call themselves captains, but one is still patrician and one is still plebeian, as in the earlier days of the Roman republic; they owe their election to the senate, which at San Marino as in Rome still wields the chief executive power, but now it is termed the Council of Sixty. There is yet another power in the state, namely, the general arringo, or gathering of the people, to decide on momentous questions of the day. Each male republican can here make his voice heard; but it is now but seldom convened, and occupies much the same position that Rome's Comitia Curiata did in the latter days of the republic.

I felt myself lucky when one day our host informed me that an arringo would be held on the morrow, and that he would have much pleasure in conducting me thither. My thoughts involuntarily wandered back to the days when Rome's people were summoned to the Comitia to decide on peace and war, but I was not privileged to hear an eager, unanimous decision on the necessity of crushing Carthage or of resisting to the death the invaders from Gaul. No, it was a real blow to my dreams of the past when some forty or fifty republicans assembled to discuss the advisability of opening telegraphic communication with the neighboring town of Rimini, and thus did the degenerate offspring of the Roman Curia on that day recognize its existence in the nineteenth century, and acted accordingly.

This existence of telegraphy I look upon as one of the first symptoms of decay in our veteran state. The simple-mindedness with which they assembled daily around the postman in the borgo at the sound of his bell, and awaited the distribution of his small handful of letters, will rapidly disappear. They resisted to the death a tempting proposition for a railroad, an hotel, and a gambling house, from some energetic company; but will they resist the more insidious innovations which will follow in the wake of the electric wires, and in the train of the feverish excitement incident on having a separate room in the Street of Nations at a Paris exhibition? No, if I could have that day recorded a vote in San Marino's assembly, I should have opposed the introduction of the telegraph. I should have opposed entering into contact with the outer world, and have been content to boast of the greatest claim to notoriety San Marino has, namely, that of being a living fossil of bygone ages.

Let no one who can so arrange fail to visit San Marino on April 1 or October 1; perhaps, if he be not an early riser, for above-mentioned reasons the latter date had best be chosen; for on these days the captains are elected for the ensuing six months, and the visitor will derive much amusement, if not profit, from being present at the ceremony. Their dress is rich; they are resplendent with the cordon of San Marino's military order around their necks, and moreover a eulogistic address is delivered to the bystanders, entering deeply into San Marino's historical lore. On this day is to be seen the little

republican army of eighteen strong, drawn up to the best advantage. Though the soldiers have no notion of drill or of military bearing, though their guady uniforms fit them like sacks, nevertheless they are unique in themselves; there are only eighteen such in the whole wide world, and they represent the smallest standing army in existence. However, San Marino is not entirely dependent on them for its defense; every male citizen is presumably a soldier, and they are divided into several regiments; but their uniforms have long since been worn out, and in these days of peace the prudent lawgivers have not seen fit to replace them. Yet the law obliges each man to keep a gun and a cockade in case of a rupture with some foreign power.

I feel morally convinced that Lord Cardwell must one day have been at San Marino and, whilst sighing over the extravagance of the British lion, have mentally resolved to follow the humble example set him by Europe's smallest state.

The traveler who is not fortunate enough to be present at the installation of the captain, may any day get an order to inspect their state wardrobe, where are seen their rich velvet cloaks, their insignia of office, and the above-mentioned collection of dress clothes; he will then feel thankful that he was not born a Sammarinese, with a chance of the captaincy, for it would require an acute archæologist to decide on the date of these raiments, and an entire disregard for cleanliness to allow of putting them on.

For the lovers of legendary lore and wild fantastic beauties, San Marino is a perfect paradise. Legends are attached to each weird spot, principally connected with the history of their patron saint, and the scenes of his spiritual labors in the days of Diocletian. There is his bed of hewn stone, his garden in an almost inaccessible cliff, his head and face in the parish church; but perhaps the heritage he has left his successors most worthy of remark is their skill in stone-masonry. Himself a quarryman employed in building Rimini, S. Marino gathered around him on his mountain a colony of his comrades, and for fifteen centuries these men of San Marino have hewn and toiled in their natural workshops for a means of livelihood.

They are most expert too in the rearing of cattle, and from far dealers come to the fairs of San Marino to purchase the far-famed oxen fed on the slopes of the giant mountain.

Very excellent grapes are produced on the sulphurous soil around Mount Titanus, and the wines produced from them are sparkling and pure. Their cellars beneath the mountain are warm in winter and cool in summer; no wonder then that they exceed occasionally in their libations. There is a well-known character at San Marino, an old beggarman, who gains his livelihood by means of a poem he once wrote; he has spent his patrimony on drink, and now subsists on the enthusiasm excited by his stirring verses. This poem is en

titled "Che Tremenda Repubblica," and, intoxicated with their love of liberty, the Sammarinesi at their festivals will listen again and again to the pompous refrain of the old man's song. He is the hero of their oft-repeated festivals and the minstrel of their board.

It was with many feelings of regret that we left this old-fashioned little country, and it was with infinite pleasure that shortly after my departure I received an intimation that for the interest I had taken in the republic they had thought fit to make me a citizen. For in these days of craving for novelty it was satisfactory to me to look through the list of citizens, and find myself the only Englishman enrolled therein. Continental celebrities there were by scores whom interest or curiosity had brought in contact with the republic; and the accompanying letter, herewith transcribed, will show their own opinion of the honor they conferred upon me. It ran as follows:

SAN MARINO, Feb. 14, 1879. ILLUSTRIOUS SIR AND FELLOW-CITIZEN: The gift of citizenship of San Marino is truly a great one, since if perchance you are at a distance you may be protected thereby; but if you come to this Alpine mountain no one can molest you, and you will be respected by all, and possess the same privileges that the other citizens enjoy. Accept, then, dear sir, this diploma in order that the great city of London may rejoice with you over the possession of it. Be good enough to acknowledge the receipt of the diploma.

Your devoted servant,

P. S.-Our republic enjoys the greatest tranquillity.

FRANCESCO CASALI.

Before bidding adieu to San Marino, I propose laying before any traveler who may wend that way the advantages which a sojourn in the republic offers for exploring an almost unknown district of the Apennines. By means of a small pony-chaise, possessed by an energetic republican who has seen somewhat of the outer world and served under the Italian flag in the Crimea, we were enabled to make some delightful excursions from our republic to Verruchio, where Dante places the scene of the imprisonment of the erring Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, and where a red medieval castle, a stronghold of the Malatesta, dominates a beetling cliff, and looks down in grim silence on a little town teeming with reminiscences of the wrongheads.

To the small streamlet which once decided the destinies of the world we paid a pilgrimage-the far-famed Rubicon, which flows some few miles beyond Verruchio, or rather there is the bed in which it once did flow.

San Leo offers the architect two rich and ancient cathedrals where the bishops of Montefeltro once held their see. This is indeed a strange weird spot, built on a rock which, like San Marino, is raised 2,000 feet above the surrounding valley. On the journey thither from San Marino, the traveler passes Monte Maggio, or the "bowing mountain," which the countryfolk tell you inclines eastwards each year more and more in pious reverence towards the Holy Sepulcher;

and the old inhabitants of San Marino affirm that now they can distinctly see houses which were invisible from the opposite valley in their youth. And Monte Maggio too is celebrated for a theft perpetrated by Napoleon, who took from thence two Paris two lovely, frescoes by Giulio Romano, and replaced them with hideous daubs. Urbino, the eagle nest of the Montefeltrian dukes, the quondam hereditary protectors of our little republic, is a pleasant drive from San Marino, and there the artist and the antiquary can enjoy to the full the legacies of beauty which the art-loving dukes of Urbino have left behind them.

Buried in a cleft of the Apennines, and approached only by a bridle path from San Marino, is the quaint village of Monte Cerignone. A high arched bridge over a mountain stream leads you into the town, and reminds you of the Ponte alla Maddalena near Lucca. And a grim square castle overlooks the town, once a favorite summer resort of the Urbino dukes. It is still rich in moldering frescoes and beautiful specimens of Cinquecento work by skillful artists, who were summoned thither by the dukes to beautify their summer hiding place.

These and many others are the attractions offered by San Marino, where a spring or autumn month can be spent, combining as it does the rare advantage of sea breezes and pure mountain air together.— J. THEODORE BENT, in Fraser's Mugazine.

DOES WRITING PAY?

THE CONFESSIONS OF AN AUTHOR.

I.

For more than twenty years I have been an industrious litterateur -I may add, of all-work-laboring in all the departments. At the same time, this work has not been what is called 'hard," such as that of a barrister in good practice, but of a rapid concentrated kind. The result is that I have succeeded in earning by my brains a sum that I fancy may surprise my readers, though I delay naming it until I have communicated my little experiences. These I hope, will be a useful contribution to the question as to whether writing is a profitable profession. Perhaps I had better say at once, by way of piquing and inflaming my readers with a noble competition, that these profits are not far from fifteen thousand pounds-a very respectable sum. For the greater portion of the time I have kept a sort of fee-book, so that it is no speculative appraisement. During

half the period alluded to I followed the profession of the bar; and it may be said that this word "following" is well chosen, for it entailed daily attendance for a number of hours; and if the profession did not follow me as well as I followed it, it brought in certain returns, and engrossed a large share of my attention. Yet I contrived gayly and with a light heart to woo and win the more engaging sister, who eventually rewarded me in the way described. Fifteen thousand pounds is a fair return for the off-hand, rattling, and somewhat careless attention bestowed.

Yet I am not in the first rank-nor in the second-I might modestly put myself in the third; though some might reasonably dispute with me even this unpresuming place. What have I done? what is my "literary baggage"? is naturally the next question. An ingenious Dryasdust took the trouble not long since to ascertain the real author, or find who was the recipient, of some letters of a wellknown personage. This he discovered by following out certain allusions in the text, hunting through newspapers of the day -arriving by an almost exhaustive process at its solution. It was a surprise to one who fancied he was wrapped up close in his anonymous ulster, defiant of recognition. I run, therefore, the same risk of detection if I confess that this same “baggage" consists of great biographical chests-"heavy, perhaps massive;" light serial portmanteaux, or novels and tales, three-, two-and-one-, volume; hatboxes, bags, Gladstone "collapsing," and some collapsed, in the form of volumes of essays, short stories, disquisitions, criticisms, etc. I have written plays that have succeeded and plays that have failed, and have been paid sufficiently in both categories. I have been a dramatic critic. I have attended a music-hall opening, and an exhibition of fans, as "our own reporter." I have contributed to an advertising paper which was left gratuitously at all doors-and which dealt with its contributors on the same principle. I have gone specially to the continent for one of the leading journals, a daily paper, and I have written for almost every magazine that has been born, died, or exists. I have written on painting, music, buildings, decorative art, dress, the classics, history, travels, my own life, the lives of other people, dancing, etc. In short, like Swift and his broomstick, I could write decently and respectably on any subject "briefed" to me.

It will be said, however, that this confession is, as it were, hors concours, and of no value as a contribution to the question, as a person with these Crichton-like gifts and this general versatility gains money as a matter of course. Not at all. It is the gaining of money that has brought me or stimulated these gifts, rather than the gifts have brought the money. This may seem paradoxical, but if I might liken myself to so great and successful a personage, it is exactly akin to the progress of the great Mr. William Whiteley-who added to his departments, now a grocery, now a butchery, now coals,