bassy, and the Cancelleria Palace, built by Cardinal Riario, nephew of Sixtus the Fourth and still papal property. The Simonetti and Falconieri Palaces are in the Via Giulia by the river.

Latest of the great papal families to settle in Rome were the Braschi, relatives of Pius the Sixth, whose palace stands in the Piazza Navona. The Patrizi Palace and the Giustiniani Palace are near the French church of San Luigi in the street of the same name. The Giustiniani are also Earls of Newburgh in the peerage of Scotland, through the marriage in 1757 of the heiress of the title and estates to the Prince Giustiniani of that date. Great was the opulence and magnificence of the Roman princes. When they went forth into the city they were attended by mounted grooms with staves, while running footmen cleared a way before them. An army of servants waited upon them; their stables were filled with horses, and their coaches were wonderful equipages of gilding, glass, and painting, with powdered footmen in silk stockings at the back, three on a prince's carriage, two on a cardinal's. One of these carried an umbrella and a cushion. If during his drive, the prince chanced to meet his Holiness the Pope, or a religious procession in which the Host was carried, he would stop his coach and alight, the cushion would be laid upon the pavement for him to kneel upon, and the umbrella would be held up to protect his bared head from the sun.

Many of the Roman nobles had private theatres in their houses; they were great collectors of art, pictures, statues, books, bronzes, tapestries, and mosaics. The Borghese alone possessed four Raphaels and what is said by some to be the finest Titian in the world, as well as their famous collection of statues. At the same time they were

generous to the city of their adoption. They threw open their beautiful parks and villas to the people, and they endowed hospitals, asylums, and orphanages. The Roman ladies had always patronised and promoted works of charity. Nevertheless the later custom, which persists to this day, of personally visiting the poor and the hospitals began with Gwendolen Talbot, the daughter of the last Catholic Earl of Shrewsbury, who, as the wife of Prince Borghese, was the first of the Roman ladies to walk alone at all hours, intent on her errands of mercy. The wit, which made her present a gold coin to a man who on one occasion followed her, was the talk of the city, where her name is still a household word in Roman mouths, and where her tragic death when only twenty-four years old,-leaving four little children, one only of whom, the present Princess Piombino, survived the infection which killed their mother -moved the entire population.

Many of the Roman palaces are as big as barracks. The Palazzo Pamphili-Doria can accommodate a thousand persons; but this was none too large for the patriarchal style of living which, in a modified form, survives to the present day. Much space was taken up by the great libraries, museums, picture galleries, and staterooms. A small army of officials were housed within the walls,-steward, bailiff, major-domo, secretaries, accountants, with all the underlings necessary to the management of great and distant estates. A wing would be set entirely apart for the prince cardinal, a cadet of the house; the domestic chaplain would require his own rooms, -he would say the daily mass in the private chapel of the palace but would not dine with the family; the sons of the house would need tutors, the daughters governesses and companions.

The great double gates of every

Roman palace, securely locked and barred at night, leads into a central court. Round it are open colonnades, sometimes in two stories, and in the centre a fountain splashes amidst ferns and palms. A porter presides at the gates, magnificent in a cocked hat, kneebreeches, and a long coat trimmed with coloured braid into which are worked the arms of the family, and carrying a long staff twisted with cord and crowned with an immense silver knob. This personage is the descendant of the janitor who in ancient Rome watched the house-door day and night, and whose fidelity was occasionally ensured by chaining him to his post.

A grand staircase leads to the first floor, and this, the piano nobile, is still occupied by the head of the family, whose rule is absolute and sometimes tyrannical. The eldest son upon his marriage is given the second floor to live in, the second son the one above, while beneath the roof is accommodation for an immense retinue of servants and attendants. It is still the custom for the whole family, married sons and their families included, to dine together; and elaborate accounts are kept of the allowances given to each son, of the quota contributed by each to the general expenses, of the dowry of each daughter-in-law, and strict account is kept as to whether she is enjoying the number of dishes. of meat per meal, and the number of horses and carriages stipulated for in her marriage settlement. In the case of an English wife a carpet used to be among the stipulations.

Though the state coaches, the running footmen, the external pomp and ceremony have disappeared, some

curious relics still remain of an order of things fast passing away. Every Roman prince has the right, should he wish it, to be received at the foot of the great staircase of any house he honours with his presence by two

lackeys bearing lighted torches, who should escort him to the threshold of his hostess's reception room. This is still done for cardinals on state occasions. Again, every prince has the right to, and still in fact has, a throneroom and throne in his palace, not for his own use, but for the Pope should he elect to visit him. In the first hall of a Roman palace a great shield, emblazoned with the family arms, is affixed to the wall. A prince may surmount this with a canopy, beside which should stand the historic umbrella and cushion. Four marquises, and these only, the four Marchesi di Baldacchino, are entitled to these privileges.

A good deal of natural confusion exists in the mind of the foreigner with regard to the different ranks and the distribution of titles in the Italian peerage. These in fact follow no general rule but depend in each case upon the patent of creation. Princely titles conferred by the Holy Roman Empire affect every member of the family equally; titles conferred by the Pope, on the other hand, as a rule are restricted to the head of the family only. Thus in the Colonna family every member is a prince or princess; among the Ruspoli, a papal creation, only the head of the eldest branch is legally a prince. In these latter cases, however, it is usual to give the eldest son one of the other family titles upon his marriage, and the same with the second son. Such an act is in the father's option, but he is obliged to notify the assumption of the title to the civil authorities. In the same way a certain amount of latitude is allowed him as to the title he uses himself, or grants to his sons. Prince Gaetani, for example, prefers to be known by the older title in his family, Duke of Sermoneta, bestowing that of Prince di Teano upon his eldest son. The titles Don

and Donna are only correctly used for the younger sons and daughters of princes and of the four Marchesi di Baldacchino, though they are often used for all the children of marquises.

In the same way, the distribution of the titles of marquis, count, or baron among the various members of the family depends upon the terms of the original patent. In some cases every member bears the title, in others the head of the family only; in the latter case, a cadet of the house would be styled Giovanni or Marc Antonio dei Principi N―, or dei Conti N-as the case might be, "John of the Princes So-and-So," or "of the Counts So-and-so."

The distinction again between the patrician and the noble is one that is not understood by the foreigner. A patrician belongs by ancestral prescriptive right to the governing class of his province. The names of the patricians were ballotted annually, and one of the number chosen as prior or governor of the province. He is in fact and history of senatorial rank. In Rome the patrician families are called the Coscritti, an allusion

The

to the Padri Coscritti or Senators of the City, the old Patres Conscripti. Their number was limited and defined by a constitution of Benedict the Fourteenth, but later popes added new names. The patrician families are now sixty in number. The nobles, on the other hand, often owed their titles not only to the pope, but to their respective communes, which, until the one fount of honour was defined to be the Sovereign, frequently bestowed titles on their citizens. popes have always conferred titles of nobility, as did the Holy Roman Empire, whose heir in this matter the popes claim to be. At present an Heraldic Commission is sitting in Rome to regulate the use of titles, many of which have been assumed for generations without any warrant. Henceforth every one will be called upon to prove his right to the title he bears, and it will be illegal for the communes to recognise it until he has done so. Foreign titles, and among them papal titles, will in all cases have to be ratified and allowed by the Sovereign of Italy.

HOPE MALLESON.

"As long as my boat," says Old Billy firmly, looking with pride upon the great pool at our feet. We have been speaking of certain legendary carp that lend romance to the place. Old Billy, it appears, has from time to time seen a colossal tail threshing the surface, and he will not permit himself to estimate the weight of the body to which it belongs.

Old Billy is one of those grandly untruthful persons who will not occupy themselves with the smaller statistics at all. The carp are undoubtedly there; they are numerous; and they are as long as Old Billy's boat: that is the thread of his discourse unravelled from the tangle of metaphor and illustration. "You can't catch 'em," is his impolite conclusion; nor can nobody," is his afterthought, dictated probably from interested motives, for have we not on sundry occasions given the old villain the wherewithal to buy beer? Even Old Billy recognises the unwisdom of particular charges of inefficiency against the person who, for the time being, represents a day's wage of unknown quantity.

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However, we are not prepared to quarrel with his assertion, partly because we have never been able of

set purpose to catch carp anywhere, and partly because we are not quite convinced that these particular carp have existence other than theoretical. Twice have we been within measurable distance of belief; once when fishing for bream with a bunch of the larvæ of bluebottles (politely known as gentles, impolitely known as maggots) and we hooked something irresistible which ran out all our line and de

stroyed it at leisure in the depths; once again, when a stout new salmoncast parted like cotton on the strike. But these events are of the now distant past, and time has induced wiser incredulity; probably in both cases we hooked a pike, a circumstance that often precedes angling misfortune.

On this sharp winter morning it is somewhat out of place to speak of carp, and, but for Old Billy, we should not have done so, for we are intent on pike and pike only. Old Billy, however, must always ease his mind on that subject; in some obscure way he seems to think his own credit and reputation greatly increased by the presence in the pool of fish which are enormous and uncatchable; possibly, too, he has some unrecog nised vein of poetry in him which finds vent in frequent allusion to the wonders of the deep. Having dismissed the carp, however, he brings the punt round to the landing-stage without further delay, and points with pride to the live-bait in the bucket; finer live-bait, he says, you could not see anywhere; money, in fact could not buy them. Conceding the point as one which hardly demands emphasis (for Old Billy caught the live-bait himself, and we have fished with him before), we get into the punt and instruct him to push off.

The pool is some eighty yards in width and some hundred and twenty in length, and it is in parts very deep,-bottomless, according to Old Billy. The great river which forms it here plunges over weir-beams for

the last time before it joins a river still greater a mile lower down, and it celebrates its last victory over the obstacles opposed to it by man in a fine turmoil of foam. Then the main current sweeps grandly across the pool to its channel below, leaving behind it two enormous eddies, one on each side. A finer pool for pike. fishing it would be impossible to conceive; the bottom is all of gravel, and the supply of fish seems inexhaustible No matter how many may be caught one day, the next finds the pool re-stocked, for it is the Mecca of all the pike in many miles of the river Severn. Of this fact Old Billy is well aware, and he regards the fish from a base matter-of-fact point of view; his avowed object is always to kill as many as he can. That is why he desired us to fish with trimmers to-day, a suggestion which we sternly put away from us. Trimmers are, in

In

the first place, an abomination. the second place, they are large discs of cork painted on the outside white and on the other red; a stick runs through them, and a line is wound round them, and they are sent out with a live-bait to fish by themselves with the white side uppermost. When a pike takes the bait the trimmer turns over and becomes red; then you go and chase it in a boat. The use of these things is reprehensible, but, -no, on second thoughts we will not speak of the fascination of the sport; we will merely denounce them and so leave them.

In his heart Old Billy despises us for sticking to the rod as good sportsmen ought; but fish, he admits, we shall probably catch, for the water is right and the weather. There were a few degrees of frost last night and it is still cold. The amiable red sun that is now well up will make it a little less cold presently, but not much; this December day he is more

for ornament than use. The air, however, is dry and there is no wind; this is the cold that makes one vigorous and does not induce shivering fits. It is in short as fair a day for winter fishing as could be wished. Old Billy paddles the punt out to the marks, if we may borrow a term from those that go down to the sea in ships, and sticks in his rypecks just at the head of the further eddy. For some unexplained reason most of the pike inhabit this part of the pool; it may be that the other eddy has less movement, and consequently has accumulated a little mud. At any rate nine tenths of the pike taken in the pool are hooked in this eddy, and here we accordingly fish. We have a somewhat childish liking for a beautiful float, and the one we mean to use is large and fat, its upper part a rich crimson and its lower a deep green. We are well aware that it is conspicuous, and that the complete angler would be ashamed to attach a thing so monstrous to his line. Yet it is not so large as a triminer, and its ruddy and cheerful countenance always seems emblematic of hope, even when the fish are least in the humour. Equally ruddy and cheerful are the three little pilot floats which we fasten above the other at intervals of eighteen inches. We use them ostensibly to keep the line from sinking, but really for æsthetic effect; our line will not sink because it has been well greased in the manner known to dry-fly fishermen, but the floats look pretty as they follow the big one in an obedient row. If the rod were long enough we should use more. Old Billy would not understand our refined pleasure in these minute things, so we do not trouble to explain them to him; instead we dangle our snap-tackle before him, that he may put on a dace from the bucket.