mistakable atmospheric phenomena. You need not take your umbrella, unless clouds have been gathering, and storms brewing over your head for three days. Winter is winter, and summer is summer, but we have a spring also, a sweet progressive spring, and a soft lingering autumn... We are shut in by a mountain chain on either side. The stagnant air secures constancy and regularity to the climate. It is generally a three days' perfect hurricane of north wind that ushers in such a sharp frost as we are at the present moment enjoying... Down from all the Russian steppes, and across all the German forests, that blustering Tramontana sweeps far and wide: it meets with a temporary check at the foot of the Alps; it takes breath and gathers strength at that frail barrier, like a mustering horde of barbaric invaders; it then overleaps it at one bound; it acquires a tremendous momentum, as from the bare summit it rolls down like an avalanche upon the devoted southern land, madly roaring and rioting, blighting and blasting, savagely howling about us and our dwellings, as if it meant to blow the chimneys off our roofs, and the very ears off our heads... It thus storms for three, may be for nine days, then it suddenly subsides, leaving earth and sky indescribably pure and fresh, and the air unspeakably still, an open field for the frost to do its slow, and sure, unceasing, unrelenting work in. Then in due time, and with the punctuality of clock-work, the time comes for the Scirocco and the other hot-breathing maritime gales. All at once down come snow and ice; all at once down come flooding streams and melting mountains. A rapid yet gradual transition ensues, from the frigid to the torrid zones. Russia for three months, for three months Africa, but a temperature of paradise during the quarters between the two extremes. Gallenga.

SARDINIA.

THE people of Sardinia are not less picturesque than the island. Their costume, their customs, their amusements, are all ready to the hand of a melodramatist or ballet-composer. They are handsome, after the dark style of the South, half-Moorish, halfItalian. Among the men, beards, moustaches, and long, flowing dark locks frame their dusky, fierce, black-eyed visages. figure they are slender and active, and like all foresters and pastoral tribes.

In

The Sardes are almost all born poets, after a kind; it is calculated that one in sixty-nine can improvise where only one in

thirty-eight can read; for, to improvise, the art of reading is no more needful than to Welsh bards or Highland pipers of ancient time.

Sheep constitute the chief wealth of the district of Gallura, of which Tempio is the centre. When the wife or daughter of a flock-owner has a quantity of wool to be plucked or combed ready for the distaff, she invites all the girls of the neighbourhood to come and help her, and all the bachelors to help them, as well as a few friends to look on. For the entertainment of the company she provides vases of flowers, a supply of bonbons, and rosoglio, with music for dancing when the work is done. An ounce of bonbons is considered a fair return for one hundred pounds of wool.

We meet in Mr. Tyndale's Travels with some amusing instances of hospitality and ignorance. But the ignorance may be matched in peasants' cottages in any county of England. For instance:

On one occasion the traveller having, according to the custom of the country, sent up his guide to a priest's house to ask the favor of a night's lodging, received for answer that the padre did not choose to admit him. While inquiring into the particulars of so unusual an answer, the priest peeping out of his glassless window, perceived that the stranger was neither a Sarde nor Piedmontese, and descending hastily, overtook him, and asked in a most courteous manner, if it was he who was inquiring for a night's lodging. To which the Englishman answered hastily that it was; but he was then going to seek a more hospitable house. The priest, with great emotion, began a series of apologies, seized the bridle of the traveller's horse, led him back to his door, and almost pulled him off the saddle into his house. It seemed that the guide was not a perfectly respectable character, and there had been some cases of vendetta, a lawless system of hereditary vengeance, in the neighbourhood. A comfortable supper and an agreeable night of conversation followed, constantly interrupted by apologies on the part of the priest for his rudeness... He was not aware that England was an island, and wished to know whether Britannia was a king or a town. He had heard of tea, but had never tasted it, and our traveller fortunately having a little with him, a brew was effected, of which the priest drank seven or eight cups, to the infinite terror of his servant, who fancied that her master was being poisoned. All the while the good priest could not believe that ships were sent all the way to China to fetch dried leaves.

...

We could give many more instances of Sarde hospitality to travellers among the higher classes, but one among the humblest will be sufficient: "In proceeding to the mineral springs of San Martin, I halted, for the purpose of learning my way, at an ovile or hut of a shepherd. He was preparing to kill a lamb for his family, and offered to accompany me as soon as he had finished. His hut was composed of a mass of great stones, arranged in a circle of about twelve feet in diameter and eight feet high, with a conical roof of sticks and reeds uniting in the apex A small piece of matting was the bed for the whole family, a few ashes were burning in a hole in the ground; a bundle of clothes, some flat loaves of bread, and three or four earthen pans completed the inventory of his goods and chattels. His dogs and pigs basked contentedly at the entrance of the ovile; his sheep fed on the adjoining hill. In less than five minutes the allpotent Sarde knife had dissected the lamb, and we then proceeded together to San Martin, about three miles distant. After sharing my light meal, I offered him a trifle for his trouble, but he indignantly refused it, and on leaving gave me an adieu with a fervent and courteous demeanour which the highest and noblest could not have excelled."

Until recently justice has been unknown in the Sarde tribunals, which have been filled by strangers sent from the continent, who counted on bribes rather than honest fees for their living. All this is altered, and is in course of being reformed under the constitution, which for the first time gave the Sarde equal rights with the Piedmontese.

As a general rule, the Sardes of the plain and mountain in lonely districts prefer private arbitration to law, and are happy in their arbitrators, who are called saggi, or wise men. A feast, when the decision is given and reconciliation effected, is the only expense to which the disputants are put: the saggi are satisfied with the honor of their authority. Through the mediation of these good old men, lawsuits which would have occupied years and devoured a patrimony, and caused a vendetta which might have exterminated whole families, are settled in a day. Public opinion supports the decisions... In what we may call an action for breach of promise of marriage, a young shepherd who was defendant demurred to the sentence. The saggi rose indignant from their seat under the wild olive, saying, "We have spoken and done justice;' and, saluting the spectators, turned to their homes. But the uncle of the shepherd, who was leaning against a knolled oak, with his bearded chin resting on the back of his hand on the muzzle of his gun, started up, and extending his right hand to

the tribunal Stop, friends," he exclaimed; "the business must be finished this moment." Then turning to his nephew, and putting his disengaged hand upon his chest, the other grasping his gun, he said to him, "Come, sir, instantly obey, or, The shepherd no longer hesitated; he sank upon his knees, and asked pardon of the saggi. Then his uncle demanded for him the hand of the maiden; the betrothal took place; and a feast and a dance, with improvised songs, followed.

The revolution of 1848, which gave to Piedmont a constitution, extended equal rights and privileges to the island of Sardinia. The recent liberal tariff has abolished all the customs' duties with which Sarde produce was at one time specially burdened... Lord Nelson wrote, in 1803: "Sardinia is very little known; it was the policy of Piedmont to keep it in the background, and it has been the maxim to rule its inhabitants with severity, loading its produce with such duties as prevented their growth. I will only mention one instance as a proof. Half a cheese was seized because a poor man was selling it to our boats, and it had not paid the duty. Fowls, eggs, beef, and every article of food are most heavily taxed on export. The country is fruitful beyond idea, and abounds in cattle and sheep, and is adapted for corn, wine, and oil. In the hands of a liberal government there is no telling what its produce would amount to."

Lord Nelson's wishes have been realised; Sardinia is in the hands of a liberal government. Nothing is now needed to make it the most flourishing island of its extent in Europe but roads and harbors, the extension of education, and the example and instruction of a few intelligent Lombardy landlords and farmers. Household Words.

THE CAMPAGNA OF ROME.

PERHAPS there is no more impressive scene on earth than the solitary extent of the Campagna of Rome under evening light. Let the reader imagine himself for a moment withdrawn from the sound and motion of the living world, and sent forth alone into this wild and wasted plain. The earth yields and crumbles beneath his foot, tread he never so lightly; for its substance is white, hollow, and carious, like the dusky wreck of the bones of men The long knotted grass waves and tosses feebly in the evening wind, and the shadows of its motion shake feverishly along the banks of the ruin that lift themselves to the sunlight. Hillocks of smouldering earth heave around him,

as if the dead beneath were struggling in their sleep; scattered remnants of mighty edifices, not one stone left upon another, lie upon them to keep them down... A dull, purple, poisonous haze stretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral wrecks of massy ruins, on whose rents the red light rests like dying fire on defiled altars. The blue ridge of the Alban Mount lifts itself against a solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. Watch towers of dark clouds stand steadfastly along the promontories of the Apennines. From the plain to the mountains the shattered aqueducts peer beyond, melt into the darkness like shadows and countless troops of funeral mourners passing from a nation's grave. Ruskin.

The lower portions of the plain seem more like ravines, old dried up water-courses, or hollows which in the rainy season might fill with water and form small lakes, than anything else. Very little vegetation anywhere shows itself, except the grasses, which are heavy and abundant, indicating a fertile soil. Indeed, this is one of the unexpected aspects of the Campagna, that all over this uninhabited desert there are most unmistakable evidences of a soil which, with good cultivation, would support a dense population. Wherever the face of the country shows a broken bank, the earth is of that dark brown color, almost black, which gives assurance of mines of wealth below.

Scarce a tree is to be seen over its whole extent; or, if some low groups of forest trees are met with here and there, they are in the deep hollows, and hardly lift their heads above the general level of the plain. Shrubs of various kinds skirt the roads and climb up the sides of the ravines, and in the summer season wild flowers and roses of a thousand kinds contend with a luxuriant growth of brambles and weeds for the supremacy, and sometimes one and sometimes the other obtains the mastery, and gives its character to the scene.

Although the Campagna is rightly described as a wild and desert region, it is not without the occasional variety of a human face and form, and even a group of low half-ruined dwellings, not built or intended for the humble uses to which they are now devoted, but the crumbled remains of palace or castle of former days... About these melancholy ghost-like ruins are sometimes seen a few of the inhabitants, men, women, children; the men clothed in sheep-skins in the form just stripped from the slaughtered animal-all pallid with the fearful disease of the plain, fever, and ague, the true malaria of Rome...