gard to whom we shall agree. What do you think of his poetry?

Mallett. I do not think it is of the highest kind, but of its kind it is masterly. It is healthy, vigorous, and almost epical in its character; and I cannot see why the world, which never is weary of praising Homer as the greatest of poets, or among the greatest of poets, turns such a cold shoulder to Scott, who, in his directness, spirit, and vigour, and straightforwardness of narrative, resembles Homer more than any of the poets of our age. The distance between them may be great, but their methods are very much the same; and had Scott written a thousand years ago in a dead tongue, we should never cease to chant his praises. Just as the Iliad and Odyssey were founded on the old ballads of his age, are Scott's romantic poems founded on the old ballads of his. Both are purely objective poets. But while this is the acknowledged charm of Homer, it is alleged as a defect in Scott. There is a great mystery in a dead tongue; and I sometimes ask myself what we should think of Homer if he had written only fifty years ago, and in English. Take, for instance, the well-known battle of Flodden-field in 'Marmion.' I defy any one to read it without a stir in his blood— it is so full of fire, spirit, picturesqueness, and directness. It carries you on with it without a flag of interest, and as description it is wonderful. No battle in Homer is more vivid, nor more true, nor more living in its energy. What a picture, for instance, is that of Marmion's riderless horse

"Bloodshot his eye, his nostril spread, The loose rein dangling from his head; Housing and saddle bloody red, Lord Marmion's steed rushed by." The very lilt of the metre carries you on with it.

Belton. The age does not like this sort of thing now in its own poetry, however much it may admire it in ancient works. We are introspective, analytic, subjective, and self-conscious, almost to morbidness. The epic and dramatic have less charm for us than the reflective and speculative. We anatomise our feelings and emotions and motives, and are not satisfied with the natural expression of them in action. We are all Hamlets, and speculate and consider too anxiously. Our minds are

"Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."

Mallett. And yet this is the age of athletics-of hunting, shooting, racing, deer-stalking, cricketing, and Alpine climbing. We have our "muscular Christianity"—our love of sports-our adoration of strength. How is it that this finds no response in our poetry? How is it that of the thousands who gather at every racecourse, whose hearts gallop with the horses, and strain to the goal with pulsing blood, and to whom the excitement is like intoxication-the great majority prefer in poetry sentiment, introspection, nay, even a morbid anatomy of feelings and emotions and passions, to healthy narrative? One would think that such persons, rejoicing in action and feeling the thrill of life, would desire something corresponding to this in literature. But it would seem they do not. They do not like Scott's life and stir and vigour: they prefer another kind of thing. They change their minds as they do their dress when they come home take off their hunting pinks, their shooting knickerbockers, and heavy shoes, and put on their dress-coat, patent leather shoes, and white cravats. Their very voices and lives change. Nimrod becomes languid, and Di Vernon changes

her manners with her riding-habit. Papa, tired with his day's work, lies on the sofa and sleeps. It is simply reaction and fashion. Belton. Do you know where Scott lived when he was in Rome? Mallett. I believe he lived in the Palazzo Bernini, at the corner of the Via della Propaganda. So at least I have been told.

Belton. It is an admirable custom which has lately been introduced into Italy of inserting a tablet in the outer walls of houses in which distinguished men have been born, or died, or lived for a time, on which the fact is inscribed. It is always interesting to know where great men and women have been born, lived, written, or died. No one could visit Shakespeare's home without feeling nearer to him; no one could pass the old Tabard Inn whence the pilgrims of the 'Canterbury Tales' set out, without a certain sense of their reality. The places great spirits have inhabited or visited seem still to retain dim vestiges of them that touch the imagination. I never pass the Nomentan gate, that I do not see Nero issuing thence on that fatal day when he fled so ignominiously to die a coward's death at the villa of Phaon. I always meet Cicero and Horace as I go down the Sacred Way; and whenever I drive by the old Albergo del Orso, the shape and figure of Montaigne, who once lived within its walls, rises before me. Many and many a day have I seemed to see Alfieri looking out of the window of the villa Strozzi towards the villa Negroni, where the Countess of Albany was waiting for him. Under the cypresses of the villa d'Este Tasso has wandered with me, and leaned beside the spilling fountain, while the nightingales sang in the shade. I never cross the Bridge of St Angelo that I do not look for the figures of Raphael

VOL. CXX.-NO. DCCXXIX.

and his friend Bindo Altovite, under the three-arched balcony that hangs over the Tiber, and I should not be much surprised to see them talking there together. Canova and Thorwaldsen still seem to linger about the studios where they wrought their great works. In the night, as I pass the Castel St Angelo, I see Benvenuto Cellini fighting on the walls, or slipping down from the tower to make his escape from his disgusting dungeon; and I almost hear the groans of Beatrice Cenci.

Mallett. Ah! it is this that makes Rome so profoundly interesting. It is truly a city of the dead, and the spirits of the past haunt it and dwell in it as much as, nay, far more than, the busy persons of to-day. You turn no corner without meeting them. Voices are in the air that whisper to you wherever you go-in the street, in the gardens, over the lone sweeps of the silent Campagna-from crumbling tombs, castles, and fortresses-from the arched and ivy-mantled aqueducts that stretch into the distance-from the hollowed caverns of the tufa galleries, where once the Christians hid-from the broken benches of the Colosseum, now so silent-from the giant arches of the ruined Baths. Is it the wind that whispers, or the ghosts of the ages past, as you wander over the grassy slopes, where at every step you tread upon some marble fragment of dead magnificence? And who and what are we that tread these streets of death? Only to-day's rear of the great army that has gone before. Here stand the ruined dwellings that they once inhabited, but where are they? Where are those imperial figures whose frown was death? Where the long line of those who charmed the ear and the eye with the magic of art? Where the poets and lawgivers, the sculptors and painters ?

C

Where the smiling faces, the graceful steps of beauty, that led the world in their train? Over the gardens that their footsteps pressed the shy lizard slips. Grass and weeds grow in the crevices of the marble pavements which once were swept by their rustling robes. Lollia, Poppæa, Messalina, charm no more. The song of Virgil and Horace and Catullus is mute. The fights and frowns of Nero are over. The elaborate hypocrisies of Augustus are finished. The ornate orations of Cicero, the stinging satire of Tacitus and Juvenal, the lofty stoicism of Aurelius, all are of the past. And yet they still live and haunt the places that knew them on earth, and their forms still rise before us almost without an evocation as we wander through the ruined streets and houses and villas where once they lived and walked.

I was in Florence the other day, and as I was strolling through one of its broad eaved narrow streets I came upon a sombre old house, in the walls of which was a marble tablet recording the fact that there Dante was born and spent the first years of his youth. In a moment all else faded from my sight-the tide of time swept back -the little boy Dante was before me, looking out of these windows, playing in these streets-innocent, gay, happy, ignorant of the future; and then in a moment the vision vanished, and I saw the thin wan figure with the hooked nose; that we know so well; and those sad eyes that had gazed into the horrors of the Inferno looked into mine. It was like the sudden lifting of the curtain of time, with an instant's glimpse into the past, which profoundly affected me, and then it fell again.

Belton. There is one inscription on the Casa Guidi which I always stop to read, and when I read I

Mallett. It is, as you say, a most graceful and tender tribute, and she well deserved it.

Belton. I have often sought for the house of Cagliostro, the famous magician, but I have never been able to identify it. He lived, I know, at one time in the Piazza di Spagna, and at another in a street near the Piazza Farnese, but the number I have never been able to discover. In both these houses he lived with his wife, the beautiful Lorenza Feliciani, after their return from Paris, where they were engaged in the notorious intrigue of the diamond necklace; and it was in the latter of these houses that they were arrested to be imprisoned in the Castle St Angelo.

Mallett. Apropos of Cagliostro's magic, there is a curious and littleknown legend about a gate in Rome just beyond the Church of St Maria Maggiore. Here, as the story goes, a celebrated alchymist and magician was invited to stay by the owner of the house or villa, who hoped to obtain some advantage to himself from his skill in the magical sciences; but the magician, after long enjoying his hospitality, and making no return for it, suddenly took French leave, leaving behind him a paper on which were written certain cabalistic signs.

These were inscribed by the owner over the gate in a half-faith that they might be efficacious in bringing him the good fortune he desired, and there they may still be seen to this day, or rather they were to be seen there when I last passed that way. But so many changes are taking place in that quarter that it is possible they may have been removed. Reumont tells this story, I believe, in his book on Rome-and " se non è vero, è ben trovato."

Belton. Have you ever looked up the subject of magic?

Mallett. Yes, a good deal; and very curious is the literature on this subject. Some of the old writers give you, for instance, complete formulas to raise spirits of various kinds, and seem to have had an absolute belief in their efficacy. It seems to be pretty clear that they did have faith in these invocations; for it is impossible to believe that such men as Cardanus and Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, Johannes Bodinus, Pietro Abana, Hieronymus Fracastorius, Torreblanca, Debris, Pomponatus, and Vairus, and men of that stamp, should have wilfully endeavoured to palm off on the world, with such calm seriousness, statements which they knew to be lies. At all events they clearly profess their faith in the power of man, by magical processes, to raise the dead, and wake spirits by incantation; and various receipts are given by them to effect such purposes.

Belton. I suppose that at the present day no one would believe in this. These men flourished in ignorant ages, when science was in its infancy, and when superstition was at its height.

Mallett. You are very much mis

taken if you believe that the day of the magicians is entirely past. The magical art is still cultivated, though in secrecy; and there are numbers of persons who still study it, practise it, and have faith in it. So at least I have been assured by men in whom I cannot but place trust, and who have declared to me that they themselves have attended magical séances, and employed the formulas of the magical books with successful results. Certain it is that the Abbé Constant devoted himself to the study of the magical arts and occult sciences, and, under the pseudonym of Elephas Levi, wrote some remarkable books on the subject, and specially one on 'La Haute Magie,' which I recommend to you, if you are curious in such matters. There is no doubt, too, that a few persons were and are his disciples and pupils in France, and among them may be mentioned Desbarolles, the author of 'Les Mystères de la Main.' I must confess, however, that after reading 'La Haute Magie' I was not very much enlightened on the subject. A great deal was hinted and insinuated and vaguely indicated, but comparatively little directly taught either as to the theory or the practice of magic.* A very accomplished and distinguished writer who lately died assured me that he himself, on one occasion, by following certain prescribed formulas, evoked one of the spirits held by those who believe to be very dangerous-understand me, not by means of any medium, but by his own practice; and that he satisfied himself by this and other experiments that the prescribed processes were not by any means delusions or follies. same gentleman also told me, when I made a remark similar to yours

This

that I supposed no one in the present day believed in magical arts, that, on the contrary, he knew many who studied it, and believed in it. "Che volete," as the Italians say. You may make out of this what you choose; I merely repeat what I have been told. Belton. Was he not making a fool of you, and trying to see if he could hoax you?

Mallett. By no means. He was very serious; and after giving me book and chapter for what he said, he finished by drawing my own horoscope very cleverly, thus showing that, at all events, he had studied the matter.

Belton. What did he prophesy about you?

Mallett. No matter; I shall not give you the chance of laughing at

me.

Belton. You stimulate my curiosity. I think I should like to try some of these evocations and incantations, but I am sure nothing would come of them. Is there any difficulty in performing them?

Mallett. No; there is no real difficulty; but numerous materials and objects are required which are not to be obtained without trouble and expense, and certain arrangements must be made which are sometimes not easy; and though, if any one were seriously inclined to try the experiments, any little obstacles could be easily overcome, yet it requires a certain patience, seriousness, determination, and trouble that few persons would take in the vague hope of arriving at results in which they have a complete distrust. That is the whole of the matter. I have often thought of trying the experiments myself; but I have to begin with no faith, and therefore I shrank before the little obstacles of trouble, expense, and time. Besides, I don't know precisely what I should do with a de

mon, or even a spirit, after I had raised it. I am more used to men and women, and I like them better. That is, I like a spirit plus a body more than a spirit minus a body. I talk and act more freely with them. As for the spirits that are said to come up at tables by the late processes of incantation, they are generally so badly educated, and speak such bad grammar, that I don't care for their company. I could stand any amount of bad grammar if they would only tell me something that we all of us do not know, and that we desire to know. To rap out by tedious processes feeble commonplaces of morality and tawdry statements of future existence which correspond solely to the vulgarest notions, or to advise us as to our conduct in copy-book phrases of evil communications corrupting good manners, does not pay. If what they said were really worth saying, I would endure even the tediousness of their methods; but I cannot see that they have added to our literature anything very valuable. Shakespeare has so terribly degenerated at the table that I feel sorry to see that he has lost his mind in losing his body.

Belton. But you have had strange experiences, have you not?

Mallett. Very strange experiences, which I cannot explain, and which nobody has ever been able to explain, to my satisfaction at least. But all that were of any note were physical and material results; and I do not accept any spiritual explanation of them. But don't let us talk about them now. They bore me, and they wouldn't amuse you.

Belton. You seem to consider the fact of the utter triviality of all that is written and rapped at tables to be sufficient proof that it does not come from spirits. I agree with you in thinking that their utter