THE LAKE-DWELLERS OF OLD. IN the winter of 1853-4, the surface of the water of Lake Zurich was lowered to a remarkable extent, and the large space left uncovered suggested to the owners of the land on the borders of the lake the desirability of building a dam, to prevent the return of the waters over their newly acquired territory. While the labourers were carrying on this work, it came to the knowledge of Mr Keller of Zurich that they had turned up a quantity of pieces of charcoal, stones blackened by fire, utensils, bones, and piles. He examined these relics, and came to the conclusion that it was the site of an ancient village. The publication of this opinion attracted great attention everywhere, and especially in Switzerland, where several persons entered upon the subject with enthusiasm, dragged several lakes, and were rewarded for their exertions by numerous important discoveries of the highest interest. These researches were extended to the Italian lakes and others, and were always attended by fresh discoveries. In Switzerland alone, not less than a hundred and fifty villages have been found, and this number is being constantly increased. An immense number of objects have been fished out of the mud at the bottom of these lakes, by means of which it is not difficult to write a sketch of the manners, degree of civilisation, and so forth of a people who lived and flourished on this earth of ours at least two thousand years before the Christian era. It will be evident that our space will not admit of our going into details in support of our statements; let it suffice, then, to say, once for all, that they are founded on facts, and the opinions of those who are best qualified to decide on archæological questions.

More than four thousand years ago-that is to say, shortly after the failure of the attempt to build the Tower of Babel-the lakes of Italy, Savoy, and Switzerland were studded with groups of habitations. On Lake Zurich, about twoscore yards from its margin, was one of the most extensive of these groups. Some of these buildings were of circular form, others rectangular; the shape, in fact, depending on the taste of the builder. The walls were of stones, probably cemented together with mortar of some kind, and the insides lined with clay; the roofs were thatched with reeds, twigs, and strips of bark. All of them stood on piles firmly driven into the bed

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of the lake, and communication between them was by means of planks, which connected them with each other. To enable the inhabitants to reach the shore, there was a bridge, formed of trees, split in half, resting on piles. Extending along the shore in front of this landing-place were large orchards, containing apple, pear, and plum trees. Fields of wheat and barley waved in the morning breeze, and the rays of the rising sun travelled down the glittering beds of crystallised snow which covered the tops of the mountains, and lighted the summits of the huge pine and chestnut trees, creeping lower and lower, till it fell in broad bands across the cornfields and the orchards, and clothed the surface of the lake in a robe of silver.

Directly this occurred, men, wearing the skins of oxen, fashioned in the manner of a tunic, came out on the platform in front of their dwellings, unfastened the strip of leather which secured their boats, made of the hollow trunk of a huge chestnut-tree, and paddled away towards the centre of the lake. Here they laid the paddles beside them, took up a line to which a hook was attached, made of a fish's bone, and having carefully baited this, threw it overboard, and patiently waited for the fish which was to contribute to their own breakfast and that of their families. While these were paddling away in their canoes, others, both men and women, were crossing the bridge to the shore, the women carrying pans made of burned clay for the purpose of holding the milk, and the men to work in their fields, or hunt the wild bulls and the deer, the bear and the bison, which abounded in the splendid forests, or follow the chamois in the more inaccessible fastnesses of the mountains. All these men were of rather small stature, and were armed with an axe made of stone, a bow, and arrows formed of reeds tipped with flint heads.*

In a somewhat larger building, at one end of this community of dwellers on the lakes, or Lacustrines as they are termed, the manufacture of these stone axes and arrow-heads was carried on, and a very flourishing trade it was, seeing that they had no other implement

*To this day, precisely similar axes form the principal implement for warlike and other purposes possessed by the inhabitants of certain islands among the Solomon group, who likewise use arrows of the same kind; moreover, the huts in which they dwell are shaped like the majority of those built by the Lacustrines.

than these, assisted by fire, in cutting down the huge trees out of which they fashioned their canoes, the piles on which their dwellings rested, and the planks they used; for the wedges used in splitting the trunks of trees were the same axes somewhat enlarged. Another building was a pottery, where pans, colanders (supposed to have been used in the making of a kind of cheese), and other utensils were modelled of clay, and afterwards baked in a fire. There was abundant life and animation among this community as the day advanced. A light-blue cloud collected over the huts, women and the elder girls were busy at their doors rubbing the grains of wheat or barley between two stones, and making their not very easy task a source of pleasure by gossiping and laughing with their neighbours. The bigger boys were employed in driving the cattle to graze beyond the boundary which protected them during the night from the attacks of bears; while the lesser ones, who were not old enough to be intrusted with tasks, perched themselves on the bridge, and angled for fish, or took headers into the lake from it, and amused themselves by swimming about, or by chasing each other with shouts and laughter among the fruit-trees. A group of men came sometimes slowly through the wood. The skins worn by them were dirty and torn, and they staggered wearily along beneath the weight of the bundles slung at their backs. Two or three hunters who had seen them in the woods escorted them, and listened eagerly to what the wayfarers chose to tell them, which was not much, for they were weary as well as unwilling to have the interest of the narrative of their travels diminished by premature disclosures to one or two individuals; they preferred to relate them to the assembled community. These men had travelled far, even to the shores of the Mediterranean, and had brought back from the people who dwelt on that coast coral and amber, and probably other things which Time has destroyed ages and ages since. We cannot tell what their country could have produced with which they could have purchased these things, and it is likely that the equivalent they gave were captives taken in war, those living articles of barter which the stronger have taken from among the weaker in all ages. We may almost assert that this was so as positively as though we had seen it. That the curse of war existed among them, we know, and that they practised certain ingenuities in waging it, we know also. It is only reasonable to suppose that one of the principal reasons which induced them to make their dwellings on the lakes was the desire to protect themselves from sudden attacks by hostile communities. No community at all considerable had anything to fear from invasion by means of canoes, not because these were few, since for a temporary purpose they had the skin of the urus, which they could convert into a boat by using it as a covering to a framework made of twigs, but because the height of the dwellings above the water gave the inhabitants such overwhelming advantages. Neither was it possible for an enemy to make an attack by way of the bridge, except under circumstances which must have caused them great loss of life, and ended in their almost inevitable defeat. This induced them to invent balls made of clay, with a hole perforated through the centre. An attacking party, if they were not met by the warriors of the community before they reached the bridge, lighted fires, heated these balls red-hot, thrust a green stick, torn from the nearest pine-tree, firmly into the hole, and launched it immediately in the direction of the huts. If this ancient species of red-hot shot fell on a roof, and was prevented from rolling off by any projection, the inflammable materials of which the roof was composed speedily took fire, and the majority of the wretched inhabitants had no means of escape from death by burning but by crossing the bridge, and surrendering themselves to the invaders.

With the exception of risks of this kind, which the community of Lake Zurich had to encounter in common with other Lacustrines, they led a happy life. Want was unknown among them. They had cattle, fruits, and grain, and the lake supplied them with fish. Thus, generation succeeded to generation for ages and ages, as the heaps of worn-out axes beneath their dwellings testify; and when the time came for them to depart, the survivors placed them with their arms by their sides, and their knees close under their chins, and heaped earth upon them till the mound in which they were buried was sometimes thirty or forty yards in height.

At last the time came when these communities were invaded by an enemy, who may have been of kindred race, but who had obtained weapons against which the stone axes were of little avail. The fashion of them was the same, they were still axes, but instead of being formed of stone, they were moulded in bronze. This commenced what is termed the bronze age.

These invaders, who made so evil a use of their discovery of metals, attacked community after com munity, burned their dwellings, and either killed or made captive the inhabitants. Charred fragments of their bread, and a large quantity of carbonised barley and other grain, have been dug out from beneath the alluvial deposits where they have lain for so many centuries.

From the date of this invasion, which is supposed to have taken place about the time when the Egyptians were besieging Nineveh and Babylon, there is a marked superiority in the articles manufactured, arising from the advantages conferred by the possession of metal implements. This is especially the case as regards weapons. The conquerors of the stone men retained the hatchet, but added to it the sword, with which they seem to have decided their combats, as projectile weapons are seldom discovered among the relics left by the men of the bronze period, which consist of needles, pins, knives, reaping-hooks, fishhooks, and other things. The fragments of articles of earthenware which have been discovered differ but slightly from those found among the remains of the stone period, as regards substance, but in form there is considerably greater variety. These Lacustrines of the age of bronze, after destroying the habitations of their predecessors, built others of a like fashion for themselves, the piles on which they rested being in many cases still visible below the surface of the waters of the lakes, rising from the beds to a height of from two to six feet, whereas the piles which supported the huts of the people of the stone period are eaten away by the waters to a level with its bed. Their religious customs, if they really had any-which is assumed by some authorities to have been the case were probably the same as those of the people they conquered, their mode of burial being identical, except that less attention was paid to the position of the bodies of the dead. They, too, followed agriculture, and bred cattle, the bones of which are naturally much more numerous among the remains left by them, than among those left by the Lacustrines of the preceding period, and this is notably the case with respect to the bones of horses.

Century followed century, and these people still held possession of their territories; but the day came when they, too, were compelled to yield to a foreign invader, who fabricated his weapons of iron, and wielded them with a stronger arm. Spreading over the country which lies between the Alps and the Jura, these invaders destroyed every community with which they came in contact. The position of the dwellings of the Lacustrines rendering them almost impregnable, the invaders had recourse to the element usually employed against them with effect, namely, fire. Piece by piece, the flaming beams fell apart, and dropped to the bottom of the lake, and with these the

contents of the huts, factories, and storehouses, where they have lain until now. Thus passed away the men of the bronze period, and thenceforward the lakes were left silent and solitary, except when the fisherman visited them in the pursuit of his occupation. That the invaders on this occasion were of Gaulish origin is proved by a variety of circumstances; such as the fashion of their arms and ornaments, the names of the villages they founded, and their practice of burning their dead. The period when the invasion took place is supposed to have been about 500 B. C.

In some respects, the new occupiers of the land were superior to the old. Their ornaments were infinitely superior in variety and workmanship; they manufactured glass and enamel, and many other things, which prove their intellectual superiority to their predecessors to have been as decided as their physical superiority. It is impossible to maintain for a moment that these Helvetians were not a totally distinct people from the Lacustrines of the stone and bronze periods. The men of these two periods were small-limbed, as is evident from the size of their armlets and the handles of their weapons; whereas their Celtic conquerors were considerably larger, as is shewn by evidence of the same kind found on one of their battle-fields near Berne. But the most decided proof of this difference between them is furnished by their mode of disposing of their dead, and their brutal custom of sacrificing animals and human beings on those occasions. In one of the tumuli of this period which has been opened were found four clay vases containing ashes, undoubtedly of human beings, and above them the charred remains of the bones of animals. On these fragments, stones had been heaped; and on these stones lay the skeletons of four young women, not arranged in order, but in such a position as shewed they had been thrown there, and that large stones had then been dashed upon them with such force that some of the ornaments they had on their persons had been broken to bits and scattered among the stones. Similar discoveries have been made in other tumuli.

Various conjectures have been hazarded respecting the quarter of the globe whence the Lacustrines came originally, but no evidence has yet been discovered which gives anything like certainty to either theory. Still, we cannot close this paper without pointing out certain resemblances which exist between the Lacustrines of the stone and bronze periods and the present inhabitants of the Solomon Isles. The inhabitants of some of the latter are agile and well-shaped, but small-limbed, and rather low in stature. Their principal implement, whether of warfare or for domestic purposes, is a stone axe, small like those of the Lacustrines. Their chief ornament is in the shape of a crescent, and so it was among the latter people. This, however, we do not lay much stress on, because the same pattern was visible to all peoples in all ages. The pecu liar attitude of some of the buried skeletons of the Lacustrines which have been found that is to say, with the knees close under the chin-is identical with what we should find if we opened some of the graves of the islanders; only in the latter case we should know that the skeletons of these people were the skeletons of aged persons who had descended alive into the grave and the earth had been heaped over them, which we cannot know to have been the case with the Lacustrines, but which may have been so. The fact that this ancient people built huts of a eircular form with conical roofs precisely as the islanders do in the present day, is somewhat remarkable, and would appear to indicate that they may have worked from a common model, as the square is the form which would suggest itself to a mind without any preconceived ideas on the subject, and which must inevitably have been suggested to the

Lacustrines by the planks and piles they used for the foundations of their huts, and was, in fact, adopted by some of them.

As discoveries continue to be made in the lakes of Switzerland, Italy, and Savoy, it is possible that some light may before long be thrown on the origin of the people who once dwelt upon them; but whether so or not, nobody can help feeling an interest in the knowledge of the fact, that there existed in Europe a nation which had attained a high degree of civilisation at the same time that Abram and Lot were journeying from Haran to Canaan.

THE SQUIRE'S OFF-FARM. ON the outskirts of our East-Anglian parish of Waterwold, just where the arable land dips into the fen, lies a small triangular estate of some fourscore acres. More than a hundred years back-so goes the story-a certain rich squire, hard of head and hard of heart, wrested this property by unfair means from its poor proprietor. The man died broken-hearted, but his last words were, that the squire would not live to reap the corn he (the dying man) had sown, but should follow him before the hay was cut. And the prophecy was fulfilled. Though nobody hereabouts knows the name of the oppressor or oppressed, yet so strong a hold has this tradition taken on popular fancy, that, on appointed nights of the year, the squire may be seen down by his plantations, yet measuring acre after acre, and the triangle, always let with the Blue-clay Farm, still bears the name which heads my paper. A good hour's walk through a web of muddy lanes, between hedges which look this February afternoon like so much sheet-iron fantastically cut, brings us to its apex. Here are farm-buildings, and, next the fen, the cottage of the labourer, who, as his employer would tell you, belongs to the live-stock on the premises.' Down from this point, the stretch of brown furrows widens as it slopes, till on the rising-ground it is met half-way by the plantations.

That legendary squire must have had an eye for the picturesque; you can see what a noble sweep of forest-growth he had planned. A clump of grand Scotch firs, their trunks now fiery in the westering light, marks the very spot where the design was abruptly broken off a century ago. Over their tops hangs one white cloud, with a fragment not unlike a dim lily-leaf beside it. So much for the background. In front, the sunshine brings very pleasantly out all the tokens of care and thrift about the homestead. The pig-sties must be full, if one may judge from that pervading aroma which sets one speculating why, the smell of roast-pork being delightful, the smell of livepork should be so eminently the reverse. On a slip of pasture, a few shaggy colts are browsing their way up into their profession as cart-horses, like incipient barristers eating their terms; and over this gate we look into the straw-yard, where a score of bullocks are doing their best to make beasts of themselves, in the Smithfield sense of the phrase. The party has evidently been picked out at random from different droves, and presents a very miscellaneous compound. Here are all sorts and conditions of horns, from the shortest projections, to that pair which grow as if they meant to touch the ground, but turn up with a sudden spike half-way. Surely that fellow scratching his head against the gate-post must be descended from the 'cow with the crumpled horn,' which is everybody's acquaintance. There is a brace of Scotch cattle, which might have just walked out of Rosa Bonheur's Morning in the Highlands; certain individuals, with the shabbiest coats of the whole lot, are from Ireland; and there is one odd-looking Welshman, one horn straight, while the other curls gracefully over his left eye.

By dint of bringing a bit of superior oilcake in my pocket whenever I come this way, I have struck

commonplace in themselves, but ennobled by that wonderful mother-love breathing through them, just such another wee round face, every charm of childhood called out by its answering love; these have often looked out upon both you and me, my reader, from the canvas of old Netherland painters. Our cottagers are 'decent God-living folks, as the phrase goes here; for before they fall to, the brown boys duck their heads, while the father says a slow reverent grace; and this act the acknowledgment of a benign Presence-touches us with more than ordinary signifi

cance here in the solitude.

There are times, more or less-I suppose they come to all-when we are chafed to the heart's core, when the very air we breathe seems choked with petty cares and vexations. Then it may be that suddenly some vivid glimpse we once had into other human lives sweeps through the mind with the health of a mountain breeze, clears off the cobwebs, and makes men and women of us again, instead of mere bundles of fretfulness; and I store up as one of these wholesome memories that of the fireside at the Squire's Off-farm.

LULLI.

ONE fine summer day, in the year 1646, the Duke de Guise brought back with him from Florence to Paris an Italian lad just thirteen years of age.

The boy was called Jean Baptiste Lulli. His dark eyes, long flowing hair, and open countenance, together with his peculiar Italian accent, and, above all, his remarkable talent as a violinist, even at that early age, gained him more than one admirer. The Duke de Guise had brought him to France, not for his music, but for another, and at that time, a more practical capacity. Lulli was an excellent cook, and had already learned the secret of preparing certain exquisite dishes, of which none of the French cooks of the period had the slightest notion. However, the Duke was soon obliged to give up the boy to Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who was amused by his foreign accent and graceful manners, and who protected him on account of his musical talents, rather than for his knowledge of cookery.

He got into many scrapes in the royal kitchens. The head-cook was extremely jealous of the favour bestowed upon the young Lulli by so illustrious a personage as Mademoiselle de Montpensier; besides which, he was envious of his superior knowledge in the art of cooking.

Sometimes, when the chef's back was turned, Lulli, forgetting the dinner that was preparing, as well as everything else besides, would take his violin from the cupboard, in which it lay hidden, and execute some soft Italian air, which so enchanted the entire force of the kitchen-chiefly lads of his own agethat one and all forgot their duties, enraptured with the delicious sounds of the violin, until joints were burned, stews evaporated to dryness, and soups and creams coagulated and smoked.

Many a time would Lulli's violin have been broken over his head by the chef de cuisine, but a certain circumstance prevented any violence being attempted. Our readers must know that for some months his august majesty Louis XIV. had intimated his approval of the œufs à la neige and the sorbets which came to the royal table-a dessert which, consequently, was repeatedly demanded, and which Lulli alone knew how to make. The head-cook himself passed, however, for the inventor of these dishes. Lulli knew it, and he had the good sense to allow matters to stand as they were. But no sooner did the old chef, in an access of fury, raise a saucepan or other utensil to fling at Lulli, than the latter exclaimed: Take care, old Scrub! His majesty will be wanting his sorbets

to-day or to-morrow;' when the saucepan was immediately dropped, and all the bitter eloquence that the head of the kitchen was capable of using flowed freely upon the lad's ears. But as Lulli could not be harmed by these words so much as by kicks and blows, his existence was prolonged in the royal kitchens until a certain day which made his fortune.

That day-Lulli was then fifteen and a half years of age-the sun was shining gloriously in the heavens, the kitchen-boys were all as gay as larks; it is needless to add, the head-cook was far away, and Lulli, who had taken up his violin, was treating his enraptured companions to some of his very finest music, when the Count de Nogent suddenly entered the kitchen, and, to the surprise of all present, took away the boy and his violin.

Never again was Lulli to behold those walls and pans that he had so often made to vibrate with his soft Italian melodies.

The count had heard from the open windows of his apartment the sound of Lulli's violin; his curiosity was excited, and he longed to know what inmate of the palace could manage the instrument so skilfully. Having assured himself that the music proceeded from the kitchen, he entered, and telling Lulli not to fear, but to follow him, and bring his violin, he took the boy straightway to the princess, and made him play before her the melodies that were still ringing in the ears of the pot-boys. We do not know all that passed during this interview; but very soon afterwards art by an Italian friar, was placed by Mademoiselle Lulli, who had been taught the first elements of his de Montpensier under the care of a proper master. In a short time, he played better than his professor, and became professor in his turn. He instructed several young men, who became, under his tuition, excellent violinists.

The fame of Lulli as a violin-player had by this hear him. Lulli was nineteen years of age when he time spread so far, that the king himself desired to played for the first time before Louis XIV., who was so enchanted by his performance and with that of his pupils, that his majesty engaged their permanent services as les petits violons du roi, or the little violins of the king. There had existed for some time at the court of Louis XIV. a band of twenty-four violin players; they were called 'the violins of the chamber,' and their reputation had already spread far and wide; but the new band of the petits violons soon eclipsed the former most completely, and Lulli entered more and more each day into the favour of the king.

Lulli now began to study composition, and with very decided success: the brilliant fêtes which were of so frequent occurrence at the court of Louis XIV., and the favour shewn him by the king, gave him numerous opportunities of trying the effects of his music. He made ballets, and composed the music for several plays in which the king himself sometimes took a part, and for which his majesty had erected more especially the theatre of the palace of Versailles. Our musician became at the same time an able composer and an excellent actor: and not only wrote the music and ballets for several of Molière's plays, but took a prominent part in the acting of those pieces. His great success lay in comic character, for which he had a very decided disposition. Indeed, when Molière wished to amuse his guests, he was wont to exclaim, turning to Lulli: 'Come, Baptiste, make us laugh.'

In the year 1672, the king made Lulli director of the Royal Academy of Music, which had until then been submitted to the Abbé Perrin, and from that moment dates the birth of the grand opera in France. The glory of having created such a splendid institution belongs, however, partly to Quinault, a member of the French Academy, who wrote the libretto for most of Lulli's operas. The latter are very numerous; we had occasion to name some of