death in 1435, he was more constant than the queen, whose last choice of an adopted heir fell on the Angevin representative, René, the father-in-law of the English Henry VI; and Christopher saw his candidate's cause triumph. He left behind him ten legitimated children, whose mother, a baker's daughter, he married at the last. These children formed the new branch of Gaetani d'Aragona, which exists to-day in Naples. Giacomo II, who had bitterly experienced the difficulty of serving two warring suzerains, the pope and the King of Naples, had decided to divide his inheritance. The bulk of the Roman fiefs went to his grandson, Giacomo IV; while the county of Fondi and the Neapolitan lands were settled on Christopher, who was also created protonotary of the realm by the grateful Joanna. But the well-meant scheme proved a trap, for each branch coveted the possessions of the other. The leading figures of the next generation were two likenamed cousins, Onorato Caetani, lord of Sermoneta, and Onorato Gaetani d' Aragona, count of Fondi. The Roman was red-haired and warlike. He had had a dangerous boyhood, plundered by a wicked uncle, Francesco, his guardian, and saved by the loyalty of the Sermonetans. His wife was Caterina Orsini, and he and she formed a singular joint friendship with the soldier Cardinal Scarampo. That this condottiere in orders, who had risen to power by the treacherous capture of his still more terrible general, Cardinal Vitelleschi, and was known as a glutton and gambler, should have had a soft spot in his character is surprising, but so it was. A long correspondence of the friends is preserved and is published by Don Gelasio. The cardinal was curt and stingy. He gives a blind stallion, and receives with faint protests fish, fowl and grain, pigs and goats. But he gave excellent advice and protected Onorato from the worst results of his ill-judged politics and thirst for adventure, as well as of the family feuds which were partly thrust upon him. Every now and then a genuine affection is clear: " as far as may be we will never cease from acting for your good and that of all your house, as long as life lasts." Onorato of Sermoneta was obsessed with soldiering in general, but more particularly with soldiering to acquire the lands of his cousin, Onorato of Fondi. The opportunity was offered him in 1459 by the invasion of Naples by John of Anjou, son and heir of "good King René." Onorato of Fondi held by the Aragonese tyrant, Ferrante, and Onorato of Sermoneta joined John on condition of receiving the Fondi inheritance. Once enlisted he stood by his chief to the last, wasting his money and his best years in dreary faction-fighting, paid with promises and crushed with debt. At the end he was fain to ransom his son Nicola, Scarampo's godson, and to subside into inaction at Sermoneta, where he died in 1478. Onorato of Fondi's lot seems scarcely more fortunate. He was a wealthy, magnificent personage, the elaborate and important inventory of whose property, taken at his death in 1491, is to form a future volume of Don Gelasio Caetani's collection. He was high in King Ferrante's favour, but his family life was unhappy. On his second marriage, his elder surviving son and heir turned against him, and at his instigation was eventually imprisoned, to die mysteriously in the royal dungeons. When Onorato himself died the French invasion of Charles VIII was at hand. In the subsequent years of turmoil, his descendants lost the county of Fondi. To say that the careers of Nicola Caetani of Sermoneta, his ecclesiastical brother, the apostolic protonotary Giacomo, and his lay brother, Guglielmo, coincide with the pontificates of Innocent VIII and Alexander VI, suggests tragedy. Their history would have furnished a congenial theme to an Elizabethan playwright like Webster or Ford. A heavy, thunderous atmosphere broods over it; and men, seemingly not far removed themselves from the commonplace, are invested with the lurid glow that still dwells round the court of the Borgia. Nicola himself was a condottiere of good service in the papal army, but he was also involved in a feud in which most Roman noble houses took part. This was caused by an outbreak of Prospero Santacroce, who in 1480 suddenly slaughtered the septuagenarian Pietro Margani as he sat chatting in the porch of his house. The feud spread like wildfire. The Orsini came in on the Santacroce side, while the Colonna, the Caetani, and others joined the Margani. For some years papal intervention had little effect; murders succeeded truces, until Virginio Orsini and Paolo Vitelli surprised the Colonna, the Savelli, and the Caetani at dawn at Civita Lavinia and sent them flying in their shirts on unsaddled horses, glad to escape. Shortly afterwards, however, the Orsini joined Alfonso of Calabria, when at the head of the Neapolitan army he attacked Rome in 1485. The Orsini held the city almost besieged till their hereditary foes in the papal army defeated them at Ponte Nomentano. For the moment they were quits and a longer peace set in. The Caetani were to suffer more from the Borgia. They were connected with Alexander VI, for his favourite mistress, Giulia Bella, was daughter of Giovannella Caetani, Nicola's sister. Her brother, Alessandro Farnese, promoted because of her intrigue with the pope, was the so-called " petticoat cardinal," who became Paul III, the last and most successful of the Renaissance popes. This tie of quasi-relationship was, however, no protection when the Borgia coveted the Caetani lands. Nicola was mysteriously poisoned in 1494, and the protonotary Giacomo managed the affairs of the house during the minority of his son. Then the unassuageable feud between the towns of Sezze and Sermoneta again broke out over the Pontine marshlands. It seems that Giacomo was lured by the pope into a bloody little campaign against his vassals' foes. The Caetani were at once declared rebels and their lands were confiscated. Sermoneta speedily fell into Cæsar Borgia's hands; a disloyal servitor accused the two brothers of procuring Nicola's death; Giacomo was tortured and condemned; his nephew and his sons scattered. The ancient castle of the Caetani with its beautiful fourteenthcentury stonework was transformed with feverish haste into a fortress able to resist the new artillery. Nothing was spared for its own sake, though much for its native strength was left. Even the church with its tombs of the barons was ruthlessly destroyed and the bones dispersed. Such action fitted the inhuman character of the Borgia, who had no use for anything but stark intellect and the satisfaction of their appetites. With this transformation closes the medieval history of the Caetani. A foreigner may be permitted to feel a sense of frustration predominant. Men who might have played a great part in a national history wasted their energies and their thoughts on savage local feuds and greedy land-hunger. What they could have done under happier auspices is shown by their descendants, breeding true to type after so many centuries, in reborn Italy. C. W. PREVITÉ-ORTON MOTOR TRANSPORT AND ITS REAL COST MOST WOST people believe that motor transport means cheap transport. For this belief, as for most popular beliefs, there is a foundation in fact. Passengers find that they can travel at lower fares by motor omnibus or motor coach than by railway; traders find that they can send, or receive, the more expensive kinds of goods more cheaply by motor van. All this, as Bastiat would have said, is what people see; what they do not see is the charge which they pay indirectly for road transport. In any form of land transport the cost of providing and maintaining the permanent way is a much more serious matter than the cost of pushing or drawing a vehicle along it. Sir Josiah Stamp has calculated that less than one and a-quarter ounces of coal will pull one ton for one mile on a railway at express speed. A railway company's coal bill, though a serious item, is not by any means the chief item of expenditure, nor is the cost of rolling stock the chief item in its capital account. From the most recent returns compiled by the Ministry of Transport it appears that the capital expenditure of the four chief railway groups on rolling stock amounts to £154,000,000 out of a total capital expenditure of £1,210,000,000. Out of a total expenditure of £161,000,000 in 1927, maintenance and renewal of rolling stock only required £30,000,000, while maintenance and renewal of way and works required £23,500,000. In the case of road transport the cost of the vehicle is the main item of expense-petrol, lubrication, repairs and wages being included. Most of a railway company's expenditure is connected with its track and its stations; the greater part of passenger fares and goods rates is required to meet this expenditure. In the case of road transport there is certainly some payment towards the cost of the permanent way, i.e. the road, made by the owners of motor vehicles, but this payment is relatively insignificant. In The Times of July 7th, a London firm of dyers published its yearly summary of its expenses in running a fleet of 46 motor vans. The first table, referring to 12 cwt. vans, shows a total average expenditure of £357, of which only £16 was for tax or licence duty, i.e. the contribution towards road expenditure. One must now add 4d. a gallon, i.e. £8 for petrol duty. The second table, referring to 30 cwt. vans, shows a total expenditure of £655 for the year, of which £40 was tax; to this one must now add £20 for petrol duty. Evidently the owner of a commercial motor vehicle need hardly consider the payment which he makes for the maintenance of his permanent way. common Again, while a motor vehicle is not actually running, it costs very little there are only the small charges for licence duty and garage. But most of the expenses of a railway company go on just the same whether its trains are running or not, e.g. during a strike, a fog, or a snowstorm. All these expenses must be taken into account when railway fares and charges are being fixed. Further, a railway company is what lawyers call a carrier," because it must carry all traffic offered to it in return for a fixed scale of charges, and it must not discriminate between one customer and another. A road transport company, on the other hand, is free from these restrictions. It can pick and choose its traffic, and in practice it rejects the heavy and bulky goods which cannot stand a high charge, but it can afford to carry the small and more costly goods at lower rates than those charged by a railway company. Goods rates for railway transport have not been fixed according to the estimated cost of transport, since this would involve unbearably high charges for stone, ore, coal, and other materials, while it would also mean absurdly low rates for costly goods, such as tea, silk, and so on. Over a long period railway rates have been worked out so as not to charge more than the traffic will bear," and to make up for low rates on heavy goods by high rates on costly goods. This plan, on which the financial position of our railways depends so largely, has been upset by road competition which has drawn away the highly-rated traffic, leaving the railways to carry the heavy and low-rated goods. In short, road competition has skimmed the cream off the goods traffic of the railways. A critic of railways may reply: So much the better, this will teach the companies to improve their services or to cut down their charges." I hold no brief for the railway companies; indeed I have often criticised their slowness in adapting themselves to modern conditions. More than twenty years ago I suggested the use of rail-cars on branch lines, believing that if a self-propelled carriage could run safely and quickly on roads it could run more quickly and more safely on rails. But |