also for the coinage, which it thus appears that
Uriconium had right to utter.

If we can grant public money for the
uncovering of history at Nineveh, is it quite fair
that we should leave to a few private subscribers
of guineas such a work as the digging up
of monuments that will throw light into one of
the obscurest and most interesting periods of
our own British history? Why should we not
have at Wroxeter what we may have, the
complete unearthing of an important Roman
town? There is nothing to remove but a few
feet of soil encumbered with nothing but a
grudging farmer, whose passion is turnips.

Over the greater number of the Roman towns
modern towns stand. The skeleton of an old
Roman town lies under the city of London, but we
cannot pull down St. Paul's and the Exchange,
Cheapside and Cannon-street, to get at it.
Though somewhat encumbered there is certainly
good digging at St. Albans, where the fashionable
Roman town of Verulamium lies in the
clods; there is good digging too at Kenchester
and at Aldborough in Yorkshire. There
villagers dig up Rome in their gardens, and as you
walk up the village street, you see over cottage
doors such inscriptions as "Tessellated
pavements, coins, &c. Admission, sixpence each."
"Basilica with Greek inscriptions."
"Hypocaust, Sudatory, Mosaic Pavements. Admission,
each sixpence." Or

          "This is the Ancient Manor House,
               And in it you may see
          The Romans works,
               A great Curiosety."

The great Roman villas at Woodchester and Bignor,
raised by Romans who had grown rich with
the wealth of a subject province, are also worth
national care. I do not wish to confine attention
to one place alone. But of the few places
in which extensive excavation is possible, there
is none, I believe, in which the uncovering of
a town thoroughly worth complete examination
may be made, at comparatively slight expense, so
truly complete as at Wroxeter.

PIANOFORTE LESSONS.

OF all the false household gods, that are not
gods, but demons—of all the hideous skeletons
that mope and mow in comers of peaceful dwellings,
there is nothing more detestable than a
thoroughly bad and new piano. An instrument
whose keys are heavy and clogged, and refuse to
move under any but the most muscular grasp;
whose wires are dumb for any harmonious
utterances, and find speech only for a loose,
short tinkling sound, that is thoughtful enough
to die away as soon as produced; but whose
outer shell, if not in accordance with the
severest decorative taste, is highly polished and
showy to the eye, is nothing but a musical,
melancholy, delusive apple of the Dead Sea.
The mechanism of such an instrument is worn
and faded with age, while its case is so new
that the damp of nature has hardly left the
wood. Many thousands of such pianos are
annually made in this country, and disposed of
through an elaborate organisation with tolerable
success. They are always well advertised as
bargains sold under peculiar circumstances, and
purchasers are always ready to be caught by
such a taking device. I have not always been
so worldly-wise myself. It was only the other
day that I bought an instrument in this way,
which has since, I am happy to state, been turned
into profitable use as a mustard-and-cress bed.
The record of my experience may be a warning
to those who have the same money and the same
desire to buy a piano, and who are, at present,
as innocent as I once was, but never hope to be
again.

The first piano that I visited was described in
the advertising columns of the leading daily
journal as "a sweet and elegant instrument,
chaste in design, pliable in touch, with all the
latest improvements; the property of a lady who
was going to Sierra Leone." The address was a
lodging-house in a genteel decayed neighbourhood;
and I was struck by the contrast between
the brilliant face of the instrument, and the
faded appearance of the well-worn furniture in
the room.

"You haven't had it long, ma'am?" I said,
addressing the lady who was about to proceed to
Sierra Leone.

"No, sir," she replied, "and there's the
annoyance. If I'd known my medical man was
going to order me to Sirry Leony for the benefit
of my health, I shouldn't have bought it, as I did,
only two months ago."

"That's rather a curious place to be ordered
to for your health, ma'am," I said; "the most
fatal spot for Europeans on the globe."

"I leave it to my doctor," she replied,
promptly, "who knows my constitution best.
Shall I have the pleasure of sending the piano
home at fifty pounds?"

"Thank you," I replied, " I have got my
daughter to consult, but I will lose no time in
letting you know."

"There are two other persons after it," she
returned, as she showed me to the door; "and if
you could oblige me during the day?"

"Oh, certainly," I said, "you may consider
it done."

I did not decide to purchase this "chaste and
pliable instrument;" and I believe its nominal
owner did not go to Sierra Leone, as I saw the
same advertisement repeated, at intervals, for
several months after this interview.

The next piano that I visited was one
described in very similar terms, except that it was
the property of a bereaved parent. Children
will die, and pianos must be sold, and as public
inspection was invited, I got over any natural
delicacy that I might have felt in trespassing, as a
stranger, upon the sacred domains of private grief.

The address was again a lodging-house in the
same neighbourhood, with very similar furniture,
and a very similar instrument—so similar, in fact,
that it might have been the identical one I had
gazed upon a few weeks before. A female
servant attended me during the inspection.