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A FAMILY OF OFFICE-HOLDERS

Don Francisco de Bringas y Caballero had a second-class clerkship in one of the most ancient of the royal bureaus. He belonged to a family which had held just such offices for time out of mind. "Government employees were his parents and his grandparents, and it is believed that his great-grandparents, and even the ancestors of these, served in one way and another in the administration of the two worlds.» His wife Doña Rosalia Pipaon was equally connected with the official class, and particularly with that which had to do with the domestic service of the royal abodes. Thus, "on producing her family tree, this was found to show not so much glorious deeds of war and statesmanship as those humbler doings belonging to a long and intimate association with the royal person. Her mother had been lady of the queen's wardrobe, her uncle a halberdier of the royal guard, her grandfather keeper of the buttery, other uncles at various removes, equerries, pages, dispatch-bearers, huntsmen, and managers of the royal farm at Aranjuez, and so forth and so For this dame there existed two things wholly Divine; namely, heaven and that almost equally desirable dwelling-place for the elect which we indicate by the mere laconic word 'the Palace.' In the Palace were her family history and her ideal; her aspiration was that Bringas might obtain a superior post in the royal exchequer, and that then they should go and take up their abode in one of the apartments of the second story of the great mansion which were conceded to such tenants." The above is from Tormento.' In the next succeeding novel, La de Bringas,' this aspiration is gratified; the Bringas family are installed in the Palace, in the quarters assigned to the employees of the royal household. The efforts of two of their acquaintances to find them, in the puzzling intricacies of the place, are thus amusingly described.

on.

WELL

ABOVE-STAIRS IN A ROYAL PALACE
From La de Bringas'

WELL, this is about the way it was. We threw ourselves bravely into the interminable corridor, a veritable street, or alley at least, paved with red tiles, feebly lighted with gas jets, and full of doublings and twistings. Now and then it spread out into broad openings like little plazas, inundated with sunlight which entered through large openings from the main court-yard. This illumination penetrated lengthwise along the white walls of the narrow passageways, alleys, or tunnels, or whatever they may be called, growing ever feebler and more uncertain as it went, till finally it fainted away entirely at sight of the fan-shaped yellow gas flames, smoking little circlets upon their protecting metal disks. There were uncounted paneled doors with numbers on them, some newly painted and others

moldering and weather-stained, but not one displaying the figure we were seeking. At this one you would see a rich silken bell cord, some happy find in the royal upholstery shop, while the next had nothing more than a poor frayed rope's-end; and these were an indication of what was likely to be found within, as to order and neatness or disarray and squalor. So, too, the mats or bits of carpet laid before the doors threw a useful light upon the character of the lodgings. We came upon vacant apartments with cobwebs spun across the openings, and the door gratings thick with dust, and through broken transoms, drew chill drafts that conveyed the breath of silence and desolation. Even whole. precincts were abandoned, and the vaultings, of unequal height, returned the sound of our footsteps hollowly to our ears. We passed up one stairway, then down another, and then, as likely as not, we would ascend again. The labyrinthine maze

led us on and ever onward.

"It is useless to come here," at length said Pez, decidedly losing patience, "without charts and a mariner's compass. I suppose we are now in the south wing of the palace. The roofs down there must be those of the Hall of Columns and the outer stairway, are they not? What a huge mass of a place!" The roofs of which he spoke were great pyramidal shapes protected with lead, and they covered in the ceilings on which Bayeu's frescoed cherubs cut their lively pigeon-wings and pirouettes.

Still going on and on and onward without pause, we found ourselves shut up in a place without exit, a considerable inclosure lighted from the top, and we had to turn round and beat a retreat by the way we had entered. Any one who knows the palace and its symmetrical grandeur only from without could never divine all these irregularities that constitute a veritable small town in its upper regions. In truth, for an entire century there has been but one continual modifying of the original plan, a stopping up here and an opening there, a condemning of staircases, a widening of some rooms at the expense of others, a changing of corridors into living-rooms and of living-rooms into corridors, and a cutting through of partitions and a shutting up of windows. You fall in with stairways that begin but never arrive anywhere, and with balconies that are but the made-over roof coverings of dwelling-places below. These dove-cotes were once stately drawing-rooms, and on the other hand, these fine. salons have been made out of the inclosing space of a grand

staircase. Then again winding stairs are frequent; but if you should take them, Heaven knows what would become of you; and frequent, too, are glazed doors permanently closed, with naught behind them but silence, dust, and darkness.

"We are looking for the apartment of Don Francisco Bringas. "Bringas? yes, yes," said an old woman; "you're close to it. All you have got to do is, go down the first circular stairway you come to, and then make a half-turn. Bringas? yes to be sure; he's sacristan of the chapel."

"Sacristan,- he? What is the matter with you? He is head clerk of the Administrative Department."

"Oh, then he must be lower down, just off the terrace. I suppose you know your way to the fountain ? »

«< No, not we."

"You know the stairs called the Cáceres Staircase ?»

"No, not that either."

"At any rate, you know where the Oratory is?"

"We know nothing about it."

"But the choir of the Oratory? but the dove-cotes?". Sum total, we had not the slightest acquaintance with any of that congeries of winding turns, sudden tricks, and baffling surprises. The architectural arrangement was a mad caprice, a mocking jest at all plan and symmetry. Nevertheless, despite our notable lack of experience we stuck to our quest, and even carried our infatuation so far as to reject the services of a boy who offered himself as our guide.

"We are now in the wing facing on the Plaza de Oriente," said Pez; "that is to say, at exactly the opposite extreme from the wing in which our friend resides." His geographical notions were delivered with the gravity and conviction of some character in Jules Verne. "Hence, the problem now demanding our attention is by what route to get from here to the western wing. In the first place, the cupola of the chapel and the grand stairway roof-covering furnish us with a certain basis; we should take our bearings from them. I assume that, having once arrived in the western wing, we shall be numskulls indeed if we do not strike Bringas's abode. All the same, I for one will never return to these outlandish regions without a pocket compass, and what is more, without a good supply of provender too, against such emergencies as this."

Before striking out on the new stage of our explorations, as thus projected, we paused to look down from the window.

The

Plaza de Oriente lay below us in a beautiful panorama, and beyond it a portion of Madrid crested with at least fifty cupolas, steeples, and bell towers. The equestrian Philip IV. appeared a mere toy, and the Royal Theatre a paltry shed.

The

doves had their nests far below where we stood, and we saw them, by pairs or larger groups, plunge headlong downward into the dizzy abyss, and then presently come whirling upward again, with swift and graceful motion, and settle on the carved capitals and moldings. It is credibly stated that all the political revolutions do not matter a jot to these doves, and there is nothing either in the ancient pile they inhabit or in the free realms of air around it, to limit their sway. They remain undisputed masters of the place.

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Away we go once more. Pez begins to put the geographical notions he has acquired from the books of Jules Verne yet further into practice. At every step he stops to say to me, "Now we are making our way northward.-We shall undoubtedly soon find a road or trail on our right, leading to the west. There is no cause to be alarmed in descending this winding stairway to the second story.- Good, it is done! Well, bless me! where are we now? I don't see the main dome any longer, not so much as a lightning-rod of it. We are in the realms of the feebly flickering gas once more. Suppose we ascend again by this other stairway luckily just at hand. What now? Well, here we are back again in the eastward wing and nothing else, just where we were before. Are we? no, yes; see, down there in the court the big dome is still on our right. There's a regular grove of chimney stacks. You may believe it or not, but this sort of thing begins to make my head swim; it seems as if the whole place gave a lurch now and then, like a ship at sea.-The fountain must be over that way, do you see? for the maids are coming and going from there with their pitchers.—Oh well, I for one give the whole thing up. We want a guide, and an expert, or we'll never get out of this. I can't take another step; we've walked miles and I can't stand on my legs.- Hey, there, halloo! send us a guide! - Oh for a guide! Get me out of this infernal tangle quickly!"

We came at last to Bringas's apartment. When we got there, we understood how we must have passed it, earlier, without knowing it, for its number was quite rubbed out and invisible.

Translation of William Henry Bishop.

6174

FRANCIS GALTON

(1822-)

HE modern doctrine of heredity regards man less as an individual than as a link in a series, involuntarily inheriting and transmitting a number of peculiarities, physical and mental. The general acceptance of this doctrine would necessitate a modification of popular ethical conceptions, and consequently of social conditions. Except Darwin, probably no one has done so much to place the doctrine on a scientific basis as Francis Galton, whose brilliant researches have sought to establish the hereditary nature of psychical as well as physical qualities.

Mr. Galton first took up the subject of the transmissibility of intellectual gifts in his 'Hereditary Genius' (1869). An examination of the relationships of the judges of England for a period of two hundred years, of the statesmen of the time of George III., of the premiers of the last one hundred years, and of a certain selection of divines and modern scholars, together with the kindred of the most illustrious commanders, men of letters and science, poets, painters, and musicians of all times and nations, resulted in his conclusion that man's mental abilities are derived by inheritance under exactly the same limitations as are the forms and features of the whole organic world. Mr. Galton argued that, as it is practicable to produce a highly gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consccutive generations, the State ought to encourage by dowries and other artificial means such marriages as make for the elevation of the race.

Having set forth the hereditary nature of general intellectual ability, he attempts to discover what particular qualities commonly combine to form genius, and whether they also are transmissible. 'English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture' (1874) was a summary of the results obtained from inquiries addressed to the most eminent scientific men of England, respecting the circumstances of heredity and environment which might have been influential in directing them toward their careers. One hundred and eighty persons were questioned. From the replies it appeared that in the order of their prevalence, the chief qualities that commonly unite to form scientific genius are energy both of body and mind; good health; great independence of character; tenacity of purpose; practical business habits; and strong innate tastes for science generally, or for some branch of

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