geous palace where I was a moment (as it seemed) before, and the lone, drear, unfurnished, musty, monk-haunted place I called my studio and lodging. One little incident more will be enough to indicate what profit I derived from my consular appointment. I had returned to Rome, and had given myself up body and mind to my art. Every once a month there came reports from my agent or viceconsul, with formal wax-seals and our arms impressed upon them, costing me double the postage that it costs me at present to send a letter to America. These reports contained the same intelligence, in the same stereotyped language: "I have the honor to inform you that no American citizen has presented himself at this consulate, and no American vessel has appeared in this port, since my last report." My own reports went to the department with a black line drawn diagonally from one corner to the other of the sheet through the divided spaces where there were headings for registering all that referred to the business of a seaport consulate. After seven or eight years of this blank reporting, one winter, when few of our countrymen had come to Rome, and those who had come expended little or nothing for pictures—I had not during the season sold a single work, and had no hope of doing so, with the prospect of a long summer staring me in the face before another winter might bring other of my compatriots to Rome, and I was already very much pinched for money-there came a report from my agent with a more than ordinary heavy and pretentious seal upon it. I opened the document, and it read thus: "SIR: I have the honor to inform you that the sloopof-war Preble came into this port three days since. As soon as I was informed of the circumstance, I immediately hired a proper boat and oarsmen, and placed the United States flag in the prow of it, and went out to the vessel. I was saluted with four guns and invited on board, where I partook of a splendid collation. After these honors and civilities, I could not do less than invite the officers on shore, asking them to a dinner at the Hotel della Posta. The repast was magnificent, and went off charmingly; we were all very merry and social, and kept it up till late in the evening. I flatter myself that I discharged the duties which devolved upon me with credit, and did honor to the position which you have placed me in, and shall have your approval. Herewith I inclose you the bill of expenses, which I must beg you to pay by return of post through Welby Brothers." A SHAKESPEAREAN STUDY. BY GEORGE LUNT. "Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cries."-MACBETH, Act I., Scene 3. due reverence, let me remark that it was the indispensable practice of witches in former times to besmear themselves with some sort of oleaginous preparation before taking their nocturnal flights. This necessary preliminary to aërial expeditions was called "anointing," or, in the more familiar and perhaps more correct phraseology of those days, "ointing," from the French verb oindre. The effect of this magical application was to produce such a porosity or lightness of the physical system that they could mount and fly like a bird, or, if any external instrumentality was required, even a broomstick, as is well known, was a sufficient steed for a jaunt through the air.' O word in all Shakespeare's writings has given | upon the stage. In order to approach the subject with so much trouble to commentators as this expression "aroint!" They have never been able to discover any plausible explanation of its origin or propriety. As often happens, perhaps they look too far to find a meaning which might present itself close at hand. It is said that Mr. J. P. Collier, whose conjectural emendations of the poet's text are generally unpoetical enough, and often seem to me to confuse and distort passages which to a person of poetical sympathies need no gloss whatever, professes to know the real interpretation of the mysterious word, but refuses to disclose it. What a tremendous secret this is to carry out of the literary world with him to those Elysian fields in which the ghost of Shakespeare must reproach him for declining to enlighten an anxious public upon a point so obscure and yet so important! Now, it seems to require no great stretch of in1 "They" (witches) "could fly in the air, when they would. on a broomstick or a fern-stalk."-Thornbury's "Shakespeare's England," ii., 114. "Satan taught them to strangle unbaptized children, or steal them from their graves and boil the flesh; of the fat they made ointment, which, when rubbed on their bodies, enabled them to fly in the air."-Id. There are two theories, however, which may tend to relieve Mr. Collier of the immense responsibility he has assumed. It cannot be rationally imagined that Shakespeare invented this word, or that he had not a definite idea in his mind of the meaning and propriety of the language he intended to produce | monologie." Both passages apparently taken from King James's “De Now, here, too, we gain a certain illustration of the theory I am endeavoring to maintain. It is evident that the witch was mounted in some way when accosted by the holy man, bidding her "alight;" and probably, by exacting her troth-plight, enjoining her to commit no further mischief on that journey. Having thus restrained her, so far as a witch's pledge was good for anything, he desires no more of her company, but sends her away with, "Aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!" for the renewal of which genuity to conceive that, in that period of not always very decipherable manuscript, and especially when we know that Shakespeare did not take the trouble to correct his plays for the press, a single letter in the word in question may have become substituted for another; so that “aroint” may have originally read anoint—such a transformation in the case of the two letters referred to being one so easily made. The sailor's wife has but few words to say, and, taken by surprise, we may imagine that, instead of simply crying, "Be off!" or "Get you gone!" she reverts, by associa-operation, after alighting, in "a journey of five thoution of ideas, to that practice familiarly known among the vulgar, which she has always understood must precede the supernatural flight of such an old woman as presented herself, and hence in her haste exclaimed, "Anoint thee, witch!" equivalent to "fly away." sand miles" or less, witches must be supposed to have taken a suitable supply of ointment with them. In Mr. Grant White's note on this word, in "Macbeth," he quotes "Rynt thee, witch, quoth Bess Locket to her mother," as a north of England folkOr, on the other hand, this marine lady, ap- saying. But this very form of the expression may be proached suddenly and addressed thus abruptly by thought, upon consideration, rather to confirm than the witch with "Give me!' quoth I," might natu- to militate against the suggestions I have made; rally use an exclamation in her surprise, and cry out, for the word “rynt,” pronounced, doubtless, with "Ah, oint thee, witch!" which, by a not at all un- they long, has no more apparent meaning than common mode of pronunciation among certain classes, 'aroint,” and, in its present shape, furnishes us with when the "Ah" is followed by a vowel, as if it were no real elucidation of the subject. But all persons ar, might readily run into "Aroint thee, witch!" on familiar with old-fashioned New England pronuncithe stage, and be so written down in the various ation of words, brought over by its original settlers, manuscript copies of the play, before it was at length not long subsequent to the production of "Macbeth" printed. Thus, with some of our countrymen, and (1610-1620), know that "oint" was pronounced int perhaps English people, too, law becomes lor, or lor-r. or inte, a manner of speaking which I have myself These suggestions may serve as giving at least an heard, years ago, used by elderly dames in applying intelligible explanation to a word, the derivation of a certain preparation to the skin of youngsters, for a which has escaped the researches of all critics, though disorder once thought specially prevalent in Scotland, its meaning is so obvious, and which, if existing even but which, I believe, has become far less frequent only among the lower classes so lately as in Shake-there and elsewhere, under the influence of improved speare's time, I can scarcely imagine to have been to- sanitary conditions of life. In Shakespeare's day, tally lost, or to have been used only by himself. In illustration of the ceremony preparatory to a midnight excursion, to which I have referred, I would call the reader's attention to " The Witch," a drama by Middleton, a contemporary of Shakespeare, who survived the great poet eleven years, and who probably wrote his play after " Macbeth' had been produced. The following passage may be found quoted in "Chambers's Cyclopædia of English Literature," vol. i., page 214: Enter HECATE, STADLIN, HOPPO, and other witches. To take a journey of five thousand miles? Have you your ointments ? Stad. All. Hec. Prepare to flight, then ; I'll overtake you swiftly, etc. " undoubtedly, "anoint" and "oint" would be pronounced anynt and ỹnt, just as in modern Greece, and perhaps in ancient Greece also (though I hope not), wohvpĥoisßow Baλaoons is pronounced, not as we learned it at school, but as if written moλupλnoẞno aλaoons.1 In regard to the interjection "Ah!" it is defined simply in "Barclay's English Dictionary" (London, 1792) as " a word made use of to denote some sudden dislike, and occasioned by the apprehension of evil consequences "-just as the sailor's wife employed it; though we know that it is also often used, for instance, to enforce an appeal. The exclamation "Rynt," so irreverently applied by Miss Locket to her mother, may have been properly “Ah, ynt," easily converted, in Norfolk County usage, into " Arrynt," and hence, by contraction, into "'Rýnt." Now, as a striking example of the facility with which very sagacious critics may sometimes fail in explaining words, a curious instance occurs in one of the notes to "Marmion." Sir Walter Scott quotes a passage from the works of Sir David Lindesay, in which, recounting his attention to King James V., in his infancy, he says: 1 So in many old-fashioned parts of New England, and I presume elsewhere, joint is pronounced jint, point, pint, etc. "The first syllabis that thou did mute are the first efforts of a child to say, "Where's David Lindesay?'' But it is evident that this is a mistake, since David Lindesay was, in fact, present, and the child was addressing him, and by pa, da, lyn, meant "Play, David Lindesay," a request with which he im And Sir Walter singularly remarks that "any old woman in Scotland will bear witness that pa, da, lyn, | mediately complied, as he says, "Then played I," etc. ESTHER, O Esther, say where are we riding? Turn, for your head is not withe-bound like mine; The very grass growing, the very air glowing, After us, after us, swift as the wind is Over the plains.-Yes-the children had gone Away to a neighbor's-the wealth of the Indies They'll use us for cover-they'll put us between them Why God made the Injuns; a wild-cat is kinder, A grizzly more human.-Say, dear, do you think I'd give just to know they are safe!-They have All gone? Then my hair here-keep dropping it where, drawn This withe-ing so tight that my wrists are all bleeding 'Tis nothing; don't turn, but keep listening, dear. Is naught coming after? That horrible laughter— The red-skins are laughing! O Esther, the fear dear, You think on the tall grass its curled ends might catch, And hang; for John knows it-knows every hair of it. All signs of our passing; their swift, crafty fingers And leave us here galloping over the prairie Alone with the devilish Comanches! My heart They wheel to the south-I feel the horse turning- One look, for God's sake, only one! It's the track- But swifter death- God! we're saved!-John! O WE E have at Philadelphia the vast exhibit of our art more comfortable, he discovers, provided he can find a of doing. Were it practicable to place by its side place to squeeze into, to sit here under an umbrella, for a display of all those things in which we show our art of the sake of the breeze, hot as the sun is, than to go elsenot doing, the Exposition would greatly multiply its les-where-and nowhere else can he obtain more than unsons and enhance its usefulness. This art of not doing, or of leaving undone the thing most essential to secure the end specially desired, is manifest in a thousand minor matters, and in some important ones. To enumerate a tenth of them would require too much space, and only be irksome to the reader; and, in truth, the art-if we may be permitted to continue this application of a term the essential meaning of which is skillful performance-the art of not doing is something that commonly every man observes differently, and our bill of complaint, therefore, would be likely to leave unmentioned many particular grievances of our readers. But if we suppose that an organized record of our social, industrial, and political deficiencies is to be set "cheek by jowl" to the Centennial Fair, we may be permitted to make our contribution to the depressing, perhaps, but still salutary exhibit; and, as we write this in torrid midsummer, with the mercury of the thermometer scaling the tube to unprecedented heights, our accusations shall be confined to those things that at this season peculiarly concern the public felicity. The American river-steamboat is one of the things which we proudly point to as an illustration of the native art of doing. We must all admit that it is majestic in size and sumptuous in its fittings, and for night-travel can be bettered probably in its best examples very little. But let us sail up the Hudson on a hot summer's day in one of the boats specially built for pleasure daylight travel. We find it excessively thronged with a motley crowd of summer tourists-of those with many impedimenta, hying to Niagara, Saratoga, or the Catskill Mountains, and those merely devoting a day to the pleasure of a sail on this famous river. The trains that whirl along the iron track on the shore accomplish the distance much more expeditiously; hence it is safe to infer that the passengers have chosen the boat either because it was supposed to afford superior comfort, or a view of the picturesque shores of the river was desired. Let us see with what result. The boat is built very nearly after the model of the night-boats. That it is to be employed almost exclusively for summer pleasure-travel does not seem to have entered the brain of its builder. The day being excessively warm, as our July and August days so generally are, the traveler naturally desires a situation in which he can enjoy the breeze created by the motion of the vessel, and, at the same time, watch the superb shores between which it is passing. He soon discovers he cannot do so. The only place from which the river can be fairly seen, and the only place where there is the least breeze, is on the small upper forward deck-big enough to accommodate perhaps a hundred people, and lying unprotected in the direct rays of the July sun! It is satisfactory glances at the shores. This, he soon feels, is the very mockery of summer pleasure-travel; it is a burlesque, he angrily reflects, of every right idea of a summer day-boat upon one of the most-traveled water-ways of the world. The traveler wonders, as a remedy easy at hand, why this deck is not extended forward to the bow as in night-boats, and surmounted by a high awning. This slight change would enlarge the accommodation somewhat, and enhance the comfort of the few gathered there; but, as the larger proportion of the passengers would still be defeated of the very end for which the steamer-journey is made, it is obvious that a radical remedy is needed. There should be an open but covered deck from stem to stern, over which the breeze could sweep without obstruction, and where the passengers could sit and obtain wide and ample views of the river. For lack of this kind of accommodation, the boats, on certain hot days this summer, have carried up and down the river crowds of half-suffocated and suffering persons, who have been arbitrarily deprived of all the felicity they had a right to expect. The art of not doing-of failing to adjust means to desired ends-could scarcely have better illustration. When one sails down the Rhine his boat is small, the style is simple, the accommodations indifferent; but he can at least see the river; he can accomplish the special purpose of his journey; but of those who ascend or descend the Hudson more than half are shut up in cabins, or crowded upon low-covered decks which afford but half-glances at the shores. This dull perception of the conditions that should pertain to pleasure-travel is manifest in other things. The tourist who would fain fortify himself against the necessary petty annoyances of his journey by a good dinner is denied the opportunity to do so. He may obtain, it is true, a poorly-cooked and worse-served meal in the dark, close, and most uncomfortable lower cabin of the boat; but, if he is of an imaginative or a speculative cast of mind, he muses upon what might be. He thinks of the upper deck of the vessel, now an empty desert of painted metal scorched by the sun, and imagines himself there under an ample awning enjoying a well-served dinner, watching, as he tastes his delicate viands, the pleasant shores go by, and feeling upon his brow the cooling breeze from the water. Here might be delight for the eye, refreshment for the body, and serene comfort for the whole being, all because of the exercise of a little of the art of doing. How different is the real picture! In a subterranean-well, no! not exactly subterranean, but an under-deck cabin with a decided subterranean suggestiveness about it-here, in semi-darkness and a suffocating atmosphere, amid babble, confusion, discomfort of all kinds, a hurried meal is snatched, cooked and served by men who have not the slightest idea of the æsthetics of the dinner-table, who really imagine that the pure and simple purpose of hungry people is to be fed, no matter how, no matter with what. These are some of the daily experiences of the Hudson River traveler. What an opportunity is here for Yankee skill and genius in the construction of a boat that shall be adapted to its purpose! What an opportunity for men of knowledge to make, by the art of doing, a sail up the Hudson a thing of delight, something that men would come from afar to enjoy! WE cannot consent to stop here without further enumeration of the art of not doing as it exists all around us. When the summer tourist has landed from the steamer it is possible that a coach waits to convey him to his rural destination. Here again is manifest the dull imagination, the incapacity to understand that which the traveler desires. He leaves the town for out-of-doors, for new scenes, fresh air, and the animation of movement. In the steamer he is shut up in a cabin, in the stage-coach he is offered another close apartment, stuffy, suffocating, dusty, hot, while he longs for the breezy spaces on the roof. There are, it is true, a few seats aloft, but so few for the number of passengers that they are hotly contested for, and a majority must perforce be driven into the dreary recesses of the vehicle. How is it that Yankee ingenuity has not remedied this? If we cannot invent a coach adapted for summer-travel, we might at least have the grace to borrow good ideas from other people. Some of the people who build stage-coaches must have traveled over the Swiss mountains in a diligence, and noted how in these vehicles all the passengers have seats on the ample roof, the luggage being thrust into the space where here the unhappy passenger is "cribbed, cabined, and confined." It is a tedious five hours' journey in the coach from Catskill village to the Mountain House. It might be converted into a pleasant and stimulating ride -for the progress is through a beautiful country and up fine mountain-roads-if the method of locomotion were adjusted to the requirements and comforts of the travelers. The art of not doing pursues the summer wanderer at every step. The hotels are nominally conducted for the convenience of the guests, but they are actually administered according to the narrow, ignorant, or selfish purposes of the proprietors. Of the bad cooking and bad service at these places so much has been said that we refrain; but, assuredly, so simple a thing as rightly selecting the hour for dinner might be expected. This in many places is between two and four o'clock-just the time when many of the guests are off angling, or boating, or upon excursions to the mountain-passes, or on rambles through the forest, all of whom return toward sundown with appetites well whetted for dinner, to find nothing better for tired nature than a meal consisting of a dismal array of chipped beef, sour berries, and a thin liquid known as tea. Indisputably, a lunch eon should be served at noon for those who may wish it, and dinner for the hungry majority at six or seven o'clock; or, which would be much better, there should be a daily table d'hôte at about six, and a coffee-room in which a guest may have served him at any hour of the day the dishes he selects. This is the only rational way; our American method is the stupid adherence to a custom the original motive for which has long been outlived; and were our caterers really en rapport with their guests, did they attempt to understand the art of doing (other than the art of extortion), there would soon be a complete revolution in the methods of the dining-room at all the resorts. If these matters are declared to be little things, it is in little things that the art of doing contributes essentially to our comfort: large evils are vehemently assailed until they are overcome; minor annoyances are often borne because it is a greater tax on one's energies to combat than to endure them. We have one more illustration of significant not doing, and then will close our bill of complaint. During the severe heat and prolonged drought of July the grass in all our city parks was wofully scorched. It had scarcely a semblance of its grateful native green. In the midst of these-we were about to say green inclosures, but this would be a mockery indeed fountains continually play, the waste waters of which flow off into the sewers. Here, then, right in the midst of the parched grass, are the very means to remedy the effects of the drought-means flowing away to waste. Assuredly it would be a small tax on engineering skill to divert this abundant water upon the grass-plats, thereby keeping them perennially green. If the skill of the park-keepers is unequal to the invention of anything for the purpose, those obtuse persons could at least borrow the simple device of the Paris park-gardeners-a long, perforated hose, stretched upon small horses with casters, which are thus easily shifted from place to place. The water forced through the perforations pours a shower upon the eager grass; and by the occasional shifting of the hose a large surface can in the course of a day be covered. The grass in our parks is dying for water; the water is there flowing away unused; how promptly a competent art of doing would bring this wasted abundance to this sore need! There is no method by which negatives can be exhibited: if there were, an exposition of things not done would rival in interest and exceed in usefulness, however much it might lack in conditions of vainglory, the best display of arts accomplished that we could make. AMONG the host of misleading maxims which, sounding well, and having got credit by reason of their containing a grain of truth, have gained currency in the world, not the least erroneous is the one which tells us that "no man is a hero to his valet." The insinuation is, that men, appearing abroad in society and among their fellows, are so many bundles of pretense; that they pad and rouge their manners and professions, as it were, so as to appear what they are not; and that when, at night, |