heard that man sing out his whole heartful you in the light and he in the dark! And his soul shot out to you upon the sounds, and died fitfully, as the magic notes dashed their soft wings against the vaulted roof above you, and took new life again and throbbed heavenward in broad, passionate waves, till your breath came thick and your blood ran fiercely ay, even your cold northern blood in very triumph that a voice could so move you. A voice in the dark. For a full minute after it ceased you stood there, and the others, wherever they might be in the shadow, scarcely breathed.

That was how Hedwig first heard Nino sing. When at last she recovered herself enough to ask aloud the name of the singer, Nino had moved quite close to her.

"It is a relation of mine, signorina, a young fellow who is going to be an artist. I asked him as a favor to come here and sing to you to-night. I thought it might please you."

"A relation of yours!" exclaimed the contessina. And the others approached so that they all made a group in the disc of moonlight. "Just think, my dear baroness, this wonderful voice is a relation of Signor Cardegna, my excellent Italian master!" There was a little murmur of admiration; then the old count spoke.

"Signore," said he, rolling in his gutturals, "it is my duty to very much thank you. You will now, if you please, me the honor do, me to your all-thetalents-possible-possessing relation to present." Nino had foreseen the contingency, and disappeared into the dark. Presently he returned.

"I am so sorry, Signor Conte," he said. "The sacristan tells me that when my cousin had finished he hurried away, saying he was afraid of taking some ill if he remained here where it is so damp. I will tell him how much you appreciated him."

"Curious is it," remarked the count. "I heard him not going off."

"He stood in the doorway of the sacristy, by the high altar, Signor Conte." "In that case is it different." "The sig

"I am sorry," said Nino. norina was so unkind as to say, lately, that we Italians have no sense of the beautiful, the mysterious

"I take it back," said Hedwig gravely, still standing in the moonlight. "Your cousin has a very great power over the beautiful."

"And the mysterious," added the baroness, who had not spoken, "for his departure without showing himself has left me the impression of a sweet dream. Give me your arm, Professore Cardegna. I will not stay here any longer, now that the dream is over." Nino sprang to her side politely, though to tell the truth she did not attract him at first sight. He freed one arm from the old cloak, and reflected that she could not tell in the dark how very shabby it was. "You give lessons to the Signora von Lira?" she asked, leading him quickly away from the party.

"Yes in Italian literature, sig

nora."

"Ah she tells me great things of you. Could you not spare me an hour or two in the week, professore?"

Here was a new complication. Nino had certainly not contemplated setting up for an Italian teacher to all the world, when he undertook to give lessons to Hedwig.

"Signora " he began, in a protesting voice.

"You will do it to oblige me, I am sure," she said eagerly, and her slight hand just pressed upon his arm a little. Nino had found time to reflect that this lady was intimate with Hedwig, and that he might possibly gain an opportunity of seeing the girl he loved, if he accepted the offer.

"Whenever it pleases you, signora,” he said at length.

"Can you come to me to-morrow at eleven?" she asked.

"At twelve, if you please, signora, or half past. Eleven is the contessina's hour to-morrow."

"At half past twelve, then, to-morrow," said she, and she gave him her address, as they went out into the street. "Stop," she added, "where do you live?"

"Number twenty-seven, Santa Catarina dei Funari," he answered, wondering why she asked. The rest of the party came out, and Nino bowed to the ground, as he bid the contessina goodnight.

He was glad to be free of that pressure on his arm, and he was glad to be alone, to wander through the streets under the moonlight and to think over what he had done.

66

I

There is no risk of my being discovered," he said to himself, confidently. "The story of the near relation was well imagined, and besides, it is true. Am I not my own nearest relation? certainly have no others that I know of. And this baroness what can she want of me? She speaks Italian like a Spanish cow, and indeed she needs a professor badly enough. But why should she take a fancy for me as a teacher. Ah! those eyes! Not the baroness's. Edvigia — Edvigia de Lira - Edvigia Ca― Cardegna! Why not?" He stopped to think, and looked long at the moonbeams playing on the waters of the fountain. 66 Why not? But the baroness may the diavolo fly away with her! What should I do I indeed! with a pack of baronesses? I will go to bed and dream- not of a baroness! Macchè, never a baroness in my dreams, with eyes like a snake and who cannot speak three words properly in the only language under the sun worth speaking! Not I-I will dream of Edvigia di Lira - she is the spirit of my dreams. Spirto gentil "—and away he went, humming the air from the

Favorita in the top of his head, as is his

wont.

The next day the contessina could talk of nothing during her lesson but the unknown singer who had made the night so beautiful for her, and Nino flushed red under his dark skin and ran his fingers wildly through his curly hair, with pleasure. But he set his square jaw, that means so much, and explained to his pupil how hard it would be for her to hear him again. For his friend, he said, was soon to make his appearance on the stage, and of course he could not be heard singing before that. And as the young lady insisted, Nino grew silent, and remarked that the lesson was not progressing. Thereupon Hedwig blushed the first time he had ever seen her blush and did not approach the subject again.

After that he went to the house of the baroness, where he was evidently expected, for the servant asked his name and immediately ushered him into her presence. She was one of those lithe, dark women of good race, that are to be met with all over the world, and she has broken a many hearts. But she was not like a snake at all, as Nino had thought at first. She was simply a very fine lady who did exactly what she pleased, and if she did not always act rightly, yet I think she rarely acted unkindly. After all, the buon Dio has not made us all paragons of domestic virtue. Men break their hearts for so very little, and, unless they are ruined, they melt the pieces at the next flame and join them together again like bits of sealing wax.

The baroness sat before a piano in a boudoir, where there was not very much light. Every part of the room was crowded with fans, ferns, palms, Oriental carpets and cushions, books, porcelain, majolica, and pictures. You could hardly move without touching some ornament, and the heavy curtains softened the sunshine, and a small open fire of

wood helped the warmth. There was also an odor of Russian tobacco. The baroness smiled and turned on the piano

seat.

"Ah, professore! You come just in time," said she. "I am trying to sing such a pretty song to myself, and I cannot pronounce the words. Come and teach me." Nino contrasted the whole air of this luxurious retreat with the prim, soldierly order that reigned in the count's establishment.

"Indeed, signora, I come to teach you whatever I can. Here I am. I cannot sing, but I will stand beside you and prompt the words."

Nino is not a shy boy at all, and he assumed the duties required of him immediately. He stood by her side, and she just nodded and began to sing a little song that stood on the desk of the piano. She did not sing out of tune, but she made wrong notes and pronounced horribly.

"Pronounce the words for me," she repeated every now and then.

"But pronouncing in singing is dif ferent from speaking," he objected at last, and fairly forgetting himself and losing patience, he began softly to sing the words over. Little by little, as the song pleased him, he lost all memory of where he was, and stood beside her singing just as he would have done to De Pretis, from the sheet, with all the accuracy and skill that were in him. At the end, he suddenly remembered how foolish he was. But, after all, he had not sung to the power of his voice, and she might not recognize in him the singer of last night. The baroness looked up with a light laugh.

"I have found you out," she cried, clapping her hands. "I have found you out!"

"What, signora ?

"You are the tenor of the Pantheon that is all. I knew it. Are you so sorry that I have found you out?" she asked, for Nino turned very white, and his eyes flashed at the thought of the folly he had committed.

F. Marion Crawford.

Of late years an immense amount of research has been directed to separating the historical from the traditional elements in the ancient story of the world. But hardly any corresponding attention has been given to the question how far tradition itself may have been really historical. It seems to have been taken for granted that written records or contemporary monuments are alone reliable, and that as soon as we attempt to go beyond these we enter a realm of unlimited exaggeration and romance, in which myth and fable, allegory and legend, must necessarily be all mingled together in such indistinguishable proportions as to be practically useless.

This impression of the essential untrustworthiness of tradition has arisen quite naturally. Tradition in our own times is a very loose and trivial thing. Everything which it is important to have accurately kept in mind is carefully committed to writing. All that is left to tradition is the small gossip of the neighborhood, and incidents not worth formally recording. Thus tradition has become a mere plaything. No wonder that those who judge only by its operation in times of written records do not think much of it as a means of enabling us really to penetrate into the past. This has been the general tone of later historians. Niebuhr, indeed, in his great

Roman history, endeavored to make a distinct use of tradition; but, practically, he interpreted it by a sort of "brilliant divination," which for the time captivated the world, but could not permanently hold its ground. By and by came Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who crossexamined Niebuhr's theories and deductions like an Old Bailey lawyer, and insisted that nothing must be admitted that could not be verified by some sort of contemporaneous record. From his day this rigid criticism has been generally accepted as the only "historical method."

Perhaps the most interesting application of this stricter method, at present, is that to the early Hebrew history. There has been of late a marked revival of interest in the Old Testament in its historical and literary aspects. In Holland, especially, a group of notable scholars, with Professor Kuenen at their head, have been almost reconstructing the story of ancient Israel, upon the basis of this very distinction between written records and oral tradition. They have investigated with singular care, learning, and fairness the question of the dates at which the various Hebrew books came into their present shape. Their verdict is that the very earliest of those books are some written in the prophetic era of the eighth century B. C. The eighth century, then, must be the starting point of Hebrew history. This is, in itself, quite a respectable antiquity, but still it does not bring us within five hundred years of Moses and the Exodus; while as for Abraham, if there can now be supposed to have ever been such a person, he lies away back in the nebulous distances of a thousand years. All these accounts prior to the eighth century are mere tradition, and Kuenen's whole treatment of them is distinctly based upon the principle that tradition in the ancient world was simply what it is to-day. Indeed, in order to show how absolutely

he regards this principle as the true one, he gives an illustration of its application to the Exodus: "On the most favorable supposition," by his showing,

66

a period of more than five centuries intervenes between the Exodus and the earliest written account of it. "Yet," he says, "a century was a hundred years then, as it is now;" and to make his meaning more unmistakable, he himself presses a modern parallel: "The oldest accounts of the Mosaic time were as far removed from Israel's lawgiver as we Dutchmen are from the beginning of the Hoek and Kabeljauw quarrels. Suppose that we only knew of the latter by tradition, which had never been committed to writing up to this time: should we have the boldness to trust ourselves to the historian who now wrote them for the first time, as a safe guide?" Further on he adds,1" Even before we have made acquaintance with the contents of the narratives, we take it for granted that they only give us half the truth, if even so much as that." In reality, as those who have read this work know, he does not use them as "half" true, hardly as having more than the feeblest basis of truth. A canon which should ascribe half truth to them would preserve all the great historical and religious features of the ancient Hebrew traditions. But the point at issue is, not the exact proportion of truth with which such traditions

may be credited, but the whole principle on which that proportion is to be estimated. I believe it can be shown that ancient tradition, instead of being about the same thing as modern, had hardly anything in common with it; that it was a sacred thing, usually most carefully guarded and transmitted; and, therefore, that it is not to be thrown aside as worthless unless supported by contemporary records, but rather to be

1 The Religion of Israel, by Dr. A. Kuenen,

vol. i. pp. 17, 18. The edition of the Theological Translation Fund Library, Williams & Norgate.

regarded as itself a species of record, and classed among the recognized materials of history.

There is one great fact underlying the whole subject, which seems to have been almost entirely lost sight of that tradition, before the times of writing, had a totally different part to play from anything required of it now. Now, as has been said, it is an accident, the mere fragmentary survival of things which have not been forgotten. Then, it was an instrument, a careful instrument for keeping in mind those things which needed to be remembered. Kuenen says, indeed, "It is certain that the thirst for reality which is proper to our age was unknown to antiquity” (vol i. p. 23). But is this so 66 certain"? Some things have to be remembered among savage just as among civilized peoples, and remembered accurately. Among these necessary things are the forms of their religion, their laws, the boundaries and possessions of tribes and families, the names and deeds of their great men. Ancient tradition was not merely the only history; it was the only law, the only records of succession, the only titledeed of property. It may seem to us a rude instrument; but nothing is more remarkable than the way in which, when man has only a rude instrument, he often acquires such skill in its use that it comes to supply his need almost as well as the far finer appliances of civilization. For instance, it would be a great mistake to estimate what bows and arrows might accomplish in days when men had nothing better, by seeing what we can make of archery, now that all serious work is done by gunpowder and rifles, and bows and arrows are used only for playthings. So, again, we must not judge of what manuscript was, as a means of preserving and disseminating literature, by considering how helpless we should find ourselves if we were suddenly deprived of the printing-press, and had to fall back upon copying by

hand, and that in the slipshod handwriting of the present day. It is just as complete a mistake to judge of what tradition might be in the old days, when it was men's only instrument of record, by what it has become now that everything of serious import is perpetuated in deeds or print. Modern tradition is mere formless hearsay; ancient tradition was a shaped and formal communication. Modern tradition is "hearsay," passed, without responsibility, from any one to any one else; ancient tradition was a formal communication, preserved, recited, handed on through chosen and responsible persons. Surely, then, ancient tradition must be credited with being carried down from age to age unchanged, and therefore reliable, to an extent of which we can form no idea from this casual hearsay of our modern days, which cannot pass through five narrators without being altered or exaggerated out of all recognition.

Proceeding now to consider the elements of tradition in detail, the first is the power of memory. Is memory capable of preserving through successive generations the facts of history, or whatever else peoples are continuously interested in knowing? At first one is apt to say "No," remembering how seldom two people can agree in their recollection of even the briefest saying or commonest occurrence. But look into the matter. Note how the power of memory differs in different people, and how it may be cultivated, and especially how it strengthens when systematically depended on, while when little is left to it, it weakens. It is a small fact, but not without significance, that among the first things which children are set to fix in their memories, apart from any idea of sacredness, are long series of historical names, dates, and events, — English kings, American colonists and presidents, -far exceeding in difficulty those Israelitish histories which Kuenen thinks cannot be trusted because only preserved