P R (88T m'Wm^' ^fmmmm V'-v '■ :'^nW'Af WMC^-. yy'^JJr<.rx:riZ:7A'^'^ni Mdm ■Amv! LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Slielf .5i^...._ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. :oKr\hr ^f^^rf<^^^nM^ ^A,op O'^AA^-:-^ r,^^;»^^^'^■^ rrrwm^^r^^^^^m^il w^«i ^^¥^^R^A^:sC:^pA^f5fW^^r '*^^f5sfl^saHTOQs^br^ imm!:!mmctf'^^m^. /w<«5Wro«r,^j,s ;8/^^.^^/ ^^A„AA, '^,- *"S^ «^M ;>> • lf«IHJ^rt:;?isS^S o. 919. XO Oozxts. !!^i'!^.!l!'..^"^.,^J9.^~,'."^.^.- '^^^ ^^^'^ CURREi^Jt A .STAND»\RD LlTrR^URF , Vo]. 1i>. N... 919, April 11 1SS7. Aniiiml Subscliplion, $30.00 READIANA CHARLES READE AiTEicK OF "ORIFFI'IH GAUNT." "FOUL PLAY, ' l/ic. En. I.iittre.i Ml llif Tost Offir-e, X. Y., as swmiii-rl.iss iiiatter. Ci'|>ynj;hl, 1X84, by Jons W. L<>\ ell Cu. JOHN-WLOVELL- CO/\PANY + SILKSI FOR ^AL^'bT LEADING HOUSES. ? Iknow BII Momen by these presents. ThI while sundry and almost countless imitations of and substitutes f(| Enoch Morgan's Sons SapoUo are offered by unscrupulous parties, w do not hesitate to represent them as the original article, ^b!6 UnbentUre WITNESSETH, that there is but or Sapolio, to wit :— the original article manufactured by the Enooi Morgan's Sons Co. , of New York, unsurpasssed in quality, xmexcellel in popularity, and widely known not only through its own merits, but through the many original modes which have been adopted to introduce it to the attention of the public. Imitation is the sin- cerest flattery. Cheapn'ess is a poor proof of quality. Cheap im- itations are doublv doubtful. The most critical conii/innities are the most liberal purchasers of Sapolio which they invariably find to be worth the price th^y pay for it. In Witness "Whereof, we hereby affix a great seal and our cor- porate title. ENOCH MORGAN'S' ^ONS CO. ESTABLISHED HALF A CENTURY. 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It should serve as the manual for organized labor in its present contest? since its teachings will as surely lead to the destruction of the wages system as the aboli- tion movement lead to that of chattel slavery. Each number contains articles of importance, besides the portion of the translation. Many of these are translated from M. Godin's contributions to the socialistic propaganda in Europe. Published as regular issues of the "Loyell Library," by the John W. Lovell Company, 14 and 16 Vesey Street, New York, N. Y., at ten cents per number ; the subscription of $1.00 secures the de- livery of the complete series. JOHN W. LOVELI, COMPANY, t4 and 16 Vesey Street. NEW YQUK* EEADIANA CIIAP.LES KEADE It AUTHOR OF "FOUL PLAV," "VERY HARD CASH," ETC., ETC. NEW YORK JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 14 AND 16 Vesey Stkeet CHARLES READE'S WORKS CONTAINED IN LOVELL'S LIBRARY. FKICKi 28 Singleheart and Doubleface, .... • IOC 415 A Perilous Secret, .....,• 20C. 759 Foul Play, 20c READIANA: COMMENTS ON CURRENT EVENTS. BY CHARLES READE. THE BOX TUNNEL. A FACT. The 10.15 train glided from Paddington, May 7, 1847. In the left compartment of a certain first- class carriage were four pas- sengers; of these, two were worth description. The lady had a smooth, white delicate brow, strongly marked eyebrows, long lashes, eyes that seeaied to change color, and a good-sized de- licious mouth, with teeth as wliite as milk. A man could not see her nose for her eyes and mouth; her own sex could and would have told us some nonsense about it. Sue wore an un- pretending grayish dress, buttoned to the tiiroat, with lozenge- shaped buttons, and a Scotch shawl that agreeably evaded the responsibility of color. She was like a duck, so tight her plain feathers fittf^d her; and there she sat, smooth, snug and delicious, with a book in her hand and a soupcon of her snowy wrist just visible as slie held it. Her opposite neighbor was what I call a good style of uian — the more to his credit, since he belonged to a corporation, that frequently turns out the worst imaginable style of y(juag man. He was a cavalry officer, aged twenty-five. He had a mustache, but not a repulsive one; not one of those sub-nasal pig-tails, on which soup is suspended like dew on a shrub; it was short, thick, and black as a coal. His teeth had not yet been turned by tobacco smoke to the color of tobacco juice, his clothes did not stick to nor hang on him, they sat on him; he had an engaging smile, and, what I like the dog for, his vanity, which was inordinate, was in its proper place, his heart, not in his face, jostling mine and other people's, who have none: — in a word, he was what one oftener hears of than meets, a young gentleman. He was conversing, in an animated whisper, with a companion, a fellow-officer — they were talking about, what it is far better not to do, women. Our friend clearly did not wish to be overheard, for he cast, ever and anon, ... furtive glance at liis fai" vis-a-vin find lowered his voice. She seemed completely absorbeu iii Le/ book, and that foassured him. At 8 EEADIANA. last the two soldiers came down to a whisper, and in that whis- per (the truth must be told) the one who got down at Slough, and. was lost to posterity, bet ten pounds to three, that he, who was going down with us to Bath and immortality, would not kiss either of the ladies opposite upon the road. " Done! Done!" Now I am sorry a man I have hitherto praised should have lent himself, even in a whisper, to such a speculation: " but nobody is wise at all hours," not even when the clock is striking five-and twenty; and you are to consider his profession, his good looks, and the temptation — ten to three. After Slough the party was reduced to three ; at Twyford one lady dropped her handkerchief ; Captain Dolignan fell on it like a tiger and returned it like a lamb ; two or three words were interchanged on that occasion. At Reading the Marlborough of our tale made one of the safe investments of that day ; he bought a Times and a Punch ; the latter was full of steel-pen thrusts and wood-eufs. Valor and beauty deigned to laugh at some inflated humbug or other punctured by Punch. Now laughing together thaws our human ice ; long before Swindon it was a talking match — at Swindon who so devoted aa Captain Dolignan — he handed them out — he souped them — he tough- chickened them — he brandied and cochinealed* one, and he brandied and burnt-sugared the other ; on their return to the carriage one lady passed into the inner compartment to inspect a certain gentleman's seat on that side the line. Reader, had it been you or I, the beauty would have been the deserter, the average one would have stayed with us till all was blue, ourselves included ; not more surely does our slice of bread and butter, when it escapes from our hand, revolve it ever so often, alight face downward on the carpet. But this was a bit of a fop, Adonis, dragoon — so Venus remained in tete-a-tete with him. You have seen a dog meet an unknown female of his species : how handsome, how erupresse, how expressive he becomes ; such was Dolignan after Swindon, and, to do the do^ justice, he got handsomer and handsomer ; and you have seen a cat conscious of approaching cream — such was Miss Haythorn ; she became demurer and demurer ; presently our captain looked out of window and laughed : this elicited an inquiring look from Miss Haythorn. " We are only a mile from the Box Tunnel." " Do you always laugh a mile from the Box Tunnel ?" said the lady. " Invariably." "What for?" "Why! -hem! — it is a gentleman's joke." " O, I don't mind its being silly, if it makes me laugh." Cap- tain DoligTian, thus encouraged, recounted to Miss Haythorn the following: "A lady and her husband sat together going through tlie Box Tunnel — there was one gentleman opposite; it was pitch dark; after the tunnel the lady said, ' George, how ab- * This is supposed to allude to two decoctions called port and sherry and imagined by one earthly nation to partake of a vinous nature. READIANA. 3 surd of you to salute me going through the tunnel!" — ' I did no such thing.' — ' You didn't ?' — ' No! why ?' — ' Why, because some- how I thought you did.' " Here Captain Dolignan lauglied. and endeavored to lead his companion to laugh, but it was not to be done. The train entered the tunnel. Miss Haythorn. " Ah!" Dolignan. " What is the matter?" Miss Haythorn. " I am frightened." Dolignan {vaovmg to her side). "Pray do not be alarmed I am near you." Miss Haythorn. " You are near me, very near me indeed, Captain Dolignan." Dolignan. " You know my name!" Miss Haythorn. " I heard your friend mention it. I wish we were out of this dark place." Dolignan. " I could be content to spend hours here, reassur- ing you, sweet lady." Miss Haythorn. "Nonsense I" Dolignan. " Pweep!" (Grave reader, do not put your lips to the cheek of the next pretty creature you meet, or you will un- derstand what this means). Miss HaythoTcn. " Ee! Eel Ee!" Friend. " What is the matter?" Miss Haythorn. " Open the door! — open the door!" The door was opened. There was a sound of hurried whispers, th*e door was shut and thebhnd pulled down with hostile sharp- ness. Miss Haythorn's scream lost part of its effect because the t'Dgine whistled forty thousand murders at the same moment: and fictitious grief makes itself heard when real cannot. Between the tunnel and Bath our young friend had time to ask himself whether his conduct iiad been marked by that deli- cate reserve which is supposed to distinguish the perfect gentle- man. With a long face, real or feigned, he held open the door — his late friends attempted to escape on the other side — impossible! they must pass him. She whom he had insulted (Latin for kissed) deposited somewhere at bis foot a look of gentle blushing reproach: the other, whom he had not insulted, darted red-hot daggers at him from her eyes, and so they parted. It was perhaps fortunate for Dolignan that he had the grace to be friends with Major Hoskyns of bis regiment, a veteran laughed at by the youngsters, for the major was too apt' to look coldly upon billiard balls and cigars; he had seen cannon balls and linstocks. He had also, to tell the truth, swallowed a good bit of the mess-room poker, but with it some sort of moral poker, which made it as impossible for Major Hoskyns to de- scend to an ungentlemanlike word or action as to brush his owu trousers below the knee. Captain Dolignan told this gentleman bis story in gleeful ac- cents, but Major Hoskyns heard him coldly, and as coldly an- svrered that he had known a man to lose his life for the same thing. " ihat is nothing," continued the major, " but unfortu- nately^ he deserved to lose it," 4 READIANA. At this the blood mounted to the younger man's temples, and his senior added: " I mean to say he was thirty-five; you, I pre- sume, are twenty-one I" "Twenty -five." " That is much the same thing. Will you be advised by me ?" " If you will advise me." "Speak to no one of this, and send White the £3 that he may think you have lost the bet.-.' "That is hard when I won it." "Do it for all tliat, sir." Let the disbelievers in human perfectibility know that this dragon capable of a blush did this virtuous action, albeit with vio- lent reluctance ; and it was his firfet damper. A week after these events, he was at a ball. He was in that state of factitious dis- content which belongs to us amiable English. He was looking, in vain, for a lady, equal in personal attraction to the idea he had formed of George Dolignan as a man, when suddenly there glided past him a most delightful vision, a lady whose beauty and symmetry took him by the eyes. Another look: "It cant be ! — Yes, it is !'' Miss Haytbom — (not that he knew her namel) — but what an apotheosis 1 The duck had become a pea-hen — radiant, dazzling ; she look- ed twice as beautiful and almost twice as large as before. H« lost sight of her. He found her again. She was so lovely she made him ill — and he, alone, must not dance with her, nor speak to her. If he had been content to begin her acquiiintance in the usual way. it might have ende3 in kissing, but having begun with kissing it must end in nothing. As she danced, sparks of beauty fell from her on all around, but him — she did not see him ; it was clear she never would see him. One gentle- man was particularly assiduous ; she smiled on bis aFsiduity ; he was ugly, but she smiled on him. Dolignan was surprised at his success, his ill taste, his ugliness, his impertinence. Dolig- nan at last found himseK injured. "Who was this man ? and what right had he to go on so? He had never kissed her, I sup- pose," said Dolly. Dolignan could not prove it, but he felt that, somehow, the rights of property were invaded. He went home and dreamed of Miss Havthorn, and hated all the ugly success- ful, * He spent a fortnight trying to find out who this beauty was — he never could encounter her again. At last he heard of her in this way : a lawyer's clerk paid him a visit and com- menced a little action against him, in the name of Miss Hay- thorn, for insulting her in a railway train. The young gentleman was shocked; endeavored to soften the lawyer's clerk; that machine did not thoroughly compre'^end the meaning of the term. The lady's name, however, was at last re- •Tealed by this untoward incident; from her name to her address was but a short step, and the same day our crestfallen hero lay in wait at her door, and many a succeeding day, without effect. * When our successful rival is ugly the blow is doubly severe, crush- ing—we fall by bludgeon: we who thought the keenest rapier nujht per- chance thrust at us in vain, BEADIANA. 6 But one fine afternoon she issued forth quite naturall}^ as if she did it every day, and walked briskh- on the nearest parade. Dohgnau did t!ie same, he met and passed her many times on the parade, aud searched for pity in her eyes, but found neither look, nor recognition, nor any other sentiment; for all this she walked and walked, till all the ether promenaders were tired and gone — then her culprit summoned resolution, and taking off his hat, with a voice tremulous for the iirst time, besought permis- sion to address her. She stopped, blushed, and neitiier acknowl- edged nor disowned his acquaintance. He blushed, stammered out how ashamed he was, how he deserved to be punished, how he was punished, how little she knew how unhappy he was: and concluded by begging her not to let all the world know the dis- grace of a man who was already mortified enough by the loss of her acquaiutnnce. She asked an explanation; he told her of the action that had been commenced in her name; she gently slirugged her shoulders, and said, " How stupid they are." Em- boldened by this, he begged to know whether or not a life of dis- tant, unpretending devotion would, after a lapse of years, erase the memory of his madneiss — his crime ? "She did not know." " She must now bid him adieu, as she had some preparations to make for a ball in the Crescent, where everybody was to be." They parted, and Dolignan determined to be at the ball where everybody was to be. He was there, and after some time he obtained an introduction to Miss Havthorn, and he danced with lier. Her manner was gracious. With the wonderful tact of her sex, she ficemed to have commenced the acquaintance that evening. That night, for the first time, Dolignan was in love. I will spare the reader all a lover's arts, by which he succeeded in dining where she dined, in dancing where she danced, in overtaking her by accident wlien she rode. His devotion fol- lowed her even to clmrch, where our dragoon was rewarded by learnmg there is a world where tbev neither polk nor smoke — the two capital abominations of this one. He made acquaintance «ith her uncle, who liked him. and he saw at last, with joy, that her eye loved to dwell upon him, wlien she thought he did not observe her. It was three months after the Box Tunnel that Captain Dolig- nan called one dav upon Captain Haythorn, R. N., whom he had met twice in his life, and s]i2,htly propitiated by resolutely listen- ing to a cutting-out expedition; he called, and in the usual way, asked permission to pay his addresses to his daughter. The worthy Captain straightway began doing Quarter-Deck, when suddenly he was summoned from the apartment by a mysterious message. On his return he announced, with a total change of voice, that " it was all right, and his vi itor might run alongside as soon as he chose." My reader has divined the truth; this nautical commander, temble to the foe, was in complete and happy subjugation to his daughter, our heroine. As he was taking leave, Dolignan saw his divinity glide into the drawing-room. He followed her, observed a sweet con- sciousness which encouraged him; that consciousness deepened 6 READIANA. into confusion — she tried to laugh, she cried instead, and tVien she srailed again; and when he kissed her at the door, it was " George," and "Marian," instead of Captain this, and Miss the other. A reasonable time after this (for my tale is merciful and skips formalties and torturing delays) tliese two were very happy — they were once more upon the railroad, going to enjoy the honeymoon all by themselves. Marian Dolignan was dressed just as before — duck-like, and delicious; all bright except her clotlies; but George sat beside hej- this time instead of opposite; and she drank him in gently from under her long eye-lashes. " Marian," said George, " married people should tell each other ail. Will you ever forgive me if I own to you — no " "Yes! yes!" "Well, then! you remember Box Tunnel" (this was the first allusion lie had ventured to it), " I am ashamed to say ] hnd bet £3 to £10 with White, I would kiss one of you two ladies;" and George, pathetic externally, chuckled within. " I know that, George; I overheard you," was the demure reply. " O, you overheard me? — impossible." "And did you not hear me whisper to my companion? I made a bet with her." "You made a bet? — how singular! What was it?" " Only a pair of gloves, George." " Yes, I know, but what about?" "That, if you did, you should be my husband, dearest." "Oh! — but stay: then you could not have been so very angry with me, love; why, dearest, then who brought that action against me?" Mrs. Dolignan looked down. "I ^7as afraid you were forgetting me. George, you will never forgive me ?" " Sweet angel! — why, thei'e is the Box Tunnel." Now reader — fie! — no! no such thing! You can't expect to be indulged in this way every time we come to a dark place. Be- sides, it is not the thing. Consider two sensible married people — no such phenomenon, I assure you, took place; no scream issued in hopeless rivalry of the engine — this time. A BRAVE WOMAN. The public itches to hear what people of rank and reputation do and say, however trivial. We defer to this taste: ^nd that gives us a right to gratify our own now and then, by presenting what may be called the reverse picture, the remarkable acts, oi sufferings, or qualities, of persons unknown to society, because society is a clique; and to fame, because fame is partial. In this spirit we shall tell our readers a few facts alaout a per- son we are not likely to misjudge, for we do not know her even by sight. 31st of August, 1878, a train left Margate for London by the Chatham and Dover line. At Sittingbourne the pointsman READIANA, 7 kimed the poiuts the wrong way, and the train dashed into a shunted train at full speed. The engine, tender, and leading carriages were crushed together and piled ovei* one another. The nearest passengers were chatting merrily one moment, and dead, dying, or mutilated, the next. Nearest the engine was a third-clafs carnage, and in its furth- est compartment sat a Mrs. Freeland, who in her youth had led an adventurous life in the colonies, but now in middle age had returned to mother England for peace and quiet. She felt a crash and heard a hissiug, and for one moment saw the ten- der bursting through the compartments toward her; then she was hurled down upon her face with some awful weight upon her, and wedged immovable iu a debris of fractured iron, splin- tered wood, shattered glass and mutilated bodies. In a few minutes people ran to help, but in that excited state Tvhich sometimes aggravates these dire calamities. First they were for dragging her out by force; but she was self-possessed, and said; "Pray, be calm, and don't attempt it; I am fast by the legs, and a great weight on my back." Then they were for breaking into the carriage from above; but she called to them, "Please don't do that — the roof is broken, and you don't know what you may bring down upon us." Thus advised by the person most likely to lose her head, one •would think, they effected an entrance at the sides. Tliey re- moved from her back an iron wheel and a dead body, and they :savved round her jammed and lacerated limbs, and at last with difficulty carried out a lady with her boots torn and filled with blood, her clothes in ribbons, her face pouring blood, her back apparently broken, and her right leg furrowed all down to the very foot with a gaping wound, that laid bare the sinews, be- sides numberless contusions and smaller injuries. They laid her on a mat upon the platform, and there she remained, refusing many offers of brandy, and waiting for a surgeon. None came for a long time and benevolent Nature, so-called, sent a heavy rain. At last, in three quarters of an hour, surgeons arrived, and one of them removed her on her mat into a shed, that let in only part of the rain. He found her spine injured, took a double handful of splinters, wood, and glass, out of her head and face, and then examined her leg. He looked aghast at the awful furrow. The sufferer said quietly, " I should like a stitch or two put into that." The surgeon looked at her in amazement. " Can you bear it?" She said: *' I think so." He said she had better fortify herself with a little brandy, She objected to that as useless. But he insisted, and the awful furrow was stitched up in silk. This done he told her she had better be removed to the Infirmary at Chatham, "Army surgeons?" said she. " No, thank you. I shall go to a London hospital." Being immovable in this resolution, she had to wait three hours for a train. At last she was sent up to London, lying upon a mat on the floor of a carriage, hashed, aa we have described, and soaked with rain. From the London station she was conveyed on a 8 READIANA. stretcher to St. George's Hospital. There they discovered many grave injuries, admired her for her courage and wisdom in hav- ing her wounded leg sewn up at once, but toLl her with regret that to be effectual it must be secured with silver points, and that without delay. ''Tery well." said she, J)atiently; "but give me chloroform, for I am worn out." The surgeon said: " If you cotdd endure it without chloroform it would be better." He saw she had the courage of ten men. " Well," said she. " let me have somebody's hand to hold, and I will try to bear it." A sympathizing young surgeon gave this brave woman his hand: and she bore to have the siJk threads removed, and thirty little silver skewers passed and repassed through her quivering flesh, sixty wounds to patch up one. It afterward transpired that the good surgeon was only reserving chloroform for the amputation he thought must foUow, having little hope of saving such a leg. Whatever charity and science — ^united in our hospitals, though disunited in those dark hells where God's innocent creatures are cut up alive out of curiosity — could do, was done for her at St. George's Hospital; the wounded leg was saved, and in three weeks the patient was carried home. But the di^eper injuries seemed to get worse. Slie lay six montlis on her back, and afttr that was lame and broken and aching from head to foot for nearly a year. As soon as she could crawl about she busied her- self in relieving the sick and the poor, according to her means. Fifteen months after the railway accident, a new and myster- ious injury began to show itself; severe internal pains, accom- panied with wasting, which was quite a new feature intbecase. This brought her to death's door after all. But, when faint hopes were entertained of her recovery, the malady declared itself — an abscess in the intestines. It broke, and left the sufferer prostrate, but out of danger. Unfortunately, in about a month another formed, and laid her low again, until it gave way like its predeces ior. And that has now been her life for months; constantly growing these agoniz- ing things, of which a single one is generally fatal. In one of her short intervals of peace a friend of hers, Major Mercier, represented to her the merits and the difficulties of a certain hospital for diseases of the skin. Instantly this brave woman sets to work and lives for other afflicted persons. She fights the good fight, talks, writes, persuades, insists, obtains the public support of five duchesses, five marchionesses, thirty-two countesses, and a hundred ladies of rank, and also of many cele- brated characters; obtains subscriptions, organizes a grand bazaar, etc., for tins woi'thy object. Now, as a general rule, permanent invalids fall into egotism; but here is a lady, not only an invalid, but a sufferer, and indeed, knocked down by suffering half her time; yet with undaunted heart, and charitable, unselfish soul, she struggles and works for others, whose maladies are after all much lighter than her own . Ought so much misfortune and merit to receive no public READIANA. 9 notice ? Ought so rare a union of male fortitude and womanly pity to suffer and relieve without a word of praise ? Why to us, who judge by things, not names, this seems some heroic figure strayed out of Antiquity into an age of little men and women, who howl at the scratch of a pin. Such a character deserves to be sung by some Christian poet; but as poetasters are many and poets are few, Mrs. Eosa Free- land, brave, Buffering and charitable, is chronicled in the prose of " Fact." A BAD FALL. TO THE EDITOR OF "FACT." Sm, — I sometimes get provoked with the British workman — and say so. He comes into my house to do a day's work, and goes out again to fetch the tool he knew be should want, and does not come back till after breakfast. Then I think I have got him. But no; he sharpens his tools and goes out for a whet. Even when he is at work he is always going into the kitchen for hot #vater, or a hot coal, or the loan of a pair of tongs, or some other blind. My maids, who, before he came, were all industry and mock modesty, throw both of these virtures out of the win- dow, and are after him on the roof, when he is not after them in the kitchen. They lose tlieir heads entirely, and are not worth their salt, far less their wages, till he is gone, and that is always a terribly long time, considering how little he has to do. For these reasons, and because, whenever he has been out on my roof the rain comes in next heavy shower, I liave permitted myself to call him in print " the curse of families." Then he strikes, and combines, and speechifies, and calls the capital that feeds him his enemy; and sometimes fights with the capital of a thousand against the capital of a single master, and overpowers it, yet calls that a fight of labor against capital. Then he demands short time, which generally means more time to drink in, and higher wages, which often means more money to drink with. Thereupon I lose my temper, rush into print, and call the British workman the British talk-man and the British drink-man. But it must be owned all this is rather narrow and shallow, " Where there's a multitude there's a mixture," and a private gentleman in my position does not really know the mass of the workmen and their invaluable qualities. One thing is notorious — that in their bargains with capital they are very lenient in one respect, they charge very little for their lives; yet they shorten them in many trades, and lose them right away in some. Even I, who have been hard on them in some things, have al- ready pointed out that instead of labor and capital the trades ought to speechify on life, labor and capital; and dwell more upon their risks, as a fit subject of remuneration, than their professed advocates have done. Is it not a sad thing to reflect, when you see the ecaflfolding 10 headiana. prepared for some great building to be erected either for pious or mundane purposes that out of those employed in erecting it some are sure to be killed? All this prolixity is to usher in a simple fact, which interests me more than the petty proceedings of exalted personages, and their "migrations from the blue bed to the brown;" and some of your readers are sure to be of my mind. The Princess'^ Theater, Oxford Street, is being reconstructed. The walls, far more substantial than they build nowadays, are to stand, but the old interior is demolished, and the roof height ened. Sullivan, a young carpenter, was at work with his fellows on a stage properly secured. They wanted some ropes that lay on another stage, and sent him for them. Between the stages was a plank, which he naturally thought, had been laid to walk on. He stepped on it — it was only a half-inch board. It snapped under his weight like a can*ot, and be fell through in a mo- ment. He caught at a projection, but merely tore his fingers, and descended into space with fearful velocity. The height was fifty feet — measxwed. • The thing he fell on was a hard board, lying on hard ground. Those who saw him fall, and heard liis one cry of horror, had no liope of taking up anything from the ground below but a bat- tered corpse with broken back, fractured skull, and shattered ribs. Thirty-five feet below the place he fell from, a strong bolt, about an inch in diameter and four feet long, protruded from the wall almost at right angles, but with a slight declension down- ward. The outer end of this protruding iron just caught Sullivan by the seat, ripped up his clothes, and tore his back, and partly broke his fall. Nevertheless, such was its violence that he bounded up from the board he eventually fell upon, and was found all in a heap in a hollow place close by, senseless, and al- most pulseless. Hy was taken to the Middlesex Hospital. There he came to his senses and his trouble. His pulse was soon over 100. His temperature 108— a very alarming feature. This, however, has subsided, and they have got his pulse to 98, but he cannot eat; his eyes cannot bear the light. There are one or more severe wounds upon his back parts, and much reason to fear injury to the spinal column. He is in danger; and, if he survives, which I think very possible, it is to be feared he will never be able to walk and work again. These, sir. are the dire realities of life; and very fit to be admitted into your graver columns. Here is a sad fact and a curious fact. Sullivan was a handsome young fellow, just beginning the world. In a moment there he lies a cripple and a wreck, and that is a sad thing for any feeling heart to think of. The bolt which saved him from immediate death is a curious fact. It ia still to be seen dangling from the wall aa it did when it ripped headiana. 11 up the workman's clothes, furrowed his back, and broke bis fall. Will it prove his friend or his enemy, that piece of iroa? The enemy of his body if it makes him a cripple instead of a corpse; but a friend of his soul if he reads his own story right; where- fore I hope some servant of God will go to his bedside with the true balm of Crilead, I am, sir, Yours faithfully, Charles Reade. PERSEVEEANCE. On a certain day in the year 1819, Mr. Chitty, an attorney in Shaftesbury, was leaving his office for the day, when he was met at the door by a respectable woman and a cliubby-faced boy with a bright eye. He knew the woman slightly — a widow that kept a small stationer's shop in the town. She opened her business at once. " Oh. Mr. Chitty, I have brought you my Robert; he gives me no peace; his heart is so set on being in a lawyer's office. But there, I have not got the money to apprentice him. Only we thought perhaps you could find some place or other for him, if it was ever so small." Then she broke off and looked appealingly, and the boy's cheeks and eyes were fired with expectation. Most country towns at that time possessed two solicitors, who might be called types, the old established man, whose firm for generations had done the pacific and luci-ative business — wills, settlements, partnerships, mortgages, etc. — and the sharp prac- titioner, who was the abler of the two at litigation, and had to shake the plum tree instead of sitting under it and opening his mouth for the windfalls. Mr. Chitty was No. 2. But these sharp practitioners are often very good-natured; and so, looking at the pleading widow and the beaming boy, he felt disposed to oblige them, and rather sorry lie could not. He said his was a small office, and he had no clerk's place vacant; " and, indeed, if I had, he is too young; why, he is a mere childl" " 1 am twelve next so-and-so," said the boy, giving the month and the day. "You don't look it, then," said Mr. Chitty incredulously. "Indeed, but he is, sir," said the widow; "he never looked his age, and writes a beautiful hand." " But I tell you I have no vacancy," said Mr. Chitty, turning dogged. " Well, thank you, sir, all the same." said the widow, with the patience of her sex. " Come, Robert, we mustn't detain the gentleman." So they turned away with disappointment marked on their faces, the boy's especially. Then Mr. Chittj^ said in a hesitating way: "To be sure, there is a vacancy, but ib^is not the sort of thing for you." 19 BEADIANA. " What is it, sir, if you please ?" asked the widow. " Well, we want an office boy." " An office boy I What do you say, Robert ? I suppose it is a beginning, sir. What will he have to do ?" " Why, sweep the office, run errands, oarry papers — and that is not what he is after. Look at him; he has got that eye of his fixed on a counselor's wig, you may depend; and sweeping a country attorney's office is not the steppuig-stone to that." He added warily, "at least there is no precedent reported." "La! sir," said the widow, " he only wants to turn an honest penny, and be among l;jw-papers." " Ay, ay, to write 'em and sell 'em, but not to dust 'eml'' " For that matter, sir, I believe he'd rather be the dust itself in your office than bide at home with me." Here she turned angry with her offspring for half a moment. "And so I would," said young master stoutly indorsing his mother's hyperbole very boldly, though his own mind was not of that kind which originates metaphors, similes, and engines of inaccuracy in general. " Theui say no more," observed Mr. Chitty; " only mind, it is half a crown a week — tliat is all." The terms were accepted, and Master Robert entered on his humble duties^ He was steady, persevering, and pushing; in less than too years he got promoted to be a copying clerk. From this, in due course, he became a superior clerk. He studied, {)ushed and' persevered, till at last he became a fair practical awyer, and Mr. Chitty's head clerk. And so much for perse- verence. He remained some years in this position, trusted by his em- ployer, and respected, too; for besides his special gifts as a law- clerk, he was strict m morals, and religious without parade. In those days country attorneys could not fly to the metrop- olis and back to dinner. They relied much on London attorneys, their agents. Lavvyer Chitty's agent was Mr. Bishop, a judge's clerk ; but in those days a judge's clerk had an insufficient sti- pend, and was allowed to eke it out by private practice. Mr. Bishop was agent to several country attorneys. Well, Chitty had a heavy case coming on at the assizes, and asked Bishop to come down for once in a way and help him in person. Bishop did so, and in working the case was delighted with Chitty's man- aging clerk. Before leaving he said he sadly wanted a manag- ing clerk he could rely on. Would Mr. Chitty oblige him and part with this young man ? Chitty made rather a wry face, and said that young man was a pearl. " I don't know what I shall do without him; why, he is my alter ego.''' However, he ended by saying, generously, that he would not stand in the young man's way. Then they had the clerk in, and put the question to him. "Sir," he said, "it is the ambition of my heart to go to London." Twenty-four hours after that, our hiimble hero was installed Jn Mr. Bishop's office, directing a large business in town and READUNA. 13 country. He filled that situation for many years, and got to be well known in the legal profession. A brother of mine, who for years was one of a firm of solicitors in Lincoln's- Inn Fields, remembers him well at this period; and to have met him some- times in his own cliambers, and sometimes in Judge's Cham- bers; my brother says he could not help noticing hitn, for he bristled with intelligence, and knew a deal of law, though he looked a boy. The best of the joke is that this clerk afterward turned out to be four years older than that solicitor who took him for a boy. He was now up amongst books as well as lawyers, and studied closely tlie principles of law whilst the practice was sljarpening him. He was much in the courts, and every case there cited in argument or judgment he hunted out in the books, aud digested it, together with its application in practice by tlie Uving judge, who had quoted, received, or evaded it. He was a Baptist, and lodged with a Baptist minister and his two daughters. He fell in love with one of them, proposed to her, and was accepted. The couple were married without pomp, and after 1 he ceremony the good minister took them aside, and said, " I have only £200 in the world; I have saved it a little at a time, for my two daugh- ters. Here is your share, my children. Then he gave his daughter £100, and she handed it to the bridegroom on the spot. The good minister smiled approval and tbey sat down to what fine folk call breakfast, but tiiey called dinner, and it was. After dinner and the usual ceremonies, the bridegroom rose and surprised them a little. He said, " I am very sorry to leave you, but I have a particular business to attend t(>; it will take me just one hour." Of course tliere was a look or two interchanged, especially by every female there present; but the confidence in him was too great to be disturbed ; and this was his first eccentricity. He left them, went to Gray's Inn, put down his name as a student for the Bar; paid away his wife's dowry in fees, and re- turned within the hour. Next day the married clerk was at the office, as usual, and entered on a twofold life He worked as a clerk till five, dined in the HaU of Gray's Inn as a sucking barrister; and studied hard at night. This was followed by a still stronger example of duplicate existence, and one without a parallel in my reading and experience— he became a writer and produced a master- piece, which, as regarded the practice of our courts, became at once the manual of attorneys, counsel, and judges. The author, though his book was entitled •' practice," showed some quaUties of a jurist, and corrected soberly but firmly un- scientific legislature and judicial blunders. So here was a student of Gray's Inn, supposed to be picking up in that Inn a small smattering of law, yet. to diversify his crude studies, instructing mature counsel and correcting the judges themselves, at whose chambers he attended aaily, cap in hand, as an attorney's clerk. There's an intellectual hotch-potch for you I All this did not in his Inn qualify him to be a barrister ; u headiana. but years and dinners did. After some weary years he took the oaths at Westminster, and vacated by that act bis place in Bishop's offiee; and was a pauper — for an afternoon. But work, that has been lung and tediously prepared, can be executed quickly; and adverse circumstances, when Persever- ance conquers them, turn round and become allies. The ex-clerk and young barrister had plowed and sowed with such pains and labor, that he reaped with comparatiA'e ease. Half the mauaging clerks in London knew him and believed in him. Tliey had the ears of their employers, and brought him pleadings to draw and motions to make. His book, too, brought him clients, and he was soon in full career as a junior counsel and special pleader. Senior counsel, too, found tliat they could rely upon his zeal, accuracy, and learning. They began to re- quest that he might be retained with tkem in difficult cases, and he became first junior counsel at the bar; and so much for Perseverance. Time rolled its ceaseless course, and a silk gown was at his dis- posal. Now, a popular junior counsel cannot always afford to take silk, as they call it. Indeed, if he is learned, but not elo- quent, he may ruin himself by the change. But the remarkable man, whose career I am epitomizing, did not hesitate; he still pushed onward, and so cne mornmg the Lord Chancellor sat for an hour in the Queen's Bench, and Mr. Robert Lush was ap- pointed one of Her Majesty's Counsel learned in the Law, and then and there, by the Chancellor's invitation, stepped out from among the juniors and took his seat within the Bar. So much for Perseverance. From this point the outline of his career is known to every- body. He was appointed in 1865 one of the Judges of the Queen's Bench, and, after sitting in that court some years, was promoted to be a Lord Justice of Appeal. A few days ago he died, lamented and revered by the legal f)rofe3sion, which is very critical, and does not bestow its respect ightly. I knew him only as Queen's Counsel. I had him against me once, but oftener for me, because my brother thought him even then the best lawyer and the most zealous at the Bar, and always retained him if he could. During the pei'iod I knew him person- ally Mr. Lush had still a plump, unwrinkled face, and a singu- larly bright eye. His voice was full, mellow, and penetrating; it filled the court without apparent effort, and accorded well with his style of eloquenr^e, which was what Cicero calls the temperatuvi genus loquendi. Reasoning carried to perfection is one of the fine arts; an argu- ment by Lush enchained the ear and charmed tJie understand- ing. He began at the beginning, and eacli succeeding topic was articulated and disposed of, and succeeded by its right successor, in language so fit and order so bicid, that he rooted and grew conviction in the mind. Tantum series nexuraque pollent. I never heard him at Nisi Prius, but should think he could do nothing ill, yet would be greater at convincing judges than at persuading juries right or \^rong; for at this pastime he would BEADIANA. 15 have to escape from the force of his o\'"n understanding, whereas I have known counsel blatant and admired, whom Nature and flippant fluency had secured against that difficulty. He was affable to clients, and I had more than one conversa- tion with him, very interesting to me. But to intrude these would be egotistical, and disturb the just proportions of this short notice. I hope some lawyer, who knew him well as a counsel and judge, will give us his distinctive features, if it is only to correct those vague and colorless notices of him that have appeared. This is due to the legal profession. But, after all, his early career interests a much wider circle. We cannot all be judges, but we can all do great things by the perseverance, which, from an oflSce boy, made this man a clerk, a counsel, and a judge. Do but measure the difficulties he overcame in his business with the difficulties of rising in any art, profession, or honorable walk; and down with despondency's whine, and the groans of self-deceiving laziness. You who have youth and liealth, never you quail ^ "At those twin jailers of the daring heart, Low birth and iron fortune." See what becomes of those two bugbears when the stout champion! 8iNGiiE-HE ART and the giant Perseverance take them by the throat. Why the very year those chilling lines were first given to the public by Bulvver and Macready, Robert Lush paid his wife's dowry away to Gray's Inn in fees, and never whined nor doubted nor looked right nor left, but went straight on — and prevailed. Genius and talent may have their bounds — but to the power of single-hearted perseverance there is no known limit. Natl omnismortuus est; the departed judge still teaches from his tomb; his dicta wiU outlive him in our English Courts; his gesta are for mankind. Such an instance of single-heartedness, perseverance and pro- portionate success in spite of odds is not for one narrow island, but the globe; an old man sends it to the young in both hemi- •pheres with this comment: If difiiculties tie in tl)e way, never shirk them, but think of Robert Lush, and trample on them. If impossibilities encounter you — up hearts and at 'em. One thing more to those who would copy Robert Lush in all essentials. Though impregnated from infancy with an honorable ambition, he remembered his Creator in the days of his youth; nor did he forget Him, when tlie world poured its honors on him, and those insidious temptations of prosperity, which have hurt the soul far oftener than "low birth and iron fortune." He flourished in a skeptical age; yet he lived, and died, fearing God, U READJANA. A HERO AND A MARTYR. There is an old man in Glasgow, who has saved more than forty lives in the Clyde, many of them with great peril to his own. Death has lately removed a French hero, who was his rival, and James Lambert now stands alone in Europe. The Frenchman saved more lives than Lambert, but then he did most of his work with a boat and saving gear. The Scot had nothing but his own active body, liis rare power of suspending his breath, and liis lion heart. Two of liis feats far surpass any- thing recorded of his French competitor; he was upset in a boat with many companions, seized and dragged to the bottom, yet contrived to save nearly them aU; and, on another occasion, when the ice had broken under a man, and the tide sucked him under to a distance of several yards, James Lambert dived under the ice, and groped for the man tiU he was nearly breathlf»ss, and dragged him back to the hole, and all but died in saving him. Here the cliances were nine to one against his ever find- ing that small aperture again, and coming out alive. Superior in daring, to his one European rival, be has yet another title to the sympathy of mankind; he is blind: and not by any irrel- evant accident, but in consequence of his heroism and his good- ness. He was working at a furnace one wintry day, and perspiring freely. The cry got up that a man was drowning. He flung himself, all heated as he was, into i^y wat r, and, when he came out, he lost his sight for a time on the very bank. His sight returned; but ever after that day he was subject to similar seizures. They became more frequent, and the intervals of sight more rare, until the darkness settled down, and the light retired forever. The meaning of the word " martyr" is — a noan who is pun- ished for a gi'eat virtue by a great calamity. Every martyr in Fox's book, or Butler's, or the " Acta Sanctorum," or the " Vitae Patrum Occideutis," comes under that definition; but not more so than James Lambert, and the hero who risks his life in sav- ing, is just as much a hero as he who risks his life in killing his fellow-creature. Therefore I do not force nor pervert words, but weigh them well, when T call James Lambert what he is — a hero and a martyr. Tiiat is a great deal to say of any one man; for all of us who are leally men or women, and not as Lambert once said to me " mere iaroom -besoms in the name of men," admire a hero, and pity a martyr, alive or dead. In espousing this hero's cause I do not follow a worthy exam- ple. Mr. Hugh M'Donald was a Glasgow citizen, and a man known by many acts of charity and public feeling. He revealed to the Giasglow public the very existence of Bums' daughter, and awakened a warm interest in her; and in 1856 he gave the city an account of James Lamliert's deeds and affliction, and asked a subscription. Glasgow responded warmly; £260 was raised, and afterward £70. The sum total was banked and doled to James Lambert ten shillings per week. However, the subscribers made one great mistake, they took for granted Lambert would not outlive their money; but he has. READIANA. il Tn 1868, having read Mr. M'Donald's account. I visited Lam- bert, and heard his story. Being now blind, and compelled to live in the past, he had a vivid recollection of his greatest deedp and told me them with spirit. I, wtio am a painstaking man, and owe my success to it, wrote down the particulars, and the very words" that, he said, had passed on these grand occasions. Next day, I took the blind hero down to the Clyde, whose every bend he knew at that tijne, and made him repeat to me every principal incident on its own spot. From titat day I used to send James Lambert money and clothes at odd times; but I did not write about him for years. However, in 1874, I published my narrative (entitled " A hero and a Martyr ") in the Pall Mall Gazette, London, the Tribune, New York, and a shilling pam- phlet with a. fine engraving of James Lamb_rt. I invited a subscription, and, avoiding the error of the former sub- scribers, announced from the first that it sijould be directed to buying James Lambert a small annuity for life. The printed story flew round the world. Letters and small sub- scriptions poured in from every part of England, and in due course from Calcutta, from tlie Australian capitals, from New York, Boston, San Francisco, and even from Valparaiso in Chili, An American boy sent me a dollar from New Orleans. Two American children sent me a dollar from Chicago. A warm- hearted Glasgow man wrote to me with rapture from the State of Massachusettes, to say every word was true; he remembered blythe Jamie well, and his unrivaled reputation, remembered his saving the mill-girls, and added an incident to my narrative, that in all the liorror of the scenes James Lambert's voice had been heard from the bank shouting lustily, " Dinna grip my arms, lassies; hing on to my skirts." The English papers quoted largely from the narrative and recommended the subscriptions* But, whilst the big world rang with praises of the Glasgo^v hero,- and thrilled with pity for the Glasgow martyr, detractors alid foes started up in a single city." And what was the name of that city? Was it Rome jealous ff)r Regulus and Quintus? Was it Tarsus jealous for St. Paul ? Was it Edinburgh, Liverpool, Paris, or Washington ? Oh, dear no: marvelous to relate, it was Glas- gow, the City of Hugh Macdonald, the hero's own birthplace — and the town which the world honors for having produced him. These detractors deny James Lambert's exploits, or say they were few and small, not many and great. They treat his blind- ness and its cause as a mere irrelevant trifle, and pretend he squandered the last subscription — which Is a lie, for he never had the control of it, and it lasted ten years. Scribblers who get drunk three times a week, pretend that Lambert — who, by the admission of his enemy McEwen, has not been drunk once these last five years — is an habitual drunkard, and that they, of all people, are shocked at it. Need I say that these de- tractors from merit and misfortune are anonymous writers in the " Glasgow Press.-' It does not follow they are aU natives of Glasgow. Two of them, at least, are dirty little pennv-a- liners from London. The pubUc knows nothing about the Press, and is easily gulled by it. But I know all about the Press, inside 18 READIANA. and out, and shall reveal the true motive of the little newspaper conspiracy against Lambert and Reade. It is just the jealousy of ithe little provincial scribbler maddened by the overwhelming su- periority of the national writer. I'll put the minds of these iquilldrivers into words for you. "Curse it all! there was a hero and a mai'tyr in our midst, and we hadn't the luck to spot him. [In reality they had not brains enough in their skulls nor blood enough in their hearts to spot him. But it is their creed, that superior discernment is all luck.j Then comes this cursed Englishman and hits the theme we missed. What can we pig- mies do now to pass for giants ? It's no use om* telling the truth and playing second fiddle. No — our only chance now, to give ourselves importance, is to hiss down both the hero and his chronicler. If we call Lambert an imposter and a drunkard, and Reade a mercenarj fool, honest folk will never divine that we are ourselves the greatest drunkards, the gi'eatest dunces, and the most habitual liars in tl.e city."' That was the little game of the Glasgow penny-a-liners, and twopenre-a-liars; and every man in Scotland, who knows the provincial Press, saw through these caitiffs at a glance. But the public is weak and credulous. Now, they might as well bay the moon as bark at me; I stand too high above their reach in the just respect of the civilized world. But they can hui't James Lambert, because he is their townsman. Therefore, I interfere and give the citizens of Glas- gow the key to the Glasgow backbiters of a Glasgow hero and martyr. I add one proof that this is the true key. The exploits and the calamity of James Lambert were related by Hugh Mac- donald eighteen years ago when proofs were plentiful. If they were true eighteen years ago how can they be false now ? Answer me that, honest men of Glasgow, who don't scribble in papers and call black white. Can facts be true when told by a Glasgow man, yet turn false when told by an Englishman???!!! Now observe — they might have shown their clannishness as nobly as they have shown it basely. There are brave men in England — many; and unfortunate men — many; whom a powerful English writer could celebrate. But no — he selects a Scotchman for his theme, and makes the great globe admire him, and moves Eng- land to pity and provide for him. Any Scotch writer worthy of the name of Scotchman, or man, observing this, would have said — "Well, this English chap is not narrow-minded anyway. You need not be a Cockney to win his heart and gain his pen. He is warmer about this Glasgow man, than we ever knew him to be about a south countryman. It is a good example. Let us try and rise to his level, and shake hands with the Southron o^er poor Jamie Lambert." This is how every Scotsman, worthy of the name, would have felt and argued. But these Glasgow sci"ibblers are few of them Scotsmen, and none of them men. The line they have taken in vilifying a blind man, who lost his sight by benevolent heroism, is one that hell chuckles at, and man recoils from. They have disgraced the city of Glasgow and human nature itself. Whatever may be the faults of the work- ing classes they are MEN. Anonymous slanderers and detract- ors are not men— -they are mere lumps of human filth. I tliere- tiEADlANA. 19 fore ask the operatives of Glasgow, and the manly citizens, to shake off these lumps of dirt and detraction, and aid me to take the Glasgow hero a^nd martyr out of all his troubles. The Frenchman I have mentioned had one great title to sym- pathy, whereas Lambert has two; and this is bow France treated her heroic son. He lived at the public expense, but free as air. The public benefactor was not locked up and hidden from the public. His breast was emblazoned with medals, and amongst them shone the great national order, the Cross of the Legion of Honor, which many distinguished noblemen and gentlemen have sighed for in vain; and when he walked abroad every gentleman in the country doffed his hat to him. Thus does France treat a great saver of human lives. James Lambert lives at the public expense, but not as that Frenchman lived. It grieves my heart to say it; but the truth is, James Lambert lives unhappily. He is in an almshouse, which partakes of the character of a prison. It is a gloomy, austere place, and that class of inmates, to which he belongs, are not allowed to cross the threshold upon their own business, except once in a fort- night. But to ardent spirits loss of liberty is misery. Meanly clad, poorly fed, well in, prisoned, and little respected — such is the condition of James Lambert in Glasgow, his native city. Yet he is the greatest man in that city, and one of the very few men now living in it, whose name will ring in history a hundred years hence; the greatest saver of lives in Europe; a man whose name is even now honored in India and Australia, in the United States and Canada, and indeed from the rising to the setting sun, tlianks to Ids own merit, the power of the pen, and the circula- tion of the Press — a true hero and a true martyr, glorious by his deeds and sacred by his calamity. A DRAMATIC MUSICIAN. To THE Editor of the ''Era.'' Sir. — There died the other day in London a musician, who used to compose, or set, good music to orchestral instruments, and play it in the theater with spirit and taste, and to watch the stage with one eye and the orchestra with another, and so ac- company with vigilant delicacy a mixed scene of action and dialogue: to do which the music must be full when the actor works in silence, but subdued promptly as often as the actor speaks. Thus it enhances the action without drowning a spoken line. These are varied gifts, none of them common, and music is a popular art. One would think, then, that such a composer and artist would make bis fortune nowadays. Not so. Mr. Edwin Ellis lived sober, laborious, prudent, respected, and died poor. He was provident and insured Ids life; he had a family and so small an income that he could not keep up the insurance. He has left a wife and nine children utterly destitute, and he coul4 20 READIA2}J. not possibly help it. The kindest-hearted Profession in the world — though burdened with many charitable claims — will do what it can for them; but I do think the wliole weight ought not to fall upon actors and musicians. The man was a better servant of the public than people are aware, and therefore, T ask leave to say a few words to the public and to the Press over his ill-re- munerated art, and his untimely grave. Surely the pi'izes of the theater are dealt too unevenly, when such a man, for his compositions and his performance receives not half the salary of many a third-class performer on the stage, works his heart out, never wastes a shilling, and dies without one. No individual is to blame; but the system seems indiscriminat- ing and unjust, and arises from a special kind of ignorance, which is very general, but I think and hope is curable. Dramatic effects are singularly complex, and they cannot really be understood unless they are decomposed. But it is rare to find, out of the Iheater, a niiud accustomed to decompose them. The writer is constantly blamed for the actor's misinter- pretation, and the actor for the writer's feebleness. Indeed, the general inability to decompose and so discriminate goes so far as this — You hear an author gravely accused by a dozen commen- tators of writing a new play four hours long. Of tliose four hours, the stage-carpenter occupied one hour and thirty minutes. Yet they aecribe that mechanic's delay to the lines and delivery, when all the time it was the carpenter, who had not rehearsed his part, and therefore kept the author and the actors waiting, just as long as he did the audience. Where the habit of decomposing effects is so entirely absent, it follows, as a matter of course, that the subtle subsidiary art of the able leader is not distinguished, and goes for nothing in the public estimate of a play. I suppose two million people Lave seen Shaun the Post escape from his prison by mounting: the ivied tower, and have panted at the view. Of those two million how many are aware that they saw with the ear as well as the eye, and that much of their emotion was caused by a mighty melody, such as effeminate Italy never produced — and never will till she breeds more men and less monks — being played all the time on tlie great principle of climax, swelling higher and higher, as the hero of the scene mounted and surmounted ? Not six in the two million spectators, I be- lieve. Mr. Ellis has lifted scenes and situations for me and other writers scores of times, and his share of the effect never been ptiblicly noticed. When he had a powejful action or im- passioned dialogue to illustrate, he did not habitually run to the poor resource of a " hurry" or a nonsense "tremolo,"' but loved to find an appropriate melody, or a rational sequence of chords, or a motived strain, that raised the scene or inforced the dialogue. As to his other qualities, it was said of Caesar that he was a general who used not to say to his soldiers "go" but " come," and that is how Mr. Ellis led an orchestra. He showed them how to play with spirit by doing it himself. He was none of your sham leaders with a baton, but a leal leader with a READIANA. 21 riolin, that set his band on fire. A little while before he died he tried change of air, by the kind permission of Messrs. Gatti, and he helped nie down at Liverpool. He entered a small orchesti-a of good musicians that liad become languid. He waked them up directly, and they played such fine music and so finely that the entr'acte music became at once a feature of the entertainment. A large theater used to ring nightly with the performance of fifteen musicians only; and the Lancashii'e lads, who know what is good, used to applaud so loudly and persist- ently that Mr. Ellis had to rise nightly in' the orchestra and bow to them before the curtain could be raised. Then I reneat that there must be something wrong in the scale of remuneration, when such a mau works for many years and dies in need, without improvidence. In all otlier professions there are low rewards and high rewards. On what false prin- ciples dues such a man as Ellis receive the same pittance as a mediocre leader, who doses a play with tremolo, and " hurries," and plays you dead with polkas between the acts, and, though playing to a British audience, rarely plays a British melody but to destroy it by wrong time, wrorg rhythm, coarse and slovenly misinterpretation, plowing immortal airs, not playing them ? I respectfully invite the Press, over this sad grave, to look into these matters — to adopt tlie habit of decomposing all the com- plex effects of a theatre; to ignore nobody, neither artist nor mechanic, who affects the public; to time tlie cai-penters' delays on a first night and report them to a second; to time the au- thor's lines and report their time to a minute; to criticise as an essential part of the performance the music, appropriate or in- appropriate, intelligent or brainless, that accompanies the lines and action; and not even to ignore the quality and execution of the entr'acte music. A thousand people have to listen to it three quarters of an hour, and those thousand people ought not to be swindled out of a part of their money by the misinterpre- tation of Italian overtures or by the everlasting performance of polkas and waltze?. These last are good mu'^ical accompani- ments to the foot, biit to seated victims they are not music, but mere rhythmical thumps. There is no excuse for this eternal trash, since the stores of good music are infinite. If the Press will deign to take a hint from me, and so set themselves to decompose and discriminate, plaj'S will soon be played quicker on a first night, and accompliphed artists like Edwin Ellis will not work hard, live soberly, and die poor. Meantime, I do not hesitate to ask the public to repair in some degree Ihe injustice of fortune. Millions of people have passed happy evenings at. the Adelphi Theater. Thousands have heard Mr. Ellis accompany llie Wandering Heir, and between the acts play his " Songs without Music " at the Queen's. I ask them to believe me that this deserving and unfortunate musician caused much of their enjoyment though they were not conscious of it at the time. Those spectators, and all who favor me with their confidence in matters of charity, I respectfully invite to aid the Theatrical and l^Iusical Professions in the effort they are now 32 EEADIAJ^Ar^ making to save from dire destitution the widow and children of that accomplished artist and worthy man. I am, sir, yours respectfully, CHARLES READE. DEATH OF WINWOOD READE. From the " Daily Telegraph," April 26, 1876. We re^et to announce the death of Mr. Winwood Reade, well- known as an African traveler and correspondent, and by many works of indubitable power. This remarkable man closed, on Saturday last. AprU 24, a laborious caieer, cheered with few of Fortune's smiles. As a youth he had shown a singular taste for natural science. This, however, was interrupted for some years by University studies, and afterward by an honest but unavailing attempt to master the art of Fiction, before possessing sufficient experience of life. He produced, however, two or tliree novels containing some good and racy scenes, unskillfully connected, and one (" See Saw,") which is a well constnicted tale. He also puijlished an archaeological volume, entitled " The Vale of Tsis." The theories of M. Du Chaillu as to the power and aggressive character of the gorilla inflamed Mr. Reade's curiosity and awakened his dormant genius. He raised money upon his in- heritance, and set out for Africa fully equipped. He hunted the gorilla persistently, and found him an exceedingly timorous animal, inaccessible to European sportsmen in the thick jungles which he inhabits. Mr. Reade then pushed his researches an- other way. On his return he published " Savage Africa," a re- markable book, both in matter and style. After some years, devoted to general science and anonymous literature, he revisited that Continent — "whose fatal fascina- tions," as he himself wrote, "no one having seen and suffered, can resist," and this time penetrated deep into the interior. In this exhibiton he faced many dangers quite ^alone. was often stricken down with fever, and sometimes ii danger of his life from violence, and once was taken prisoner by cannibals. His quiet fortitude and indomitable will carried a naturally feeble body through it all, and he came home weak, but apparently un- injured in constitution. He now published two volumes in quick succession — " The Martyrdom of Man," and the "African Sketchbook " — both of which have Tnet with warm admiration and severe censure. Mr. Reade was now, nevertheless, generally recognized by men of science, and particularly by Dr. Darwin and his school. In November, 1873, he became the Times^ cor- respondent in the Ashantee war, and, as usual, did not spare himself. From this, his third African expedition, he returned a broken man. The mind had been too strong for the body, and he was obliged to halt on the wav home. Early in this present year, disease, both of the heart and lungs, declared itself, and he wasted away slowly but inevitably. He wrote his last work. ♦* The Outcast," with the hand of death upon him. Two zealoug BEADIANA, 23 friends can-ied him out to Wimbledon, and there, for a day or two, the air seemed to revive him; but on PYiday night he began to sink, and on Saturday afternoon died, in the arms of his be- loved imcle, Mr. Charles Reade. The vriter thus cut off in his prime entered life with excellent prospects; he was heir to considerable estates, and gifted with genius. But he did not Jive long enough to inherit the ooe or to mature the other. His whole public career embraced but fifteen years; yet in another fifteen he would probably have won a great name, and cured himself, as many thinking men have done, of certain obnoxious opinions, which laid him open to reasonable censure, and also to some bitter personalities that were out of place, since truth can surely prevail without either burning or abusing men whose convictions are erroneous but honest. He felt these acrimonious comments, but bore them with the same quiet fortitude by help of which he had endured his sufferings in Africa, and now awaited the sure approach of an untimely death at home. Mr. Reade surpasses most of the travelers of his day in one great quality of a writer — style. His English, founded on historical models, has the pomp and march of words, is often racy, often picturesque, and habitually power- ful yet sober; ample' yet not turgid. He died in his thirty- seventh year. CEEMONA FIDDLES. From the "Pall Mall Gazette." FIRST LETTER. August mh, 1872. Under this heading, for want of a better, let me sing the four- stringed instruments that were made in Italy from about 1560 to 1760, and varnished with high-colored yet transparent varnishes, the secret of which, known to numberless families in 1745, had vanished off the earth by 1760, and has now for fifty years baffled the laborious researches of violin makers, amateurs, and chemists. That lost art I will endeavor to restore to the world through the medium of your paper. But let me begin with other points of connoisseurship, illustrating them as far as possible by the specimens on show at the South Kensington Museum. The modern orchestra uses four stringed instruments, played •with tlie bow; the smallest is the king; its construction is a marvel of art; and. as we are too apt to un'^ierrate familiar miracles, let me analyze this wooden paragon by way of show- ing what great architects in wood those Italians were, who in- vented this instrument and its fellows at Brescia and Bologna. The violin itself, apart from its mere accessories, consists of a scroll or head, weighing an ounce or two, a slim neck, a thin back, that ought to be made of Swiss sycamore, a thin belly of Swiss deal, and sides of Swiss sycamore no thicker than a six- pence. This Uttle wooden shell delivers an amount of sound S4 READIANA. that is simply monstrous: but, to do that, it must submit to a strain, of which the public has no conception. Let us suppose two claimants to take opposite ends of a violin-string, and to pull against each other with all their weight; the tension of the string so produced would not ec(ual the tension which is created by the screw in raising that string to concert pitch. Consider, then, that not one but four strings tug night and day, like a team of demons at the wafer-like sides of this wooden shell. Why does it not collapse; well, it would collapse with a crash, long before the strings reached concert pitch, if the Tiolin was not a wonder inside as well as out. The problem was to with- stand that severe pressure without crippling the vast vibration by solidity. The inventors approached the difficulty thus: they inserted six blocks of lime, or some light wood; one of these blocks at tlie lower end of the violin, one at the upper and one at each corner — the corner blocks very small and triangular; the top and bottom blocks much larger, and shaped like a capi- tal D, the straight line of the block lying close to the sides, and the curved line outward. Then they sliglitly connected all the blocks by two sets of linings; these linings are not above a quarter of an inch deep, I suppose, and no thicker than an old penny piece, but ihey connect those six blocks and help to dis- tribute the resistance. Even so the shell would succumb in time; but now the in- ventor killed two birds with one stone; he cunningly diverted a portion of the pressure by the very means that were necessary to the sound. He placed the bridge on the belly of the violin, and that raised the strings out of the direct line of tension, and relieved the lateral pressure at the expense of the belly; But as the belly is a weak arch, it must now be strengthened in its turn. Accordingly, a bass-bar was glued horizontally to the belly tinder one foot of the bridge. This bass-bar is a very small piece of deal, about the length and half the size of an old-fash- ioned lead pencil, but, the ends being tapered off, it is glued on to the belly, with a spring in it, and supports the belly magically. As a proof how nicely all these things were ba lanced, the basn- bar of Gasparo da Salo, the Amati, and Stradiuarius, being a little shorter and shallower than a modern bass-bar, did ad- mirably for their day, yet will not do now. Our raised concert pitch has clapped on more tension, and straightway you must remove the bass-bar even of Stradiuarius, and substitute one a little longer and deeper, or your Cremona sounds like a strung frying-pan. Remove now from the violin, which for two centuries has en- dured this strain, the finger board, tail-piece, tail-pin and screws — since these are the instruments or vehicles of tension, not ma- terials of resistance — and weigh the violin itself. It weighs, I suppose, about twenty ounces: and it has fought hundred- weights of pressure for centuries. A marvel of construction, it is also a marvel of sound; it is audible further off than the gigantic pianoforte, and its tones in a master's hand go to the heart of man. It can be prostituted to the performance of diffi- culties, and often is; but that is not its fault. Genius can make HEADIANA. 25 your very heart dance with it, or your eyes to fill; and Niel Gow, who was no romancer, but only a dkeper critic than his fellows, when being asked what was the true test of a player, replied: " A mon is a player when he can gar himsel' greet Wl' HIS fiddle." Asking forgiveness for this preamble, I proceed to inquire what country invented these four-striiigecl and four-coinered instruments? I understand that France and Germany have of late raised some pretensions. Counoisseurship and etymology are both against them. Etymology suffices. The French terms are all derived from the Italian, and that disposes of France. I will go into German pretensions critically, if any one will show me as old and specific a German word as viola and violino, and the music composed for those German instruments. " Fiddle " is of vast antiquity; but pear-shaped, till Italy invented the four cor- ners, on which sound as well as beauty depends. The Order of Invention. — Etymology decides with unerring voice that the violoncello was invented after the violono or double-bass, and connoisseurship proves by two distinct methods that it was invented after the violin. 1st, the critical method: it is called after the violin, yet is made on the plan of the violin, with arched back and long inner-bought. 2d, the historical method: a violoncello made by the inventors of the violin is incomparably rare, and this instrument is dispropor- tionately rare even up to the year 1610. Violino being a deriva- tive of viola would seem to indicate that the violin followed the tenor; but this taken alone is dangerous; for v?ola is not only a specific term for the tenor, but a generic name that was in Italy a hundred years before a tenor with four strings was made. To go then to connoisseurship — I find that I have fallen in with as many tenors as violins by Gasparo da Salo, who worked from about 1555 to 1600, and not quite so many byGio Paolo Maggini, who began a few years later. The violin being the kmg of all these instruments, I think there would not be so many tenors made as violins, when once the violin had been invented. Moreover, between the above dates came Corelli, a composer and violinist. He would naturally create a crop of vioUns. Finding the tenors and violins of Gasparo da Salo about equal in number, I am driven to the conclusion that the tenor had an unfair start — in other words, was invented first. I add to this that true four-stringed tenors by Gasparo da Salo exist, though very rare, made with only two comers, which is a more primitive form than any violin by the same maker appears in. For this and some other reasons, I have little doubt tiie viola preceeded the violin by a very few years. What puzzles me more is to time the viohn, or, as we childishly call it (after its known descendant), the doulale-bass. If I was so pre- sumptuous as to trust to my eye alone, I should say it was the first of them aU. It is an instrument which does not seem to mix with these four-stringed upstarts, but to belong to a much older family — viz., the viola d'amore, da gamba, &c. In the first place it has not four strings; secondly, it has not an arched 26 READIANA. back, but a flat back, with a peculiar shoulder, copied from the viola da gamba; thirdly, the space between the upper and lower corners in the early specimens is ludicrously short. And it is hard to believe that an eye, which had observed the graceful proportions of the tenor and violin, could be guilty of such a wretched little inner-bought as you find in a double-bass of Brescia. Per contra, it must be admitted, first, that the sound- hole of a Brescian double-bass seems copied from the four- stringed tribe, and not at all from the elder family; secondly, that the violin and tenor are instruments of melody and harmony, but the violin of harmony only. This is dead against its being invented until after tlie instruments to which it is subsidiary. Man invents only to supply a want. Thus, then, it is. First, the large tenor, played between tlie knees; then the violin, play- ed under the chin; then (if not the first of them all) the small doubJe-bass: then, yeai's after the violin, the violoncello; then the full sized double-bass; then, longo intervallo, the small tenor, played under the chin. However, I do not advance these conclusions as infallible. The highest evidence on some of these points must surely lie in manuscript music of the sixteenth century, much of which is preserved in the libraries of Italy; and, if Mr. Hatton or any musician leamei in the history of his art will tell me for what stringed instruments the immediate predecessors of Corelli, and Corelli at his commencement, marlced their compositions, I shall receive the communication with gratitude and respect. I need hardly say that nothing but the MS. or the editio princeps is evi- dence in so nice a matter. The first known maker of the true tenor, and probably of the violin, was Gasparo da Salo. The student who has read the valuable work put forth by Monsieur Fetis and Monsieur Vuil- laume might imagine that I am contradicting them here; for they quote as "luthiers" — antecedent to Gasparo da Sato — Kerlino, Duiffoprugcar, LinaroUi, Dardelli, and others. These men, I grant you, worked long before Gasparo da Salo; I even offer an independent proof, and a very simple one. I find that their genuine tickets are in Gothic letters, whereas those of Gasparo da Salo are in Roman type; but I know the works of those makers, and they did not make tenors nor violins. They ma^e instruments of the older family, viole d'amore, da gamba, etc. Their time tickets are all black letter tickets, and not one such ticket exists in any old violin, nor in a single genuine tenor. The fact is that the tenor is an instrument of unfixed dimensions, and can easily be reconstructed out of dif- ferent viole made in an earlier age. There are innumerable ex- amples of this, and happily tlie Exhibition furnishes two. There are two curious instruments strung as tenors, Nos. 114 and 134 in the catalogue; one is given to Joan Carlino, and year 1452; the other to Linaro, and 1563. These two instruments were both made by one man, Ventura LinaroUi, of Venice (misspelt by M. Fetis, Venturi), about the year 1520. Look at the enormous breadth between the sound-holes; that shows they were made to caiTy six or seven strings. Now look at the scrolls; both oj READIANA. 27 them new, because the old scrolls were primitive things with six or seven screws; it is only by such reconstruction that a tenor or violin can be set up as anterior to Gasparo da Salo. No 114, is, however, a real gem of antiquity; the wood and varnish ex- quisite, and far fresher than nine Amatis out of ten. It is well worthy the special attention of collectors. It was played upon the knee. There are in the collection two instruments by Gasparo da Salo worth especial notice; a tenor, No. 143, and a violono, or primi- tive double-bass, 199. The tenor is one of his later make, -yet has a grand primitive character. Observe, in particular, the scroll all round, and the amazing inequality between the bass sound-hole and the purfling of the belly; this instrument and the grand tenor assigned to Maggini, and lent by Madame Risler, offer a pomt of connoiseurship worthy the student's attention. The back of each instrument looks fully a century younger than the belly. But this is illusory. The simple fact is that the tenors of that day, when not in use, w^ere not nursed in cases, but hung up on a nail, belly outward. Thus the belly caught the sun of Italy, the dust, &c., and its varnish was often with- ered to a mere resin, while the back and sides escaped. This is the key to that little mystery. Observe the scroll of the violono 199. How primitive it is all round: at the back a flat cut, in front a single fltite, copied from its true parent, the viola da gamba. This scroll, taken in conjunction with the size and other points, marks an instrument considerably anterior to No. 200, As to the other double-basses in the same case, they are assigned by their owners to Gasparo da Salo, because they are double purfled and look older than Cremonese violins; but these indicia are valueless; all Cremona and Milan double-purfled the violon as often as not, and the constant exposure to air and dust gives the violono a color of antiquity that is delusive. In no one part of the business is knowledge of work so necessary. The violoni 201-2-3, are all fine Italian instruments. The small violon, 202, that stands by the side of the Gasparo da Salo, 199, has the purfling of Andreas Amatus; the early sound-hole of Andreas Amatus; the exquisite corners and finish of Andreas Amatus; the finely cut scroll of Andreas Amatus; at the back of scroll the neat shell and squaxe shoulder of Andreas Amatus; and the back, instead of being mads of any rubbish that came to hand, after the manner of Brescia, is of true fiddle-wood, cut the bastard way of the grain, which was the taste of the Amati; and, finally, it is varnished with the best varnish of the Amati. Under these circumstances, I hope I shall not offend the owner by refusing it the inferior name of Gasparo da Salo. It is one of the brightest gems of the collection, and not easily to be matched in Europe, SECOND LETTER, August 2it?), 187a. Gio Paolo Maggini is represented at the Kensington Museum by an excellent violin. No. Ill, very fine in workmanship and 28 READIANA. varnished, but as to the model a trifle too much hollowed at the sides, and so a little inferior to some of his violins, and to the viohn No. 70, the model of which, like many of the Brescian school, is simple and perfect. (Model, as applied to a violin, is a term quite distinct from outline.) In No. 70 both belly and back are modeled, with tLe simplicity of genius, by even gradation, from the center, which is the highest part, down to all the borders of the instrument. The world bas come back to this primitive model after trying a score, and prejudice gives tlie whole credit to Joseph Guarnerius, of Cremona. As to the date of No. 70, the neatness and, above all, the slimness of the sound-hole, mark, I think, a period slightly posterior to frasparo da Salo. This slim sound-hole is an advance, not a retrogi-ession. The gaping sound-holes of Gasparo da Salo and Maggini were their one great error. They were not only ugly; they lessened the ring by allowing the vibration to escape from the cavity too qmckly. No. 60, assigned. to Duiffoprugcar and a fabulous an- tiquity, was made by some 'prentice hand in the seventeenth century; but No. TO would adorn any collection, being an old master- piece of Brescia or Bologna. The School of Cremona, — Andreas Amatus was more than thirty years old, and an accomplis' ed maker of the older viole, when the violin was invented in Brescia or Bologna. He does not appear to have troubled his head with the new instrument for some years; one proof more that new they were. They would not at first materially influence his established trade: the old and new family ran side by side. Indeed it took the violin tribe two centuries to drivn out the viola da gamba. How- ever, in due course, Andreas Amatus set to work on violins. He learned from the Brescian school the only things they could teach a workman so superior — viz., the four corners and the sound-hole. This Brescian sound-bole stuck to him all his days; but what he had loarned in his original art remained by him too. The collection contains three specimens of his handiwork: Vio- lin 203, Mrs. Jay's violin — with the modern head — erroneously assigned to Antonius and Hieronymus; and violoncello No. 183. There are also traces of his hand in tlie fine tenor 139. In the thi'ee instruments just named the purfling is composed in just proportions, so that the white comes out with vigor; it is then inlaid'Hth great neatness. The violoncello is the gem. Its outlirHh's grace itself; the four exquisite curves coincide in one p. 'e £tl5d serpentine design. This bass is a violin souffle; were it shown at a distance it w ould take the appearance of a most ele- gant violin; tlie best basses of Stradiuarius alone will stand this test. Apply it to the Venetian mastei-piece in the same case.) The scroll is perfect in desisrn and chiseled ss by a sculptor; the purfling is quite as fine as Stradiuarius; it is violin purfling, yet this seems to add elegance without meanness. It is a master- piece of Cremona, all but the hideous sound-hole that alone con- nects this master with the Brescian school. His sons Antonius and Hieronymus soon cured themselves of that grotesque sound-hole, and created a great school. They chose better wood and made richer varnish, and did many beau- READIANA. 29 tiful things. Nevertheless, they infected Italian fiddle-making with a fatal error. They were the first SCOOPERS. Having im- proved on Brescia iu outline and details, they assumed too hastily that they could improve on her model. So they scooped out the wood about the sound-holes and all around, weakening the con- nection of the center with the sides of the belly, and checlr^n^ the fullness of the vibration. The German school carried this vice much farther, but the Amati went too far, and inoculated a hundred fine makers with a wrong idea. It took Stradiuaiius himself fifty -six years to get entirely clear of it. The brothers Amati are represented in this collection, first by several tenors that once were noble things, but have been cut on the old system, which was downright wicked. It is cutting in the statutory sense, viz., cutting and maiming! These ruthless men just sawed a crescent off the top, and another oft" the bot- tom, and the result is a thing with the inner bought of a giant and the vipper and lower bought of a dwarf. If one of these noble instruments survives in England uncut, I implore, the owner to spare it; to play on a £5 tenor, with the Amati set before him to look at wliile he plays. Luckily the scrolls remain to us; and let me draw attention to the scroll of 136. Look at the back of this scroll, and see how it is chiseled — the center line in relief, how Bharp, distinct, and fine — this line is obtained by chiseling out tlie wood on both sides with a single tool, which fiddle-makers call a gauge, and there is nothing but tlie eye to guide the hand. There are two excellent violins of this make in the collection —Mrs. Jay's, and the violin of Mr. C. J. Read, No. 75. This lat- ter is the large pattern of those makers, and is more elegant than what is technically called the grand Amati, but not fo striking. To appreciate the merit and the defect of this instrument, com- pare it candidly witli the noble Stradiuarius Amatise that hangs by its side, numbered 83. Take a back view first. In outline they are much alike. In the details of work the Amati is rather superior; the border of the Stradiuarius is more exquisite; but the Amati scroll is better pointed and gauged more cleanly, the purfling better composed for effect, and the way that purfling is let in, especially at the corners, is incomparable. On the front view you fijid the Amati violin is scooped out here and t^^^re, a defect the Stradiuarius has avoided. I prefer the Strad- "^xius sound-hole per se; but if you look at the curves of these t\. w vicx iins, you will obser\'e that the Amati sotmd-holes are in strict harmony with the curves; and the whole thing the produpt of one original mind tliat saw its way. " Nicholas Amatus, the son of Hieronymus, owes his dioyinct reputation to a single form called by connoisseurs the Orrand Amati. This is a very large violin, with extravagantly long cor- ners, extremely fine in all the details. I do not think it was much admired at the time. At all events he made but few, and his copyists, with the exception of Francesco Rugger, rarely selected that form to imitate. But nowadays these violins are almost worshipped, and, as the collection is incomplete without one, I hope some gentleman will kindly send one in before it 30 READIANA. closes. There is also wanting an Amati bass, and, if the pur- chaser of Mr. GiUott's should feel disposed to supply that gap, it would be a very kind act. The Rugger family is numerous; it is represented by one violin (147). Leaving the makers of the Guamerius family — five in number — till the last, we come to Antonius Stradiuarius. This unriv- aled workman and extraordinary man was born in 1644, and died in December, 1737. There is nothing signed with his name before 1667. He was learning his business thoroughly. From that date till 1736 he worked incessantly, often varying his style, and always improving, till he came to his climax, represented in this collection by the violins 83 and 87, and the violoncello 188. He began with rather a small, short-cornered violin, which is an imitation of the small Amati, but very superior. He went on, and imitated the large Amati, but softened down the corners. For thirty years — from 1673 to 1703 — he poured forth violins of this pattern; there are several in this collection, and one tenor, 139, with a plain back but a beautiful belly, and in admirable preservation. But, while he was making these Amatise violins by the hundred, he had nevertheless his fits of originality, and put forth an anomaly everj" now and then; sometimes it was a very long, naiTow violin with elegant drooping corners, and sometimes, in a happier mood, he combined these drooping cor- ners with a far more beautiful model. Of these varieties No. 86 gives just an indication; no more. These lucid intervals never lasted long; he Avas back to his Amatis next week. Yet they left, I think, the germs that broke out so marvelously in the next century. About the year 1703 it seems to have struck him like a revelation that he was a greater man than his master. He dropped him once and forever, and for nearly twenty years poured forth with unceasing fertility some admirable works, of which you have three fine examples, under average wear, hard wear, and no wear — 90, 92, 91. Please look at the three violins in this order to realize what I have indicated before — that time is no sure measure of events in this business. Nevertheless, in all these exquisite productions, there was one thing which he thought capable of improvement — there was a slight residue of the scoop, especially at the lower part of the back. He began to alter that about 1720, and by degrees went to his grand model, in which there is no scoop at all. This, his grandest epoch, is represented by the Duke (>f Cambridge's violin, Mr. Arkwright's, and M. le Compte's; this last has the additional characteristic of the stiffer sound-hole and the wood left broad in the wing of the sound hole. One feature more of this his greatest epoch: the purfling, instead of exactly following the corner, is pointed across it in a manner completely original. He made these grand violins and a bass or two till about 1729; after that the grand model is confined to his violins, and the details become inferior in finish. Of this there is an example in No 84, a noble but rough violin in parts of which c*Ttain connoisseurs would see, or fancy they saw, the hand of Bergou/i. or of Fi-ancesco or Homobuono Stradiuarius. These woi-kmen undoubtedly lived and survived their father a few years. They seem to have worked up hig refuse wood after his death; but their interference with his work while alive lias been exaggerated by French connoisseurs. To put a difficult question briefly; their theory fails to observe the style Stradiuarius was coming to even in 1727; it also ignores the age of Stradiuarius during this his last epoch of work, and says that there exists no old man's work by Stradiuarius himself; all this old man's work is done by younger men. However, generalities are useless on a subject so difficult and disputed. The only way is to get the doubtful vio- lins or basses, and analyze them, and should the muse- um give a permanent corner to Cremonese instruments, this Francesco and Homobuono question will be sifted with exam- ples. The minutise of work in Stradiuarius are numerous and admirable, but they would occupy too much space and are too well known to need discourse. His varnish I shall treat along witli the others. A few words about the man. He was a tall, thin veteran, always to be seen with a wdiite leathern apron and a nightcap on his head: in winter it was white wool, and in sum- mer white cotton. His indomitable industry had amassed some fortune, and " rich as Stradiuarius " was a byword at Cremona, but probably more current among the fiddle-makers than the bankers and merchants. His price toward the latter part of his career was four louis d'or for a violin; his best customers Italy and Spain. Mr. Forster assures us on unimpeachable authority that he once sent some instruments to England on sale or return, and that they were taken back, the merchant being unable to get £5 for a violoncello. What ho! Hang aU the Englishmen of that day who are alive to meet their deserts! However, the true point of the incident is. I think, missed by the nari-ators. The fact is, then, as now, England wanted old Cremonas, not new ones. That the Amati had a familiar reputation here and probably a ready market can be proved rather prettily out of the mouth of Dean Swift. A violin was left on a chair. A lady swept by. Her mantua caught it and knocked it down and broke it. Then the witty dean applied a line in "Virgil's Ec- logue — " Mantua vas miserte nimium vicina CreinouEe." This was certainly said during the lifetime of Stradiuarius, and proves that the Cremona fiddle had a fixed reputation; it also proves that an Irishman could make a better Latin pun than any old Eoman has left behind him. Since I have diverged into what some brute calls anec-dotage let me conclude this article with one that is at all events to the point, since it tells the event- ful history of an instrument now on show. The Romance of Fiddle-Dealing. — Nearly fifty years ago a gaunt Italian called Luigi Tarisio arrived in Paris one day with a lot of old Italian insti'uments by makers whose names were hardly known. The principal dealers whose minds were nar- rowed, as is often the case, to three or four makers, would not deal with him. M. Georges Chanot, younger and more intelli- gent, purchased largely, and encouraged him to return. He came back next year witli a better lot; and yearly increasing hia 3» RhjAUlANA. funds, he flew at the highest game; and in the course of thirty years imported nearly all the finest specimens of Stradiuarius, and Guarnerius France possesses. He was the greatest connoisseur that ever lived or ever can live, because he had the true mind of a connoisseur and vast opportunities. He ransacked Italy before the tickets in the violins of Fi'ancesco Stradiuarius, Alexander Gagliano, Lorenzo Guadagnini, Giofredus Cappa, Gobetti, Mor- gilato Morella, Antonio Mariaui, Santo Maggini, and Matteo Benti of Brescia, Michel Angelo Bergonzi, Montagnana, Thomas Balestrieri, Storioni, Vicenzo Rugger, the Testori, Petrus Guarne- rius of Venice, and fully fifty more, had been tampered with, that every brilhant masterpiece might be assigned to some popu- lar name. To his immortal ciedit, he fought against this mania, and his motto was " A tout seigneur tout honneur." The man's whole soul was in fiddles. He was a great dealer, but a greater amateur. He had gems by him no money would buy from him. No. 91 was one of them. But for his death you would never have cast eyes on it. He has often talked to me of it; but he would never let me see it, for fear I should tempt him. Well, one day Georges Chanot, Senior, who is perhaps the best judge of violins left, now Tarisio is gone, made an excursion to Spain, to see if he could find anything there. He found mighty little. But, coming to the shop of a fiddle maker, one Ortega, he saw tlie belly of an old bass hung up with other things. Chanot rubbed his eyes, and asked himself, was he dreaming? the belly of a Stradiuarius bass roasting in a shop-window! He went in, and very soon bought it for about forty francs. He then ascertained that the bass belonged to a lady of rank. The belly was full of cracks; so, not to make two bites of a cherry, Ortega had made a nice new one. Chanot carried this precious fragment home and hung it up in his shop, but not in the win- dow, for he is too good a judge not to know the sun will take all the color out of that maker's varnish. Tarisio came in from Italy, and his eye lighted instantly on the Stradiuarius belly. He pesteied Chanot till the latter sold it him for a thousand francs and told him where the rest was. Tarisio no sooner knew this than he flew to Madrid. He learned from Ortega where the lady lived, and called on her to see it. " Sir," says the lady, " it is at your disposition." That does not mean much in Spain. When he offered to buy it, she coquetted with him , said it had been long in her family; money could not replace a thing of that kind, and in short, she put on the screw, as she thought, and sold it him for about four thousand francs. What he did with the Ortega belly is not known — perhaps sold it to some person in the tooth-pick trade. He sailed exultant for Paris with the Spanish bass in a case. He never let it out of his sight. The pair were caught by a storm in the Bay of Biscay. The ship rolled; Tarisio clasped his bass tight, and trembled. Ix was a terrible gale, and for one whole day they were in real danger. Tarisio spoke of it to me with a shudder. I will give you his real words, for they struck me at the time, and I have often thought of them since — READIANA. 33 " Ah, my poor Mr. Reade, the bass of Spain was all but LOST," Was not this a true connoisseur ? a genuine enthusiast ? Ob- ser^'e 1 there was also an ephemeral insect called Luigi Tarisio, who would have gone down with the bass : but that made no impression on his mind. De minimis non curat Ludovicus. He got it safe to Paris. A certain high priest in these mys- teries, called Vuillaume, with the help of a sacred vessel, called the glue-pot, soon rewedded the back and sides to the belly, and the bass being now just what it was when the ruffian Ortega put his finger in the pie, was sold for 20,000 fr. (£800.) I saw the Spanish bass in Paris twenty-two years ago, and you can see it any day this month you like; for it is the identical vio- loncello now on show at Kensington, numbered 188. Who would divine its separate adventures, to see it all reposing so calm and uniform in that case— "Post tot nauragia tutus." THIRD LETTER. A^igust 27th, 1872. " The Spanish bass" is of the grand pattern and exquisitely made: the sound-hole, rather shorter and stiff er than m Stra- diuarius's preceding epoch, seems stamped out of the wood with a blow, so swiftly and surely is it cut. The purfling is perfec- tion. Look at the section of it in the upper bought of the back. The scroll extremely elegant. The belly is a beautiful piece of wood. The back is of excellent quality, but mean in the figure. The sides are cut the wrong way of the grain; a rare mistake in this master. The varnish sweet, clear, orange-colored, and full of fire. Oh, if this varnish could but be laid on the wood of the Sanctus Seraphin bass! The belly is full of cracks, and those cracks have not been mended without several lines of modern varnish clearly visible to the practiced eye. Some years ago there was a Stradiuarius bass in Ireland. I believe it was presented by General Oliver to Signor Piatti. I never saw it; but some people tell me that in wood and varnish it surpasses the Spanish bass. Should these lines meet Signor Piatti's eye, I will only say that, if he would allow it to be placed in the case for a single week, it would be a great boon to the admirers of these rare and noble pieces, and very instructive. By the side of the Spanish bass stands another, inferior to it in model and general work, superior to it in preservation. No. 187. The unhappy parts are the wood of the sides and the scroll. Bad wood kills good varnish. The scroll is superb in workmanship; it is more finely cut at the back part than the scroll of the Spanish bass; but it is cut out of a pear tree, and that abominable wood gets uglier, if possible, under varnish, and lessens the effect even of first-class work. On the other hand, the back and belly, where the varnish gets fair play, are beautiful. The belly is incomparable. Here is the very finest ruby varnish of Strad- iuarius, as pure as the day it was laid on. The back was the same color originally, but has been reduced in tint by the fric- U REAMANA. tion this part of a bass encounters when played on. The varnish on the back is chipped all over in a manner most picturesque to the cultivated eye\ only it nnid go no fnvther. I find on exam- ination that these chips have all been done a good many years ago, and I. can give you a fair, though of course not an exact, idea of the process. Methinks I see an old gentkmian seated sipping his last glass of port in the dioiug-room, over a shining table, whence the cloth was removed for dessert. He wears a little powder still, though no longer the fashion; be bas no shirt-collar, but a roll of soft and snowy cambric round his neck, a plain gold pin, and a frilled bosom. He has a wliite waist- coat — snow-white like his linen; he washes at home — and a blue coat with gilt buttons. Item, a large fob or watch-pocket, whence bulges a golden turnip, and puts forth seed, to wit, a bunch of seals and watch-keys, with perhaps a gold pencil-case. One of these seals is larger than the others; the family arms are engraved on it, and only important letters a.re signed with it. He rises and goes to the drawing-room. The piano is opened; a servant brings the Stradiuarius bass from the study; the old gen- tleman takes it and tunes it, and, not to be bothered with his lapels, buttons his coat, and plays his part in a quartet of Haydn or a symphony of Corelli, and smiles as he plays, because he really loves music, and is not overweighted. Your modern amateur, with a face of justifiable agony, plows the hill of Beethoven and harrows the soul of Reade. Neverthe- less, my smiling senior is all the time bringing the finest and most delicate varnish of Stradiuarius into a series of gentle col- lisions with the following objects: First, the gold pin; then the two rows of brass buttons; and last, not least, the male chatelain of the period. There is an oval chip just off the center of this bass; I give the armorial seal especial credit for that: "A tout seigneur tout honneur." Take another specimen of eccentric wear: the red Stradiuarius kit 88. The enormous oval wear has been done thus: It has be- longed to a dancing-master, and he has clapped it under his arm fifty times a day to show his pupils the steps. The Guarnerius family consisted of Andreas, his two sons, Petrus and Joseph, his grandson, Petrus Guarnerius of Venice, and Joseph Guarnerius, the greatest of the family, whom Mons. Fetis considers identical with Guiseppe Antonio, born in 1683. There are, however, great difficulties in the way of this theory, which I will reserve for my miscellaneous remarks. Andreas Guaranerius was the closest of all the copyists of the Amati; so close, indeed, that his genuine violins are nearly al- ways sold as Amati. Unfortunately he imitated the small pat- tern. His wood and varnish are exactly like Amati; there is, however, a peculiar way of cutting the lower wing of his sound- holes that betrays him at once. When you find him with the border high and broad, and the purfling grand, you may suspect his son Petrus of helping him, for Iiis own style is petty. His basses few, but fine. Petrus Guarnerius of Cremona makes vio- lins prodigiously homhes, and more adapted to grumbling inside than singing out>' but their appearance magnifi.cent, a grand liEADIANA. 35 deep border, very noble, sound-hole and scroll Amatise, and a deep orange varnish that nothing can surpass. His violins are singularly scarce in England. I hope to see ono at the Exhibi- tion before it closes. Joseph, his brother, is a thorough original. His violins are narrowed under the shoulder in a way all his own. As to models, his fiddles are bombes like his brother's; and, as the center has generally sunk from weakness, the violin presents a great bump at the upper part and another at the lower. The violin 97 is by this maker, and is in pure and perfect condition; but the wood having no figure, the beauty of the varnish is not appreciated. He is the king of the varnishers. He was the first man at Cremona that used red varnish oftener than pale, and in that respect was the teacher even of Stradiuarius. When this maker deviates from his custom and puts really good hare- wood into a violin, then his glorious varnish gets fair play, and noth- ing can live beside him. The other day a violin of this make ^vith fine wood, but undersized, was put up at an auction with- out a name. I suppose nobody knew the maker, for it was sold on its merits, and fetched £160. I brought that violin into the country; gave a dealer £24 for it in Paris. He made a very few fiatter violins, that are worth any money. Petrus Guarnerius, the son of this Joseph, learned his business in Cremona, but migrated early to Venice. He worked there from 1725 to 1746. He made most beautiful tenors and basses, but was not so happy in his violins. His varnish very fine, but paler than his father's. Joseph Guarnerius, of Cremona, made violins from about 1725 to 1745. His first epoch is known only to connoisseurs; in cmt- line it is hewed out under the shoulder like the fiddle of Joseph, son of Andrew, who was then an old fiddle-maker, but the mo(iel all his own ; even, regular, and perfect. Sound- hole long and characteristic, head rather mean for him; he made but few of these essays, and then went to a different and admirable style a most graceful and elegant violin, which has been too loosely described as a copy of Stradiuarius; it is not that, but a fine vio- lin in which a downright good workman profits by a great con- temporary artist's excellences, yet without servility. These vio- lins are not longer nor stiffer in the inner bought than Stradi- uarius: they are rather narrow than broad below cut after the plan of Stradiuarius, though not so well, in the central part, the sound-holes exquisitely cut, neither too stiff nor too flowing, the wood between the carves of the sound-holes remarkably broad. The scroll grandiose, yet well cut, and the nozzle of the scroll and the little platform . They are generally purfled through both pegs, like Stradiuarius; the wood very handsome, varnish a rich golden brown. I brought three of this ejwch into the coun- tiy; one was sold the other day at Christie's for £260 (bought, I believe, by Lord Dunmore), and is worth £350 as prices go. This epoch, unfortunately, is not yet represented in the collec- tion. The next epoch is nobly repressnted by 93, 94, 95. All these vi- olins have the broad center, the gi-aud long inner bought, stiffish 36 READIANA. yet not ungraceful, the long and rather u])right sound-hole, but well cut; the grand scroll, cut aU in a hurry,;but noble. 93 is a lit- tle the grander in make I think; the purfling being set a hair's- breadth further in, the scroll magnificent; but observe the haste — the deep gague-marks on the side of the scroll; here is already an indication of the slovenliness to come; varnish a lovely orange, wood beautiful; two cracks in the belly, one from the chin-mark to the sound-hole. 94 is a violin of the same make, and without a single crack; the scroll is not quite so grandiose as 93, but the rest incomparable; the belly pure and beautiful, the back a pict- ure. There is nothing in the room that equals in picturesque- ness the colors of this magnificent piece; time and fair-play have worn it thus; first, there is a narrow irregular line of wear, caused by the hand in shifting, next comes a sheet of ruby varn- ish, with no wear to speak of; then an irregular piece is worn out the size of a sixpence; then more varnish; then, from the center downward, a grand wear, the size and shape of a large curving pear; this ends in a broad zigzag ribbon of varnish, and then comes the bare M'ood caused by the friction in playing, but higher up to the left a score of great bold chips. It is the very beau-ideal of the red Cremona violin, adorned, not injured, by a century's fair wear. No. 95 is a roughish specimen of the same epoch, not so brilliant, but with its own charm. Here the gague- marks of impatience are to be seen on the very border, and I should have expected to see the stiff-throated scroll, for it be- longs to this form. The next epoch is rougher still, and is generally, but not al- ways higher built, with a stiff-throated scroll, and a stiff, quaint sound-hole that is the delight of connoisseurs; and such is the force of genius that I believe in our secret hearts we love these impudent fiddles best — they are so fuU of chic. After that, he abuses the patience of his admirers; makes his fiddles of a pre- posterous height, with sound-holes long enough for a tenor;^ but, worst of all, indifferent wood and downright bad varnish — varnish worthy only of the Guadagnini tribe, and not laid on by the method of his contemporaries. Indeed, I sadly fear it was this great man who, by his ill example in 1740-45, kUled the varnish of Cremona, Thus — to show the range of the subject — out of five distinct epochs in the work of this extraordinary man we have only one and a half, so to speak, represented even in this noble collection — the greatest by far the world has ever seen. But I hope to see all those gaps filled, and also to see in the collection a Stradiuarius violin of that kind I call the dol- phin-backed. This is a mere matter of picturesque, wear. When a red Stradiuarius violin is made of soft velvety wood, and the varnish is just half worn off the back in a rough triangular form, that produces a certain beauty of light and shade which is in my opinion the ne plus ultra. These violins are rare. I never had but two in my life. A very obliging dealer, who knows my views, has promised his co-operation, and I think England, which cuts at present rather too poor a figure in respect of this maker, wiU add a dolphin-backed Stradiuarius to the collection before it is dispersed. READIANA. 37 "h CauLO BergonZI, if you go by gauging and purfling, is of course an inferior make to the Amati; but, if that is to be the line of reasoning, he is superior to Joseph Guarnerius. We ought to be in one story; if Joseph Guarnerius is the second maker of C/remona, it follows tliat Carlo Bergonzi is the third. Fine size, reasonable outline, flat and even model, good wood, work, and varnish, and an indescribable air of grandeur and im- portance. He is quite as rare as Joseph Guarnerius. Twenty- five years ago I ransacked Europe for him — for he is a maker I always loved — and I could obtain but few. No. 109 was one of them, and the most remarkable, take it altogether. In this one case he has really set himself to copy Stradiuarius. He,has com- posed his purfling in the same proportions, which was not at all his habit. He has copied the sound-hole closely, and has even imitated that great man's freak of delicately hollowing out the lower wood-work of the sound-hole. The varnish of this violin is as fine in color as any pale Stradiuarius in the world, and far superior in body to most of them; but that is merely owing to its rare preservation. Most of these pale Stradiuariuses, and es- pecially Mrs. Jay's and No. 86, had once varnish on them as beautiful as is now on this chef d'oeuvre of Carlo Bergonzi. Monsieur Fetis having described Michael Angelo Bei-gouzi as a pupil of Stradiuarius, and English writers having blindly fol- lowed him, this seems a fit place to correct that erroi*. Michael Angelo Bergonzi Avas the son of Carlo; began to work after the death of Stradiuarius, and imitated nobody but his father — and. him vilely. His corners are not corners, but peaks. See them once, you never forget them; but you pray Heaven you may never see them again. His ticket nins, "Michael Angelo Ber- gonzi figlio di Carlo, fece nel Cremona," from 1750 to 1780. Of Nicholas, son of Michael Angelo Bergonzi, I have a ticket dated 1796, but he doubtless began before that, and worked till 1830. He lived till 1838, was well known to Tarisio, and it is from him alone we have learned the house Stradiuarius lived in. There is a tenor by Michael Angelo Bergonzi to be seen at Mr. Cox, the picture dealer, Pall-mall, and one by Nicholas, in Mr. Chanot's shop, in Ward our street. Neither of these Bergonzi knew how their own progenitor varnished any more than my housemaid does. Stainer, a mixed maker. He went to Cremona too late to unlearn his German style, but he moderated it, and does not scoop so badly as his successors. The model of his tenor, es- pecially the back, is very fine. The peculiar defect of it is that it is purfled too near the border, which always gives meanness. This is the more unfortunate, that really he was freer from this defect than his imitators. He learned to varnish in Cremona, but his varnish is generally paler than the native Cremonese. This tenor is exceptional; it has a rose-colored varnish that nothing can surpass. It is lovely. , Sanctus Seraphin.— This is a true Venetian maker. The Venetian bom was always half -Cremonese, half-German. In this bass, which is his uniform style, you see a complete mastery of the knife and the gauge. Neither the Stradiuarius nor the 38 READIANA, Amati ever purfled a bass more finely, and, to tell the truth, rarely so finely. But oh! the miserable scroll, tlie abominable sound-hole! Here he shows the cloven foot, and is more Ger- man than Stainer. Uniformity was never carried so far as by this natty workman; one violin exactly like the next; one bass the image of its predecessor. His varnish never varies. It is always slightly opaque. This is observed in his violins, but it escape? detection in his basses, because it is but slight, after all, and the wonderful wood he put into his basses shines through that slight defect and hides it from all but practiced eyes, lie had purchased a tree or a very large log of it; for this is the third bass I have seen of this wonderful wood. Nowadays you might cut down a forest of sycamore and not match it; those veteran trees are all gone. He has a feature all to himself; his violins have his initials in ebony let into the belly under the broad part of the tail-piece. This natty Venetian is the only old violin maker I know who could write well. The others bungle that part of the date they are obliged to write in the tickets. This one writes it in a hand like copper plate, whence I suspect he was himseK the engraver of his ticket, which is unique. It is four times the size of a Cremonese ticket, and has a scroll border composed thus: — The sides of a parallelogram are created by four solid lines like sound-holes; these are united at the sides by two leaves and at the center by two shells. Another serpen- tine line is then coiled all round them at short intervals, and within the parallelogram the ticket is printed: — Satictus Seraphin Utiuensis, Fecit Venetiis, anno 17 — . The Mighty Venetian. — I come now to a truly remarkable piece, a basso di canaera that comes modestly into the room with- out a name, yet there is nothing except No. 91 that sends such a thrill through the true connoisseur. The outline is grotesque but original, the model full and swelling but not bumpy, the wood detestable; the back is hare-wood, but without a vestige of figure; so it might just as well be elm; the belly, instead of being made of mountain deal grown on the sunny side of the Alps, is a piece of house-timber. Now these materials would kill any other maker; yet this mighty bass stands its ground. Observe the fiber of the belly; here is the deepest red varnish in the room, and laid on with an enormous brush. Can you see the fiber through the thin varnish of Sanctus Seraphin as plainly as you can see the fiber through this varnish laid on as thick as paint? So much for clearness. Now for color. Let the student stand before this bass, get the varnish into his mind, and then walk rapidly to any other instrument in the room he has previ- ously determined to compare with il. This will be a revelation to him if he has eyes in his head. And this miracle comes in without a name, and, therefore, is passed over by all the sham judges. And why does it come without a name? I hear a French dealer advised those who framed the catalogue. But the fact is that if a man Quce narrows his mind to three or tour inakers, and imagines READIANA. 39 they monopolize excellence, he never can be a judge of old instruments, the studj' is so wide and his mind artificially nar- rowed. Example of tbis false method: Mr. Falconer sends in a bass, which he calls Andreas Guarnerius. An adviser does not see that, and suggests " probably by Amati." Now there is no such thing as " probably hy Araati,"'any more than there is prob- ably the sun or the moon. That bass is by David Tecchler of Rome; but it is a masterpiece; and so, because lie has done better than usual, the poor devil is to be robbed of his credit, and it is to be given, first to one maker who is in the ring and then to another icho is in the ring. The basso di camera, which not being in the ring, comes without a name, is by Domenico Mon- tagnana, of Venice, the greatest maker of basses in all Venice or Cremona except one. If this bass bad only a decent piece of wood at the back, it would extinguish all the other basses. But we can remedy that defect. Basses by this maker exist with fine wood. Mr. Hart, senior, sold one some twenty years ago with yellow varuisli, and wood striped like a tiger's back. Should these lines meet the eye of the purchaser, I shall feel grateful if he will commvmicate with me thereupon. I come now to the last of the Goths, thus catalogued, No. 100, " ascribed to Guarnerius. Probably by Storioni." Lorenzo Storioni is a maker who began to work at Cremona about 1780. He has a good model but wretched spirit varnish. Violin No. lnO is something much better. It is a violin made befoi-e 1760 by Laudolfo of Milan. He is a maker well known to experienced dealers who can take their minds out of tiie ring, but, as the writers seem a little confused, and talk of two Lauduiphs, a Charles and a Ferdinand, I may as well say here that the two are one. This is the true ticket: Carolus Ferdinandus Landnlpbus, fecit Mediolani in via S. Mar- garitas, anno, 1756. Stiff inner-bought really something like Joseph Guarnerius, but all the rest quite unlike: scroll very mean, varnish good; and sometimes very fine. Mr. Moore's in point of varnish, is a fine specimen. It has a deeper, nobler tint than usual. This maker is very interesting, on account of his being absolutely tlie last Italian who used the glorioiis varnish of Cremona. It died first at Cremona; lingered a year or two more at Venice; Lan- dolfo retained it at Milan till 1760, and with him it ended. In my next and last article I will deal with the varnioh of Cremona, as illustrated by No. 91 and other specimens, and will enable the curious to revive that lost art if they choose. FOURTH LETTER. August ^-i. St, 1873. The fiddles of Cremona gained their reputation by superior tone, but tliey hold it now mainly by their beauty. For thirty years past violins have been ma-le equal in model to the chef- iVveuvres of Cremona, and fitronger in wood than Stradiuarius, 40 READIANA. and more scientific than Guarnei'ius in the thicknesses. This class of violins is hideous, but has one quality in perfection — Power- whilst the masterpieces of Cremona eclipse every new violin in sweetness, oiliness, crispness, and volume of tone as distinct from loudness. Age has dried their vegetable juices, making the car- cass much lighter than that of a new violin, and those light dry frames vibrate at a touch. But M, Fetis goes too far when he intimates that Stradiuarius is louder as well as sweeter than Lupot, Gand, or Bernardel. Take a hundred violins by Stradiuarius and open them; you find about ninety -five patched in the center with new wood. The connecting link is a sheet of glue. And is glue a fine resonant substance? And are the glue and the new wood of John Bull and Jean Crapaud transmogrified into the wood of Stradi- uarius by merely- sticking on to it ? Is it not extravagant to quote patched violins as beyond rivalry in all the qualities of sound? How can they be the loudest, when the center of the sound- board is a mere sandwich, composed of the maker's thin wood, a buttering of glue, and a huge slice of new vpood ? Joseph Guarnerius has plenty of wood; but his thicknesses are not always so scientific as those of the best modern fiddle- makers; so that even he can be rivaled in power by a new violin, though not in richness and sweetness. Consider, then, these two concurrent phenomena, that for twenty-five years new violins, have been better made for sound than they ever were made in this world, yet old Cremona violins have nearly doubled in price, and you will divine, as the truth is, that old fiddles are not bought by the ear alone. I will add that 100 years ago, when the violins of Brescia and of Sti'adiuarius and Guarnerius were the only well-modeled violins, they were really bought by the ear, and the prices were moderate. Now they are in reality bought by the eye, and the price is enormous. The reason is that their tone is good but their appearance inimitable; because the makers chose fine wood and laid on a varnish highly colored, yet clear as crystal, with this strange property — it becomes far more beautiful by time and usage: it wears softly away, or chips boldly away, in such forms as to make the whole violin pictur- esque, beautiful, various, and curious. To approach the same conclusion by a different road — No. 94 is a violin, whose picturesque beauty I have described already; twenty-five years ago Mr. Plowden gave £450 for it. It is now, I suppose, worth £500. Well, knock that violin down and crack it in two places, it will sink that moment to the value of the " violon du diable," and be worth £350. But collect twenty amateurs all ready to buy it, and, instead of cracking it, dip it into a jar of spirits and wash the varnish off. Not one of those customers will give you above £40 for it; nor would it in reality be worth quite so much in the market. Take another example. There is a beautiful and very perfect violin by Stradiuarius, which the Timefi, in an article on these instruments, calls La Messie. These leading journals have })rivate information on every subject, even grammar. I prefer to call it — after the very intelligent man to whom we owe the sight of it— the VuUlaume READIANA. 41 Stradiuarius. Well, the Vuillaume Stradiuarius is worth, as times go, £600 at least. Wash off the varnish, it would be worth £35; because unlike No. 94, it has one little crack. Asa further illustration that violins are heard by the eye, let me remind your readers of the high prices at which numberless copies of the old makers were sold in Paris for many years. The inven- tors of this art undertook to deliver a new violin, that in usage and color of the worn parts should be exactly like an old and worn violin of some favorite mnker. Now, to do this with white wood was impossible; so the wood was baked in the oven or colored yellow with the smoke of sulphuric acid, or so forth, to give it the color of age; but these processes kill the wood as a vehicle of sound; and these copies were, and are, the worst musical instruments Europe has created in this century; and bad as they are at starting, they get worse every year of their un- tuneful existence: yet, because they flattered the eye with some- thing like the light and shade and jjicturesqueness of the Cre- mona violin, these pseudo-antiques, though illimitable in num- ber, sold like wildfire; and hundreds of self-deceivers heard them by the eye, and fancied these tinpots sounded divinely. The hideous red violins of Bernadel, Gand , and an English maker or two, are a reaction against those copies; they are made hon- estly with white wood, and they will, at all events, improve in sound every year and every decade. It comes to this, then, that the varnish of Cremona, as operated on by time and usage, has an inimitable beauty, and we pay a high price for it in sec- ond-class makers, and an enormous price in a fine Stradiuarius or Joseph Guarnerius. No wonder, then, that many violin- makers have tried hard to discover the secret of this varnisli; many chemists have given days and nights of anxious study to it. ' More than once, even in my time, hopes have run high, but only to fall again. Some have even cried Eureka! to the public; but the moment others looked at the discovery and compared it with the real thing. " inextinguishable laughter shook the skies." At last despair has succeeded to all that energetic study, and the varnish of Cremona is sullenly give up as a lost art. I have heard and read a great deal about it, and I think I can state the principal theories briefly, but ii.".elligibly. 1. It used to be stoutly maintained that the basis was amber; that these old Italians had the art of infusing amber without \ impairing its transparency; once fused by dry heat, it could be l)oiled into a varnish with oil and spirit of turpentine, and com- bined with transparent j'et lasting colors, To convince me, they used to rub the worn part of a Cremona with their sleeves, and then put the fiddle to tlieir noses, and smell amber. Then I, burning with love of knowledge, used to rub the fiddle very hard and whip it to my nose, and not smell amber. But that might arise in some measure from there not being any amber there to smell. (N. B. — These amber-seeking worthies never rubbed the colored varnish on an old violin. Yet their theory had placed amber there.) 2. That time does it all. The violins of Stradiuarius were raw, crude things at starting, and the varnish rather opaque. 42 READIANA 3. Two or three had the courage to say it was spirit- varnish, and alleged in proof that if you drop a drop of alcohol on a Stradiuarius. it tears the varnish off as it runs. 4. The far more prevalent notion was that it is an oil varnish, in support of which they pointed to the rich appearance of what they called the bare wood, and contrasted the miserable hungry appearance of the wood in all old violins known tote spirit- varnished — for instance, Nicholas Gagliano, of Naplas, and Jean Baptiste Guadagnini, of Piacenza, Italian makers contem- porary with Joseph Guarnerius. 5. That the secret has been lost by adulteration. The old Cre- monese and Venetians got pure and sovereign gums, that have retired from commerce. Now, as to theory No. 1. — Surely amber is too dear a gum :and too impracticable for two hundred fiddle-makers to have used in Italy. Till fused by dry heat it is no more soluble in varnish than quartz is; and who can fuse it? Copal is inclined to melt, but amber to burn, to catch fire, to do anything but melt. Put the two gums to a lighted candle, you will then appreciate the difference. I tried more than one chemist in the fusing of amber; it came out of their hands a dark brown opaque sub- stance, rather burnt than fused. Wlieu really fused it is a dark olive green, as clear as crystal. Yet I never knew but one man who could bring it to this, and he had special machinery, in- vented by himself, for it; in spite of which he nearly burned down his house at it one day. I believe the whole amber theory comes out of a verbal equivoque; the varnish of tlie Amati was called amber to mark its rich color, and your a jjriori reasoners went off on that, forgetting that amber must be an inch thick to ex- hibit the color of amber. By such reasoning as this Mr. Davitl- son, in a book of great general merit, is misled so far .as to put down powdered glass for an ingredient in Cremona varnish. Mark the logic. Glass in a sheet is transparent, so if you re- duce it to powder it will add transparency to varnish. Im- posed on by this chimera, he actually puts powdered glass, an opaque and insoluble sediment, into four receipts for Ci'emona varnish. But the theories 2, 3, 4, 5 have all a good deal of truth in them ; their fault is that they are too narrow, and too blind to the truth of each other. In tins as in every seientijk iuquiri/, the true solu- tion is that irJiicti reconciles all the truths tJuit seem at variance. The way to discover a lost art, once practiced with variations by a hundred peojjle, is to examine very closely the most brill- iant specimen, tiie most characteristic specimen, and, indeed, the most extravagant specimen — if j^ou can find one. I took that way. and I found in the chippiest varnisii of Stradiuarius, viz., his dark red varnish, the key to all the varnish of Cremona, red or yellow. (N. B. — The yellow always beat me dead, till I got to it by tliis detour.) There is no specimen in the collection of this red varnish so violent as I have seen; but Mr. Pawle's bass. No. 187, wUl do. Please walk with me up to the back oi iMiat bass, and let us disregard all hyix>tlieses and theories, and READIANA. 43 use our eyes. What do we see before us ? A bass with red var- nish that chips veiy readily off what people call the bare wood. But never mind what tliese echoes of echoes call it. What is it V It is not bare wood. Bare wood turns a dirty brown with age. This is a rich and lovely yellow. By its color and its glassy gloss, acd by disbeUeving what echoes say and trusting only to our eyes, we may see at a glance it is not bare wood, but highly varnished wood. This varnisb is evidently oil, and con- tains a gum. Allowing for the tendency of oil to run into the wood, I should say four coats of oil varnish, and this they call the bare wood. We have now discovered the first process: a clear od. varnish laid on the white wood with some trans- parent gum not high colored. Now proceed a step further; the red and chippy varnisb, what is that? " Oh, that is a var- nish of the same quality but another color," say the theorists No. 4. "How do you know?" say I. "It is self-evident. Would a man begin with oil varnish and then go into spirit var- nish ?" IS their reply. Now observe, this is not humble observation, it is only rational preconception. But if discovery has an enemy in the human mind that enemy is pi-econception. Let us then trust only to humble observation. Here is a clear varnish without the ghost of a chip in itstiature; and upon it is a red varnish that is all chip. Does that look as if the two varnishes were homogeneous ? Is chip precisely the same thing as no chip? If homogeneous, there would be chemical affinity between the two. But this ex- treme readiness of the red varnish to chip away from the clear marks a defect of chemical affinity between tiie two. Why, if you were to put your thumb nail against that /ed varnish, a lit- tle piece would come away directly. This is not so in any known case of oil upon oil. Take old Forster, for instance; he begins with clear oil varnish; then on that he puts a distinct oil varnish with the color and transparency of pea-soup. You will not get his pea-soup to chip oflE his cleai varnish in a hurry. There is a baes by William Forster in the collection a hundred years old; but the wear is confined to the places where the top varnish must go in a played bass. Everywhere else his pea-soup sticks tight to his clear varnish, being oil upon oil. Now, take a perfectly distinct line of observation. In var- nishes oil is a diluent of color. It is not in the power of man to charge an oU varnish with color so liighly as the top varnish of Mr, Pawle's bass is charged. And it must be remembered that the clear varnish below has filled all the pores of the wood; tlierefore the diluent cannot escape into the wood, and so leave the color undiluted; if that red varnish was ever oil varnish, every particle of the oil inust be there still. What, in that mere film so crammed with color? Never! Nor yet in the top varnish of the Spanish bass, which is thinner still, yet more charged with color than any topaz of twice the thickness. This, then, is how Antonius Stradiuarius vaniished Mr. Pawle's bass. He began with three or four coats of oil varnish contain- ing some common gum. He then laid on several coats of red varnish, made by simply dissolving some fine red unadulterated ^m in spirit ; the ppirit evaporated and left pure gum lying on 44 READIANA a rich oil varnish, from which it chips by its dry nature and its utter want of chemical affinity to the substratum. On the Spanish bass Stradiuarius put not more, I think, than two coats of oil rarnish, and tben a spirit varnish consisting of a different gum, less chippy, but even more tender and wearable than the red. Now take this key all round the room, and you will find there is not a lock it wiU not open. Look at the varnish on the back of the " violon du diable," as it is called. There is the top varnish with all the fire of a topaz and far more color ; for sUce' the deepest topaz to that thinness, it would pale before that var- nish. And why? 1st. Because this is no oily dilution ; it is a divine unadulterated gum, left there undiluted by evaporation of the spirituous vehicle. 2d. Because this varnish is a jewel with the advantage of a foil behind it ; that foil is the fine oil varnish underneath. The purest specimen of Stradiuarius's red varnish in the room is, perhaps, Mr. Fountaine's kit. Look at the back of it by the light of these remarks. What can be plainer than the clear oil varnish with not the ghost of a chip in it, and the glossy top varnish so charged with color, and so ready to chip from the varnish below, for want of chemical affinity be- tween the varnishes ? The basso di camera by Montagnana is the same thing. See the bold wear on the^sack reveaUng the heterogeneous varnish below the red. They are all the same thing. The palest violins of Stradiuarius and Amati are much older and harder worn than Mr. Pawle's bass, and the top varnish not of a chippy character ; yet look at them closely by the light of these remarks, and you shaU find one or two phenomena-either the tender top varnish has all been worn away, and so there is nothing to be inferred one way or other, or else there are flakes of it left, and, if so, these flakes, however thin, shall always betray, by the superior vividness of their color to the color of the subjacent oil varnish, that they are not oil varnish, but pure gum left thereby evaporating spirit on a foil of beautiful oil varnish. Take Mrs. Jay's Amatise Stradiuarius; on the back of that violin toward the top there is a mere flake of top varnish left by itself; all round it is nothing left but the bottom varnish. That fragment of top varnish is a film tliinner than gold leaf; yet look at its Intensity; it lies on the fine old varnish like fixed hghtning, it is 80 vivid. It is just as distinct from the oil varnish as is the red varnish of the kit. Examine the Duke of Cambridge's violin, or any other Cremona instrument in the whole world you like; it is always the same thing, though not so self-evident as in the red and chippy varnishes. The Vuillaume Stradiuarius, not being worn, does not assist us in this particular line of argu- ment; but it does not contradict us. Indeed, there are a few little chips in the top varnish of the back, and they reveal a heterogeneous varnish below, with its rich yellow color like the bottom varnish of the Pawle bass. Moreover, if you look at the top varnish closely you shall see what you never see in a new- violin of our day; not a vulgar glare upon the surface, but a gentle inward fire. Now that inward fire, I assure you, is mainly caused by the oil varnish below; the orange vamisb above has a heterogeneous foil below. That inward glow is characteristic of READIANA. 45 all foils. If you could see the Vuillaume Stradiuarius at uight and move it about in the light of a candle, you would be amazed at the fire of the foil and the refraction of light. Thus, then, it is. The unlucky phrase " varnish of Cremona" has weakened men's povpers of observation by fixing a precon- ceived notion that the varnish must be all one thing. The Cre- monia mrnish is not variiisli, hut two varnishes ; and those var- nishes always heterogeneous : that is to say, first thepores of the ivood are filled and the grain shown up by one, by two, by three, and sometimes, though rarely, by four coats of fine oil varnish unth some common but clear gum in solution. Tlien upon this oil x^arnish, when dry, is laid a heterogeneous varnish, viz., a solu- tion in spirit of some sovereign, high colored, pellucid, and, above all, tender gum. Gum-lac, which for forty years has been the mainstay of violin makers, must never be used; not one atom of it. That vile, flinty gum killed varnish at Naples and Piacenza a hundred and forty yeai-s ago, as it kills varnish now. Old Cremona shunned it, and whoever employs a grain of it, com- mits willful suicide as a Cremonese varnisher. It will not wear; it will not chip; it is in every respect the opposite of the Cremona gums. Avoid it utterly, or fail hopelessly, asall varnishershave failed since that fatal gum came in. The deep red varnish of Cremona is pure dragon's blood; not the cake, the stick, the filthy trash, which, in this sinful and adulterating generation, is retailed under that name, but the tear of dragon's blood, little lumps deeper in color than a carbuncle, clear as crystal, and fiery as a ruby. Unadulterated dragon's blood does not exist in commerce west of Temple-bar; but you can get it by groping in the City as hard as Diogenes had to grope for an honest man in a much less knavish town than London. The yellow varnish is the unadulterated tear of another gum, retailed in a cake like dragon's blood, and as great a fraud. All cakes and sticks pre- sented to you in commerce as gums are audacious swindles. A true gum is the tear of a tree. For the yellow tear, as for the red, grope the City harder than Diogenes. The orange varnish of Peter Guarnerius and Stradiuarius is only a mixture of theee two genuine gums. Even the milder reds of Stradiuarius are slightly reduced with the yellow gum. The Montagnana bass and No. 94 are pure dragon s blood mellowed down by time and exposure only. A violin varnished as I have indicated will look a little better than other new violins from the first; the back will look nearly as well as the Vuillaume Stradiuarius, but not quite. The belly will look a little better if properly prepared; will show the fiber of the deal better. But its principal merit is, that like the violins of Cremona, it will vastly improve in beauty if much ex- posed and persistently played. And that improvement will be rapid, because the tender top varnish will wear away from the oily substratum four times as quickly as any vulgar varnish of the day will chip or wear. We cannot do what Stradiuarius could not do — give to a new violin the peculiar beauty, that comes to heterogenous varnishes of Cremona from age and hon est wear; but, on the other hand, it is a mistake to suppose that 46 READIANA. one hundred years are required to develop the beauty of any Cremona varnishes, old or nevs^. The ordinary wear of a cen- tury cannot be condensed into one year or five, but it can be condensed into twenty years. Any young amateur may live to play on a magnificent Cremoaa made for himself, if he has the enthusiasm to follow my directions. Choose the richest and finest wood; liave the violin made after the pattern of a rough Joseph Guarnerius; then you need not sand-paper the back, sides, or head, for sand-paper is a great enemy to varnish; it drives more wood-dust into the pores than you can blow out. If you sand-paper the belly, sponge that finer dust out, as far as possible, and varnish when dry. That will do no harm, and throw up the fiber. Make your own linseed oil — the linseed oil of commerce is adulterated with animal oil and fish oil, which are non-drying oils — and varnish as I have indicated above, and when the violin is strung treat it regularly with a view to fast wear; let it hang up in a warm place, exposed to dry air, night and day. Never let it be shut up in a case except for trans- port. Lend it for months to the leader of an orchestra. Look after it, and see that it is constantly played and constantly exposed to dry air all about it. Never clean it, never touch it with a silk handkerchief. In twenty years your heterogeneous var- nishes will have parted company in many places. The back will be worn quite picturesque; the belly will look as old as Joseph Guarnerius; there will be a delicate film on the surface of the grand red varnish laiellowed by exposure, and a marvelous fire below. In a word, you will have a glorious Cremona fiddle. Do you aspire to do more, and to make a downright old Cre- mona violin? Then, my young friend, you must treat yourself as well as the violin; you must not smoke all day, nor the last thing at night; you must never take a dram before dinner and call it bitters; you must be as true to your spouse as ever you can, and, in a word, live moderately, and cultivate good temper and avoid great wi'ath. By these means, Deo i^olente, you shall live to see the violin that was made for you and varnished by my receipt, as old and worn and beautiful a Cremona as the Joseph Guarnerius No. 94. beyond which nothing can go. To show the fiddle-maker what may be gained by using as lit- tle sand-paper as possible, let him buy a little of Maunder's palest copal varnish; then let him put a piece of deal on his bench and take a few shavings off it with a carpenter's plane. Let him lay his varnish directly on the wood so planed. It will have a fire and a beauty he will never quite attain to by scrap- ing, sand-papering, and then varnishing the same wood with the same varnish. And this applies to hare-wood as well as deal. The back of the Vuillaume Stradiuarius, which is the finest part, has clearly not been sand-papered in places, so probably not at all. Wherever it is possible, varnish after cold steel, at all events in imitating the Cremonese, and especially Joseph Guarnerius. These, however, are minor details, which I have only inserted, because I foresee that I may be unable to return to this subject in writing, though I shall be very happy to talk about it at my own place to any one who really cares about the . \ EEADIANA. 47 matter. However, it is not every day one can restore a lost art to the world; and I hope that, and my anxiety not to do it by halves, will excuse this prolix article. CHARLES READ. THE STORY OF THE BOAT RACE OF 1872. To THE Editor of the " Obsekver." This great annual race has become a national event. The rival crews are watched by a thousand keen eyes from the mo- ment they appear on the Thames; their trials against time or scratch crews are noted and reported to the world; criticism and speculation are unintermittent, and the Press prints two hundred volumes about the race before ever it is run. When the day comes England suspends her liberties for an hour or two, makes her police her legislators; and her river, though by law a highway, becomes a race course; passengers aud commerce are both swept off it not to spoil sacred sport; London poui's out her myriads; the country flows in to meet them; the roads are clogged with carriages and pedestrians all making for the river; its banks on both sides are blackened by riu unbroken multitude five miles long; on all the bridges that command the race people hang and cluster like swarming bees; windows, seats, balconies, are crammed, all glowing with bright colors (blue predominating), and sparkling Vi'ith brigliter eyes of the excited fair ones. The two crews battle over the long course under one continu- ous roar of a ragmg multitude. At last — and often after fluctu- ations in the race that drive the crowd all but mad — there is a puff of smoke, a loud report, one boat has won, tiiough both de- serve; and the victors are the true kings of all that mighty throng; in tnat hour the Premier of England, the Priuiate, the'poet, the orai^or, the philosopher of his age, v.'ould wallc past unheeded if the Stroke oar of the victorious boat stood anywhere near. To cynics and sedentary students all this seems childish, and looks like paying to muscle a homage that is never given by ac- clamation to genius and virtue. But, as usual, the public is not far wrong; the triumph, though loud, is evanescent, and much has been done aud endured to earn it. No glutton, no wiue-bibber, no man of impure life could live through that great jjuU; each, victor (tbatinuit venere et vino, sudavit ct alsif. The captain of the winning boat has taught Government a les- son; for in selecting his men he takes care of Honor, and does not talce care of Dowb, for that would be to throw the race away upon dry land; but tlie public enthusiasm rests on broader and more obvious grounds llian these. Every nation lias a right to admire its own fraitis in individuals, when those trails are honor- able and even innocent. England is not bound to admire those atJjletes, who every now and then proclaim their nationality by drinking a quart of ginright off for a wager; but we are a nation 48 READIANA. great upon the water, and great at racing, and we have a right to admire these men, who combine the two things to perfection. This is the king of races, for it is run by the King of animals working, after his kind, by combination, and with a concert so strong, yet delicate, that for once it eclipses machinery. But, above all, here is an example, not only of strength, wind, spirit, and pluck indomitable, but of pure aud crystal honor. Foot races and horse races have been often sold, and the betters betrayed; but this race never — and it never will be. Here, from first to last, all is open, because all is fair and glorious as the kindred daylight it courts. We hear of shivering stable boys sent out on a frosty morning to try race horses on the sly, and so giv^e the proprietors private knowledge to use in betting. Sometimes these early worms have been pre- ceded by earlier ones, who are watching behind a hedge. Then shall the trainer wliisper one of the boys to hold in the faster horse, and so enact a profitable lie. Not so the Uni- vesrity crews; they make trials in broad daylight for their own information; and those trials are always faithful. The race is pure, is and a strong corrective annually administered to the malpractices of racing. And so our two great fountains of learning are one fount of honor, God be thanked for it! So the people do well to roar their applause, and every nobleman who runs horses may be proud to take for his example these high- spirited gentlemen, who nobly run a nobler creature, for they run themselves. The recent feature of this great race has been the recovery of Cambridge in 1870 and 1871, after nine successive defeats; defeats the more remarkable that up to 1861, Oxford was behind her in the number of victories. The main cause of a result so peculiar was tliat system of rowing Oxford had in- vented and perfected. The true Oxford stroke is slow in the water but swift in the air; the rower goes well forward, drops his oar clean into the water, goes well backward, and makes his stroke, but, this done, comes swiftly forward all of apiece, hands foremost. Thus, though a slow stroke, it is a very busy one. Add to this a clean feather, and a high sweep of the oars to avoid rough water, and you have the true Oxford stroke, which is simply the perfection of rowing, and can, of course, be de- feated by superior strength or bottom; but, ca'teris paribxis, is almost sure to win. Nine defeats were endured by Cambridge with a fortitude, a patience, and a temper that won every heart, and in 1870 she reaped her reward. She sent uj) a crew, led by Mr. Goldie — who bad been defeated the year before by Darbishire"s Oxford eight — and coached by Mr. Morrison. This Cambridge crew pulled the Oxford stroke, or nearly, di'ove Oxford in the race to a faster stroke that does not suit her, and won the race with something to spare, though stuck to indomitably by Darbishire and an inferior crew. In 1871 Oxford sent up a lieavy crew, with plenty of apparent strength, but not the ])vecision and form of Mr. Goldie's eight. Cambridge took the lead and kept it. This year Oxford ivas rather unlucky in advance. The city was circumnavigable by little ships, and you might have tacked READIANA. 40 an Indiaman in Magdalen College meadow; but this was unfavor- able to eight-oar practice. Then Mr. Lesley, the stroke, sprained his side, and resigned his post to Mr. Houblon, a very elegant oarsman, but one who pulls a quick stroke, not healthy to Ox- ford on Father Thames his bosom. Then their boat was found to be not so lively as the Cambridge boat built by Clasper. A new boat was ordered, and slie proved worse in another way than Salter's. In a word, Oxford came to the scratch to day with a good stiff boat, not lively, with 201b. more dead weight inside the coxswain's jacket, and with a vast deal of pluck and not a little Hemiplegia. The betting was five to two against her. Five minutes before the rivals came out, it was snowing so hard that the race bade fair to be invisible. I shall not describe the snow, nor any of the atmospheric horrors' that made the whole business purgatory instead of pleasure. 1 take a milder revenge; I only curse them. Putney roared, and out came the Dark Blue crew; they looked strong and wiry, and likelj' to be troublesome attendants. An- other roar, and out came the Light Blue. So long as the boats were stationary, one looked as likely as the other to win. They started. Houblon took it rather easy at first; and Cam- bridge obtained a lead directly, and at the Soap Works was half a length ahead. This was reduced by Mr. Hall's excellent steer- ing a foot or two by the time they shot Hammersmith Bridge. As the boats neared Chiswick Eyot, where many a race has changed, Oxford gradually reduced the lead to a foot or two; and if this could have been done with the old, steady, much- enduring stroke, 1 would not have given much for the leading boat's chance. But it was achieved by a stroke of full thirty- nine to the minute, and neither form nor time was perfect. Mr. Goldie now called upon his crew, and the Clasper boat showed great qualities ; it shot away visibly, like a horse suddenly spurred ; this spurt proved that Cambridge had great reserves of force, and Oxford had very little. Houblon and his gallant men struggled nobly and unflinchingly on ; but, between Barnes Bridge and Mortlake, Goldie put the steam on again, and in- creased the lead to about a length and a half clear water. The gun was fired, and Cambridge won the race of 1872. In this race Oxford, contrary to her best traditions, pulled a faster stroke than Cambridge; the Oxford coxswain's experience compensated for his greater weight. The lighter coxswain steered his boat in and out a bit, and will run some risk of be- ing severely criticised by all our great contemporaries — except Zig-Zag. As for me, my fifty summers or fifty winters — there is no great difi'erence in this island of the blessed, they are neither of them so horrible as the spring — have disinclined me to thunder on the young. A veteran journalist perched on the poop of a steam vessel has many advantages. He has a bird's- eye view of the Thames, and can steer Clasper's boat with his mind far more easily than can a younster squatted four inches above the water, with eight giants intercepting liis view of a strange river, and a mob shouting in his ears like all the wild beasts of a thousand forests. 50 EEADIANA. Mr. Goldiahas done all his work well fol* months. He chose his men impartially, practiced them in time, and finally rowed the race with perfect judgment. He took an experimental time, and finding he could hold it. made no premature call upon his crew. He held the race in hand, and won it from a plucky op- ponent without distressing his men needlessh^ No man is a friend of Oxford, who tells her to overrate accidents, and under- rate what may be done by a wise President before ever the boats r.-ach Putney. This London race was virtually won at Cam- bridge. Next year let Oxford choose her men from no favorite schools or colleges, lay aside her prejudice against Clasper, and give him a trial; at all events, return to her svvinging-stroke, and practice tilt not only all the eight bodies go like one, but all eight rowlocks ring like one; and the spirit and bottom that enabled her to hang so long on the quarter of a first-rate crew in a first-rate boat will be apt to land her a winner in the next and many a hard-fought race. CHARLES READE. BUILDEES' BLUNDERS. To THE Editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette." FIRST LETTER. T