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of the feet was exactly observed, and in convents of religious ladies, the Reverend Mother Abbess washed the feet of all the nuns of her convent.

The Quattro Capi: Tiber: Ghetto:

Forum.

FTER the forenoon ceremonies in the Vatican on Holy Thursday, I wandered towards home by a route that lay through narrow streets, amidst congested masses of nodding houses, up hill and down hill, through curving, sinuous crevasses, wending along by hall ways, under arches and gloomy covered galleries, through the complicated mazes and arteries of this Eternal City. I passed over to the left side of the Tiber by the bridge Ponte di Quattro Capi, so called from a four-headed figure of Janus which anciently stood near it. This bridge was originally called Pons Fabricius, having been built by the then Curator Viarum of Ancient Rome named Fabricius, and in the year 60 before the birth of Christ. It is associated with the memories of classic times, and is mentioned in the satires of Horace as being the spot where Damasippus was about to throw himself into the Tiber, and was deterred from the rash act by the admonitions of Stertinius. I leant for a time over the parapets of this ancient bridge, looking down on the current of the yellow waters of Old Father Tiber still flowing on to the sea, as the ceaseless stream of time flows on to the ocean of eternity. I contemplated the momentous events that occurred on these banksevents upon which hinged the destinies of the empires of the world. Into those waters plunged the brave Horatius,

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FISHING FOR ANTIQUITIES.

the keeper of the gate. They were crossed by triumphant armies, generals, and emperors, and were often crimsoned by the tide of life flowing from gashes opened by charging battalions who pierced each other's vitals with their naked steel. On these banks Peter and the Vicars of Christ presented to Christendom the Magna Charta of the most ennobling privileges, and unfolded to the children of grace their title deeds to their everlasting inheritances! I thought that perhaps many precious relics of ancient Rome still lay hidden beneath those waters. It occurred to me that as the Popes have been so successful in recovering so many treasures of chronology, archæology, and prized works of ancient art by excavating the foundations of old houses and palaces, and former classic sites, that many more such treasures must be buried beneath the bed of the Tiber. How deeply interesting would be the work of fishing up those buried prizes! An enterprise to effect this project has been recently organized, and just now the finest river fishing in the world is about to begin. The Tiber is to be dragged for its hidden antiquities. A society has been formed at Rome for this purpose, in conjunction with the engineering company established for the embankment of the Tiber. Signor Castellani, Prince Odescalchi, the Marquis Vitelleschi, Mr. Story, the eminent American sculptor, and the historian Mommson, are some of those who have taken the matter up. In a letter to Castellani, the historian gives unreserved encouragement to the undertaking, and speaks of the "noble enterprise, which cannot fail to awaken the highest interest, and to deserve the loudest applause of the archæologists of all countries, as well as of those who know our present civilization to be grafted on old Roman culture, so that what is always the church's capital is in a certain sense the capital of the whole

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world".

Herr Mommsen has no doubt that the search will lead to the discovery of great artistic and archæological treasures, "especially in bronzes". The works of the society will be carried on, we may say, hand in hand with those of the engineers engaged to protect the city of Rome against the periodical ravages of the river. One noble feature of the project is, that the work is to be done "for love". Whatever objects may be reclaimed are to form a National Roman Museum: and the members renounce beforehand every thought of dividends, spoil, or personal return for their money and co-operation. The enterprise is independent of the Government, and entirely patriotic; yet the aid of foreign archeologists will not be declined, if offered upon the same basis of frank enthusiasm for learning and ancient art. Now, then, for the " branched candlestick", the "head of Tolus", or whatever else may turn up! Sport royal may be anticipated-for twenty-five centuries have ground-baited those fishing deeps.

seven

Passing over this bridge of Quattro Capi, I entered the region called the Pescheria, and soon after reached the locality inhabited by the Jews, the Ghetto. Many Hebrew captives were sent to Rome by Pompey, and their descendants fixed their residence there during the old Empire, and obtained protection and many privileges during the reigns of Julius Cæsar and Augustus. They multiplied, and Josephus states they once numbered a population of 8,000 souls. They became turbulent; their residence in the city was at first confined to the limits of the Trastevere. Subsequently Pope Paul IV. obliged them to reside within the quarter of Rome called the Ghetto. It was surrounded by walls, and was entered by gates, which were locked up on them every night.

The streets within are narrow and the locality is squalid, and yet, though containing a population of 3,600 within a very contracted area, is still remarkable for its singular salubrity, attributable, as is supposed, to the density of the population being a security against the prevalence of the malaria, the scourge of Rome. Some few are rich, but the great majority are paupers. Pope Nicholas III. and Gregory XIII. obliged them to send a representative body of some hundreds to attend six times a year in the church of St. Angelo, in Pescheria, to hear explanatory lectures on the Old Testament, especially on the prophesies relating to the Messiah, in expectation of converting them to the belief in Christ and Christianity. The fruit, alas! has been small indeed! Pope Pius IX. abolished the Ghetto as an exclusive residence for the Jews, allowing them at pleasure to fix their dwellings in any other part of the city. Their numbers now in Rome very closely approximate 4,000.

In Palestine the Jews have long been reduced to a very small proportion of their former numbers. They are now most numerous in the northern part of Africa, between Morocco and Egypt, where, especially in the Barbary States, they form the chief element of the population, and in that strip of Europe which extends from the Lower Danube to the Baltic. In the latter region there are about 4,000,000 Jews, most of whom are of the middle class, among the Slavonic nationalities; while in the whole of Western Europe there are not 100,000 of them. In consequence of European migrations, descendants of these Jews have settled in America and Australia, where they are already multiplying in the large commercial towns in the same manner as in Europe, and much more rapidly than the Christian population. The Jewish settlers in

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Northern Africa are also increasing so much that they constantly spread farther to the south. Timbuctoo has, since 1858, been inhabited by a Jewish colony of traders. The other Jews in Africa are the Falaschas or Abyssinian black Jews, and a few European Jews at the Cape of Good Hope. There are numerous Jewish colonies in Yemen and Nedschran, in Western Arabia. It has long been known that there are Jews in Persia and the countries on the Euphrates; in the Turcoman countries they inhabit the four fortresses of Scherisebs, Kitab, Schamatan, and Urta Kurgan, and thirty small villages—residing in a separate quarter, but treated on an equal footing with the other inhabitants, though they have to pay higher taxes. There are also Jews in China, and in Cochin China there are both white and black Jews. The white Jews have a tradition, according to which in the year 70 A.D. their ancestors were 10,000 Jews who settled at Cranganore, on the coast of Malabar, after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. The Jews remained at Cranganore until 1565, when they were driven into the interior by the Portuguese. The black settlers are supposed to be native proselytes, and have a special synagogue of their own. Finally, I reached the Campo Vaccino, the cattle market or Smithfield of Rome. Though ignoble the modern use and name, it occupies a site of no less historic celebrity than that of the classic ground of the ancient Roman Forum. It was comprised within the space between the Palatine and Capitoline, but its precise boundaries form a subject of much discussion and angry controversies between the conflicting theories of historians and antiquarians. It is supposed to have extended from the Capitol and the Arch of Septimius Severus towards the Arch of Titus, opposite the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina on