who never for a moment forgot the duty of the citizen in the glory of eminent military command. Nor can any vague regret linger around Scott's grave; for his successor has thus far shown only those qualities which are the most precious to a Government like ours.

GEROME'S picture Deux Augures, which is well known from the photograph, was among the works at the late exhibition of the Allston Club in Boston. It represents the Augurs, of whom Cicero speaks, as wondering that they could look in each other's faces without laughing, standing over the coops of sacred chickens, whose peckings they were to interpret. The story has served to illustrate many a sharp criticism, and at last appears in art; and it is certainly very effective, except that Cicero never said any thing of the kind, and that it was not the Augurs who performed that duty. This fact is stated by D. in a pleasant note to the Boston Advertiser, which does a service to scholarship and popular accuracy which we are glad to acknowledge. How many other of our stock classical illustrations would shrink under the same shrewd eye! D. says:

"More than a century and a half ago the great Bentley took the trouble to expose this blunder at full length in his celebrated Letter of Phileleutheros Lipsiensis. The reader, who has any taste for classical learning in an entertaining form, can not do better than to refer to the passage there, and indeed to read the whole letter. But the substance on this point may for convenience be given here. "Cicero neither ever himself said, nor reported the elder Cato as saying, any thing of the kind about the Augurs. They were both of them Roman Tories, stanch supporters of church and state in Roman politics; and whatever Cicero may have thought or said in private as a philosopher, he was not the man to hold up, in a published treatise, the College of Augurs and the state religion to ridicule. If Lord Derby were to write that Lord Eldon said that he wondered that two English bishops could look each other in the face without laughing, the scandal and improbability would hardly be greater. Besides, Cato and Cicero were themselves Augurs, while Eldon and Derby were not quite bishops. How comes the story, then, to have such currency? Simply by substituting for a Roman Augur a very different character, an Etrurian soothsayer (Haruspex). The highest churchman might ridicule the episcopal character of a Methodist bishop or an Irvingite archangel.' Haruspex, as distinguished from Augur, is the word used by Cicero in both passages, from which the familiar allusion is derived. The Haruspex was in common with the Augur a professed diviner from natural signs, but in all other particulars they differed essentially, as much as a Catholic and a Methodist, though both are professed Christian divines. Their sacred books even were not in common. The origin and nature of their systems, the sources of their authority, and still more their political and social positions, differed widely. The Harusper was usually and properly regarded as a foreign religious adventurer; the Angur was always a man of high political and social station in Rome. But it is unnecessary to pursue the detail, which is to be found not only in Bentley, but in any of the standard manuals on Roman antiquities. With all this knowledge accessible to them, the wonder is that two magazine writers should recall their witty allusions to the two Roman Augurs without a laugh at their own, or at least at each other's, expense; and M. Gerome might, it seems, make a third in the party."

THE extravagance and absurdity of style of much of our Yankee newspaper writing is a favorite topic of censure with many among ourselves, and of the most scornful contempt with writers in England. Indeed, John Bull's affectation of contempt for our general literary style is as ludicrous as it is unfound.

ed. There are extravagant and foolish writers here as in England, simply because folly is not local; but we challenge any reviler to find any where in American writing so turgid and ridiculous a piece of bathos as Henry Kingsley's description of the manner in which Jefferson Davis would hear of Thackeray's death-which the Easy Chair quoted at the time; while every steamer from England brings newspapers and magazines in which our most astounding "reportorial efforts" are outdone.

This absurdity of style is most conspicuous in personal descriptions and allusions, and in those we can not compete with our brother Bull. The truth is, that Jenkins is a purely British product. We have toadies and weak brains, but the perfect snob is found only among the proud Britons, who never, never, never will be slaves. The most daring efforts of the Yankee Jenkins are tame when measured by the great original. Here, for instance, is the manner in which he speaks of the Queen's letter to Mr Peabody, thanking him for his generous gift to the London poor-a letter which was properly womanly and polite:

"We have this week to record an act of grace so rich, and of glory so pure, on the part of her Majesty the Queen, as will more than requicken the sentiments of reverence which all her subjects, of every order and every class, havə been accustomed to entertain toward her. We refer to the letter-couched in terms of right noble simplicityaddressed by her Majesty to Mr. Peabody, in acknowledgment of the splendid gifts which that gentleman has made to the working-classes of this country."

"Here's richness!" quoth Mr. Squeers. But from Jenkins merely groveling we ascend to Jenkins in the vein of pure sentimental "hifalutin." If the Yankee "reportorial style" has produced any thing so amusing we have not seen it. Here is Mr. Gladstone driving up to the House of Commons on the evening when he was to introduce the Reform bill:

"Four o'clock had struck, and the crowd, making up its mind that Bright had gone in earlier, was only held together by the chance of seeing Gladstone. It had not been an indifferent crowd-rather a crowd keenly inquisitive, honestly in earnest. Its cheers, originated by a few men here and there, had been far more hearty than, in England, expressions of opinion are wont to be. But hitherto there had been nothing which could honestly be called enthusiasm. In fact, the people were waiting for that one leader in whose splendid brain and whose generous heart they put their whole faith. At last there came a swaying about of the crowd-a cheer went ringing and rolling along the line-the police tried to keep men back, and men wouldn't have it—a sort of electric telegraphy seemed to flash and sparkle from face to face, and those behind cried, Who is it?' and those in front were too busily cheering to answer the inquiry. It was wonderful-the change from the calm, indifferent, jesting manner of the crowd to the sudden earnestness with which the leader of the Liberals was welcomed. Up went the voices, and off went the hats; and all that an unimpassioned spectator could see through the tempest of applause was a pale, grave, gallant face, firmly set; then a light on the face, as the great orator was compelled to raise his hat in recognition; and by his side a lady, graciously proud of her husband's fame.

"Said one working man to his neighbor, Looks pale, don't he?'

"Answered the other, 'He'll make the Tories look a deal paler afore he's done!'"

But the meanness of spirit which animates both these performances is not surprising in a country where etiquette prescribes that the whim of a dull youth may interfere with the intellectual enjoyment of scholars and cultivated men and women. At a late meeting of the Royal Society Dean Stan

ley was to read a paper, and the Prince of Wales was present. It is the etiquette that at the end of an hour the lecturer shall pause, and if the Prince indicates that he wishes him to proceed he may do so; if not, he must stop. Upon this occasion the company was composed of the most intelligent persons, and the paper was most interesting and instructive. At the end of an hour Mr. Stanley paused and looked at the Prince, whom common politeness and regard for the wishes of others should have impelled to bow in approval of finishing the lecture. But the young man simply stared. Mr. Stanley looked at Professor Farraday, who presided, and the Professor whispered that if the youth bowed the Dean might finish the paper, of which but little more remained to read. The audience, naturally impatient of an interruption which should have been merely formal and momentary, looked at the Prince in surprise, which became instantly indignation in every breast but that of Jenkins when the Heir of England rose and walked out of the room. Imagine Agassiz compelled by etiquette to stop in the middle of a lecture because Tad Lincoln or a youthful Johnson was ill-mannered! And imagine still more a company of intelligent people gravely tolerating such a proceeding!

But this apparent servility is part of the British system. "Monarchy in England," as Louis Blanc says, "is a simple business transaction. How much does it bring in? How much does it cost? Balance of profit and loss." This incident of Dean Stanley's lecture is an illustration of the horrible extravagance of the price. A system of Government should be remarkably superior to all others which requires that Oriental servility of manner and conduct which monarchy apparently requires of intelligent Englishmen. "I have some difliculty," says the acute observer, from whom we have just quoted, "in reconciling with the manners of a free people the species of idolatrous worship-I speak only as to outward form-to which a 'Drawing Room,' as it is called here, gives rise." Nor while John Bull thinks it cheaper to maintain a monarchy must we expect him to refuse to pay the price. It may seem hard and even ludicrous that the constitutional protection of Dean Stanley's rights as a man should depend in any degree whatever upon his conforming to a system which requires him to stop short in a valuable discourse because a very dull young man in the audience is not well-bred enough to ask him to proceed. But after all, it is undeniable that it is better to conform to that absurd condition than to live subject to the knout or bow-string.

"THE telegrams from Italy of last evening," said the London Times lately, "announce the arrival of General Garibaldi at Como. The intelligence could hardly be more portentous. Garibaldi at Como is on the very theatre of his most brilliant exploits of former days." And as war is about breaking upon Italy again, and names which to most American travelers have only a romantic association become of military significance, the Easy Chair naturally recalls the days of '48 when Carlo Alberto was the Italian chief, and Italian faith and hope were as warm doubtless as they are to-day, and when, at the very moment in which the Austrians under Radetzky occupied Milan, the Easy Chair and three friends descended the Gottherd pass of the Alps into Italy. "I think at this moment," writes one of that gay party, "of the evening that

| we topped the hills around Como and began to descend toward its shores."

The words breathed upon memory like a soft west wind upon an Æolian harp, and looking into the yellow diary of those cloudless days the Easy Chair finds a record which shows how the country looked, and how the people felt when Italy awoke eighteen years ago.

As the afternoon was ending-says the note-book, describing the journey on foot from Lago Maggiore and the Lake of Lugano to Como-we passed a shrine at which a mother and children were kneeling and chanting the Ave Maria, and an ass with loaded panniers jogged slowly by. The vesper bells began to ring from an old church tower upon a mountain-side, and down the long valley, while far over the rounding tops of orange and fig trees in the warm-descending vale a triangle of dark-blue water was the first glimpse of Como. My knees bent a little, not with fatigue, but with reverence, as if I were again entering the very court and heart of Italy. A group of girls, less timorous or more interested than the crowd upon the Lugano Lake shore, asked us if there were any news-if France were coming to help Italy. But ours, alas! were not the beautiful feet upon the mountains. We could only say "nothing" and "good-by."

At Santa Croce we came out in full view of the lake, upon which lay the splendor of sunset, and taking a path which we were told would shorten the journey we lost our way upon a huge hill-side. But as we reached the summit the full moon rose from behind the heights upon the opposite shores of Como, and a handsome Italian boy showed us a straight path to Cadennabia upon the margin of the lake. I gave him a silver trifle, and he wished us "felice viaggio" with his black eyes and his musical lips, and leaving him like a shepherd boy of the purer Arcadia of the hills we descended rapidly into a vineyard, and so came to the shore.

It was a moment of mingled twilight and moonlight. A path of splendor lay upon the Cadennabia shore to the Villa Melzi opposite; and, hailing an old boatman, we glided up that golden way to the vine-clustered balcony which I knew at Bellaggio under the moon. The air was calm and bland. The water was oily and gleaming. The mountains stood around us dusky and vast in the ghostly light as we went silently over the lake.

We landed, and took tea upon the balcony at the hotel whose only rival in Europe for romantic picturesqueness is the Trois Couronnes at Vevey upon the Lake of Geneva. The "magic casement" of Keats's Ode to a Nightingale was mine at Bellaggio. The lake murmured with music every where. I saw the boats full of people singing choruses, then talking and laughing as they floated away. The sound of instruments, the throb of strings, the sad, mellow peal of horns, filled the air; and long after midnight a band was still playing in the village. About midnight Edmund and Frank bathed in the lake. Their figures were white as marble in the black water, and they struck the calm into sparkles of splendor as they swam out.......

The boat which we took to descend the lake to the town of Come had three rowers. The chief, whom I remembered from last year, groaned bitterly over the war because there were so few strangers. "Trade, you see, is conservative," said I to Edmund.

"Who wouldn't be conservative at Como?" he tranquilly replied.

"We live upon the strangers," continued Giovanni Battista, the boatman, with a simplicity and truthfulness that made us laugh; "and this year nobody comes. The Italians are driven away, and the foreigners are frightened."

He had not been to Como for two months, although his business is plying upon the lake, and his winter depends upon his summer. "The war is bad for all of us,” he said, “and after all the Germans are back again."

....Farther on, and nearer Como, the shore is covered with handsome villas, of which the most remarkable for beauty and fame are Madame Pasta's, a magnificent estate, and Taglioni's, which is not yet finished, and the stately Odescalchi. As we passed Madame Pasta's the old boatman shrugged his shoulders and trilled with his voice. "That's the way the money came there," he said, contemptuously. He was clearly of opinion that only the decaying and decayed families whose names he had heard all his life, and whose ancestors his fathers knew, were to be spoken of with praise.

"Whose villa is that?" asked I. "Eh! che! nobody's," he replied; "if it were any body's we should know."

At 5 o'clock we rounded the point over which I had stood the year before on a still September afternoon hearing the girls sing in a boat below, and so came to the shore at Como.

Every where there was an air of consternation. The Austrians had just reoccupied the town, and the streets were full of the "hated barbarians," rattling about with long swords and standing on guard at the doors of public buildings. The walls bristled with military notices. Among others I read one exhorting all well-disposed people to surrender arms of every kind by a certain day at a place named. The people seemed to be stupefied, and gazed in dull wonder upon the soldiers.

Out of the square, ringing with Austrian sabres, we stepped into the Duomo, dim and lofty and hushed, untouched by revolutions or triumphs. A few unodorous sinners were kneeling and praying. They were very poor and ignorant. But this was their palace, and they looked as if they knew that the great Emperor of the barbarians had not one more gorgeous or solemn.

We tried to secure seats in the post for Milan. There was no place. We applied at the offices of public and private diligences. It was still impossible. The evening was cool and clear, and we considered. The distance to Milan was but eight hours of our walking, and we were making a walking tour. And although we had scarcely bargained for a promenade over the plains of Lombardy in an August sun-yet this perfect moon? Should we turn back without seeing the Goths encamped around the most glorious of Gothic cathedrals?

It was nine o'clock when we shouldered our knapsacks and set forth. The dwellers in romantic Como, standing at their doors, looked wonderingly upon the four pedestrians marching in regular resolute tramp along the streets, evidently moving upon Milan. The small children plainly thought us a part of the imperial and royal army. "Here come the Austrians," whispered one boy to another, as he gazed at the gray wide-awakes and knapsacks.

The mild Francis looked at him with the air of an army which would respect persons and property so long as it was unmolested, and wished the boy so soft a buona notte that he smiled gently, and I am sure his dreams were not disturbed.

We passed out of the gate of Como full against the round rising moon and took the broad hard highway for Milan. We passed a few wagons loaded with the furniture of some fugitive and rolling slowly along. As we pushed on, the idea of penetrating by night and on foot into a country at war was stimulating and novel. But what consciousness of war could survive in the deep peace of that night? The fields were covered with high corn, and the hard straight road went before us in dim perspective. There were no other travelers. Two or three empty. vetturas or a wine cart straggled lazily by, the lit tle bells upon the horses tinkling, and the drivers fast asleep. Nor were the villages many. As we passed a group of half a dozen houses a fellow was sleeping soundly upon a bench at a door. When we broke in upon the silence of night by asking the name of the village, he sprang up nimbly and limped rapidly out of sight as if the question had been a pistol-shot and had wounded him. Every body was nervous "in questo momento." Toward midnight we stopped at a house which should have been near the point at which we meant to sleep until sunrise, and roused an old lady who shrilly chirped and twittered her terror through the slide in the door. But satisfying her that we were neither Croats nor cannibals, she told us that we were yet a mile or two from Balasina.

It was now twelve o'clock, and the land seemed sunk in a sleep of death. There was no sound but our own echoes as we entered the dreary, dismal village, which, like all Italian villages, is merely a dirty street bordered with gloomy houses. They looked so hopeless with their grim stone fronts, high-barred windows out of reach, and huge gates, as if expecting nothing but hostility, that when we stopped before the inn we felt like the wretched wights who beheld the dungeons of an ogre; and when Edmund exclaimed in what seemed a terrible voice, so still was the night, "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" we started as if had heard a loud joke in church. Then the vision of a pleasant inn hung for a moment in our minds, and the sense of the preposterous contrast awakened a loud peal of laughter which died away echoing among those houses which were as hospitable as sea-crags. While we stood debating, a group of peasants, with their jackets slung over their shoulders, passed spectrally by, staring steadily at us, as if they would not be unwilling to strike a final blow for the kingdom of Italy.

They disappeared, and we struck a resounding blow upon the door of the Albergo, and another and another. After a while there was a sound of stealthily unba ing window-shutters followed by a voice demanding the reason of the tumult. We explained that we were friends who wanted beds for the night. No, that was impossible, "the voice replied far up the height;" there were no beds, and we had better push on to the next tavern. We expostulated in many tongues with the dimly-visioned head that now appeared, pleading that we were strangers from a far country who were very tired and sleepy. The head disappeared for a few moments and we heard a low colloquy. Then the great gate of the Albergo swung sullenly open, and we stepped into a dim court, and the dimly-visioned face became a face like a dull razor, it was so thin-featured and stupid. The man asked us to stop, and, stepping aside, he called a woman's name, then stood waiting, his wretched dozing face illuminated by the weak lustre of a long-wicked tallow-candle which he held. Pres

ently he moved on along the windows of the court conversing with an invisible within the house. When those murmuring arrangements were made, he led us up a dirty, stone staircase, trying to open various doors with keys that did not fit the locks; and finally, after a desperate wrestle with one, he swore fiercely in a thin, wiry voice that made the blood run cold, and then smashed the door of the chamber, carrying away wood-work and lock together. It was a vast room of immense discomfort, and after barricading the disabled door with tables and chairs, we lay down and fell asleep upon beds which could furnish no dreams.

In the morning we ate grapes and peaches, and finding a wagon which we could hire, we bribed our pedestrian consciences and bowled over the beautiful road to Milan, reluctantly confessing that the imperial and royal post-roads were the best in the world.

"Yes-but not for the public benefit," said the mild Francis; "they are for the quicker transport of troops and artillery to oppress the people."

Sad, silent, broken-hearted Milan! No, not yet visibly broken-hearted, for the Cathedral sparkled pure and lofty in the rare, blue summer air. It was the morning of the Feast of the Ascension of the Virgin Mary, to whom the Cathedral is dedicated, and was therefore high festival. But the people had little aspect of joy. We stopped at the gate, and sat in the steady glare of the sun while our passports were closely inspected. Outside the city wall lay a wilderness of tree trunks, which had been leveled in expectation of a siege by the Austrians. They were useless now; and groups of soldiers in gray slouched hats and black plumes-a kind of Robin Hood uniform-were clustered idly and curiously about the gate. They looked worn and red and wasted, and I fancied had taken part in the fight of the burning day which had made almost as many idiots as corpses in the Austrian army.

Within the city the streets were broken up, and the paving-stones designed for barricades were merely roughly laid back again in their places. In the long vista of the streets there was no shop open. The only signs of traffic were the stands of the fruitmerchants shaded by gayly-striped awnings, and covered with piles of glowing fruit. Multitudes of brightly-dressed people strolled idly and curiously up and down, and a company of sappers and miners marched by without music, but carrying their implements and their soiled accoutrements. They were dirty and draggled, like a corps marching across a battle-field to dig a hopeless ditch. There were no carriages moving; there was no noise, no hurry, no excitement, only that scuffling murmur which makes the silence of a great city so spectral. The stately Milanese women walked finely by. Their long black hair was drawn away from the forehead and folded in massive plaits; and the black veil that hung from the back of the head was partly gathered over the arm. Queen-like they walked, carrying the bright-colored fan which was raised to shield their eyes from the sun, or languidly waved against their bosoms. Forms of the Orient or of Spain the imagination touched them with pathetic dignity-matrons of a lost country.

-The yellow Diary does not stop here, but we must. The traveler to-day, descending the Alps to Como, will find the same Italy arousing to a greater struggle than that from the blow of whose defeat it was quivering when Radetzky sat down in Milan eighteen years ago.

"A CONFIRMED BACHELOR" submits to the Easy Chair the confession of a married friend, upon which he asks advice. There is such pungency in the statement that it shall be also submitted to the great congregation of Easy Chairs in the country. And of all wives and mothers we ask whether such things can be? If not, why has this complaint such a pathetic air of probability?

"Don't marry," says our woeful wight, "unless you As for me-let me undeceive you!—I have no comfort or can afford to hire an accomplished housekeeper and cook. peace. If I want a decent meal I have to get it at an eating-house. My own house is mismanaged, misgoverned, and disorderly from one year's end to the other. My wife sits up till nearly midnight reading foolish novels. If the children trouble her she whips and sends them off to the When morning comes she is so tired she can servants. not get up until after the breakfast is on the table; and it is a regular Biddyfied breakfast, worse than ever I tasted in a four dollar a week boarding-house. Half the time I dress both the children in the morning and get them their breakfast. They live mostly on crackers, cheese, and milk, for there is nothing else in the house fit for them to eat. My wife comes down when we are half through, and gets the morning paper, and looks over it to see what matinées are to take place, and makes her arrangements to leave the children to the care of the servants; and then (while she well knows it takes all that I can do, by the hardest work, to support the family in such a disorderly and mismanaged way) she hounds me to death to run in debt and buy a piano and several expensive dresses for herself. Her mind and thought seem wholly directed to self-gratification.

"My health is feeble, and my doctor insists on particular articles of diet. The only way I can get them in my own house is by appealing to my wife's selfishness. No considerations of my health move her; but if I say, 'Give me such and such so many times and you shall have a new dress, then I may get it, but even then not always, for if it interferes with the matinées or reading of the last novel I can not have it. All appeals to sense of duty, to selfishness of purpose, are met with ridicule and laughthe principles of right, all expositions of the duty of un

ter, with senseless quibbles, or with smart, impertinent speeches. When I talk of order and system, and lay before her plans of management, I am told that I don't know any thing about housekeeping, which is something different from every thing else. When sickness overtakes me, if it is slight I am ridiculed. My wife is greatly provoked with the bother of it. But if I am violently ill, and soles me by saying, 'Dear me what will become of me grave opens at my feet, as it has often done, she conand the children if he dies and leaves me poor?"

the

"I can't earn any thing ahead. She wants me to get my life insured, but fortunately for me the Companies will not take it. If they would I am afraid that I would get but little attention even in the most dangerous illness. My wife considers children a great nuisance, and if they bother her she whips them, but whips them for nothing else. She can not understand why they cling to their father so. I proposed to join the army, and her objection was only this, that my pay would not be sufficient to support her; but as my services were refused because of my ill health I unfortunately (as Webster said) still live. She makes it a constant practice to oppose me in every thing. If she proposes something and I agree to it, then she changes her mind. I have reasoned with her of duty, of religion, and of justice, and the answer is that domestic duties are a drudgery, and she will make a drudge of herself for no man. She despises household matters as beneath her notice, and looks upon the care of her children as a degrading occupation fit only for servants.

"I have but one hope, and that is to get money enough to hire some thoroughly competent person under the name

of a servant to care for my children, and a skilled cook to give them wholesome food. Yet I do not hate my wife. I can not forget that she is all that is left to me of the idol

of my youthful heart. God in His all-wise providence has sent this affliction upon me, and I will bear the burden patiently, hoping not only that I may be purified