of all sovereigns the one who can least readily offend his counsellors, break with etiquette, or disregard the large body of traditions which make up so much of the working "system" of the Roman court. We do not believe it would be easier to move the capital of the Catholic Church than to move any other capital, and that has been proved throughout history to be the most difficult of undertakings. In modern times, only one capital has been shifted, and the present generation may yet witness the abandonment of St. Petersburg, and the restoration of the Rus quire a Spanish guard to maintain his is in theory despotic, and in practice, authority, which guard would cause when resolved, is the final referee, he is Europe to regard him as, in some sense, a vassal of Spain. Monaco has also been suggested; but though the pope might, with the help of the Catholic powers, acquire that principality by purchase, might reign there in independence, and might even, amid the most beautiful scenery in the world, built a new Vatican and a new St. Peter's, he would never be safe from danger on the French side. France might at any moment be in the hands of men who would like nothing better than to insist on "guarding" him, and Germany would hardly risk war to protect his independence. No other place is even sug-sian dynasty to its ancient centre of action. gested as possible, and in none of those mentioned, except possibly Monaco, would the pope be more independent than he is now, while in any one of them he would be deprived of the traditional charm and authority which attaches to the word Rome. The world would not instinctively respect Ivica, or Malta, or Monaco, or the Styrian monastery which would be offered by the Austrian court. Moreover, there is more to think of than the pope. He is the head of a great organization, as large and important as most governments, divided into many departments, each of them with business which is world-wide. These departments are all administered by gentlemen who are either Italian by birth and training, or have become Italian by long residence in Rome. Many of them scarcely speak any other language than Italian. All of them would feel when once removed from Italy unhappy exiles, knowing nothing of things about them, and hardly knowing themselves. They could not carry away their buildings, and hardly their subordinates, who are as closely linked to Rome by a thousand ties as they are themselves. They would lose at once the sense of habitude, and with it much of their selfconfidence and serenity, while new and foreign influences, possibly hostile influ. ences, would press upon them from every side. It was said during the last election to the chair that the choice of a foreign cardinal would, for a time at least, almost paralyze the papacy, so impossible would it be for a foreign pope to sympathize with or understand cardinals, prelates, and secretaries of departments all saturated with Roman feeling and Roman tradition, and the risk of dislocation involved in the transfer of the see to any non-Roman place would be little less violent. We may be sure that the Curia will never voluntarily quit Rome; and though the pope The pope may be ready to quit Rome, but the papacy is essentially Roman, and will not, we may be sure, be moved, except under the pressure of a danger of which there is as yet no sign. From Chambers' Journal. HAMPSTEAD HEATH. THE manor of Hampstead was given by Edward the Confessor to the monks of Westminster; and subsequent monarchs conferred on them the neighboring manors of Belsize and Hendon. It was at Hendon Manor House that Cardinal Wol sey made his first halt when journeying from Richmond to York after his disgrace. At that time, however, Hampstead itself had no great claim to notice, its inhabi tants being, we are told, chiefly washer women, whose services were in great demand among the inhabitants of London. That this peaceful if humble occupation could be carried on, proves at least that the wolves which, according to Dame Juliana Berners's "Boke of St. Albans," abounded among the northern heights of London in the fifteenth century, had been exterminated by the end of the sixteenth. The wild boar lingered longer; and so late as 1772, we hear of the hunting of a deer in Belsize Park. This, however, can scarcely be regarded as genuine sport, as it is advertised to take place among other amusements intended to allure visitors to Belsize House, which had been opened as a pleasure-house by an energetic individ ual of the name of Howell. He describes in his advertisement all the attractions of the place, and promises for the protection of visitors that "twelve stout fellows, com pletely armed, will patrol between Belsize and London." Early in the eighteenth century chalybeate wells were discovered at Hampstead, and as they were recommended by several physicians, the hitherto quiet village became a fashionable and dissipated watering-place. Idle London flocked there: youths who were delighted to show their finery in a new place; girls who were young enough to delight in the prospect of dancing all night; gamblers of both sexes; wits and fops. They danced, lost their money at cards and dice, talked scandal of each other, and drank of the chalybeate well, which Sam Weller has characterized for all generations as "water with a taste of warm flat-irons," till Hampstead lost its novelty, and the company went elsewhere to go through the same programme. Among the crowd of nonentities that frequent the Hampstead Wells there is one notable figure, that of Richard Steele. In 1712 Steele retired from London to a small house on Haverstock Hill, on the road to Hampstead. Here, doubless, his friend and fellow-laborer Addison visited him; and the two would find in the hu mors and follies of the company at the Wells material for the next number of "The Tatler," the publication of which had now been going on for three years. Let us picture the two friends passing together through the gay company. Steele, radiant, we may be sure, in gay apparel, seizing at once on the humorous charac teristics of the scene; while Addison would tone down his companion's exuberant fancy, and draw his own thoughtful moralizings from the follies he witnessed. On summer evenings they would walk on the Heath, and admire the view across the swelling green slopes to the town of Harrow, where one day was to be educated my Lord Byron, a young gentleman who would win greater fame as a poet than even Addison's acquaintance -a protégé to begin with, an enemy at last the lame Catholic gentleman, Mr. Alexander Pope. Thirty years later the figure of another literary man was to be seen at Hampstead. Not so gorgeous as Dick, not so precise as Addison, is slovenly, tea-drinking, longworded Samuel Johnson; but he is their legitimate successor, nevertheless. He, too, is a man of letters, living by the produce of his pen, and appealing for support to the public, and not to the kindness or charity of private patrons. Indeed, he scorns such condescending patronage, as a certain stinging letter to Lord Chesterfield remains to testify. In 1748, Mrs. Johnson, for the sake of the country air, took lodgings at Hampstead; and there her husband wrote his satire, "The Vanity of Human Wishes." Johnson did not spend all his time at Hampstead, for he was obliged to return and drudge in smoky London in order to provide for her comfort. Boswell tells us that "she indulged in country air and good living at an unsuitable expense; and she by no means treated her husband with that complacency which is the most engaging quality in a wife." Yet Johnson loved faithfully and mourned sincerely the querulous, exacting woman, a quarter of a century older than himself, and cherished an undoubted belief in her beauty; while all save him perceived that if she had ever possessed any- - which they doubted - it had long disappeared. Early in this century, the year after Waterloo was fought, Hampstead was familiar with the forms of three men to whom life gave only scorn, insult, and disappointment, yet whose memory lingers about it and makes it hallowed ground. In 1816 Leigh Hunt lived at Hampstead in a part called the Vale of Health; and there Keats, who lodged in the village, and Shelley, were his frequent visitors. Each of the three was more or less a martyr. For the crime of describing the prince regent - whose memory as George IV. is not highly honored as an “Adonis of fifty," Hunt was thrown into prison; while the political reviews and journals abused his graceful poems and scholarly essays as if they had been firebrands, to extinguish which every exertion must be made. They succeeded in torturing him, in reducing him to poverty and dependence, but they did not succeed in changing Leigh Hunt's convic tions. He would not bow down to the Adonis of fifty. Shelley was rather a visitor than a resident at Hampstead Heath; but Keats composed not a few of his poems here. The sorrows of his sorrowful life had not yet reached their climax in 1816. Already he was struggling with poverty, disease, and hopeless, passionate love; but he had not yet published those poems which were to rouse such wrath in the bosoms of a few critics, and such delight in thousands of readers. But at Hampstead most of them were written. Here he breathed life into the long-dead myth of Endymion, surround. ing it with such a wealth of description as seems scarcely possible to a youth of such limited experience. Can commonplace Hampstead Heath, the chosen resort of Bank Holiday excursionists, be the prototype of that Grecian valley where the goddess of night stooped to kiss Endymion? Here was written the sad story of "The Pot of Basil," and the legend of " The Eve of St. Agnes;" here, in 1819, was com posed that most exquisite "Ode to a Nightingale," which, even were it his only production, might place Keats among our greater poets. and the imitation is so perfect as to deceive all but those who have studied such things minutely in Europe. The explorer of furniture stores may come upon magnificent specimens of English Gothic chamber pieces or ancient looking Chippendale and Sheraton chairs, which might have belonged to Queen Elizabeth but for From The British Trade Journal. the fact that they did not. It must be THE TRADE IN MODERN ANTIQUITIES. puzzling at first to discover in New York ONE of the chief delights of Continen- shops stamped leather chairs of the time tal travel, as every person of experience of Louis Treize, plentifully ornamented will admit, is the unlimited opportunities with brass nails whose heads are fully an it affords for buying antiquities. The inch in diameter, and the citizens of that statuary, the coins, and the pictures that enterprising city are invited to become may be purchased in Italy are a source of the happy possessors of as many of these never-failing interest to English travellers treasures as they like on ridiculously low and of never-failing profit to Italian deal- terms. If, however, the explorer is iners. Andalusia, again, is a huge curiosity quisitive, and the furniture vendors are in shop. Being once upon a time in Seville, a tolerably candid mood, the visitor may we came across a retired British grocer or be conducted into some backyard where tailor, or something of that kind, who had these gems of high art are produced. A just purchased a Madonna and Child - -un- Queen Anne's chair just made can, for happily unsigned - which he had picked instance, be supplied with worm-holes by up for a few pounds in a dingy back street. the simple process of tilting it bottom side He was going to send it to the Exhibition up and firing a charge of pigeon shot into of Old Masters, and, if he ever did so, he the bottom and front of the seat. Old probably found that it was worth only a armor, too, is a good line in this business, pound or thirty shillings at the outside. the drawings required for the purpose It is the same, indeed, throughout Spain. being made from the collection in the The altar-cloths, the broken fans, the in- Grand Opera House, in Paris. It is said laid tables and cabinets, as resplendent as that Birmingham knows something about anything in the convent of the Cartufle at this branch of the trade, and that helmets, Granada, the wonderful chairs, and the shields, casques, breast-plates, and comstill more extraordinary scraps of ancient plete suits of mail are regularly manufac lace, upon which all who have ever trav- tured for the gratification of credulous oil elled in Spain have spent much money - speculators and retired pill manufacturers. these abound from Malaga to Irun, and If a man starts a lot of ancestors he likes naturally one is inclined to speculate a to have dummies of them in his hall rigged little on the odd circumstance that the in their mediæval ironmongery. If Birsupply is more abundant than ever, al- mingham did not gratify him, Germany though the demand is fairly brisk. Tan- would. It is astonishing how many tons giers is, we should say, a hotbed of modern of antiquities are annually sold along the antiquities, and even Mr. Chamberlain | Rhine, and it is even asserted that in bought some of them when he was over Castle Colburg, where Martin Luther there a year or so ago. He ought to have threw his inkstand at the devil- and, unknown something about this class of happily, missed him the original splash goods, being a Birmingham man, but the was cut up and sold long ago, but that, as childlike faith of the president of the the timber is massive, the place is careBoard of Trade in all things ancient is fully re-inked every night for the purposes notorious. America, oddly enough, has of sale next day. We cannot say how taken to this business of manufacturing much truth or falsehood there may be in the antique Dutch cabinets that, with this particular story. There might have bronze panels, dingy and marked with the been some excitement in seeing the orig cracks of fictitious centuries, are turned inal transaction if both the distinguished out every day from Chicago furniture parties to it were present. There can be stores, and for some purposes they are none in gazing on a patch of ink. The quite as useful as if they had indeed be trade in modern antiquities, however, is a longed to some departed burgher in the curious reality, as real as the sale of old dead cities of the Zuyder-Zee. New York clothes or tombstones. It is a fact calcu experts in this sort of forgery make a lated to weaken one's faith in life. specialty of Queen Anne chairs and tables, For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. PATIENCE. HOLD thou mine hand, beloved, as we sit On wall and ceiling, as the flames leap Hold thou mine hand, beloved, with the calm Fall on us, folding faithful breast to breast. Hold thou mine hand, beloved, while I speak Of all thy love hath done and borne for me, The stronger soul supporting still the weak, The good hand giving royally and free; I touch this thing and that, thy pretty gifts, My fate and me beyond life's buffeting. Thy patience through the long years with their pains Thy patience with my weakness and regret. Ah, let me thank thee now with falling tears, Tears of great joy, and deep, serene content, And God be thanked that through the weary years We saw together ere our lives were blent, Although the years were desolate and long, Thy patience matched thy love, and both were strong! All The Year Round. YEARNING. OVER the west the glory dies away, Faint rose flecks gleaming in the darkening sky; And the low sounds that mark the close of day, Rise up from wood and upland-rise and die; Soft silence falls o'er meadow, hill, and grove, And in the hush I want you, oh, my love. In the gay radiance of the morning hour, In the warm brooding glory of the noon, When man and Nature, in their prime of power, With the day's fulness blend in eager tune; The rush of life forbids the pulse to move, That now, in yearning passion, wants you, love. Wants you to watch the crimson glow and fade, Through the great branches of the broadening lime; Wants you, to feel the soft grey quiet shade, Lap the tired world in blessed eventime; Wants you to whisper: "Come, your power to Ah, yet consider it again! Thy Thyrsis song of yore; We borrow thy lost friend's refrain, And bid thee sing once more! Spectator. F. W. B. |