conservatory for fresh water; as were also the Centi Camerelli, into which we were next led. All these crypta being now almost sunk into the earth, show yet their former amplitude and magnificence.

Returning towards the Baie we again pass the Elysian Fields, so celebrated by the poets, nor unworthily, for their situation and verdure, being full of myrtles and sweet shrubs, and having a most delightful prospect towards the Tyrrhene Sea. Upon the verge of these remain the ruins of the Mercato di Saboto, formerly a circus; over the arches stand divers urns, full of Roman ashes.

Having well satisfied our curiosity among these antiquities we retired to our felucca, which rowed us back again towards Pozzolo, at the very place of St. Paul's landing. Keeping along the shore, they showed us a place where the sea water and sands did exceedingly boil. Thence to the island Nesis, once the fabulous Nymph; and thus we leave the Baiæ, so renowned for the sweet retirements of the most opulent and voluptuous Romans. They certainly were places of uncommon amenity, as their yet tempting site and other circumstances of natural curiosities easily invite me to believe, since there is not in the world so many stupendous rarities to be met with, as in the circle of a few miles which environ these blissful abodes.

From Evelyn's "Diary," February 7th, 1645.

F°

THE LIFE OF TREES

OR their preservation, nature has invested the whole tribe and nation (as we may say) of vegetables with garments suitable to their naked and exposed bodies, temper, and climate. Thus some are clad with a coarser [skin], and resist all extremes of weather; others with more tender and delicate skins and scarfs, as it were, and thinner raiment. Quid foliorum describam diversitates? What shall we say of the mysterious forms, variety, and variegation of the leaves and flowers, contrived with such art, yet without art; some round, others long, oval, multangular, indented, crisped, rough, smooth, and polished, soft, and flexible at every tremulous blast, as if it would drop in a moment, and yet so obstinately adhering, as to be able to contest against the fiercest winds that prostrate mighty structures! There it abides

till God bids it fall: for so the wise Disposer of things has placed it, not only for ornament, but use and protection both of body and fruit; from the excessive heat of summer, and colds of the sharpest winters, and their immediate impressions; as we find it in all such places and trees, as, like the blessed and good man, have always fruit upon them, ripe, or preparing to mature; such as the pine, fir, arbutus, orange, and most of those which the Indies and more southern tracts plentifully abound in, where nature provides this continual shelter, and clothes them with perennial garments.

Let us examine with what care the seeds (in which the whole and complete tree, though invisible to our dull sense, is yet perfectly and entirely wrapped up) exposed, as they seem to be, to all those accidents of weather, storms, and rapacious birds, are yet preserved from avolation, diminution, and detriment, within their spiny, armed, and compacted receptacles; where they sleep as in their causes, till their prisons let them gently fall into the embraces of the earth, now made pregnant with the season, and ready for another burden: for at the time of year she fails not to bring them forth. With what delight have I beheld this tender and innumerable offspring repullulating at the feet of an aged tree, from whence the suckers are drawn, transplanted and educated by human industry, and, forgetting the ferity of their nature, become civilized to all his employments.

Can we look on the prodigious quantity of liquor, which one poor wounded birch will produce in a few hours, and not be astonished? Is it not wonderful that some trees should, in a short space of time, weep more than they weigh? And that so dry, so feeble, and wretched a branch as that which bears the grape should yield a juice that cheers the heart of man? That the pine, fir, larch, and other resinous trees planted in such rude and uncultivated places, amongst rocks and dry pumices should transude into turpentine, and pearl out into gums and precious balms?

From "Sylva, or a Discourse on Forest Trees.»

FREDERIC WILLIAM FARRAR

(1831-)

REDERIC WILLIAM FARRAR, the celebrated English pulpit orator, has long been a favorite contributor to English reviews, but perhaps his best work as an essayist was done in "Woman's Work in the Home," an admirable series of essays in the mode of Samuel Smiles, which deserve their extensive popularity in England and America. He was born at Bombay, India, August 7th, 1831. Educated for the English Church at Oxford and Cambridge, he was ordained in 1854. Twenty years later, after notable work as a pulpit orator and public educator, he was appointed Canon of Westminster, and in 1895 Dean of Canterbury. Besides his essays, he has written several novels and a number of theological works. His "Life of Christ" has been widely circulated and much admired.

FE

SOME FAMOUS DAUGHTERS

Ew things shock us more in the records of history than the mention of bad daughters. Happily they are not numerous. It is inexpressibly painful to find among them two at least of the daughters of Milton - Mary and Anne, the two elder. The third daughter, Deborah, seems to have been better than her unnatural sisters, and spoke of her father with affection after his death.

There is too much reason to fear that heredity, as well as the many unhappy circumstances which surrounded that ill-starred family, may account for a relationship so disastrous. Miss Powell, whom Milton married, was the daughter of a rowdy, impecunious, and broken-down cavalier. It would have been impossible for him to select a young lady less suited to be at the head of a sober Puritan household. There are strong grounds for the belief that she treated him shamefully-far more shamefully than is usually suspected. And though, in his consummate magnanimity, he forgave her and received her back into his home,

and also gave shelter to her endangered and broken-down relatives, it is hardly likely that their union ever produced much happiness. Her daughters seem to have resembled her. No doubt Milton made mistakes in the too scanty intellectual training which he alone was able to give to those shallow natures. His ideal of womanhood was not ignoble, as we see in what he writes of Eve

"She as a veil down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore,

As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received.
For contemplation he, and valor formed;

For softness she, and sweet attractive grace:
He for God only, she for God in him.

But this Hebrew and Puritan ideal required to be colored with some of the hues of chivalry. Milton adored his second wife, and we hear the sobs which sound through his sonnet on his "late espoused saint," after her too early death. When he was old and blind, and could no longer court for himself, his third wife was chosen for him by his friend Dr. Paget. This lady, Elizabeth Minshull, who was much younger than Milton, seems to have been of a retiring and self-respecting character. In his last conversation with his brother Christopher, he spoke of her as "his loving wife." But it was impossible for her to live. with the daughters of Milton and Mary Powell. She wisely persuaded Milton to have all three "sent to learn some curious and ingenious sorts of manufacture that are proper for women to learn, particularly embroideries in gold or silver." The maidservant who gave evidence about Milton's will tells us that when the second daughter, Mary, was told that her father was to be married, "she said that was no news, but if she should hear of his death, that was something."

It is difficult to pardon their frightful and unnatural Philistinism, and Milton felt it deeply. The worst was that they were guilty of petty purloinings, cheated him, and actually sold his books, forcing him to feel an anguish more acute than that caused by his blindness. He would leave them nothing but what was supposed to belong to their mother, "because," he said, "they have been very undutiful to me." "My children have been unkind to

me," as he often told his brother, "but my wife has been very kind and careful of me." It may be a palliation, not an excuse, that they had to read to him in eight languages, not one of which they understood, because, he would often say in jest, that "one tongue was enough for a woman." Doubtless they felt a rebellious dissatisfaction at the dullness of their lives in that sad home, with nothing about them except books, which they loathed. Perhaps some of the bitterness of Milton's disappointments in his experience of womanhood breathes through the lines of «Paradise Lost":

"For that fair female troup thou saw'st, that seemed

Of goddesses, so blithe, so smooth, so gay,

Yet empty of all good wherein consists
Woman's domestic honor and chief praise;
Bred only, and completed to the taste,

Of lustful appetence, to sing, to dance,

To dress, and troll the tongue, and roll the eye."

But I will conclude with the picture of a model daughter, of one whose name shines out on the page of history as a supreme example of daughterly affection,- Margaret Roper, the favorite child of Sir Thomas More.

Some writers imagine that learning and advanced education in the children tend to diminish affection towards the parents. History does not bear out the suspicion. Margaret Roper is one conspicuous instance to the contrary. She, the best and most loving of daughters, was one of the most learned women of her day. She wrote Latin with such elegance as to excite the astonishment and admiration of the accomplished Cardinal Pole. She wrote an essay in Latin on the "Four Last Things," which her father, the great and learned chancellor of England, preferred to one which he himself had composed on the same subject. She was capable of discussing with her father some of the gravest questions of theology and politics. Another remarkable proof that learning interferes in no way with the domestic affections is Lady Jane Grey

"Girl never breathed to rival such a rose,
Rose never blew that equaled such a bud.»

She was so devoted to learning that, at the age of sixteen, as Roger Ascham tells us, she preferred studying Plato's "Phædo"