beset the travelled amateur of books and art.
He had loitered, sketched, and dreamed away
more than one winter among the palaces of
Florence and Rome. He had read Petrarch, and
Tasso, and the most amusing parts of Dante
He had been in love, though never, perhaps, very
deeply, with scores of dark-eyed Giuliettas and
Biancas. He had written canzonets in which
amore rhymed to core in the orthodox fashion,
and had sung them by moonlight under picturesque
balconies, over and over again, in many a
stately old Italian city. Above all, he had
known Giulio Colonna from his earliest
boyhood, and had been inoculated with Italian
patriotism ere he knew what patriotism meant.
Accustomed to regard Signor Colonna not only
as some kind of distant cousin, but also as one
of his mother's most frequent guests, he had
accepted all his opinions with the unquestioning
faith of childhood. He had, indeed, listened to
the magic of his eloquence long before he was of
an age to understand its force and purport, and
had become insensibly educated in the love and
reverence of those things which were to Giulio
Colonna as the life of his life. It was, therefore,
no wonder that the young Earl proved, as he
grew to man's estate, a staunch friend to the
Italian cause. It was no wonder that he made
enthusiastic speeches at obscure meetings,
transacted a vast amount of really hard work in his
capacity of Honorary Secretary to the Central
Committee, and believed in Giulio Colonna and
the great Italian republic of the future, with all
his heart and soul.

There was, in reality, no blood relationship
whatever between the Castletowers family and
this branch of the Colonnas. A. Miss Holme-
Pierpoint had married a Prince Colonna some
twenty-five or thirty years before; but she was
long since dead, and had left no children. A
pleasant intercourse had subsisted, however,
between the two families ever since. The
Colonnas, down to the third and fourth
generation, were royally welcomed at the grand
old Surrey mansion, whenever any of them came
to England; Lady Castletowers and her son
had once spent six delightful weeks of
villegiatura at Prince Colonna's Alban Villa; and
when the young Earl was in Rome, he had been
the very life and soul of all the winter entertainments
given at that stately palazzo which stands
in the Corso at the corner of the Piazza di
Santissimi Apostoli. As for Giulio Colonna, he
had been l'intime du maison ever since the
Honourable Alethea Pierpoint had exchanged
her name for that of Castletowers—just as he
had been l'intime du maison at the house of her
ladyship's father. He was one of the very few
whom the countess really valued, and whom she
condescended to call by the sacred name of friend.
Perhaps he was the only person upon earth who
could be said to enjoy her ladyship's confidence.
It was to him that she had turned for help in her
matrimonial troubles; for advice respecting the
education of her son; for sympathy when any of
her ambitious projects failed of success. She had
known him, indeed, from her girlhood. She
admired his great and varied talents. She had
perfect reliance on his probity and honour; and
she respected his nobility of birth. To a certain
extent, she respected his patriotic devotion as
well; though, it is almost needless to add, she
was wholly at issue with him on the subject of
republicanism.

"It is a point," she used to observe, "upon
which my good friend Signor Colonna is deaf, I
grieve to say, alike to reason and good taste.
He has so imbued himself with the classical
history of his country, that he can no longer
discriminate between the necessities of a
semi-barbarous race and those of a highly civilised
people. He cannot see that the monarchical
form of government is precisely that which the
age demands. I am very sorry for him. I have
represented the matter, to him, over and over
again, from every conceivable point of view; but
with unvarying ill success. I am weary of
trying to convince a man who shuts his ears to
conviction."

And when she had said this, or words to this
effect, Lady Castletowers would sigh, and drop
the subject with the air of one who had exhausted
it utterly.

TO SMOKE, OR NOT TO SMOKE?

THE universal habit of smoking tobacco—
universal as to nations, if not with individuals—
sometimes makes us ask ourselves how people
managed when they had no tobacco to smoke.
For the plant is quite a recent introduction.

Nicotiana Tabacum is a native of South
America, which its Spanish discoverers found
growing abundantly in the Antilles, and which
found its way into Europe, generally, little more
than three hundred years ago. It had been
cultivated by the Spaniards in Cuba, and by the
Portuguese in Brazil, when Jean Nicot, king's
advocate, on a mission in Portugal, first sent
seeds to Catherine de Médicis; whence its
botanical name, which the plant retains, and its
denomination of "Herbe de la Reine," by which
it was known for a considerable time. But
almost every one engaged in its early spread,
endeavoured to immortalise themselves through
its agency.

It is to tobacco's supposed medicinal virtues,
and not to its employment as a pastime, that
this flattering reception must be attributed.
Fagon, Louis the Fourteenth's famous physician,
wrote of it (in Latin) thus: "If tobacco be
used with judgment and moderation, it may
justly claim the precedence of all other
remedies. . . . It appeases, likewise, by its sulphur,
excruciating pain of the teeth. It has even the
qualities of Homer's nepenthes; for it makes us
forget the cares of life, renders us happy in
extreme poverty, carries along with it, into our
veins, the most flattering hope, eases our mind,
and even supplies the want of victuals."