I carried it above with me, thinking it might weigh thirty ounces, but it proved to weigh no more than twelve. The reason I had no garments on was because in the days of my former master, Duke Alessandro de' Medici, one of the fishermen in the Arno went to fish with his hands and dived beneath the river. There he got caught in the branches of a sunken tree and was drowned. This was my reason. Master Guglielmo wished me to stop up my ears with cotton, musk, &c. But this I forbore to do, lest I should not hear if called. And, although I was not deeper below the water than six 'Canne Romane,' and was called at many times at the top of the voice, I failed to hear and yet I heard well enough the sound of two stones when struck together below the water at half-arm's length, and further. I staid half an hour down there the first time.

He goes on to describe how his nose began to bleed and also his mouth and ears, and he had to give a sign to his comrades to draw him up. He presently plunged in, he says, for a swim, and the bleeding ceased. When next he went down he attached ropes to the wreck and enough of it to load two stout mules was drawn up by the windlass working on the raft above. The wood now proved to be of three species, larch, pine, and cypress; while the pegs were of oak. He found many bronze nails as fresh as if made yesterday. These, he says, fastened the plates of lead on the exterior. There was also a lining of linen between the lead and the timber. Within the ship were pavements of tiles two feet square (bipedales), also segments of red marble and enamel.

Here were the rooms of the palace which I did not dare to enter, both for fear of losing myself and also on account of the machine within which I was, which if a man did not keep it upright, he would suddenly be drowned by the water coming in; though one who knew how to swim might save himself by quitting the machine. Master Guglielmo said that there were beams of bronze down there; but I did not see them. We found anchors which had been used in operations in the time of Flavio Biondo. Measuring the ship we found it in length seventy canne,' ," and in width thirty canne, the height from keel to deck eight canne. All my measurements and relics, however, were robbed from me by certain ones who hoped to discover in the material something about the make of this ingenious instrument of Master Guglielmo. But they found nothing; and I have sworn on the Sacrament not to divulge the secret while the Master lives. All I know is that this ship is in this lake, and only one particle is wanting to its completeness, and that is wanting because Master Guglielmo took it away.

Various attempts were made once more, in 1827, by one Annesio Fusconi, an engineer, who used Halley's diving-bell; but the results were unsatisfactory. Nibby, the Roman archaeologist, was present, and came to the erroneous conclusion, with those who were employed in diving to see the remains, that they must have pertained to a villa which Julius Caesar is known to have built at Nemi, but which, displeasing him, he destroyed. 'He pulled down a villa which he had built from the foundations at Nemi, because it did not exactly suit his taste, although his means were, at the time, but slender.' 12 The real secret of the waters of Nemi, so long and jealously preserved, remained with them until September 1895, when Signor

"A canna = 6 feet 5 inches.

12 Suetonius, Julius Caesar, xlvi.

Eliseo Borghi obtained permission from Prince Orsini to employ divers and make fresh research. Guided by the fisherman, Cav. Vittorio Malfatti and two divers soon located the first of two magnificent galleys that lie therein, at a distance sixty-five feet from the shore. It lies at a depth of thirty feet. At right angles to it, some two hundred feet distant, they found a second ship; and besides these there was found a structure resembling a pier or mole.

By attaching long cords with corks to the galleys, the divers gradually sketched out in outlines on the surface the shape of the vessels. The writer can recollect the feeling of awe which thrilled those looking on at the design developing slowly upon the face of the waters, informing us of the peculiar, if not unique, historic wonders below. The length of the first vessel was found to be ninety feet, by twenty-six in the beam. The decks were found to be paven with elaborate mosaic work in porphyry, green serpentine, and 'rosso antico,' intermingled with richly-coloured enamel. The bulwarks are cast in solid bronze once gilded, as traces showed.

From other parts of this vessel nearest the shore, which lies in shallower water than its fellow, the divers brought up the various beautiful sculptures besides quantities of fragments confirmatory to the letter of De' Marchi's description as to the structure and ingenious means employed to keep out leaks. The outer edge of the vessel is covered with cloth smeared with pitch, and over this occur folds of thin sheet-lead doubled over and fastened down upon it with copper nails. It may be verified, when a yet more determined attempt shall be carried out to make the lake yield up bodily its treasure, that these great galleys may have been designed by their megalomaniac builder, Caligula, in imitation of those described in Suetonius as having been used by him along the neighbouring Campanian coast, for floating villas; but as to their purpose, it is at least as probable they were connected with the cult and festival of Virbius, representative of Hippolytus, the charioteer, as with those of Diana; were it not that the Ancients, as well as some moderns, have held that there is immediate relationship between the Moon-Goddess and the lunatic. It may thus have been that the Flamen Virbialis had advised the Emperor upon the spot that the 'Rex Nemorensis' had enjoyed too long a reign, or had in some way proved tyrannical. This would account for the flippant order of the Emperor that one of his slaves should challenge him, in order to assassinate him and appropriate his office.

The day when these galleys of Caligula shall be brought to land will be veritably a red-letter day in the archaeological calendar; but, owing both to their condition and the depth at which they lie, we may well doubt if that can ever take place.

ST. CLAIR BADDELEY.

HOW WE CAME TO BE CENSORED BY THE STATE

11. THE WEDGE

PERHAPS because the player is obliged to appear in propria persona, and cannot be judged apart from his quasi-physical achievement, by proxy as it were, as can other artists, since it is unfortunately part and parcel of his accomplishment, the public have from the first displayed an intense curiosity to approach the Player as intimately as it can in his profession, as will be seen from the custom that prevailed up to far into the eighteenth century, of allowing spectators to sit on the stage to witness a play, and this in spite of repeated Royal commands to the contrary.

This hindrance was not finally abandoned until Garrick's time. It was the fashion amongst the modish to indulge their wit at the expense of any unoffending personage in the audience, and exchange compliments with any woman that took their fancy. Presumably, even gentlewomen were quite ready to enter into the spirit of it, for under their vizard masks they felt all the courage of incognito. But I cannot help feeling a mask was rather a protection against the free language of the courtiers than of the playwright or players. When Samuel Pepys saw Cromwell's daughter Mary, then Lady Falconbridge, in the theatre with her husband, he noticed with much pleasure that she became so embarrassed at the amount of attention and curiosity she was attracting that she put on her vizard mask, and so kept it on all the play, 'which of late has become a great fashion among the ladies which hides their whole face." Here, at all events, we find a lady masking herself against the impertinence of the public. Performances that had at one time commenced at three o'clock or even earlier, at the end of the seventeenth century had reached a much later hour. On some occasions, by reason of the heat of the weather, the play did not begin till nine, nor was the house to be opened till eight. To all appearances the fop went to the playhouse to be observed or to show off his new periwig, or to pose as a man of fashion, and had as little critical faculty in judging a play

as any modern youth of fashion who is to be found in the front stalls of a musical comedy at the Gaiety. I cannot believe that human nature can have deteriorated much more than in the fashion of combing the hair back from the forehead, instead of surmounting it with a peruke; and the fatuous young man in white waistcoat and white kid gloves with a great deal of silk sock showing, who lolls in the stalls of our playhouses to-day is in nothing different from the Lord Foppington of 1697, who remarked that a man must endeavour to look wholesome, lest he make so nauseous a figure in the side box the ladies should be compelled to turn their eyes upon a play.'

Towards the end of the seventeenth century the upper gallery was opened gratis to footmen waiting for their employers, and it is conceivable that, with the nobility and gentry so voluble in the pits and boxes, the lacqueys were not much more reticent amid the gods. This custom of admitting the footmen was not abandoned until the reign of George the Second, when, for their rudeness, they were not permitted the use of the gallery, until then reserved for or rather appropriated by them. Three hundred of them then armed themselves and broke into Drury Lane in the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales. An endeavour was made to read the Riot Act, and some thirty of the ringleaders were seized and sent to Newgate. A threatening letter was sent to Fleetwood, the then patentee, that the footmen would raze the theatre to the ground unless their prerogative of a free pass was restored to them, but an efficient guard of soldiers on several subsequent nights terminated the affair, and this custom died out after being in existence a hundred years.

How and in what manner the players were able to make themselves heard on the stage it is difficult to understand, for there, too, a constant discussion was kept up on the current topics on both sides of the curtain. You speak so low,' cried an exasperated critic from the pit to an actor who could not be heard above the buzz of general conversation. And you too high,' returned the humiliated actor.

Steele, of one of his comedies, says: 'It had a clear stage and no favour.' This of a play in which he had endeavoured to clear the stage of any but the player during the performance, in accordance with a decree of Queen Anne's, in which she endeavoured to abolish both the custom of the spectators mixing with the players, and that of ladies wearing vizard masks at the play-a habit that, according to Colley Cibber, 'had so many ill-consequences attending it.' That was, however, two hundred years ago. There was a play last Spring in London at which I had been glad had it been the fashion to wear masks. In my defence I may say that I was there on the second night of the performance, ignorantly one of a few scattered spectators who had strayed in to hear a drama in a foreign tongue. Later I

VOL. LXV-No. 385.

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heard it was crowded, and I observed that by special request that particular play was repeated again and again.

We get some terrible pictures of private squabbles expanding into a dangerous tumult when the Hanoverians were on the throne. In 1720, under Rich's management, a certain Earl, whose name I do not gather, but of no very sober habit, seeing a friend of his on the other side, crossed the stage while the play was in progress amid a general uproar from the house. The manager then went to him and said: 'I hope your Lordship will not take it ill if I give orders to the stage-door keeper not to admit you any more;' upon which the Earl, as he is called in the history, gives Rich a slap in the face, which is cordially returned by the manager. A grave scuffle ensues of patrons versus players, and Quin, Ryan, Walker, Rich, and others drive their patrons out by the stage door. The gentlemen re-enter by the boxes, cut the hangings of gilt leather finely painted, and do not desist until a constable and the watchmen take the rioters in charge, for which, as usual, the theatre is closed down-this time, indeed, not by command of the King, who henceforth ordered a guard to attend this theatre, but in order to repair the damage done during the riot.

We must, however, make allowances for an uncourteous period of manners, for, if the general public was not too gentle to the player, it is at any rate interesting to find that even the King was treated with the scantiest ceremony where an audience was kept waiting for him after the time advertised for the commencement of the play. George the Second, having arrived rather late on one occasion, was received with marked resentment by the public, and with violent expressions of disapproval. At this the King seems to have been embarrassed rather than angry, and with some readiness of resource advanced to the front of the box, pulled out his watch, pointed out the difference of time to his lord-in-waiting, and beat his misleading timekeeper against the box, which little pantomime highly delighted the audience and restored them to good humour. That evening was destined to be an amusing one. A centaur was introduced into the play, who had to pierce an adversary with an arrow; the weapon by an accident glanced into the King's box and grazed past him. At the sight of this the public rose in a great ferment, suspecting treason, and prepared to revenge the outrage, when all of a sudden the whole front of the centaur came off, and the carpenter who played the ' posterior advanced and fell on his knees to the King, assuring him it was an accident. This was just the kind of performance that would tickle an audience to death, and George the Second voted the centaur's head and tail the most amusing thing of the evening. This same sovereign was often wont to be heard talking aloud in his box when he had any comments to make on anything that was said on the stage that attracted his attention; therefore it is not to be wondered