the same result, amid shrieks of laughter and applause. At last, at the persuasion of a gentle breeze, it turned and walked gravely down the nearest street, still at about eight feet from the ground. This most life-like action almost put the crowd into convulsions. In fact, the elephant might have done real damage, if he had not himself come to an untimely end. For, rising on the breath of popularity, he ascended to the top of a house, stood on the roof, looked down benignly on the crowd as if abou: to make an address, then rolled over on his side, blazed up in momentary splendour, and finally ended in smoke. But of course the balloon-form is easiest to make, and is therefore most common; the variation is in the painting of the ball, and in the figure attached to the car, such as Ships, Cupids, Pulcinella (the Italian mixture of Punch and Cluwn), &c. At Frascati, I saw one go off with old Harry himself, black, horned, hoofed, tailed, according to the traditional treatment. The proud Artist was in high glee, and turned to us saying, “ Last year they had an Angel, and the balloon stuck on the corner of the church. Angels won't leave Frascati. This year I have sent up the devil, and he has gone off clear. Ay, and I wish I could send all the rest off too !”

The Running at the Star, a tilting game played on horseback, is a pretty sight, but is no fun at all compared to a good donkey race, or to the greasy pole as seen at Compatri on the Feast of San Rocco. On the occasion I allude to, after the way had been well prepared for a few yards up the pole by the more adventurous youth, a tall gaunt man, with a suspicious looking bag at his girdle, stepped up with a determined air. A suppressed titter through the crowd showed that many were in the secret. He climbed bold!y up the few yards from which the grease had been well rubbed off ; and then stopped and significantly opened the bag. Producing a comb, he scratched off all the grease as far as he could reach, and diving into the bag, brought out a handful of ashes ! Sprinkling this over the con bed part, he was thus enabled to ascend a foot or two; and by frequent repetition of the operation he gained the top. The chattering and laughing and joking that attended the progress of this feat was ndiscribable, and the popular applause culminated when the hero, rejecting all the other prizes suspended at the top, made deliberate

choice of a brace of polonies ! On these occasions, the arrangement of the people is most picturesque ; and of course it is spontaneous otherwise there would be no charm. Everyone remarks that Italians, whether in groups or singly, are always standing ready to be sketched. Art cannot help living amongst them; they provide it with so much food. A crowd of villagers is a perfect feast of colour. The women generally form in groups apart from the men, and thus we start with a series of broad contrasts. Then, while each woman, however poor, dresses in perfect taste herself, it would almost seen as if she had consulted the dresses of all her friends, so that every group is a harmonious chord of warm colours. Sometimes, to add to the effect, each village has its own distinctive head-dress, or even whole costume, always beautiful. The men, too, are more than a mere contrast : they are pictures in themselves, feathers in their hats, carrings, blue coats, red waistcoats, brown breeches, goatskin leggings, &c. Add to all this, the beauty of feature and complexion so common here, the quaint old houses and the lovely sky, and the general air of happiness which pervades all, and then ask yourself with Mark Taply wlether there is any credit in being jolly in Italey, This picture becomes more striking still inside the Church, or during the open air procession, about which I have preferred saying nothing, even at the risk of providing a play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out, for after all it is the religious part of the festa which is uppermost in the minds of the villagers. No words of mine would be able to draw the scene,- the vestments of the clergy, the dress of the lay confraternities, the Symbols, the Banners, little children dressed as angels with golden wings, the crowd of mingled colours skirting it on both sides, now amongst the olive-groves, now amid trellis-work of viries, now in the streets of dear old Porzio, so beautiful in itself, - all this is indelibly impressed on my memory as one of the fittest symbols earth can find for those deep truths which these processions are always meant to symbolize. And so farewell to Monte Porzio and the Feast of St. Antoninus !

FRED. C. KOLBE.

Notes on Star-lore. SideReal romance in some form or other has been the creation or the heritage of almost every race, however primitive its habits and crude its notions. No manifestations of the great Architect have had such power to rivet the eye and charm the imagination of mankind as His celestial manifestations. The keen frosty brilliance of a northern sky no less than the warm transparent glow of a southern, causes us to raise our eyes aloft in wondering admiration at the starry host which revolves before us in such magnificence. “Sursum corda is the thought that must suggest itself to the most unimpassioned spectator drinking in the silent wonders of a clear midnight sky. The first associations of the enquiring intellect are rather poetical than exact, more fanciful than scientific, bul poetry and fancy, in whatever garb they appear, are the harbingers of greater and more solid truths behind them, and the mere guesses and impulses of imagination often anticipate in their shrewd forecasts the conclusions of the scientific analyst. Star legends, idle dreams of a summer's night, dreamt by the wandering shepherd or mariner, have had nevertheless some useful and interesting function leading the intellect by means of observation to nomenclature and classification and ultimately to astronomical calculations. Astrology and the whole mass of sidereal romance have been introductory to astronomy just as alchemy and the art of sinophy have prepared the way for analytical chemistry. The Chaldean astrologer with his countless observations inspired by an imaginative religion,- for, the temple of Belus, was nothing more nor less than an observatory,- the Greek with his romantic and observant intellect,-King Ptolemy with his Almagest—a marvellous classification in itself—and the more recent astrologers of the middle ages with their pretended power of divination elevating them, to the proud position of kings, councillors, and guides, have one and all aided astronomy, that most mathematical and exact of sciences, but one, at the same time, imaginative in its beginnings. To us at the present day starlegends may not be very useful from a practical point of view. We cannot calculate our latitude and longitude by them, they are waifs and strays of fancy only, interwoven by poets amongst the glorious

throng above, and may have an interest for the archæologist and the student rather than for men of a more practical turn of mind. It is interesting to note, however, that it is a practical view which runs strongly throughout these legends. With the two well-known stars Castor and Pollux was connected a pretty story of fraternal affection, but they were also known as the “lucida sidera ” to the sailor storm-tossed on the Ægean. To him they were as useful as the Pole-star and the Alpha Leonis to the modern navigator. As time went on the practical associations of the Gemini probably obscured the early legend, and the sailor, whilst he guided his ship over the “ barren sea,” forgot the poet's fancy which gave the name. Further, Virgil tells us upon the authority of that purely agricultural astronomer, Aratus, viewing the stars more particularly in connection with gardens, that Böötes, the keeper of the Great Bear, would send no doubtful signs to tell us when to plant kidney beans and, lentils. Even the Kafir, although he may not have many star legends finds in them some practical good, and gathers in his mealies when the mealie-star, the Tsicela 'Koba appears. It would be interesting, however, to know how far the Kafir races may have developed a star-nomenclature of their own, and whether they have gone beyond this simple process. The Bushmen have certainly done so, and have displayed considerable imaginative power in accounting for the origin of the stars. Dr. Bleek informs us that the two lions, the name given by the Bushmen to the pointers of the Southern Cross, were said by them to have been originally men. They also made a division of the stars into night stars and dawn stars—the “ dawn's heart" is the star Jupiter who has a daughter identified with some neighbouring star preceding Jupiter, probably Alpha Leonis. Her name is the “ Dawn's heart Child,” and her relation to her father is somewhat mysterious. He calls her my heart, and swallows her, and then walks the heavens alone. When she grows again he leads her forth and she occupies the same position she did before. Perhaps by this is meant that the light of the lesser star pales before the light of the greater, and the father stands forth revealed alone in the grey twilight. In Bushman phraseology he has swallowed up his daughter. Many have been the interpretations by which the dawn myths of the Aryans and their descendants

ings and reland made hicebus Ap

have been read, but the Bushmen may help in their small way to show us how in the earliest times men have always and under all conditions striven to personify. Measuring all things by the standard of their own feelings and relations they carried the idea of humanity throughout the universe, and made it the supreme one As a further illustration I may add that the Phoebus Apollo of the Greeks was with the Bushmen a man originally from whose armpit brightness came. He lived formerly on the earth, but he only gave light round his own house. Some, children, we are told, belonging to the first Bushmen (who preceded the flat Bushmen) here we get a hint of a race of men living before the present aborigines, and as a scientific fact this is valuable-were therefore sent to throw the sleeping sun into the sky. Since then he shines over all the world.

Not only did the Bushmen personify but, as a necessary sequel to this kind of personification, they proceeded to adore. Of course we cannot suppose that their adoration was very systematic as part of an organized religion, for we have very scant materials at hand to draw conclusions upon, but that they did worship is a fact; for instance, Dr. Bleek assures us that they worshipped more particularly “Canopus” the well-known Bushman rice-star, and their worship was expressed in distinct form of prayer, nor were they free altogether from a kind of animal worship, or at any rate an adoration which was sufficient to elevate animals into the company of the stars. We learn that “Aldebaran” was personified by them as the male, Alpha Leonis as thc female, hartebeest. Procyon was with them the male Eland, Castor and Pollux the Eland's wives; the Steinbok represented the clouds of Magellan,” the male tortoise on a stick Orion's sword, and three female tortoises Orion's belt. This is the classification of Dr. Bleek and Sir T. Maclear, and knowing just so much as this of Bushman star-lore we feel anxious to know more. Enough, however, is revealed to us to prove that the Bushmen personified the stars, giving some of them a story and a name, that they worshipped them, and that they therefore viewed the orbs which passed overhead in the dark silent vault as illustrations of a higher power, otherwise they would not have worshipped them, and that in so doing they displayed an imaginative and