giving Day has indefinitely postponed the arrival of the new Zealander to sketch its ruins. Whatever may become of the Manchester School, British eloquence, statesmanship, patriotism, and loyalty will not fade like the Tyrian dye: the British Houses of Parliament will not moulder like the Venetian palaces; nor (for it all comes to that) have the people of this little isle' shown the slightest symptom of abandoning or forfeiting the grand position which the Premier claimed for them at Blackheath, among the small and select company of great nations that have stamped their names on the page of history, as gifted with the qualities that mark the leaders of mankind.' This recalls the fine lines of Goldsmith:

'Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,

I see the lords of human kind pass by.'

Have they in any respect degenerated since then?

85

CURIOSITIES OF GERMAN ARCHIVES.

1. Aus Vier Jahrhunderten. Mittheilungen aus dem Haupt-Staatsarchive zu Dresden, von (Out of Four Centuries. Selections from the Chief State Archives at Dresden. By) Dr. KARL VON WEBER, Ministerialrath, Director des Haupt-Staatsarchives. Two volumes. Leipzig: 1857.

2. Aus Vier Jahrhunderten, &c. &c. Neue Folge. 1861.

THE author of this compilation is one of those zealous public functionaries whom it would be both cruel and impolitic to check by Talleyrand's famous injunction against zeal. Public loss as well as private mortification would be the result. Instead of dozing over the miscellaneous and multitudinous heaps of parchments and papers confided to him in 1849 as Director of the State Archives of Saxony, or pocketing occasional fees for extracts, Dr. Karl von Weber set about examining and selecting from them; and from the description he gives of his treasures we should say that few antiquarians have undertaken a more appalling task.

The State Record Office of Dresden, established in 1834, contains (he tells us), besides a great number of original records, about 300,000 reports or documents (Actenstücke) out of the repositories of more than fifty dissolved or extinct provincial jurisdictions, commissions, embassies, &c. It also possesses an inexhaustible mine for history, in the shape of letters to and from members of the ruling family, high officials, and other influential persons. If, for example, in earlier times there died any one directly or indirectly connected with the

local or central administration, it was customary to despatch a commissary to the house of mourning, to take possession of all writings belonging to the State; and if he chanced to be of an anxious turn of mind, he laid hands on all the written paper that met his eye. The sorting and sifting were postponed, or reserved for some superior, by whom the papers were commonly laid aside and forgotten. The State Office has inherited in this fashion a vast quantity of private papers, unpaid tailors' bills inclusive, which are now only fit for the paper-mill; but mixed up with them have frequently been found interesting letters and confidential communications concerning events which were kept strictly secret in their day, many which were not even trusted to official reports necessarily circulating through many hands.'

A tailor's bill, paid or unpaid, may be turned to good account by a biographer; witness the curious illustration of the circumstances and habits of Goldsmith drawn by Mr. Forster from the bills of Filby of Fetter Lane, the maker of the famous peach-coloured coat; and many of Macaulay's most striking remarks on characters and events are based on scraps and remnants, which a writer of less discernment would have passed unnoticed on a stall.

When Dr. Weber had completed his selection of materials, the next step was to compound them into a book, at the earnest request of friends.' The encouragement given to the first specimen naturally led to a second; and the result is a collection which may often be consulted with advantage, whether the object be to verify a disputed point in history, to throw light on manners, to gratify a taste for the wonderful, or to find new proofs of the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction.

It matters little with which volume or class of subjects we begin. Extracting at random from such a

book is like dipping into the kettle of Camacho. The ladle is pretty sure to bring up something racy and appetising. We alight, for example, on an article headed A Journey to Milan in 1571;' an expedition set on foot by Augustus Elector of Saxony, with the laudable object of promoting industrial enterprise. With this view Bartholomew Rabozot and Jacob Dunus, natives of Ticino, were commissioned to institute such inquiries and make such purchases in Italy as might facilitate the establishment of the silk and velvet manufactures in Saxony. The sum to be laid out by them was 5000 florins, with which they purchased thirty-five horses at Frankfort, expecting to realise a handsome profit by reselling them in the South. Unfortunately they got no further than Milan, where religious bigotry put a decisive stop to all hopes of international barter: Milan being at that time an appanage of the Spanish crown, with a Cardinal for governor.

Rabozot, who, on his arrival, was more afraid of horse-stealers than priests, was reposing, booted and spurred, in the stable with his stud, when he was suddenly roused at midnight and carried off to a place of confinement with six of his grooms. Early the next morning he was brought before the Cardinal governor, who handed him over to the tender mercies of the Holy Office. After lying forty-eight hours in a dark cell, he was visited by the Inquisitor and examined as to some fifty heads of doctrine or belief, with a most unreasonable disregard to his own personal faith or means of knowledge. For example: What was the Elector of Saxony's religious creed? Was his highness a Lutheran heretic or not? whether he himself held that belief? to which last question he replied affirmatively. He was next asked whether he attended mass, and on his replying that he had his affairs to look after, they told him that, if he had traded ten years in

their country and neglected the mass, he was a child of Satan.Whether he had brought any Lutheran letters or books with him?' 'No.' Whether he had eaten flesh at forbidden times?' 'No, for the very sufficient reason that no one there would give him any;' to which they rejoined that there were innkeepers who would give him his crop-full of what he asked for.' Secondly, 'Whether he had spoken ill of the priests whom he had met in the streets or elsewhere?' 'No.' 'Whether he had thought evil of them? and what was his opinion of the mass?'

The last question was a poser, and he did his best to evade it by appealing to his former professions, but the inquisitors were not to be put off in this fashion, and they remanded him with the ominous warning that they would find a mode of getting what they wanted out of him. The next day they hung heavy weights on his feet, and told him he must confess or be torn in two, and especially declare whether he deemed the mass good or not. On being lifted from the ground he cried out that he must speak on compulsion, and said that as to his opinion of the mass, he had never tried nor witnessed it, and therefore did not know whether it was good or bad. They then drew him up again, and the chief official gave him many hard words, to which he replied boldly: If we were alone together, you would not dare to talk thus, and although I am now in your power, and must suffer all you choose to inflict, the time may come when I shall be notably revenged.' By whom?' they scoffingly "They would take good Who would put themselves against the Pope and King Philip, who had upheld the Inquisition?' This last speech was accompanied by an indecent gesture of contempt. They kept him suspended in the air two hours longer, to the best of his reckoning, for he fainted and does not know when he

asked. By the Swiss? care not to meddle.