and, drawing my sword, cut off the ears of the dead one. At short distances I found the bodies of the other nonnettes, as the French used to call them, and I cut off their ears too. What are you going to do with all these ears?' cried one of my companions. Carry them to the Colonel, as evidence of the full success of our enterprise.' 'The ears! what a depraved taste!' exclaimed another. We then hastened by the shortest cut towards the camp, where we arrived about dawn, with the bottles, the two nuns, and the ears. That morning, the Colonel and the Major drank my health in the wine of the convent !"

Such tales are not mere fictions; we have heard many quite as horrid, as the annals of the war of the Peninsula, and the evidence of thousands of Portuguese and Spaniards yet living, and of Englishmen too, can attest. The armies of Napoleon, in their ruthless career of invasion and conquest, had become demoralised to a most fearful extent. No other European armies could vie with them in this respect. The hero afterwards tells the story of his own early career. He was the son of a Piedmontese captain in the old King's service, who was killed at Samparelliano, in the first French invasion of Italy! The son was then at college, his guardian defrauded him of one half of his inheritance when he came out of college; and being left without any check in those revolutionary times, he squandered the rest in three years on wild debauch. "Reduced to my last ducat, I made up my resolution: Napoleon wanted men and I wanted bread-the contract was soon settled. A few months after, I set off for Spain; I there found myself in my true element,-danger, battles, plunder, massacre, had nothing strange for me. I felt as if I was restored to the kind of life for which I was born. I had never been so happy among the refinements of luxury and the pleasures of our Italian cities. I was at last made a lieutenant on the field of battle where Napoleon fell; and I then took the road of Italy, with fifty livres in my pocket, the only remains of the rich booty I had repeatedly made in Spain." That being soon spent, he thought of embarking for South America, the only

part of the world where men were still cutting each others' throats for glory, freedom, or vengeance, or 66 what you will;" when he saw a lady in a public walk at Milan who fixed his attention. He entered her husband's service as a valet. The lady had a secret gallant; he obtained a clue to the intrigue, and upon this he built a diabolical plan. He repaired to a rendezvous instead of the real Lothario, did violence to his mistress, and at the same time managed to have the other gallant introduced into the husband's apartment. This he considered as revenge, because the lady had looked down upon him with contempt. The blow was fatal to the frail one; she fell ill, and died a few days after. And now the wretch who had been the means of her death was miserable, and bribed a fellow-servant to go to steal out of her coffin her long tresses. Here the extract ends.

For such characters the armies of Napoleon were the real element.

XXXVI. THE REAL CASTLE OF OTRANTO.

In that very nice little book of Table-Talk, the Walpoliana,' the author of the romance of the Castle of Otranto' is made to say, "Lady Craven has just brought me from Italy a most acceptable present, a drawing of the Castle of Otranto. It is odd that that back-window corresponds with the description in my romance. When I wrote it, I did not even know that there was a castle at Otranto. I wanted a name of some place in the south of Italy, and Otranto struck me in the map."

The drawing must have greatly flattered the castle if it made Horace Walpole believe that the real edifice was in any way so wild and romantic as his fanciful description. In our turn, we may say, "it is odd" that a son of Lady Craven, the donor of the drawing, should have been the first to inform the public that the castle of Otranto is a common-place, unpicturesque, and comparatively modern building, having nothing Gothic or baronial hout it. The following is Mr. Keppel Craven's sketch.

"The castle of Otranto, a name calculated to awaken feelings of pleasing recollection in an English mind, is far from realising the expectations created by the perusal of the celebrated romance bearing the same appellation. It is now what it ever was, the citadel of this town, a fort of no considerable extent or power, but not entirely deficient in picturesque beauty, especially on the land side. Two large circular towers, features always observable in the fortresses built by Charles the Fifth, rise from the rich foliage of the trees which fill the town ditch, and among which a very high palm is eminently conspicuous. On the opposite wall, a drapery of interwoven creepers exhibits a fine contrast to the colour of the stone of which the edifice is constructed. From its summit the view is extensive, but bare of objects, especially to the south, where a ruined church of St. Nicholas occupies the site of an ancient temple of Minerva, and forms the only feature in the landscape. The wind blew strong from the north, and cast a haze on the distant horizon: when that is not the case, the mountains of Epirus on the opposite coast are distinctly seen."-A Tour through the "Southern Provinces of the Kingdom of Naples, by the Hon. Richard Keppel Craven, chap. viii.

But even this picture is a great deal too favourable, and the view of the castle given in Mr. Craven's book is far too romantic for so common-place a building, which has no hoary antiquity, or anything else to recommend it. When we were last at Otranto, some time after Mr. Craven's visit, the trees had disappeared from the town ditch, the interwoven creepers had been removed in the course of a general scraping the walls had been subjected to, and nothing was wanting but a coat of whitewash to make the castle look quite prim and genteel. We consult our memory and our stray notes in vain for the "very high palm, so eminently conspicuous.' Let us not be

suspected of an intention to dispraise a book that has afforded us much delight. We have at different times followed Mr. Craven's steps in nearly all the districts he describes, and can vouch for the general correctness of his entertaining work.

If Horace Walpole had travelled in these provinces,

where the remains of the feudal times are very numerous, he would have found many a castle more suited to his purpose; and it is rather curious that at Castro, on the same coast, and only a few miles from Otranto, there exists a real, bona-fide castle, just such as he, and his follower Mrs. Radcliffe, delighted to imagine, with dungeons, subterranean passages, dim halls, twisting, whispering corridors, and all other appurtenances of

romance.

XXXVII.

WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK.

"When Greek meets Greek,

Then comes the tug of war."

DURING the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, three young men of St. Germain, who had just left school, not knowing any one at court, and having heard that foreigners were always well received there, resolved to disguise themselves as Armenians, and go to see the ceremonies attending the admission of several knights of the Order of the Holy Ghost. Their trick was as successful as they expected. When the procession was defiling through the long mirror-gallery, the guards placed them in front, and requested every one to make way for the foreigners. Not content with this, however, they were so rash as to enter the antechamber, where they found MM. Cardonne and Ruffin, interpreters of the Oriental languages, as well as the first clerk of the consulates, whose office it was to watch over all that concerned Asiatics who might be in France. The three scholars were immediately surrounded and questioned-first of all in modern Greek. Without being disconcerted, they made signs to show that they did not understand it. They were then addressed in Turkish and Arabic: at last, one of the interpreters, losing all patience, cries out, "Gentlemen, you must surely understand some one of the languages in which we have spoken to you. Where do you come “From St. Germain-en-Laye,” replied the

from ?"

"This is the first time that you have asked us

boldest.
in French."

They then avowed the motive of their disguise: the oldest of them was not eighteen. The story was told to Louis the Fifteenth, who laughed excessively, and ordered them to be imprisoned for a few hours, and then set at liberty with a good scolding.

XXXVIII. ANECDOTES OF BRUNELLESCHI.

WHEN the great architect Brunelleschi offered himself to build the dome of the cathedral of Florence, the committee of citizens which superintended the building of the church invited the most celebrated architects and engineers of France, Spain, Germany, England, and Italy to come to Florence and give their opinions on the best plan for raising the dome. After nearly a twelvemonth, the "wise men" from the east and west, north and south, assembled at Florence in the year 1420. The most ridiculous projects were broached in that learned congress. Among other plans, one deserves particular mention: it was proposed to carry a vast quantity of earth inside of the church, and having strewn it with copper and silver coins, to heap it up in the transept, so as to make a mound as high as the intended dome, on which mound the structure was to be raised and supported. When the dome should be completed and safe, the notable projector concluded nothing was more easy than to get rid of the mound of earth beneath. 66 Only give leave to the people to come in with shovels and barrows, and remove the earth and the money mixed with it; they will soon clear the whole away." There was a ridiculous tradition at the time that the Pantheon of Rome had been built after this fashion. Brunelleschi, who had studied the subject thoroughly, and had been three times to Rome to examine the Pantheon and the other monuments of ancient art, rejected all the plans proposed, and said he would engage to raise a double dome, with internal stairs to ascend