This cannot be revealed; such publicity might wound his delicate sensitiveness. In this article he must only be known as 'Lo.' No bad name either: there was once a Saint Lo, of knightly memory; so 'Lo' is well suited to designate the most chivalrous of cats.

He grew up to maturity in the house where he was born. For three years his familiar apple-tree, on which he tried his youthful claws, blossomed and bore; for three years, the sparrows in the thorn and willow provided him with a little useful recreation -no worse, certainly, than deer-stalking and harehunting; and then his destiny darkened. We were about to flit-a long flitting of some hundred miles and more; and of all the questions involved therein, one of the most difficult was, what was to be done with Lo? We could not leave him; we did not like to give him away; and yet we feared that the cry, 'A new home-who'll follow?' would never be responded to by him. The most frequent suggestion was to take his photograph, and then give him a little dose of the 'fixing' material, which would 'fix' both him and his likeness for ever in this world, and save all further trouble. But this idea was not likely to be carried out.

'When there's a will there's a way. I made up my mind concerning him.

On the day of the flitting-when he was lying peacefully and unconsciously on his native kitchen hearth, which he was never more to behold—I carried him, purring and fondling, to an empty room upstairs, and locked him in, together with a hamper and dinner. He did not quite understand the proceeding, but accommodated himself to circumstances, and lay down to sleep in the sunshine. There, ignorant of the black future, he passed his day. At nightfall I packed him and sewed him up, still purring, in the hamper of his woes. To parody the old axiom: 'When a cat's carried, his sorrow begins.' From that hour there was no more peace for our unfortunate Lo.

He, with myself, was taken in for a week by a benevolent family, who kept a bird. This necessitated Lo's solitary confinement in a wash-house. Thither, almost exanimate from fright-I believe he even fainted in my arms-was he conveyed; and there, though visited, fed, and condoled with, he remained in a state of mind and body of indescribable wretchedness-sleeping in the copper, and at the least noise retiring for refuge up the chimney. His appearance, when being repacked for his second journey, was that of a disconsolate, half-idiotic sweep.

hope that I should find him sitting happily on the hearth, which, we are weak enough to fancy, never looks quite comfortable and home-like without a cat. But hope deceived. My first question: 'How is he?' was answered dolefully: 'He has run away.'

Ay, just when his troubles were ended, when his mistress was coming home, when all the delights of milk and cream, sunshiny lawns to sleep on, green trees to climb, mice, and-dare I say it?-young birds to eat, were opening before him-he ran away! We returned to a catless fireside.

Of course, every search was made: a reward offered, the village policeman applied to; but day after day passed, and no sight of Lo. Sometimes flying rumours reached us of his being seen in gardens, or scampering across fields, or sheltering in some stable or barn. Once, the policeman paid us a special visit, stating formally his knowledge of his whereabouts, and that every measure should be taken for his recovery; but even the professional skill, worthy of being exercised on some distinguished criminal, failed with regard to our cat. We had almost given him up for lost.

Now, one ought never patiently to submit to any loss, till every possible means tried have proved it irremediable. One evening after he had been a week missing, and taking into account his exceedingly shy || and timid disposition, the strange country in which he had lost himself, and his utter ignorance of illusage, we began to relinquish all hope of his return, I resolved to go in search of the cat myself. A scheme about as wild as starting to hunt up a brother in Australia, or a friend in the far west-a sort of Evangeline' expedition: yet most women reading Longfellow's exquisite poem, must feel that such a proceeding as Evangeline's would be perfectly natural, reasonable, and probable under similar circumstances. So, after tea, I went out. It was a lovely evening, with hedges just budding, and thrushes just beginning to pipe out that peculiar rich note which always reminds one of the return of spring-an evening when one enjoys, and likes to think of all those belonging to one as enjoying, the renewal of nature, life, and hope. I did not like to think of even my cat-my poor cat, for whom was no after-life, no immortal and eternal | spring—dying in a ditch, or starved, beaten, illused, till death was the kindest thing I could hope for him. I almost wished I had taken his friend's advice, that we had photographed him, and 'fixed' him, safe from all mortal care.

and I felt sure that if he appeared again he would be coaxed, caught, and brought safe home. I then continued my pilgrimage.

'Please take care of it-it's a cat.' 'A what, ma'am?' asked the magnificent-looking guard.

'A cat-a live cat.'

He laughed. "O yes, ma'am-all right.' bade poor Lo a temporary farewell.

Letters communicated his wellbeing. He had arrived at home-had recovered from his first paroxysms of terror-had even begun to wash himself and appear like a cat of civilised mien. There was

Equally unsympathetic was an elderly gentleman, the owner of a beautiful house, garden, and conservatory, and who came most politely to the door, his bonnie little grand-daughter holding by his hand. He had a fine face, long silvery hair, was bland and

amiable of demeanour, reminding me of Mr Dickens's "Casby the Patriarch.'

'Madam,' said he, after hearing my tale, 'if those animals are allowed to inhabit such a place, I devoutly wish all the cats in this world were in paradise. They are the ruin of us horticulturists. Do not regret yours. I can supply you out of my garden with any number, dead or alive.'

Next day, sitting at work, I heard a scuffle in the hall; the door was flung joyfully open

'Ma'am, there's your cat.'

It was indeed. Gaunt, scared, dirty; fierce with hunger, and half-wild with fright, the poor runaway was brought home to his mistress's arms. After the immemorial fashion, I drop a veil over the pathetic scene which followed.

*

**

*

*

Many another house I tried; my search having one result-namely, the discovery that I had a number of nice neighbours-old ladies, neat as a new pin; spruce parlour-maids; kindly mistresses, mostly with babies -such an abundance of civil tongues, and pleasant, good-natured, nay, handsome faces, as might well be satisfactory to a new-comer into this country place. I also gained one consolation, that it was the safest neighbourhood in which Lo could possibly have been lost, since all the good folk seemed personally acquainted, not only with one another, but with one another's cats. Ours might yet turn up, or, if not, might find an asylum in the bosom of some unknown family, who would console him for the cruel mistress and uncomprehended miseries which doubtless had unsettled his reason, and driven him to despairing flight.

So, having done all that could be done, I was fain to turn homeward

In the spring twilight, in the coloured twilight, -never seen except in spring. It tinted the bare trees and brown hedges, throwing over the whole sky a tender light, and changing the shiny bit of far-away western sea into a lake of burning roses. Wonderful was the peace over all animate and inanimate nature, as it lay, waiting in faith the step-by-step advance of another unknown year.

-an

Passing the lodge of the big house of the village open door, fire-light, and children's prattle, inspired me with one last vague hope. I knocked. 'Have you seen,' &c., &c., &c., as usual.

No. Yet the sight disclosed almost atoned for the disappointment. An interior, such as only an English cottage could furnish; a cottager's wife, such as Morland or Gainsborough would have delighted to immortalise. Her face, healthy, fair, and sweet-nay, downright beautiful, was reflected feature by feature in two other little faces-one staring out bravely from beside mother, the other half-hidden in her gown. This last charming little face, which no persuasions could allure from its shelter, was itself worth the whole evening's pilgrimage to look at; and the centre picture, half twilight, half fire-light, is a thing to be set down in memory, among passing glimpses of unutterably beautiful fragments, which remain daguerreotyped as such, for ever.

This episode, with the rest, amused us for some time, when, coming home, we talked over our chances of recovering our lost pet; conjecturing that for a month to come, we should have all the stray cats of the neighbourhood brought to us for recognitionexcept the right one. But to 'greet ower spilt milk' is not our custom, lest life should become not only a via lactea, but a via lachrymosa. So, having done our best, we dismissed the subject.

Surely, after all this bitter experience, he will recognise his truest friends-true even in their unkindness; will believe in his new quarters as home, and play the prodigal no more.

Poor Lo! I hope it is not applying profanely 'the noblest sentiments of the human heart,' if, as he lies there, snugly and safely, I involuntarily hum to myself a verse out of The Clerk's Twa Sons of Owsenford:

The hallow days o' Yule were come,

And the nichts were lang and mirk,
When in there cam her ain twa sons,
Wi' their hats made o' the birk.
Blaw up the fire now, maidens mine,
Bring water frae the well:
For a' my house sall feast this nicht,
Since my twa sons are well.

And she has gane and made their bed,
She's made it saft and fine,

And she's happit them in her gay mantil,
Because they were her ain.

(Bless us, what would 'Mr Casby' say?)

I here end my story. Better-since fortune is fickle, and affection often vain-end it now; lest, as Madame Cottin says in the final sentence of her Exiles of Siberia-did I continue this history, I might have to chronicle a new misfortune.'

THE TRAINING OF BEASTS IN ANCIENT

ROME.*

THE art of taming and training wild beasts was never practised on a grander scale than during the latter period of Roman antiquity. Very justly has Goethe represented delight in the wonderful, the incredible, and the monstrous,' as the most striking peculiarity of the later Romans. In fact, it may be said, that among these degenerate descendants of the world-conquerors, throughout a constant succession of the most powerful excitements, so effeminate a relaxation had crept in, that only one thing could give them interest-namely, the accomplishment of the impossible. Theatres that turned round upon pivots with all the audience, buildings in the sea, dishes composed of rarities from all quarters of the globe, are some of the fruits of this tendency, which ignored the limits of space and time, and regarded the laws of nature with scorn.

It was not enough that the rarest, fiercest, and most beautiful beasts were gathered together in Rome from the ends of the earth, they were also compelled

Translated from the German.

to lay aside their instinctive impulses, and be obedient to what was most repugnant to their nature. The art of taming wild beasts was, at first, connected with the exhibitions of the amphitheatre and the circus; but to avoid wearying the public by successive repetitions of bloody contests between men and animals, recourse was had to games in which naturally tame beasts were exhibited along with others that had been tamed by art. In consequence of the great number of amphitheatrical displays, the labour of taming and training gave employment to multitudes of men. In an astrological poem of the early imperial date, where the constellations which predestine men to their several callings are given, there is found the horoscope of those who tame the tiger, soften the rage of the lion, converse with elephants, and render these unwieldy masses fit for human arts and duties. In another poem of the fourth century of our era, the horoscope is represented of those who make bears, bulls, and lions fit for intercourse with men.' The whole imperial era, in fact, seems to have abounded in these tamers (mansuetarii).

Pliny observes that the smallest and most timid of beasts and birds, such as the swallow and the mouse, were altogether intractable; while the largest and fiercest, as the elephant and lion, were easy to tame. The ancient Indians had already very successfully tutored the elephant; but in Rome the discipline was carried to a much greater length. We quote Pliny's own words: In a play given by Germanicus, the elephants brought their clumsy evolutions into the shape of a dance. Sometimes they used to brandish their weapons in the air, to fight one another like gladiators, and to riot in a wanton dance. Later, they practised on the rope, on which four of them carried another in a litter, which was supposed to represent a woman in childbed, and whom they let down so gently upon the sofas of a guest-table, that they disturbed none of its occupants. It is told of an elephant that was slow at learning, and which had often been beaten on that account, that it was watched in the night, and found practising its lesson by itself. These huge animals mounted the tightropes with the greatest agility, and, what is even more remarkable, descended them with equal ease. Mucianus mentions an elephant that had learned to write Greek, and to its performances used to add: "I have written this with my own hand," &c.'

The taming of lions, also, had already been prosecuted to a great extent in ancient Greece and in Africa. The Indian lion, according to the Greek naturalist, was particularly easy to train when young. The Carthaginian Hanno is said to have been the first who went about attended by a tamed lion. Berenice, the Egyptian queen, had a favourite lion that ate at her table and used to lick her cheeks. Marc Antony rode about Rome in a chariot in which two lions were yoked. Domitian had a lion that was taught to carry the game in hunting, who let himself be chased by hares, and into whose throat one might thrust his hand with impunity. This prodigy was the subject of several poems. Martial counsels the hare to take refuge from the pursuit of the hounds in the jaws of the lion, and asks which was the greater miracle, that the eagle of Jupiter had not hurt Ganymede, or that the emperor's lion had not injured the imprisoned hare? This wonderful lion, however, was torn in pieces by another beast that broke out from its cage in the arena; but he had the consolation, as Statius says, of being mourned by both the people and the senate, and that the emperor took his loss worse than that of ever so many Egyptian, African, or German beasts. Heliogabalus used sometimes, for a joke, to terrify his guests by bringing his tame lions suddenly into the dining-room. Even tigers were sometimes so far

subdued as to lick their keepers' hands and faces. Leopards were easily reduced to submit to the rein of the charioteer.

Another triumph of this training was the inuring of land-animals to the water. Among the splendid exhibitions to which Titus owed no small amount of his popularity, was the arena under water, where horses, oxen, and other animals were collected, and taught to go through the duties to which they were accustomed on the dry land. The story of oxen being in the habit of carrying women, may probably have suggested the mode in which the abduction of Europa was accomplished. Oxen in general were very tractable; they learned to stand upon their hind-feet, and would allow jongleurs to perform their tricks on their backs, and were even skilled in playing the part of drivers in chariots at full speed. Tamed beasts frequently served both to raise the splendour of mythological tableaux and ballets, and to enhance the comic displays at masquerades. Carnivals of the same kind were often held at the festivals of the gods. Apuleius describes a procession at a festival of Isis: there was a tame she-bear clothed as a woman, borne on a chair; an ape, in the costume of Ganymede, with a Phrygian cap and saffron-coloured mantle, presented a golden cup; an infirm old man, travelling with a winged ass, parodied Bellerophon with Pegasus. It may be supposed that, in such parodied representations, apes were the best adapted, and the favourites; and several monuments indicate this to have been the case. In these, apes are represented as being trained, sometimes under fear of the whip, at others by caresses; some with the head-gear and castanets of dancers, or in the long robe of the citharadi with the lyre, or as flute-blowers, or driving chariots with whip and reins, or as soldiers, &c., are mentioned by historians, and are to be seen in pictures. The most interesting of these is a wallpainting in Pompeii, where the deliverance of Anchises and Ascanius from the burning of Troy by Æneas, is represented by apes. These works, fortunately preserved, prove that the ape-comedy was zealously cultivated in ancient Rome. Also, as domestic animals, trained apes were in great request, especially for the amusement of children: an ape of clay has been found in a child's grave, evidently a plaything.

The comedy of the dogs flourished no less than that of the apes. We have the description of a play in which a dog acted the chief part, which was performed with great applause in the presence of the Emperor Vespasian, in the theatre of Marcellus at Rome. The four-footed actor shewed the greatest self-possession, when, in the course of the representation, some drink was given to him which purported to be poison, but which was really only a sleepingdraught. After he had swallowed the draught,' says the narrator, he began to tremble, to reel, and to become unconscious; at length he stretched himself out, as if dying, lay as really dead, and allowed himself to be pulled and dragged about as the plot of the drama required. But as soon as the signal was given, he began to move gently, as though awaking out of a deep sleep, lifted his head, and looked round him; and while the spectators were expressing their admiration, he went up to the person to whom, according to the fiction of the play, he belonged, and shewed so much delight and fondness by wagging his tail, as to excite universal astonishment.'

The boudoirs of fashionable Roman ladies were, it is well known, furnished with tame birds. Who does not remember the sparrow of Lesbia, which Catullus has made immortal?

How much tame doves were in request may be judged of by the fact, that towards the close of the republic, a celebrated breeder sold a single pair for

-principally fourpenny-bits of the Constantine period-his brooches, his pottery, and his own bones, all over that neighbourhood, with his accustomed profusion. The Druids were there, of course, giving that artificial ringworm to the crown of the hill, which it was their duty and pleasure to effect upon all waste places. It had a beacon also, which can still be seen, and has often given warning to canny Yorkshire when canny Scotland was about to make a foray. There is a good deal of contention between these neighbours still, but after quite another sort of fashion, and diamond cuts diamond, instead of claymore broadsword. The northern folks arrive now quietly enough by the London and North-western Railway, and Bradshaw gives token of their approach instead of the beacon of old Ingleborough. But there is a grand look-out yet from the place where its ruins lie, two or three thousand feet above yon waste of waters: Lancaster tower and town; the little caravans crossing the perilous sand-roads, which, in a few hours, the sea will again claim for her own; smoke-pennoned steamer and white-sailed ship; curved bays, with little fishing-hamlets; belts of woodland with a glimmering star, vane-and very properly so-of some ivy-mantled village church; the mouths of three fair rivers, running down with many a curve and sweep from swarded uplands; on this side, a sandbank or an island low in the sea, and on that, a group of mountains, the highest which our England has to boast of.

But, after all, our business is with Ingleborough Within. The whole district of Craven-the British Craigvan, country of rocks-of which this hill is lord, is honeycombed by innumerable earthchambers. Ribblesdale, Wenningdale, Wharfdale, and half a score of other dales, named after their respective rivers, which curve so shallowly and broadly around the wooded limestone cliffs, are undermined and tunnelled for miles by the hand of nature, and beneath them flow 'sunless streams,' like Alph, the sacred river, none knows whither, and 'measureless to man.' Often as we wander over the shoulders of Ingleborough, we hear voices and gurglings from torrents which never find their way at all to the upper world, and from out one cavernous mouth in the hill Whernside, flows a stream which, in flood-time, washes out periodically old silver coins of the reign of Edward I., from who-knows-whose deep-hidden treasury. In Giggleswick Scars, whose name unhappily does not convey any idea of their real grandeur, is an ebbing and flowing well, of exceedingly irregular habits, having a flux and reflux, with a difference of from a few inches up to a foot and a half, caused by some wondrous subterranean power, which miserable mathematicians explain by the principle of the double syphon. If you lay your ear to the ground at a certain spot in Ribblesdale, you will hear how the water comes down at Lowdore in fairyland, although not so much as a rivulet is to be seen outside of Robin Hood's Mill. Sometimes tremendous funnels, of two hundred feet in depth, lead by a very direct route, and one which would take no time at all to traverse, right down upon these mysterious streams, which are lit by them here and there, upon their dark road, as a tunnel by its shafts. Black and deep enough the water seems, as we peer over the edge of the 'pot' to look at it, nor does it make us at all ambitious to imitate that subterranean explorer, Sinbad, in trespassing on kelpie ground. Hellen Pot, which contains in it an underground water-fall of no less than forty feet, has been descended to the depth of three hundred and thirty feet, where the black river sinks into a quiet rotatory pool, and does not reappear to mortal eye for more than a mile. Some few of these pots have fish in them: large dark trout abound in Hurtle Pot, where 'the boggart,' in

rainy weather, is heard to threaten and fret, and are also found in less quantity in the chasm above it, though the upward force of the water is there so strong as to cast up stones of considerable size to the surface, and even on the bank.

There is a village under Ingleborough called Clapham, a great deal more picturesque than its metropolitan namesake; and from it the ascent of the hill is generally begun. At the neighbouring railway-station are to be read considerable puffs about his serene highness, and particularly concerning the structure of his internal arrangements, which cannot but be gratifying to any mountain. The tourist is entreated to come early, and to spend a week in visiting Ingleborough and its caves.

A quarter of an hour's walking brings us to the hamlet, with its verdurous ravine and the fall issuing from the artificial lake above it; and half an hour afterwards, we arrive by a beautiful path which winds through larch-plantations, round the mountain's side, at the mouth of the cave. The entrance is wild and imposing, embowered in trees, and overhung with trailing foliage, and commands such a view of the deep ravine beneath it, and of the limestone shoulders of opposite Ingleborough, bare or half draped in green, as would be fit enough to gladden the eye of an anchorite, did any chance to dwell here. When the tallow candles are lit, and the iron gates closed and locked upon us, we begin to wish ourselves outside again; and when we have stumbled over the sixty yards or so of rock-passage, which is the entire length of the old cave, and admired the few gloomy petrifactions which gleam about in the dark vault as cheerfully as mouldy coffin-plates, we feel quite certain that we have had enough of caverns. That, at least, was our experience of Clapham Cave a score of years ago.

Up to that time, notwithstanding railways, and what is called the march of intellect, and in spite of all the newspapers had written against them, the water-fairies still dwelt under Ingleborough in the beautiful palace they had inhabited ages before the Hengist Brothers were a firm, or Agricola was a husbandman, or even a child in arms. They knew, because they could hear us talking where their outer wall was thinnest next to the old cave, that foolish mortals paid a shilling apiece for looking at what had once been a cattle-stable of their own; but between it and them a partition had been built up some two or three thousand years before, of calcareous concretion' upon our side, and of fretted crystal upon theirs; so that they feared no intrusion. Their manners were similar to those prevailing in European courts. The king spent a great deal of money in racing, and worse; the queen, good old creature, kept bees, and was content with eating bread and honey in her parlour, or, as is more likely in the housekeeper's room, out of the way, for her simple tastes were much reflected upon and ridiculed by her disre spectful children. The young prince had his booncompanions, and loved his rubber at skittles; and the princess, his sister, amused herself with her organ

for she was very high-church-or reclined upon frosted silver cushions, while her maidens (who, poor things, were kept standing all the time half out of the water) regaled her with stories of fabulous merman martyrs, till they brought quite a dryness into her eyes.

The palace itself was of extraordinary extent and splendour; the apartments, though many of them were very lofty, being indeed used in some instances as air-baths, never needed any support for their roofs, but the architect had built up a crystal pillar or two, here and there, for ornament, and in order to swell his bill, which, after all, he had great difficulty in getting settled by the late king (1240 A.M.), who