us," and immediately a miracle rewarded his pious faith. By the time the Koreishites reach the cave, an acacia tree had sprung up, a pigeon had built a nest and laid two eggs in it, and a spider had woven its web across the entrance. The pursuers turned away disappointed, and the fugitives were saved. None of the sacred pigeons are ever killed; indeed, a wilful injury to one of them is said to be punished with death. Their number is kept within bounds by frequent gifts of pairs to distant mosques and to privileged individuals. The bazaar comprises miles and miles of narrow lanes intersecting each other. A row of low counters runs along the front of the shops. On these the masters sit crosslegged, or with one foot under them, quietly smoking their pipes, and languidly transacting business with customers, who not unfrequently seat themselves in like manner, while they drive a slow bargain, and murder precious time. People following the same trade occupy the same street. Near the entrance of the bazaar are found the trades of least importance, such as sellers of beads, combs, and spoons. There are whole streets with shops full of the last articles of every material, from wood and bone to silver and gold, adorned with coral and precious stones. Here, too, may be seen the chopsticks, which remind one of the vampire lady in the story, who in her husband's presence ate nothing but rice, which she picked up grain by grain. One can understand how her rose-tipped fingers manipulated the dainty machine for which advanced civilisation, always in a hurry, even in eating, has substituted a many-pronged fork.-The Argosy.

CRITICS AND THE CRITICISED.-We know further that the best of critics is the one who makes fewest mistakes. We laugh at the familiar instances of our ancestors' blindness; but we ourselves are surely not infallible. We plume ourselves on detecting the errors of so many able men; but the very boast should make us modest. Will not the twentieth century laugh at the nineteenth? Will not our grandchildren send some of our modern idols to the dustheaps, and drag out works of genius from the neglect in which we so undeservedly left them? No man's fame, it is said, is secure till he has lived through a century. His children are awed by his reputation; his grandchildren are prejudiced by a reaction; only a third generation pronounces with tolerable impartiality on one so far removed from the daily conflict of opinion. In a century or so, we can see what a man has really done. We can measure the force of his blows. We can see, without reference to our

personal likes or dislikes, how far he has moulded the thoughts of his race and become a source of spiritual power. That is a question of facts, as much as any historical question, and criticism which takes it properly into. account may claim to be in some sense scientific. To anticipate the verdict of posterity is the great task of the true critic, which is accomplished by about one man in a generation.-Cornhill Magazine.

SLAVERY UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE.-One inseparable effect of the institution of slavery is the anomalous condition to which the

lower orders of freemen, those who would ordinarily constitute the working classes, are necessarily reduced. Their place in the social economy being taken, they themselves sink into a useless and mischievous encumbrance. This was eminently the case in Roman society under the Empire. The number of slaves was prodigious, and their proportion to other wealth very great. Trade, not only wholesale, but retail, was usually carried on by slaves on their masters' account. Doctors, lawyers, bankers, merchant captains, commercial travellers, small shopkeepers, publicans, hawkers, and even slavedealers, were for the most part but slaves, who exercised their several callings on behalf of the speculators who owned them. Some few employments indeed were open to the poorer classes of freemen, such as inferior situations about the temples and in the custom-houses: but even here they were subject to severe competition with slaves. And so degrading had the prevalence of slave labor caused work to be considered, that men, women, and children, rather than embrace the few means of honest livelihood yet left them, rushed eagerly to fill the numberless useless and immoral callings engendered by luxury in a corrupt society. To be a gladiator, a buffoon, a dancer, or a courtesan, was not only more lucrative, but in public estimation more honorable, than to follow any honest trade; and except for occupations like these, the greater part of the Roman plebs lived in idleness on the gratuitous distributions of food made by the State and by rich citizens. Another consequence of excessive cheapness of slave labor was extreme wastefulness in its application. The loss caused by useless labor was little thought of, and the distribution of work was regulated with the utmost caprice. Whilst some slaves might pass their lives in turning a mill, harnessed, and sometimes muzzled like beasts, others in crouching day and night before their looms, the division of labor in the opulent houses was often carried to such an absurd extreme, that

ten men were scarcely sufficient to perform tasks which might have been reasonably expected of a child. Each different kind of dress, each sort of material, had its own custodian. The mirror, the comb, the girdle, had every one its slave; each different sort of headdress its different professor. The art of carving was brought to such elaborate perfection that there were slaves who had no other business. When a rich man went abroad he was attended by a whole army of footmen and pages, in such numbers as to block up the public ways. Each office of the bath, the kitchen, and the house was performed by its Own slave. Domestic gladiators, actors, male and female musicians, dancers, tumblers, and jesters were kept to enliven the banquets. There were also the troops of cupbearers, beautiful children with long shining hair, slaves of luxury and shame, who were numbered sometimes by hundreds, and these carried in their train others charged with their training and adornment.-The Month.

NERO AND HIS GOLDEN HOUSE.-Nero's life as Emperor was one long series of stage effects, of which the leading feature was a feverish extravagance. His return from the art-tour in Greece outdid all the triumphal processions of the past. Thousands of carriages were needed for his baggage; his sumpter mules were shod with silver; and all the towns he passed upon his way received him through a breach made in their walls, for such he heard was the "sign of honor" with which their citizens were wont to welcome the Olympian victors of old days. The public works which he designed were more to feed his pride than serve the public. He wanted, like another Xerxes, to cut a canal through the Corinthian isthmus; thought of making vast lakes to be supplied from the hot springs of Baiæ, and schemed great works, by which the sea might be brought almost to the walls of Rome. But it was only by his buildings that he left enduring traces, and to this the great disaster of his times gave an unlooked-for impulse. Some little shops in the low grounds near the Circus took fire by chance. The flames spread fast through the narrow streets nnd crowded alleys of the quarter, and soon began to climb up the higher ground to the statelier houses of the wealthy. Almost a week the fire was burning, and of the fourteen wards of the city only four escaped unharmed. Nero was at Antium when the startling news arrived, and he reached Rome too late to save his palace. He threw his gardens open to the homeless poor, lowered at once the price of corn, and

had booths raised in haste to shelter them.

He did not lack sympathy for the masses of the city, whose tastes he shared and catered for. And yet the story spread that the horrors of the blazing city caught his excited fancy, that he saw in it a scene worthy of an Emperor to act in, and sung the story of the fall of Troy among the crashing ruins and the fury of the flames. Even wilder fancies spread among the people: men whispered that his servants had been seen with lighted torches in their hands as they were hurrying to and fro to spread the fire. For Nero had been heard to wish that the old Rome of crooked streets and crowded lanes might be now swept clean away, that he might rebuild it on a scale of royal grandeur. Certainly he claimed for himself the lion's share of the space that the flames had cleared. The palace to which the Palatine hill had given a name, now took a wider range and spread to the Esquiline, including in its vast circuit long lines of porticoes, lakes, woods, and parks; while the buildings were so lavishly adorned with every art as to deserve the name of the "Golden House," which the people's fancy gave to them. In its vestibule stood the colossal figure of the Emperor, one hundred and twenty feet in height, which afterwards gave its name to the Colosseum. From it stretched porticoes a mile in length, supported on triple ranges of marble pillars, leading to the lake, round which was built a mimic town, opening out into parks stocked with wild animals of every sort. The halls were lined with gold and precious stones; the banqueting-rooms were fitted with revolving roofs of ivory, perforated to scatter flowers and perfumes on the guests, while shifting tables seemed to vanish of themselves, and reappear charged with richest viands. There were baths too to suit all tastes, some supplied from the waters of the sea, and some filled with sulphurous streams that had their sources miles away. Thousands of the choicest works of art of Greece and Asia had been destroyed, but their place was taken by the paintings and the statues brought from every quarter of the empire. Nero sent special agents to ransack the cities for art-treasures, and many a town among the isles of Greece mourned in after days the visit that had despoiled it of some priceless treasure. When all was done, and the Emperor surveyed the work, even he was satisfied, and he cried, "Now at least I feel that I am lodged as a man should be." It was in halls like these that the privileged few gathered round their lord when he returned from the grave business of the circus and the stage to indulge in the pleasures of the table.-The Earl Empire. By W. W. Capes, M.A.