upon paper what I think of you and your rascally old adviser, old Holloboy. I don't see the drift of your letters; but I guess by your not coming home, that there's no good in them. I know old Holloboy too well to be taken in by his fine speeches. Nelfield is worth at least fifteen hundred a-year, and though Miss Sourings is no beauty, you will be a great ass if you throw it away. Mind my words. We have been great friends up to this time; but I won't stand any nonsense. Therefore come home. - Yours truly, "L. B."

A week elapsed, and no answer arrived at the Manor, and the irate progenitor was just on the point of starting across the country to seize his son vi et armis, when a queen's head added to his bewilderment by the following lines:

"An application was addressed to the writer of the enclosure, No. 3, calling on him for an unconditional reply to the following enquiry; namely, what grounds, if any, he had for making any insinuation against a distinguished individual's liberality. As no answer is vouchsafed to this question, the undersigned deeply regrets that he is obliged to interdict all intercourse for a time between Holloboy Hall and Barton Manor.-L. B."

While deeply meditating on the contents of this epistle, he received a letter from no less a personage than the much injured Holloboy himself.

"SIR,- With reference to several despatches lately received from you, and marked respectively 1, 3, and 5, I have the honour to submit the following statements to your consideration-Your son, Lucius Barton, has done me the honour frequently, during the last two years, to reside in my house. He has, in the most flattering manner, assured me that he derives not only great enjoyment, but

instruction also, from my conversation; and under my auspices, and those of a distinguished nobleman now forced by an envious public into the shades of private life, he has made such progress in the science of diplomacy, that if fortune should ever restore my patriotic friend to the helm of foreign affairs, I have no doubt my pupil would be considered peculiarly qualified for the Chinese, or other interesting mission. I myself, sir, was designed, I have every reason to believe, for a mission to the Court of Tameehameeha, in Otaheite, had my party continued in power, and I rejoice to be the means of imparting to my youthful friend those principles which raised me to such an elevation. He has written most of his letters to you at my dictation, or in order to show to me his proficiency in the science I have cultivated so long; and, sir, I have the honour to tell you, that your taunts have only endeared him to me the more; that I have proved this by giving him the hand of my youngest daughter, Georgina, and that I have settled on him one-half of my estate, and twenty-five thousand pounds in hand. I call on you, sir, for nothing in return; for I consider you unworthy of such an offspring. I avail myself of this opportunity, &c. "Sir,

"GEORGE PIGHEAD HOLLOBOY."

VOL. L. NO. CCCXIV.

to buckles and greaves, hatchets, helmets, and horseshoes, which the vulgar regard merely as old iron, but which antiquarians value. Not yet caught! Stay till he has dusted some old yellow lace, and tried your taste in the fripperies of your great grandmother. Obdurate still!-then, as a last trial of his skill, where extraordinary pertinacity fights without making much way against equally enduring patience, he exhibits a gallery of Madonnas and saints suffering a second martyrdom, on whose lacerated and peeled faces the rogue will spit as he rubs them down with his coat-sleeve, inured to the service, pronouncing their expression of quiet suffering

divine, repeating the operation as often as St Sebastian's eye grows dim, or the glories of St Cecilia's halo fade on her head; "they need but a little cleaning to fit them for a distinguished place in any gallery in Europe," himself, meanwhile, with ourselves, whom he would make his dupe, affording a fitting pendant for the Caravaggio he now shows us. Not wishing, however, to gratify him, by playing the fair-skinned simpleton to this brownskinned, keen-eyed villain, in a tableau vivant we take our leave of him. To those possessing more money than wit, and in search of antiques, of all places in the world we would commend them to Ancona.

Ancona has its opera-house, a fine façade without, a liberal display of gilt cornice and saltatrice dancing in fresco within. We found the boxes filled with ladies, who still justify the reputation of the domus Veneris of the goddess, who might still, or travellers belie us, rejoice on the shores of Eryx or of Cyprus in the perpetuity of her works. Indeed, it is with us almost an hypothesis that the ancients planted the temple on spots which the divinity in that line had already claimed. (The inconstant goddess was suitably lodged amidst the winds of Præneste, or on the rocky shores of Antium,) and the women of Ancona are lovely to this hour. The scenery of the stage and its decorations were well painted; the dresses rich as Venice satin and spangle could make them; the service and retinue of the house well conducted and ample; and a noble chandelier rained light upon us, and showed off to the greatest possible advantage an eidoranion of beauties blazing in constellation in the front row, or twinkling alone in the private box. But they

do want a livelier prima donna; and, when they next give their Moses in Egypt, they could do with fewer brazen serpents in the orchestra. None certainly but coppersmiths, anvil men, and those indulgent Anconians, could tolerate such discordant, vehement, and incessant noise, under the pretence of orchestral performance. Of a surety, such grumbling and rumbling-such variety of discord-never beat together on our tympanum before. We felt like

the nervous female who lodged between two chemists, an old one and a new, and awoke, (she told her doctor,) every morning by the "linger 'em on" of the shop of the heavy old pestle, and the active "kill 'em quick" of the new settler. The orchestra of Ancona seemed to have studied these two mor tars thoroughly. Rather than have sat where that unhappy wight the prompter was doomed by office to sit, and hear for three hours those marrowbones and cleavers, we would be closeted in the belfry when great Tom begins to wag his tongue, and announce to Bagly Wood or Iffley Lock the aristocratic importance of Christ Church. The prima donna is past her prime : an untravelled canary-bird is she, that has been confined to her present "gilt cage" ever since she began to twitter. Become too old for the stage, she is also much too self-possessed, and too much at home there. She could count out the house as composedly as a grazier his sheep, and stare a full pit full in its face. Her gait is irregular and unrythmical. Her walk is like that of a tame ostrich before company at the Zoological; and, when she drew in the long lean muscles of her neck to scream, as the part required, three such screams issued from the throat as might have been heard halfway to Dalmatia_we never before heard screams encored; but, as she could not repeat them, she signified her sense of grateful acknowledgement to the uproarious approbation by putting her hand upon her heart, and smiling at us, amidst dys

pnoea and palpitation, through a thick coat of rouge! She had feet not at all according to the Ancona tariff, and a train of an aulnage beyond any heroic precedent. Surprised by her lover, and obliged suddenly to turn upon him, she meets the said train, which had been going the other way. The Trojan xxvis must have managed it better. Ludicrous enough was the position as she strutted away, like some angry peacock conscious of its glorious encumbrance, and screaming as he adjusts it. Ballets we hold to be a permitted indecency every where, and could never find much grace in seeing the handsomest limbs move counter to nature's intentions. We must concede something to habit; but our concession is strictly limited to the flexibility of young members. At Ancona we beheld middle-aged people, dressed juvenile, sustaining all the honours of the ballet: two pairs of ancient legs vie for the admiration oftwo thousand connoisseurs. We did pity the

poor souls who had to play Psyche and Zephyr! They began, as they all do, by twisting their dislocated members into all those sorts of attitudes which are practised by Japanese superstition, or pictured on the Etruscan jar-feats difficult to be done, and would they were impossible! Out of breath, and suffering the torments of cramp, they affect an easy abandonment; and, gasping a second or two in each other's arms, start off again like hares from the form, and bound from place to place, and recede to the bottom of the stage, only to come back to the lamps in flying leaps and tip-toe twirlingsshe whisking up her airy petticoats, as often as they began to be decently composed round her limbs, and he taking an ambitious series of capers, to drop aplomb before us, and finish off with a twirl and a valedictory bow. These were not the dangerous exhibitions denounced in this country by the great satirist.

The town of Senegaglia is cheerful; the streets are by no means empty, though it is not yet"fair time:" when this occurs, an indraft of 20,000 upon a fixed population of about half that number, usually takes place. They talk a good deal about it long before it arrives, and places to let for the fiera are advertised in the windows. At that season, Mussulman and Christian, Jew and Frenchman, all meet here with their respective wares, and oriental ambers vie with Lyons velvets, German bookstalls, Italian sculpture, English cutlery, and Paris horologerie. In this part of Italy a country so little eminent for stationary commerce, and destitute of the useful arts-there must be twenty days of pleasant idleness, and of abundant temptation. One of the resident booksellers of this place, who had passed all his life amongst large margins, rare MSS, black letter, quaint device, and illuminated vellum, showed us a book for which, if he spoke truth, he had recently refused 900 francs-viz. a Polybius published by Perotti in 1473, and now offered

We

by him for 1000 francs, (L.40.) It was a very small book, to read which had been a real infliction, let alone paying for it. He had also an Artemidorus, to be sold (if a purchaser offered) for 500 francs, (L.20,) which might, for aught we know to the contrary, be cheap at the money. had seen too much "picture" lately at Rome, to care for any wayside celebrities of the art; so we abstained from a Perrugino-the Perrugino of Senegaglia- and did not profit by the waiter's offer to take us to see the descent from the cross by "Barrochio," but went in preference to visit a young antiquarian lawyer, of whose collection of curiosities much had been said to interest us at the inn. Him we were fortunate enough to find at home

(your lawyers, like spiders, seldom go far from home.) He received us with gratifying attention, and presently began, as he found us out, to speak deferentially of any judgments that escaped us on what we saw. We had soon seen his whole museumhad said the civil things that men say when they don't intend to purchase

and were on the very threshold of his door about to retire, when, lo! a maid and a service of ices came upon the scene, and an ice per man made it impossible to stir. We were frozen to the spot, and so we talked away from ices to bronzes, and other objects of

vertù; and then came to business, and we bargained, and bought, and parted company on the best possible understanding. "A gentlemanly man that lawyer,' observed one of our party.

Onwards from Ancona, the seashore of the Adriatic is a flat sandy coast, not unlike that from Brighton to Worthing, and as devoid of objects of interest. At Fano, we visit the Arch, so damaged by the soldiers of Julius the Third, and by the people of Fano, who fought in defence of their town from its summit, that the inscriptions which would have ascertained its date, together with its ornaments, have perished. A dirty ancient gateway, and nothing more, is the Arch of Fano. A thing, like many other things, to be seen simply because it is ancient, and has been "booked" among the "sights." The fire-fly seems to be a capricious visiter. We had scarcely seen one since we left Rome, three weeks ago; to-day, the 19th May, they came out in vast numbers to light us into Fano, sparkling in every hedge, corn-field, and plantation, with a brilliancy which those who have once seen never forget, and of which those who have not can have no adequate idea.

We saw here the ceremony of reconducting to her chapel on the Piazza, a certain Madonna, who had been about making visits in procession all day, after a very long discourse by the Bishop of Camerino, who happened to be passing through the town. There was an immense crowd-every peasant was ambitious of holding a candle in the procession, which, so soon as the bells began to ring, were all lighted; and, on a signal being

given, off went the slow cortège, which presented an avenue of candles

very long large moulds indeed!—a bespangled picture, set round with the customary trophies of hands and feet, and dilated hearts of very thin silver walls, with a faded nosegay or two, were all disposed under a blue silk awning, and the whole apparatus, borne on poles, nodded as it went over the bareheaded populace. The figure stopped, and was made to turn round for a few seconds upon the crowd at the church door, and then entered as it had issued in the morning, and was soon safely lodged again in its shrine.

The passion for collecting, and selling the things collected, has descended here to a very low rank of life. It will be a long time before a tavernwaiter in England, even in London, will tell you, as ours did, that he had recently sold 2000 silver coins, consular and others, to a nobleman in the neighbourhood, and that he had friends among his townsmen who collected whatever the peasants picked up, (and hereabouts they are always picking up something,) and classed and arranged them according to their abilities. Such persons, he added, became at last very expert and knowing, and would seldom part with their treasures. Valery states, that elephants' tusks have been found on the hills' sides adjoining Fano, remains, it is conjectured, of Asdrubal's army, who was slain on the banks of the Metaurus.

Happening to be somewhat in the condition of Catullus' Hospes at Pr saro, we wrote an "ordonnance," but having misgivings about is being properly made up, we sent for the

"man of art," who, not knowing the capacity in which he was called for, put on his clinical black coat, and tapped at our bed-room door, hoping, doubtless, that a nervous countess had