don banks are most powerful establishments able to compete with the Bank of England, the Bank would soon be compelled to take means to supply itself with more gold from abroad, when more gold was needed. This change would go far to nullify the fluctuations and elevations of the Bank-rate which, under the present system, afflict the country whenever a temporary drain of specie occurs. But the banks connected with the foreign trade of the country, and all the new ones which might be established for this purpose, would keep a portion of their Reserves invested in the securities of Foreign Governments especially in the Government stock of those countries to which our drains of specie usually flow: for example, at Paris, New York, and Calcutta. And when a demand for specie for export occurred, the banks would either cash a portion of those foreign securities, and bring the specie to this country; or-which practically would be the course adopted-they would give their customers drafts upon the banks of the countries to which they desired to export specie, which drafts would render any export of specie unnecessary.

Hence the cost to the banks of cashing a portion of their foreign securities would constitute the only cause for raising the Bank-rate. The rise of the Bank-rate, in fact, would only take place to such an extent as to recompense the banks for the loss, if any, which they might sustain on the sale of a portion of their reserve of foreign stock. Now, as such sales would be made in countries to which specie was flowing, and where in consequence prices would be high, it is probable that no loss would accrue to our banks from such sales. But even say there was a considerable loss upon such sales. Say that the Bank of England were in need of five millions of gold, and that, in order to procure this

amount of specie, it had to incur a loss of 1 per cent, or £75,000. This is a very high estimate of the loss on such operations: indeed, Mr Reuben Browning states that in 1825 Baron Rothschild supplied upwards of nine millions of specie to the Bank of England upon those terms. Well, then, a rise of the Bank-rate to the extent of even per cent would more than cover the whole cost of the transaction! As the loan and discount business of the Bank of England ordinarily amounts to fully 20 millions sterling, a rise of from 4 to 5 per cent would yield to the Bank £100,000 in twelve months, as a set-off against the £75,000 which it spent in supplying itself with five millions of additional specie.

per cent - say

Such is our plan of Monetary Reform-a measure as requisite for the material wellbeing of the country as Parliamentary Reform is for the political wants of the nation. By this plan, the whole note - circulation of the country would be placed on a solid basis, and at the same time the currency would be allowed to expand and contract freely with the varying circumstances of the community. Every bank would, as at present, be bound to pay gold for its notes when required, with the additional safeguard that all the notes would be secured by a more than equal amount of Consols. The antiquated and injurious system of monopoly would also be replaced by a system of perfect freedom and equality. And at the same time, the currency of this country would acquire that elasticity which is so greatly wanted, and which would enable us to tide over with ease the temporary difficulties which thrice during the last twenty years, under the present vicious and antiquated system, have inflicted such terrible disasters on the trading-classes, and have done so much damage to the credit of the country.

IN these much-travelling days the formal descriptions of scenery, which once held so great a place in literature, have either ceased entirely or died away into those suggestions which recall a landscape to eyes which have seen it, but convey little idea to the stranger. You remember?" is often more eloquent than pages of what is called word-painting, though it affords small information to the mind of the home-staying, if such there still be. But yet most people who have roamed about the loveliest scenes on earth take a pleasure, which it is difficult to account for, in every tyro's new-recorded opinion of them, and like to see wherein his experience differed from their own, whether he noted their favourite points of view, and appreciated their favourite phases of native character or atmospheric influence. This feeling perhaps exists nowhere so strongly as among the crowd of Italian travellers, and especially among those who have spent some part of their lives about Rome and its charmed neighbourhood. Even people who have gone there for a few weeks, as people begin to do in these fast days-even probably Cook's Tourists, whom that remarkable individual carries through Italy as he might take them to Margate or to the Great Exhibition even they possibly will seize, all their lives henceforward, upon every scrap of print which treats of the scenes of their travels, and fondly recall and compare and criticise the record from that in their own memory. Not to such rapid visitors, however, can we address ourselves when we leave the great City of Sorrow and Decay, and turn our steps over the wide Campagna towards the Alban Hills. Who does not remember them, with the white towns on their slopes like a perpetual smile, with their villas and

their shadowy olive-gardens, their blue lakes and their mouldering palaces, and the sun that burns on Monte Cavo, blazes on the classic heights of Tusculum, and makes such great poems among the clouds, over the Campagna, as the dullest eye can scarcely fail to mark? It is to the leisurely visitors of times when there were no organised excursions-to the Forestieri, who have spent many a heavenly day of spring upon those sweet hillsides, and learnt their charms by heartthat we say, Do you remember?

thinking less, however, at this moment, of the familiar pleasant places than of the sudden wild blast of calamity and awful visitation which has of late disturbed their peace.

We will not pretend to remind the student of all the classic memories that linger about these hills, for, after all, to-day is to-day, and a Frascati woman, majestic in her white veil, or an Albanese, with her red ribbons, and her dark little house and her bambini, appeals more closely to one's heart at the present moment than Hadrian or Horace. Nothing is so remarkable in Italian scenery as that sweet strain of universal population that gives animation and a voice to every stretch of beautiful country the traveller lights upon; no doubt with grand exceptions, epic and solemn like the Campagna, tragic and awful like the Pontine Marshes-but still so general in every spot specially favoured by nature. As you mount the soft Alban slopes at the point nearest Rome, it is Frascati (you remember?) that you come upon with all that girdle of noble villas, with that terrace on the wall from which (if you are English enough not to fear the sunset) you can watch such goings-down of the great potentate of the sky as perhaps are to be seen nowhere else on earth; when the

wide vault of heaven gleams with almost insufferable glories, with vast belts and zones of every gorgeous colour; and the wide plain lies silent under the slant illumination; and candid Soracte rises lonely out of the distance; and away to the left hand, in purple glooms and wistful light, lie the Sabine and the Latin Hills; and St Peter's in the golden mists stands out insignificant but mighty, as if it stood alone amid the stillness of the Campagna, and there was no such thing around its skirts as Rome. The great basilica never looks so impressive, never so grand, so small, so wonderful an emblem of the might yet insignificance of man. Many a human association too clings to the little town. To the English, and still more to the Scottish pilgrim, it has an interest apart from all others. In the cathedral sleeps Prince Charlie, call him Pretender if you will no name can take away from the pathos and the pitifulness of his story; he who led the wild Highland bands, and held state at Holyrood, and had dreams of British empire, and was chased through all the northern wilds, and died, dead out, life and fame, as a man so deeply fallen, so cursed for his fathers' sake, the last of such a hapless race, might well do, and yet deserve more sympathy than blame. We know no two places upon earth which a philosophic and wandering Prince, if such a pilgrim exists, should find more full of sad suggestions than the terrace at St Germains, on which one Stuart, banished, wore out his heart in fictitious state; and that at Frascati, on which Charles Edward, with his sun going down amidst the confusion and wild storm-clouds of a lost life, must have looked out many a day to see the foreign world that thought not of him, living its homely life, and taking no account of kingdoms lost or won. His name is writ there in stone over him, with the most pitiful and touching of all pious falsehoods,

with the name and state of King of Great Britain and Ireland-an inscription which will not fail to fill many a wayfarer with strange thoughts.

And then the road goes winding along the hillside through the belt of villas, through the sweet glimmer of the olive groves, through the vineyards and fields of rustling corn, a mile or so on to Grotta Ferrata, where you all, you remember, went to the great fair, and wore paper roses in your hats, and bought penny trumpets, and the bright kerchiefs of the contadine, and saw the great pigs roasted whole at every corner; and, perhaps, on some quieter excursion, visited the Dominichinos in the fortified monastery which Pope Julius built, and which of itself is well worthy of note. Then is it San Martino that comes next, with nothing curious at all about it except itself, a little ancient, wild, rugged, strong, dilapidated, lovely village, the sort of place where, in defiance of all comfort and sanitary regulations, and even of a smell or two caught in passing, one's heart somehow takes up its abode at, seizing some Gothic window or cloistered nook to build a nest in, in defiance of all reason. And then the landscape widens, and a gleam of blue strikes the eye; of such a blue as never was seen before, as never perhaps will be seen again-bluer than the sky, bluer than the Mediterranean, bluer than any human eyes that ever shone; the Alban Lake, metallic, volcanic, shimmering under the sunshine in its round profound basin, and with the towers of Castel Gandolfo shining in the sun above. It gleams blue in the air, and it is water, and ought to refresh the eyes; and when we ride along the galleries, as they are called, under the trees, with glimpses now and then of the lake, and the towers above, and the Campagna below, the prospect is magical; but from the road, as you pass by, the sight of the Lake of Albano is not refreshing. There is something weird

and mystic and out of nature about it-volcanic, a freak of fire, some rude Titan's sudden work, and not the slow sweet toil of nature. To Castel Gandolfo the Pope comes for his holidays when the work of the sacred year is over in the Vatican, and it throws up a dome and sundry towers into the sky, which is nearly as blue as the lake. And then comes Albano, the chief town of all, with its miles of Roman causeway, making for it a separate way out of imperial Rome, and its wooded slopes, and its narrow clamorous streets, and those stately gardens of the Doria villa, and the bishop's palace, which has now gained a sacred fame. The road winds through it and comes upon one of the grandest viaducts ever made, the magnificent bridge which crosses the narrow, rugged, wooded ravine which once divided Albano and L'Ariccia. The two towns are now linked together by this noble link of stone, and through them both and over the bridge you go on to Nemi and Genzano, and the wild solitary way where once soldiers kept guard and brigands flourished before the railway made the road to Naples swift and safe.

Such is the line which marks the undulations of the Alban range, now mounting near the clouds, now stooping down towards the plain. The English community which lives in Rome, and the visitors whom good or evil fortune detains there after the dangerous moment when wise Forestieri fly, take refuge all along the range from the scorching tropical heats of an Italian summer, in all sorts of nooks and corners. While we write there rises before us woven in with many memories, the great airy naked rooms, full of windows and lights and bits of fresco, and the great landscape of the Campagna, in the upper floor of the Casa Pentini at Frascati; and farther on, at the gates of the little town of Nemi on the higher side of the lake, the pretty painted chambers of another old

palace, full of wall-pictures, not great in point of art, but sweet in colour, with glimpses from every window sheer down into the blue, blue lake, and abroad upon its rich wooded margin, and the big palace on the other side-places to spend a summer in as different as can be conceived from an English country-house or seaside residence, but so quaint, so beautiful, so full of memories, so strange, yet so home-like. There the unaccustomed Northern lives, shut up in his bare stately rooms, with closed windows and closed shutters, keeping out the insupportable glare and heat of day, until the sun sinks and a breeze springs up which bears you a whisper of the distant sea-the sea which you can think you see, and which sometimes flashes out in answer to the sun on the horizon like the silver string of a bow. Then the windows are flung open, the balmy air comes in, the prisoner shakes himself free of his fetters, and goes forth to watch the nightly pageants of sunset and moonrise, and to hear the Ave Maria sound from the churches, and the village girls sing their evening hymn, and the good people sit round the café door babbling and smoking and fanning themselves (according to their respective sexes), and doing all that has to be done by mutual calls and mutual weariness in other regions. At every step you take in the Piazza there is a new picture. The women go past in their pretty costumes, with the white drapery about their heads which makes them Madonnas up to middle-age, and weird Sibyls after. The peasants from the plains or the mountains in their many-laced buskins and conical hats, who have been hanging about the steps of the church all day to be hired like the labourers in the parable, lie down there on the same liberal portal for their night's rest. And the big mellow moon mounts up with genial eye; and tinkles of music are about, and voices, not softened