giving an exhibition of push shots with lumps of mud. To this I drew Caterino's attention. "What," I asked, "is Andrea doing with that club I gave you? "Oh," replied my cherub, with an absent-minded expression, "I have lent it to him for an hour. Andrea is my cousin." But he looked uneasy. At the third hole it was Caterino's turn to go ahead and scout for any ball which might find the water. No sooner was he out of earshot than Cesare, the other caddie, turned to me and spoke winged words. Anon, more in sorrow than in anger, I pressed Caterino for the truth, and with an eye on Cesare that was anything but seraphic, he admitted the sordid impeachment. But, he said, I had not heard all the facts. It was true that he had sold the club, being in sore need of money, but he had retained the right to practise with it for an hour every evening, and to buy it back some day, when he could afford it again. How could he refuse to sell it when his father was out of work and his mother ill? As he poured forth this eloquent justification of filial piety, Cesare's expressive features regis tered various shades of emotion, admiration struggling with envy and delicate irony. Later on, when the game was done, clubs cleaned, and tips duly pocketed, the two lads made off together in grim silence for the caddies' stamping-ground, from whence, before long, came sounds of fierce contention and high debate. But the incident ended without bloodshed; for the quarrels of these people, like their narrow streets, remind one forcibly of the fardistant East-a fierce clamour and clash of words which violently threaten, but seldom reach, an ordeal by battle. At the Golf Club di Roma, even in March, one can usually lunch in the open air, and from the spot where the tables are set, under a little trellised arbour, you can look out across the Campagna and see Alba and Tusculum, gleaming like jewels against the purple velvet of the hills-looking, no doubt, much the same as they did what time the Cæsars dwelt upon the Palatine, or even in the old time before them, when stout Horatius kept the bridge so well. For those who like their golf with a romantic setting and a gently ironic flavour of 'Old Mortality' in the background, I know of no place to compare with these links of Acqua Santa, except it be that apology for a course which sacrilegious foreign devils have laid out between the Yellow Temple and the northern walls of Peking. Here you may bask in the sun at the very gates of the Eternal City, eating spaghetti and drinking good clean wine (at eightpence a pint, mark you), and gaze upon humanity's time-garment, as it were, in the making. Over there, on the right, stretches the Appian Way, splendid monument and silent witness of all the triumphs of Imperial Rome. As one sits here and contemplates from afar its avenue of ruined tombs and shrines of warriors and worthies, whose very names are forgotten, it needs but little imagination to conjure up many a picture and pageant of the past: to fill that stone-paved road with splendid ghosts; to see the conquerors of Carthage, the chariots of the Cæsars and their legions, passing on their flowerstrewn way to the Forum; or to see, in place of the posts that carry the telegraph to Albano, that grim line of 1500 crucifixes which made a Roman holiday of Spartacus and his followers. Yonder, where Seneca's tomb still speaks its message to a world that has little or no time for meditation, a cloud of dust marks the passage of Cook's tourist cars on their way to the catacombs. Far out to the left, the pillared arches of Acqua Claudia and Acqua Marcia stretch out towards the Sabine Hills, serene and splendid in their latter end; and high above them, tiny specks against the blue, circle a pair of droning aeroplanes. So clear is the air and so close at hand seem the hills, that one finds oneself almost unconsciously thinking that generations of sculptors and painters have made a good deal too much of that "rape of the Sabines" business; for, at best, it can scarcely have been more than an affair of neighbours-probably of first cousins, and a summer afternoon's job at that. And, in the same train of thought, what becomes of those gorgeous and bloodthirsty fights between Rome and Tusculum, over which, thanks to Macaulay, we gloated so whole-heartedly in our youth? Seen in this clear noonday light one cannot help wondering how much of that glamour and splendour of panoply was really theirs, and how much of it due to the fine frenzy of the bard. All the same, one would not willingly part with those doughty heroes of the ancient 'Lays,' nor think of Lausulus of Urgo and the great Lord of Luna as fighting village squires with a taste for border raids. Be all this as it may, we now play golf, and shepherds tend their flocks where, in the brave days of old, Alba and Tusculum and all the Thirty Cities came forth to war with Rome." But Caterino, heir of all the ages and races of the Campagna, knows more about St Peter and St Cecilia than he does about proud Tarquin, or Appius Claudius, or any of the mighty dead whose spirits hover round the Seven Hills. He has a few vague ideas (probably acquired at the movies) about the gladiators and Christian fed lion entertainments of the old time Colosseum, but I greatly doubt that he has ever heard of Carthage or "that Serpent of Old Nile." He comes of a stock that has always instinctively preferred a live dog to a dead lion, and that would rather know what wine is in the cask than stop to meditate on the Imperial dust which may have stopped its bunghole. Now, as I sit at my ease after lunch, and proceed to light a contemplative pipe, I perceive him, leisurely emerging from behind the caddie-master's hut and looking as if butter would not melt in his mouth. Approaching delicately, he asks me at what time we are going out again. Never was guileless innocence more convincingly writ on any human face; yet I know, and all the expectant circle of his pals, gathered yonder by the fence, knows, that this casual entrance of his is a matter of artistry and the nicest possible timing, contrived to bring him into my presence just ahead of Amelia, the stolid serving-wench, and in time to secure for him certain remnants of bread, fruit, and his eager cheese, on which eyes have been fixed, through the fence, for the last halfhour. Beyond all question, even for these youngsters, the struggle for life in Italy is a serious business, and it is likely to become much more so for the next generation. The Roman father of to-day asks the question, "What shall we do with our sons?" with just as little prospect of an easy answer to the riddle as any perplexed parent of Putney or Paris or Peking. When the day comes-and it is not far off-when Young Italy is no longer welcome to migrate to America, the question of the nation's daily bread is certain to take on a new and ominous complexion, inasmuch as every year adds hundreds of thousands to the number of mouths to be fed. But whatever may be in store for humanity at large, or for this little world of the Campagna, I am under no apprehension of anxiety as to Caterino's future. He, at all events, will always keep his end up, and be there, or thereabouts, when the cakes and ale are served out. MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. THE VICTORIAN AGE-A PARADOX-PHILISTINES AND MEN OF THE Victorian Age is out of the fury of the Benthamites, fashion. It is at once too near to (and too remote from) the young Bolsheviks of the press to be justly appreciated by them. The men of genius who are its peculiar glory seem dismoded to the anarchs who write in hopeless competition with them. They are easy marks for the banter of the wits, who do not see that they themselves are are expressing a mere passing prejudice. And the misunderstanding is intensified by the fact that, while the political ideals of the Victorian Age are mean and paltry, its artistic ideals, magnificently realised, set it on an equality with the great ages of the world. The Dean of St Paul's, in his Rede Lecture, delivered lately in Cambridge, hails the age, which many men contemn, as the sæculum mirabile, "the most wonderful century in human history." If we look at it from the political point of view, it is difficult to agree with him. In the first place, it was an age of progress, which measured success by the ledger, and believed that there was a kind of sanctity in a large balance at the bank. While its heroes, the captains of industry, clung to life with 66 All was for being assured that without In the second place, the Victorian age broke sharply with tradition. It made an end of the happy contentment dissent," and thought (errowhich had been the Englishman's heritage. It substituted for the quiet prosperity of the countryside the squalid bustle of the town. It set up the plutocrats of the mills as the rivals to the aristocracy, which had been trained for generations to the service of the country, and was ready to face cheerfully whatever sacrifice was expected of it. It was the biggest revolution which had taken place in England since the Reformation; and so noble did progress and prosperity appear in the eyes of those who pursued them that they were ready to condone any enormity which helped them to attain their ends. Thus, in spite of all the fine words that were commonly used about freedom of thought and "liberty " of action, the Victorian Age was the age of shoddy and devil's dust. 66 And from the prosperity of the mill-owners there sprang the great middle class. Suddenly, as by a miracle, the Philistines, as Matthew Arnold called them, came into being. Read Culture and Anarchy' and you will see what form and shape they assumed in the eyes of one who was an acute observer and a master of irony. They were not amiable, and they were indisputably vulgar. They confused words with realities, and they hoped to cover up the grossest egoism with soft phrases. They talked glibly of the dissidence of 66 neously) that they were the real descendants of Cromwell's Ironsides. They boasted that they might say what they chose, and stoutly maintained that licentious speech was a good in itself. They believed that if we abolished tariffs, all the world would follow our benevolent example, and when the world did nothing of the sort they tamely concealed their disappointment. Nothing was so certain in their eyes as that henceforth war was an impossibility. They esteemed the yard measure a far more powerful weapon than the sword, and when war came they would not confess to themselves that they were deceived. In brief, the middle class, most highly characteristic of the Victorian Age, was not precisely handsome to contemplate; but if it knew little of the graces it engrossed some of the more obvious virtues, and it bequeathed to the country good and wise sons, who have done a vast deal of the country's work ever since, and have turned themselves (without hardship) into a new aristocracy. Whatever its faults, and they were not few, the Victorian Age was mightily prosperous. The Dean of St Paul's begs us to remember that "the prosperity and security of the happy time were due to temporary causes, which never can recur." We do not share the Dean's apprehension. We do not believe with him that our |