Paris hosts, has recalled to the mind of Europe the interval which separates a friendly understanding from an offensive and defensive alliance. Just twenty-one years ago, for the only time since the Franco-Prussian war, there was a real danger of Europe being once more given over to strife and carnage. Prince Bismarck and Count von Moltke both thought the moment opportune for a fresh attack on France. The old German Emperor, grandfather of the present Kaiser shared that opinion. His nephew, the Tsar Alexander II., promptly and personally interposed. He secured the support of the English Court and Cabinet; the horizon cleared; the war scare of 1875 peacefully receded into history. There is the best reason for saying that very soon, possibly by the time that these lines are before the public, the continuity of Russian diplomacy, thanks to the events and influences reviewed here, will receive a new and auspicious illustration. When, as Lord Rosebery the other day reminded us, Oliver Cromwell effectually intervened to deliver the Waldensians from their harryings, slayings, and general outragings by the Duke of Savoy, not an ounce of English gunpowder was wasted, nor a drop of English blood spilt. Diplomatic agencies were employed to induce France, as the most Catholic power, to give the Duke of Savoy to understand that his persecutions of the Swiss Protestants must cease: The hint was obeyed. Thereafter Cromwell's fellow religionists on Helvetic soil, within a defined but liberal, nor ever transgressed, area, enjoyed the same immunity from rapine, rape, or

The

murder, as the most Popish of their compatriots. Substitute Russia and France for France alone; put Armenia in the place of Switzerland; the situation of 1655 is repeated in 1896. The rumors of a new Berlin Conference referred to above are certainly premature and probably baseless. A possibility far more plausible is that of an International Commission, such as settled the Bulgarian frontier in 1878, to mark the territory within which the Armenian Christians are to be absolutely sacrosanct, and where to molest any one of them will be a sin against the letter as well as the spirit of European law. Of course such a conclusion will not be reached without concessions reciprocated between France, Russia, and the other great Powers. Triple Alliance has now subsisted so long as to have become a historic safeguard, instead of merely a diplomatic phrase. On the one hand, France will tender her assurance to abstain from all action or policy likely to injure the threefold bulwark of the peace of Europe. On the other hand, France herself will receive a pledge that her European neighbors will not be parties to any arrangements or preparations which can cause her the disquiet of two decades ago, or revive the war scare of 1875. Thus the combination of diplomacy with deer-stalking on the Dee, and with the fêteing as of an Offenbachian fairyland on the Seine, is in a fair way of producing results which the intervention of vociferating sectaries and the war-cries of officious crusaders will not seriously mar or delay.-Fortnightly Review.

THE doubtful honor of being considered a mighty magician, which in the Middle Ages so often fell to the lot of men of superior gifts, was shared by Virgil in a remarkable degree. Why the great poet was thus distinguished, we may discover in the cir

NEW SERIES.-VOL. LXIV., No. 6.

cumstances of his life and his special genius.

In the wide, flat pasture lands of the Mantuan plain, watered by the Mincio, and enriched by the damp fogs arising from its chain of lakes-in that plain, so often in our own day the scene of

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Italy's struggles to drive back her Austrian oppressors--there stood, two thousand years ago, near the village of Andes, the homestead of the father of Virgil. Here, with the help of his wife, Maia, he cultivated his little patrimony, and here their son, Publius Virgilius Maro, was born, October 15, B.C. 70. They had sufficient wealth and good sense to bestow on their gift ed child a liberal education, sending him to the schools of Milan and Cremona, and afterward to Naples, where he studied the Greek language and literature. Probably to this early acquaintance with the city of "sweet Parthenope," to use his own expression, we may trace his enduring love for her enchanting shores. His poetic soul must have glowed responsive to her luxuriant loveliness, and her milder air and soft sea-breezes probably suited his health better than the rougher blasts of his Mantuan home. For all his life he was never robust, and we do not read of his ever having taken part in the stirring military events of his time.

The battle of Philippi, B. c. 42, while it made Octavian master of the Roman world, left him in great difficulties as to the payment of his victorious veterans. To meet their demands, he gave them grants of land, chiefly in Northern Italy, and in this way the Virgilian patrimony passed into other hands.

About this time there appeared before Augustus a tall, slender young man, stooping in gait and slow of speech, whose complexion, browned by exposure to the summer sun, and whose rural air placed him in strong contrast with the gilded youth of the luxurious Rome of that day, but in whose eyes was glowing the fire of genius. This was the unknown poet, who was to sing of "Arms and the Man" to his own and future generations. He had come to appeal on his father's behalf for the restitution of the little Mantuan farm, and in this it is probable he succeeded with the Emperor, to whom he afterward testified his gratitude in his first Eclogue, where he addresses him under the name of Melibæus. Fortune continued to smile upon the young Virgil, with the patronage of the rich and generous

Mæcenas, to whom he soon after introduced Horace, his friend and brother bard. Whether through the favor of this powerful patron, or through that of Augustus himself, Virgil, a little later, became possessed of a villa on the height of Posilippo, near Naples. Henceforward this was his home; here he wrote his greatest works, cultivated his vineyards and gardens, and from the resources of his practical knowledge of Nature often gave useful hints to the peasants of his neighborhood, and to the fishermen who plied their craft at the foot of his rocks. But in the midst of his varied occupations, and the many interests offered by the old Greek city of Neapolis, he never forgot the farmhouse at Andes, and frequently sent money to his father, who became blind in his later life.

Thus passed the tranquil years, varied probably by occasional visits to the metropolis. He died of fever at Brindisi, September 22, B.C. 19, on his return journey from Athens, whither he had gone to meet his friend and patron, Augustus, coming home from an eastern campaign. His ashes, according to his own directions, were taken to his beloved Posilippo, and placed in a tomb on the hillside looking toward Naples. This tomb soon became a shrine, where poet and peasant, philosopher and fisherman, alike repaired to pay a tribute of veneration to departed genius and love of humanity. It still stands on the sunny slope, half hidden in a tangle of vines and cactus, and though modern antiquarians in their scepticism would throw doubt on its authenticity, they cannot despoil it of its interest. It is a small, square, vaulted chamber, unmistakably a Roman columbarium, containing ten niches for urns. The urn which held the ashes of Virgil was of marble, supported on nine small pillars, and stood alone, opposite the entrance. It bore this inscription:

"Mantua me genuit, Calabria me rapuit, tenet nunc

Parthenope; cecini pascua, rura, duces."

("Mantua gave me birth, Calabria snatched me from life; Parthenope has my ashes. I sang of pastures, fields, and shepherds.") The urn has long ago disappeared, but

a modern stone, bearing the same inscription, has been placed where it stood. In 1226 the tomb was in a good state of preservation when Petrarch, as he tells us in his Itinerary, was taken to see it by King Robert of Sicily, and here he planted a laurel in memory of the great Latin poet. This laurel is said to have existed till the last century, when it was gradually destroyed by reckless curiosity-hunters. In 1544 the following inscription, which is still to be seen, was placed in the adjoining wall of the vineyard :

'Qui cineres? tumuli hæc vestigia ? Conditur olim

Ille hic qui cecinit pascua, rura, duces." ("Whose are these ashes? Whose this ruined tomb? It once contained the ashes

of him who sang of pastures, fields, and shep. herds.")

Within a few years of the poet's death, so well was his fame already established, that statues were everywhere erected to his memory, an annual celebration was held at the tomb, and, highest honor of all, even during the reign of Augustus the use of his writings as school-books had begun. Very early, too, the custom arose of attempting to read Fate by the random opening of his works, and taking as prophetic the line that first met the eye, as in after days was so often done with the Bible. It is said that the acceptance or refusal of the empire was more than once decided by these "sortes Virgilianæ," as they were called.

The remarkable words of the fourth Eclogue, beginning "Ultima cumai venit jam carminis ætas," were, as is well known, supposed by many from the earliest Christian times to be a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah. When we remember that Virgil's death occurred only nineteen years before that event, we need not wonder at the effect produced on some of the followers of the new faith by the prediction of the near approach of the Golden Age inaugurated by the coming of a Divine Child, words so strangely in accordance with those of the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah ix. 6, 7). Nor can we be surprised that they regarded the writer with a sympathetic feeling, and

doubted, pagan though he was, whether the gates of heaven were closed upon him. When St. Paul, on his way to Rome, landed at Pozzuoli (Acts xxviii. 13), then Puteoli, a busy commercial city, he spent seven days there. We may naturally suppose that he looked southward across the shining bay to the headland of Posilippo, and a beautiful tradition says that, remembering the great poet who there had lived and sung, the Apostle of the Gentiles lamented that he had not been privileged to tell the story of the Saviour of the world to the man who in ignorance had predicted His glorious advent. Another version is, that St. Paul even visited the tomb on the steep hillside, and there wept over the fate of this gifted spirit. So late as the fifteenth century, at Mantua, when the mass of St. Paul's Day was celebrated, a hymn was sung which recorded the story in the following lines:

"Ad Maronis mausoleum
Ductus, fudit super eum
Piæ rorem lacrimæ.
Quem te, iniquit, reddidissem
Si te vivum invenissem
Poetarum maxime !"

In the mystery plays of the Middle Ages, Virgil was often represented with the Sibyls, who, yet in the night of paganism, had announced the coming of the dawn.

In the "Divina Commedia," Dante gives utterance to the prevailing feeling of sorrow that such a soul should, through not having been baptized, be cut off from the joys of Paradise. Dante was sorely troubled for his "beloved master," his "sweetest father,"'" as he calls his guide through the regions of eternal woe and purifying fire, who, alas! was forever relegated to a "pale realm of shade," the limbo of the unbaptized. As readers of the marvellous poem will remember, this is put in the mouth of the poet Statius, suffering in Purgatory for the denial in his lifetime of his faith in Christianity. Addressing Virgil, he says: "Thou wert the first to send me to Parnassus to drink from her springs, and then thou lightedst my path to God. When thou saidst, The age will be renewed, justice and the earlier days of humanity will return, and a

new race will descend from heaven,' thou wert like one who walks by night, carrying a lamp whose light avails not to himself, but to those who follow after him. Through thee I became a poet, through thee I became a Christian" (Purg. xxii. 64-73).

This feeling lingered long in the minds of men, ultimately resolving itself into the belief that Virgil, though debarred from the blessings of Christianity, was gifted with magic powers, which he used for the good of mankind. At first, skill in the black art is not attributed to him, but only power arising from his intimate knowledge of the most recondite secrets of Nature. He figures especially as the great benefactor of Naples, where by degrees he came to be regarded by the more ignorant of the population as a maker of talismans and charms. In and around Naples we feel ourselves truly in the Virgil country, not only because of the proximity of many places named in the Eneid, but also from local names and traditions. The fisherman still points out "The Rocks of Virgil," and the oldest of the tunnels by which the hill of Posilippo is pierced, is called up to the present day the Grotto of Virgil. For many centuries this was the only direct way of communication between Naples and the Phlegræan Fields. It is said that Virgil, seeing what a boon it would be to the country people, who had to bring the produce of their farms to the city either by boat or by a toilsome journey over the hill, made the tunnel by enchantment in one night. Our own Marlowe thus refers to this in his "Doctor Faustus" (Act iii. scene 1) :

"There saw we learned Maro's golden tomb; The Way he cut an english mile in length Thoroug a rock of stone in one night's

space.

That this was the popular belief is shown by the fact of King Robert of Sicily having brought Petrarch here, when his guest in Naples, to ask his opinion on the subject. Petrarch tells us that he thus replied to the King: "I know well that Virgil was a poet and not a magician; besides, I see here the marks of the iron tools used in the excavation." Whoever he may have been who planned "this very dark and

most obscure passage, fearful to him who entered it," as an old writer says, did a merciful work, saving many a weary step to men and horses.

In one of the public squares of Naples there stood, five hundred years ago, a colossal bronze horse, probably Greek. but said to be the magic work of the poet, and endowed by him with curative powers for all equine maladies. So great was its fame and reputed success that the farriers, who were losing their trade, bored a hole in its body, and thus deprived it of its magic power. But it was still regarded with such superstitious veneration that the Archbishop of Naples in 1322 had it taken down, and the body melted into a bell for the cathedral. The head was saved, and since 1809 it has been in the Museum of Naples, where the visitor may still see it in the gallery of the bronzes, a masterly piece of sculpture, instinct with fiery life. The rings in the mouth were put there by the Emperor Conrad, about 1251, to hold a bridle, as symbolical of the bridle with which he threatened the Neapolitans. The forelock is tied up in a knot on the forehead, and it is curious to observe how this style of decoration still prevails in Naples, where the best kept cab-horses have this knot of hair tied with brightcolored ribbon.

In pity to the mosquito-tormented Neapolitans, Virgil is reputed to have made a great fly of metal which had the power of driving away all insect plagues.

In connection with the Porta Nolana, one of the old gates of Naples, a Virgilian tradition long lingered. Gervais of Tilbury, an Englishman, who published a book of travels in 1212, thus relates it. He says: "We call those things wonderful which, although natural, are beyond our understanding; our inability to explain them alone makes them marvellous." He goes on to tell some of the many magic deeds attributed to Virgil by popular report, and then gives his own experience, which he declares must have been incredible to him had it not fallen under his own observation. He was at Salerno, he says, in 1190, when Philip, son of the Earl of Salisbury, unexpectedly landed there on his way to the siege of

Acre. Gervais decided to accompany him, and the two went to Naples to seek a ship to take them to Palestine without delay and with as little expense as possible. Arrived in the city, they went to the house of the Archdeacon Giovanni Pignatelli, who received them hospitably, and, while dinner was being prepared, went with them down to the sea. They had no trouble in obtaining what they desired; a vessel was found whose captain was willing to hasten his departure, and to take them for the sum they named. On their expressing to the Archdeacon their surprise at their easy success, he asked:

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By which gate did you enter the

city?"

They answered, "By the Porta Nolana.

"And at which side of the gate did you come in ?"

"As we approached the gate, we were nearest the left side, but an ass laden with wood coming up we were obliged to take the right."

The Archdeacon replied, "In order that you may see what wonders Virgil has wrought for our city, I ask you to come with me that I may show you a record of him."

They accordingly all went to the Porta Nolana, and there, on the right side of the gate, the Archdeacon pointed out a head in marble which bore an expression of hilarity, while on the left was another head which seemed to weep. Then the Archdeacon explained that those who without definite inten tion entered on the right side of the gate always succeeded in their plans, but those who entered on the left failed in everything. Thus it became clear why all had gone well with the travellers, and Gervais somewhat inconsistently concludes his story with these words: "On Thy will, O Lord, depend all things, and no one can resist that will."

Conrad of Querfurt, Chancellor of the Emperor Henry VI., of Germany, has left a remarkable letter written from Sicily in 1194 to his friend the Abbot of Hildesheim, in which he tells the marvels which he saw in his travels. Italy at that time being but little visited by northern antiquarians, was regarded by them as a land of mystery

and enchantment, and we need not be surprised to learn that Conrad saw with terror Scylla and Charybdis, and many other marvels of classic days. He, however, was not travelling as an archæologist, but had gone to Italy charged by Henry VI. with the execution of his tyrannous edict for the dismantling of the fortifications of Naples. They had been built, Conrad declares, by Virgil himself, who had besides, as a Palladium, made a small model of them which he enclosed in an air-tight bottle. This would have been an effectual safeguard against armies. and emperors, but for a small crack which was discovered in the bottle, sufficiently accounting for the ease with which Conrad fulfilled his master's orders.

This legend takes another form as told by Caracciolo in his account of the fortress of the Castel dell' Ovo (Castle of the Egg), probably so called from the shape of the islet on which it stands. Virgil, according to the story, had much delight in this castle, and taking an egg, the first ever laid by a certain hen, he put it in a bottle which he enclosed in a small iron cage. This cage he suspended from a beam in a certain chamber of the castle, with strong doors securely locked. On the safety of this egg the existence of the castle was to depend, and as at the present day it still stands on its rocky islet, frowning over the beautiful bay, who can say that the egg does not still hang in its secret chamber?

The famous mineral springs of Pozzuoli, so efficacious in many disorders, were long believed to owe their healing powers to Virgil's spells, and in the "Chronicles of Parthenope" it is related that at a later period the physicians of the famous school of Salerno found their gains so materially diminished that some of them secretly embarked for Pozzuoli, where they effaced the inscription over the door of the baths, so that no one might henceforth know of their miraculous powers. But on their return voyage they were overtaken by a violent storm, and all were drowned between Capri and the headland of Sorrento, except one who was penitent and afterward told the story of this evil deed.