finds the company noisy; and chatterboxes declare nobody can hold their tongue. Well, well, la gente are sometimes very provoking. We argued these matters of transport and halting-place as gently as I could, while we trotted up by the side of the brawling Sesia ("there's snow in that water," said the Padrona, pointing down with her whip, "it's white water "); passed a picturesque nearly "saddlebacked" bridge and several delightful châlet hamlets that cried aloud to be sketched; and curious little churches, all glowing with external frescoes. The Val Sesia gave birth to a remarkable group of artists -with one Gaudenzio Ferrari at its head-just in the flowering time of Italian painting; and to this day indigenous art faintly recalls the tender tints and Raphaelesque outlines of Gaudenzio and his school. Some of the frescoed fronts are but tasteless imitations of architecture and sculpture; but others are graced with Annunciations, Visitations, or Last Judgments, in harmonious colouring, pale yet rich. St. Christopher is a favourite subject; and one is thankful to be reminded of the lovely story, even by a saint, a palm-tree staff and a Bambino, a good deal out of drawing. In a Spanish church, where for many decades the vergers have been conducting tourists round, a St. Christopher canvas was explained thus to an English family: "The large figure is Christopher Columbus. The small figure is emblematic of the Gospel. The waves are the Atlantic, which Columbus crossed to carry religion to the new-found continent." The anatomically incorrect St. Kits of the Val Grande suggest more lovely thoughts than the Spanish verger's. When the travelling public overrun these valleys, will the Sesia country suffer a degradation corresponding to that of the beautiful old legend? There is a risk-a great risk-that it will be so. Yet, for the sake of the tourists (and a little also for the commercial prosperity of these valleys), I wish the tide of travel to set this way.

"I dare say" (the Padrona put it interrogatively) "it takes you an hour to get up from Riva to Casa Janzo?"

"Oh, about three-quarters of an hour," I answered. "Well, I can do it easily under the half-hour."

That was a small triumph over an argumentative, “contrairy" stranger. It restored the Padrona's good-humour. We parted excellent friends, both wishing to meet again. The Padrona did her best to lift me out of the calèche as I prepared to lift the dog-that is to say, by the back of my neck. Then she jumped upon the boxseat, flourished whip and reins, the ends of her knotted kerchief and the loops of blue ribbon in her hair fluttering in the keen breeze that blew off the Sesia glacier, and disappeared-a nodding, smiling,

be-ribboned charioteer-at a rapid trot into the agglomeration of châlets that go to form picturesque Riva Val Dobbio, while I turned to scale the rocks between me and rustic Cà di Janzo.

A CORSICAN NOTE THE vócero.

The vócero is one of this strange island's strange customs.

A death occurs; and, in the presence of the corpse (addressing indeed, for the most part, the dead person), a woman improvises— praising, questioning, lamenting-while, at intervals, other women cry aloud, bewailing the dead, or sob and moan piteously. The custom recalls the ululatus of the Romans. It is like the function of the mourning women among the Hebrews; and the Arabs have a similar observance. I have read the words that were lately improvised over the corpse of a murdered man, and they reminded me of the dirge in Shelley's "Ginevra "; but they were, in parts, fiercely savage. The Corsican singer added, also, a fearful and dramatic interest to her plaint by unfurling the blood-stained garments of the dead man, and waving them, like a flag, as she cried aloud for vengeance. The death-song in Shakespeare's Celtic Cymbeline (the scene of the play is laid in the Celtic Principality) resembles the vócero, and so does the Irish Caoine. There is the wailing, which is music, if measured by its effect on the imaginations of those who hear it, though the sounds do not conform to any rules of counterpoint; and there are the songs which express the same agony of separation, the same pride in the loved dead, the same piteous, affectionate protests : "What ailed ye to leave us? Had ye not the best we could give to eat; to wear? Did we not give ye love enough, then?"

That is the burden of a well-known Irish death-song. It is near akin to the sentiment of one of the most admired Corsican lamenti; and Irish and Corsican songs of praise of the strength and adroitness of the dead hero, or the beauty of the beloved daughter, and her meekness and piety, bear a singular resemblance to each other, while greatly differing from any mourning verses that I know in English, French, Italian, or German. Corsican sorrow is, for the most part, restrained; but, at the time of a death, its outbreak is vehement. Mr. Barry mentions his surprise at seeing a comely, welldressed girl, apparently about seventeen, flinging herself over and over again in the dust of an Ajaccian roadway, crying, "My sister is dead! Oh, my sister is dead!" and her fellow-townsfolk found nothing extraordinary in this demonstrative grief.

The Corsican "wake" is almost identical with the ceremonial

observances described in Balzac's "Médecin de Campagne," when death strikes down the head of a family in the Alps, above his "happy valley," near Grenoble.

The vócero originally took place in the house of mourning, but the governing powers now interfere. In the interest of the public health, it is forbidden that the corpse and the crowd shall be pent up for hours (and even days) together; therefore the uncoffined dead are now carried into the squares (places) of the townlets; and there, before a numerous company of friends, relatives, and more or less indifferent onlookers, the improvisatrice and the "wailing women" alternately lift up their voices.

Until quite lately, Ajaccio afforded the spectacle of the vócero. So did Bastiá and all Corsican towns. A pretty young Ajaccienne tells me she has been present at an out-of-door vócero, but that Ajaccio est un peu trop civilisé maintenant for such a performance. No picture could place the wild and pathetic scene so vividly before the eye as do the wonderful descriptions of Balzac and Mérimée; and Mérimée's "Colomba" is as true to other sides of the island's life as it is to this custom of the vócero.

SPAIN AND TYROL.

The Tyrol seems to me, from the scenic as well as the human point of view, as truly southern as meridional Italy; and there are two trifling incidents (but characteristic of the "lands of colour and of song") which always recur to my mind together. The Tyrolese ncident is merely the fact of a very old Meran veterinary surgeon, with a lovely pink carnation tucked behind his ear, coming to see a sick dog. Italian peasant-lads go courting with such an oral decoration. But I doubt if, even in unconventional Italy, a veterinario would think it quite professional to present himself before an employer with a bright blossom in the place where some clerks in northern climes carry their pens.

And the companion picture is of a Spanish housemaid (a man, of course), who had a latticed bower at the end of a balcony overlooking the courtyard of the hotel. His bower accommodated himself, a chair, pails, rags, brushes, and dusters. In some receptacle he kept his guitar, and when his work was done, in the balmy venings, he used to thrum his instrument most melodiously, accompanying it with a deep and mellow voice. The housemaid, too, was old. He shaved his cheeks and chin at rather long intervals, and generally wore a grizzled stubble. He was extremely fat, and his music was delicious.

VOL. CCLXXXII. NO. 1996.

BB

A FISHERMAN'S FIGHT AT SESTRI-LEVANTE.

Some things can only grow in the sunshine. Of such is the characteristic Ligurian spectacle, a fight between fishermen. Even the mere thought of these southern sights brings a feeling of shine and glow into our grey north. This sort of duel is regulated, from beginning to end, by custom. The men, at the outset of a fight, drag off their heavy, woven sashes, and knot them at one end. Some sashes are three yards long, some longer. They are about a third of a yard wide. The patterns and colouring must be traditional, for they are rather artistic, with a look of old sampler work. Locally, sashes must be recognised as love-tokens, for many that are to be bought to-day in Ligurian shops have tender sentiments woven into them in something like cross-stitch: "To my best beloved; " "Love of my life, may all be well with thee;" "From a true heart," and so forth. Even without the hard knot, such a sash could give a formidable cut; and the blow, as the fishermen deliver it, gains much by the mighty swing of the arm. Each combatant has his semicircle of friends and supporters. They see to "fair play," and they minister to the one who most needs their assistance. When the fight has gone far enough, the friends of both parties dexterously swoop down and seize the man who has had the best of it, toss him into a boat, possess themselves of the oars, and push him out to sea as far as ever they can, there to await the cooling of his temper. The victor is generally placable enough. It is the vanquished who requires blandishments and tactful handling. An incautious word will set his anger aflame again. At last, when he is led away, protesting, threatening, and struggling in the arms of his partisans, the conqueror's boat has probably drifted upon the current some distance out to sea. His backers then attempt to float out oars or paddles to him, and if they fail in their attempts they launch a boat and bring him in triumph to the shore.

CLARE SOREL STRONG,

R

A BOOKMAN'S ROMANCE.

AYMOND WEDDERBURN was a bookman of the old

school. He wore clothes of an antique cut, carried a goldheaded cane with a hole through the handle, from which a tassel had long since departed; he took snuff, loved folios and old bindings, and attended book-sales with a short ivory rule to measure margins. He scorned the modern amateur buying through an agent. Dilettanteism was costly ignorance-a prey for the sharks-indeed, I have heard him pronounce the well-groomed collector a "chicken-brain."

He was a bachelor partly by temperament, but chiefly by circumstance. Women were part of the material system, and pretty faces did not attract him. Books took their place, they fascinated him, ruled his life, and were his only idols. But he had not always been insensible to the beautiful face of a pure woman. He had known love, had kissed the lips of a maid, and had had his life coloured with the passionate beauty of a maiden's vow. But that was many years since. His joy of love had given place to a crushing sorrow. The bitterness almost mingled with the sweet-the darkness had fallen so suddenly and so soon.

And on this bright summer afternoon of which I am writing, the ancient bitterness had been revived by a passing face in the street. It was a fresh, winsome face with a soft country bloom upon it, and its girlishness and innocence recalled all the romance of his youth. He had returned to his rooms in Bloomsbury somewhat shaken, perhaps, a little trembling, for he sought the comfort of his arm-chair with a sense of utter weariness and with a long sigh. He took his afternoon purchases from his great pockets and laid them aside. without a thought, without a care; and yet they were the prizes of a true bookman. A vision possessed his brain. His love passage lay all before him. He looked up, and his eyes wandered round his library, where his beloved books stood all about him in open shelves with protecting wire doors-for he hated glazed presses-but the place appeared to have lost charm. It looked dismal and dull.

After thinking a little while he got up and went to the special corner where he kept his choicest treasures, and he took down a