has been anticipated by a fair German thinker: "I don't exactly say that I believe in evil spirits," remarks Madame Buchholz, "but still a good many things do happen in this world which no one can explain properly-not even Fritz, who knows most things better than other people." Substituting Mr. Grant Allen and Mr. Ernest Hart for Fritz, this nearly represents my own conclusions. I wished to add the very latest specimen of a haunted house, but regard for the rights of property and the value of a tenement makes me hold my hand. Suffice it to say that, in spite of popular science, so-called ghosts can still affect the relations between landlord and tenant.

ANDREW LANG.

From Good Words. ON SIDEBOARDS. The dining-table presupposes the sideboard. If the table has to be served there must be some place on which dishes, decanters, trays, etc., will have to be put before they are set on the table, or to be used as a board for temporary deposit, during the course of a meal. But the sideboard from a very early period was employed, not merely as a convenience during a meal, but as a vehicle for display, and it is now, and always has been the buffet on which has been exhibited the wealth of the household in plate.

The Romans made a great point of display of their silver eating and drinking vessels, which were set out on the trapezophoron or abacus, in addition to such as were in requisition during the dinner or supper. The trapezophoron was actually the lower portion of marble, bronze or silver, and was elaborately carved or moulded, and on this rested the abacus, which was the table it self. Cato, in the old days of simple Roman life, could speak of it as a kitchen table, but the splendid sideboard groaning under its weight of silver and gold plate, was an introduction from Asia in B. C. 187; and Cicero mentions the gold vessels on it. On a sardonyx goblet of somewhat later period, pre

served at Paris, is the representation of such a sideboard resting on four legs, and heaped up with goblets and statuettes. Pliny mentions nine gold vessels encrusted with jewels on one of these sideboards.

Another sort of table used for much the same purpose was the delphica, resting on three legs, and with a round slab on top. This is the table so repeatedly represented in the frescoes of the Catacombs. It is that in the Catacomb of S. Callixtus with the Eucharistic bread and fish laid on it, so that apparently it was this sort of table that was specially employed by the early Christians for an altar. It cannot have been largely employed for the display of plate, but was rather used for setting on it the dishes for the meal.

We know that at a Roman banquet the food was not placed at once on the table, but was introduced on a large tray, called the repositorium, originally of wood but afterwards of silver, and was so arranged that the dishes not only stood side by side, but were arranged one above another, something like a what-not. As often as a course was introduced, so often did the repositorium come in, and the guests were expected to put out their hands and take from the what-not that which they fancied. However, it required a certain amount of culinary accomplishment to know which dishes to select in their proper order. The Roman table formed three sides of a square, and the "repository" was brought into the midst.

But a side-table for the broken meats and for dirty dishes must have been required, and such a table I fancy, was the delphica, and the abacus was reserved for the drinking vessels, and show of plate. This delphica was represented in the Middle Ages by the buffet. This was a round table placed in the room, free standing, and not against the wall. The modern sideboard is the old dresser. At the same time the buffet was laden with goblets and refreshments. Oliver de la Marche, in his account of the marriage of Charles de Bourg with Margaret of York, says:

"With regard to the service, Madam, the new duchess was attended by a butler and a carver and bread-bearer, all Englishmen and knights, and men of high family. Then the steward called, 'Knights to the meat! Thereupon all went to the buffet to get meat, and all the relatives of Monsieur walked round it; and all the knights in their several order, two and two, with trumpets sounding before the meat."

He also describes the buffet. It was lozenge shaped, and covered with a cloth embroidered with coats of arms; and it had stages behind like steps. At the bottom were silver gilt vessels of large size, above that on the next steps, vessels of pure gold inlaid with precious stones, and above that again, one magnificent goblet richly encrusted with stones. At the corners of the buffet were sculptured unicorns.

It is clear from this description that the buffet and dresser were united. But usually the dresser had no meat placed on it; it was intended simply for display. Each shelf had an embroidered cover and the whole had not infrequently a canopy above it. Sometimes it was open below, but very often it had cupboards in which the plate was preserved out of sight when not exposed.

The old English name for the sideboard was court cupboard. In "Romeo and Juliet" one servant cries out to another, while the tables are being cleared after dinner:

Away with the joint stools, remove the

court cupboard, look to the plate. Singer, in his "Commentaries on Shakespeare," notes hereon: "The court cupboard was the ancient sideboard; it was a cumbrous piece of furniture, with stages or shelves, gradually receding, like stairs, to the top, whereon the plate was displayed at festivals."

The number of shelves indicated and distinguished the nobility of the host. It would have been quite out of place for an ordinary English squire to have had stages at the back of his cupboard; at the same time it would be quite in order for his kitchen dresser to be set out with pewter.

Dame Eleanor of Poitiers, in "Les Honneurs de la Cour," informs us that two steps were allowed to the wife of a banneret, three to a countess, four to a princess, and five to a queen.

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In the "Laurea Austriaca," a curious old Latin book published in 1627, giving an account of an entertainment given by King James I. of England to the Spanish ambassadors, during the negotiations about the marriage Frince Charles with the Infanta of Spain, there is an interesting illustration that represents the king at table with one of the ambassadors. Behind him are two court cupboards, or sideboards, each of five stages, as became a king, and each laden with plate. It will be noticed that there are only two, or possibly three knives on the table, and not a single fork or spoon.

It is now thought that forks were employed by the ancient Romans. but rarely. Two silver forks, believed to be of the Imperial period, were found in Rome in 1874, but it is possible they may be Renaissance articles. Usually the Romans employed the ends of their spoons, the handles, for forks, and these were either sharp-pointed, or turned down as hoofs or claws, to hold the meat, whilst the hand grasped the bowl of the spoon.

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Coryat, in his "Crudities," 1611, remarks that in his travels in Italy he found that forks were then used meals. "For which, with their knife, which they hold in one hand, they cut the meate out of the dish, they fasten the fork which they hold in their other hand upon the same dish, so that whatsoever he be that sitting in the company of any others at meale, should unadvisedly touch the dish of meat with his fingers, from which all at the table doe cut, he will give occasion of offence unto the company as having transgressed the lawes of good manners;" and he adds: "Hereupon, I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this forked cutting of meate, not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in England, since I came home; being once quipped for that frequent using of my

forke by a certain learned gentleman,

a familiar friend of mine, Mr. Lawrence Whitaker, who in his merry humour doubted not to call me 'Furcifer,' only for using a forke at feeding, but for no other cause."

The dresser originally was a table, on which the meat was dressed for sending into the hall, but as it was necessary for the cook to have his dishes and sauce-boats near at hand, a back was put to it, with shelves, and this was called a tremlet; then the kitchen dresser with its tremlet, was dignified by carving and tricked out with drapery, and was turned into the court cupboard, or sideboard of the hall. And so it is that even in articles of furniture there are orders and ranks and degrees. But they all come of one simple stock, all descend like man from a common ancestor, and the lordly oak sideboard, with its stages burdened with gold and silver plate, with goblets and trays, is but a cousin of the kitchen dresser of deal, with its rack of common plates and dishes.

S. BARING-GOULD.

From The Spectator. BROOKSIDE GARDENING. "And a river went out of Eden to water the garden."

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Rock gardens, covered with the minute vegetation of the Alps and Pyrenees, are among the most interesting, if not the most beautiful, developments of floriculture. A still more recent, and, as we think, even charming, addition to the country house is the "brook garden," in which running water, and not the stony rocks of the desert, is the centre and motif of the subsidiary ornaments of flowers, ferns, trees, shrubs, and mosses. Nature is in league with art in the brook garden, for nowhere is wild vegetation so luxuriant, and the two forces of warmth and moisture so generally combined, as by the banks of running streams. The brook is its own landscape gardener, and curves and slopes its own banks and terraces, sheltered from rough winds and prone to the sun.

Most country homes of the South and West, except those on the chalk downs, have near them some rill or brook of running water. On the sides of the chalk downs, though not on their summits, these streams cut narrow gullies and glens. In Surrey, Devon, Somerset, and parts of Sussex and Hampshire, wherever, in fact, there is hilly, broken ground, the little rills form these tiny broken ravines and valleys, often only a few yards in width from side to side. They are a common and familiar feature of ordinary English scenery. Usually these brooklet valleys are choked with brambles or fern, and filled with rank undergrowth. Often the stream is overhung and invisible, or dammed and left in soak, breeding frogs, gnats, and flies. The trees are always tall and beautifully grown, whatever their age, for the moisture and warmth force vertical growth; the smaller bushes, hawthorn, briar, and wild guelder-rose, also assume graceful forms unhidden, for they always bow their heads towards the sun-reflecting stream. Part of the charm of the transformation of these brookside jungles into the brookside garden lies in the gradual and experimental method of their conversion. Every one knows that running water is the most delightful thing to play with provided in this world; and the management of the water is the first amusement in forming the brook garden. When the banks have been cleared of brambles to such a distance up the sides of the hollow as the ground suggests, and all poor or illgrown trees have been cut away to let in the only two "fertilizers" needed-air and sun-the dimensions of the first pool or "reach" in the brook garden are decided upon. This must depend partly on the size and flow of the stream. If it is a chalk spring, from six feet to six yards wide, its flow will probably be constant throughout the year, for it is fed from the reservoirs in the heart of the hills. Then it needs little care except to clear its course, and the planting of its banks with flowers and stocking of its waters with lilies, arums, irises, and trout is begun at once. But

in summer. On these the brook gardener must take a lesson from the beavers, and make a succession of delightful little dams, cascades, and pools, to keep his water at the right level throughout the year. Where there is a considerable brook these dams may be carried away in winter and ruin the garden. Stone or concrete outfalls are costly, and often give way, undermined by the floods. But there is a form of overflow which gives an added sparkle even to the waterfall, and costs little. Each little dam has a cut at one side, "floored" with thin split oak, overlap ping like the laths of a Venetian blind when closed. This forms the bottom of the "shoot," and carries the water clear of the dam into the stream below. As the water runs over the overlapping laths it forms a ripple above each ridge, and from the everlasting throb of these pleats of running water the sunlight flashes as if from a moving river of diamonds. Beside these cascades, and only two inches higher than their level, are cut "flood-overflows" paved with turf, to let off the swollen waters in autumn rains. With the cutting out of undergrowth and the admission of light the rank vegetation of the banks changes to sweet grass, clovers, woodruffe, and daisies, and the flowers natural to the soil can be planted or will often spring up by themselves. In spring the banks should be set thick with violets, primroses, and the lovely bronze, crimson, and purple polyanthuses. Periwinkle, daffodils, crocuses, and scarlet or yellow tulips will all flourish and blossom before the grass grows too high or hides their flowers. For later in the year taller plants, which can rise, as all summer woodplants do, above the level of the grasses, must be set on the banks. Clumps of everlasting peas, masses of phloxes, hollyhocks, and, far later in the year, scarlet tritomas (red-hot pokers), look splendid among the deep greens of the summer grass and beneath the canopy of trees. For it must be remembered that the brookside garden is in nearly every case a shaded garden, beneath

All beautiful flowering shrubs and trees, such as the guelder-rose, the pink may, the hardy azalias, and certain of the more beautiful rhododendrons will aid the background of the brook garden, and flourish naturally in its sheltered hollow. There is one "new" rhododendron, which the writer saw recently in such a situation, but of which he does not recollect the name, which has masses of wax-like, pale sulphur flowers, which are mirrored in a miniature pool set almost at its foot. This half wild flower garden pertains mainly to the banks of the brook gully, and not to the banks of the brook itself. It is in the latter, by the waterside, that the special charm of these gardens should be found. It is the nature of such places to have a strip of level ground opposite to each of the curves of the stream. This makes a natural flowerbed for stream-side plants. All the narcissi, or chalice-flowers, naturally love the banks of brooks:

Those springs,

On chaliced flowers that lies. These will grow in great tufts and everincreasing masses, multiplying their bulbs till they touch the water's edge. Not only the old pheasant's-eye narcissus, but all the modern and splendia varieties in gold, cream, white, and orange, grow best by the brookside. By these, but on the lower ground almost level with the water, big forgetme-nots, butterburs, and wild snake'shead lilies should be set, and all the crimson and white varieties of garden daisy. Lily of the valley, despite its name, likes more sun than our brook garden admits except in certain places; but certain of the lilies which flourish in the garden beds grow with an added and more languid grace on the green bank of our flower-bordered brook, and the American swamp-lily finds its natural place. Then special pools will be formed for the growth of those plants, foreign and English, which love to have their roots in water-soaked mud, or the beds of running streams, while leaves and flowers rise far above into the light.