-which he thought 'sounded ill for her respectability' and so he would have no more to do with her! The last of the three pretty ones was a very sad spectacle indeed; she was a gentle innocentlooking girl-not more than sixteenbrought in like a sheep to the slaughter by a wicked-faced devil-as to whose business in life there could not be two opinions. Gambardella hardly looked at the girl-but told the woman in a grave imperative manner that he was already suited-and the pair went off to seek a less scrupulous customerleaving me very much shocked upon my honour! I was at his house again yesterday-went with Carlyle to see the picture in its finished state-and stayed awhile behind him, helping the Unfortunate to concoct a new advertisement! more precise, and not so liable to misinterpretation as the first. In addition to the female help he is minded now to have a-tiger! Lady Morgan having laughed at him for having the door opened by a maid with a baby in her arms!! It is impossible to make him conduct himself like a reasonable being-and so he must flounder along like a very unreasonable one. The only comfort is that sort of headlong, unbalanced character has a wonderful knack of lighting always like a cat on its feet. There I must stop abruptly-Mazzini has been here and as it pours down rain I had best send the letters with him." To Jeannie Welsh. Mazzini was suffering from an abscess in his face. The story of it illustrates his calm fortitude as well as the affection he aroused in others.

"Wednesday [July, 1843]. "Now I hope to be better than I was before the going to bed

and do not you fancy that I would be either so forgetful of my promise or of my own interest as to be either 'dying or near dying' or at all seriously ill without telling you, and calling on you to come and help me though you were at the furthest end of the kingdombut I have always an inner feeling when I am seriously ill-quite different from that which attends a passing illness, however painful for the time being and I had none of that presentiment on this occasion. I knew that it was only a summing up of many things' (chiefly moral) as Mazzini declares his face to be—and that the rest and quiet of bed would bring me speedily round. Oh dear me, Babbie, I am very anxious and sorrowful about Mazzini. After many entreaties he has at last begun to take care-some care of himself, but God knows whether it be not too late. He went with Toynbee yesterday to a consultation with Hawkins, the chief surgeon of St. George's Hospital-who probed the wound and declared it to be already at the bone-and John Carlyle told me again last Sunday night 'that if it reached the bone nothing could hinder its becoming a cancer.' 'Well,' says Mazzini, 'but my dear-even if it does-there can still you know be an operation'! Such comfort! and this he said to me to-day as calmly as if he had been speaking of a hole in his coat! He went yesterday and had a tooth drawn by order of his new surgeon to see if Nature would turn the matter perhaps into that course and came here to-day all the way from Queen Square where he now lives! And when I scolded him for coming, he said 'Well, but since the tooth was pulled, upon my honour the wound has not discharged anything.' I could

not help crying half the time he stayed -he looks so emaciated and so calm! if his Mother were near or any human being to nurse him I should not mind so much but he has nobody but poor helpless me helpless because the accursed conventionalities of this world would make it disgraceful to go and nurse one's dearest friend if he happened to be a young man. A strange thing took place at the Association the other night-so pathetic and at the same time almost ridiculous. After Mazzini had made a short speechpleading his inability to speak more at one time a working-man took the chair and moved a resolution that 'Mr. Mazzini should be- laid under obligation to take care of himself! his life being not his own but Italy's property, that constraint should be exercised if necessary for his preservation'-the sensible working-man! And then he proceeded to move the details of his resolution-firstly for instance that if the doctor considered quiet necessary that an Italian guard should be in constant attendance at his door to prevent any one passing in to him-etc. etc., and this movement was followed by a deputation of Italian men waiting on Dr. Toynbee to ask what particulars of treatment he wished to have enforced. The only comfort is that he does now begin to feel himself the insanity of neglecting his health to the same extent as formerly. God grant the sense may not have come too late."

To Helen Welsh. As has been noted previously, Mrs. Carlyle was sometimes bored by the attentions of her devoted admirers, and snubbed them. Here is one who all too amiably turned the tables on her.

The call from Tennyson, who hated calls as such, was a great triumph.

[Jan. 31, 1845.]

"I am tired to death to-day

and as stupid as two or three donkies for I did not get to sleep till after four this morning the consequence I suppose of having excited myself too much in doing the honours of a tea party. I do not remember when there was a party here by appointment beforeand I was forced into this one by an offer from the beautiful and deaf Mrs. Mackenzie to come and I dreaded having her all to myself, so asked Miss Wilson and her brother-and that bedevilled husband No. 2 whom I told you of. I did not ask his wife but he took it for granted that he might bring her. My programme when I last told you of them was to cut the lady and wean the gentleman away from the house-but neither would she be cut nor he be weaned. After I had treated him with the most marked coldness and even impertinence for many weeks, he came one day and finding I was alone sent away his carriage saying he would walk back-Humph!' thought I, 'heaven send we are not going to have an explanation!' So it was-presently he began to complain of my repulsive manner to him-he was persuaded I had the greatest dislike of him he thought it very unjust -he-they had always liked me so well! He had wearied his patient (oh!) wife with wonderings what I could mean &c. &c. &c. but the cruellest of all had been for him to see the other day my reception of Darwin!! 'When he contrasted my sunshiny cordial looks of welcome, and hearty shake of the hand for him—a person whom I really liked

with the apathetic air and the fingers presented to himself he felt finally convinced that I not only had a dislike to him but wished to mark it.' I was

than the idol and almost as new as radio. For its beginnings you must search five hundred centuries. To find a race so primitive that it does not know false face or fetish, you must travel for tens of thousands of years back up the stream of culture till you reach Australia and its bushmen. At one time or another the cult of the mask has spread over all the rest of the world. To-day men worship by its means in Asia, Africa, the two Americas, and even Europe.

The mask holds a certain mystery, a certain terror, even for civilized man. Every masker is a potential Ku-Klux. The unknown and the irresponsible lie behind that false face. Imagine, then, the power of the mask with primitive man. He lived, he still lives, in a world of spirits. In every bush, in every brook, there is a spirit. In strange-shaped stones and lowering clouds lurk demons. These spirits, seen and unseen, come to harm him. His own soul wanders out of his body when he sleeps; the soul of another may steal in and possess him, or some

witch-doctor may catch his spirit and sell it to an enemy. The quick and the dead are demons together, and they do all manner of evil to one another. The happy man is the man who can learn how to balk the spirit of his enemy or to control the demon of some great dead chief. Out of such needs rises magic, the first science, and fetishism is born. Little images may receive the power to destroy rivals. The spirits of powerful demons may be propitiated by offerings to the carved sticks in which they find shelter. If a spirit will come into a tree or a post, giving the thing power, think how quickly it will take up its abode in a mask carved in its image. When a savage wears this mask, the demon enters into his body, and he is possessed.

In Africa the favorite form of masking is a kind of spiritualism. Young men give to the raising of the dead all the enthusiasm that goes to professional base-ball in America. Each Conan Doyle makes himself a mask emblematical of a dead relative. When the craze for séances sweeps the village, the bucks put on their headdresses and their costumes of leaves, and wander from house to house, talking with a strange accent through a reed mouthpiece and accepting gifts. To the casual white man these very material ectoplasms may seem a ridiculous piece of tomfoolery, but, if the traveler understands how ready the spirit world is to take shape in any passing fetish, he will see a complete and inevitable logic in the ghost-masks of Africa.

It takes something more than an idle fancy to get a negro into a mask in which he can fight the demons that lurk in forests. Here he is dealing