war.

belief in his existence had by no means died out. Chroniclers tell how at times a shadowy figure glided through the streets of European cities, bringing infallibly in its train famine, pestilence, or With great awe they tell how it had wandered thus for fifteen hundred years across the snow-clad heights and arid steppes of Caucasus and Asi, through the African deserts and by the rivers of Central Europe, and so must wander till the end of time

"By years not worn, but sore opprest, And longing for the judgment-day; Praying for rest, to find no rest, Cursing each morn's returning ray,

Ever wandering-ever-ever!"

In 1547 there appeared at Hamburg one who called himself Joseph, and stated he had been a shoemaker in Jerusalem at the time of Christ's crucifixion. His story is embodied in a ballad, probably of later date, which is preserved in the Pepys collection. Save that the Roman Cartaphilus is transformed into the Jewish shoemaker, the account given in the ballad differs in no material point from that of Matthew Paris. In a quaint, downright way, without prelude, it plunges at once into the subject:

"When as in faire Jerusalem

Our Saviour Christ did live,
And for the sins of all the world
His own dear life did give.
The wicked Jews with scoffes and

scorn

Our Saviour did molest, That never till he left his life

Had he a moment's rest. When they had crowned his head with thorns,

And scourged Him to disgrace, In scornful sort they led him forth Unto his dying place."

Christ, fainting beneath the burden of his cross, sought to rest upon a stone, which stood at the door of a shoemaker's shop in the

Via Dolorosa; but the churlish owner, rushing out, thrust him off, saying:

"Away, thou King of Jewes,

Thou shalt not rest thee here;
Pass on, thy execution place

Thou seest now draw near.'
And thereupon he thrust him thence,
At which our Saviour sayd,
'I sure will rest, but thou wilt walk,
And have no journey stayed.'
With that this cursed shoemaker,

For offering Christ this wrong, Left wife and children, house and all, And went from thence along."

Cursed with a deathless immortality, and tormented by the pangs of unavailing remorse, he wandered through all lands without house or home or hidingplace. He also was a "most grave and holy person:"

"If he hear any one blaspheme,

Or take God's name in vain,
He tells them that they crucify
Their Saviour Christ again.
If you had seen his death,' said he,
'As these mine eyes have done,
Ten thousand thousand times would
ye

His torments think upon,
And suffer for his sake all paines
Of torments and of woes.'
These are his words, and eke his
life,

Where'er he comes or goes."

The next public appearance of the Jew would seem to have been at Paris in the year 1686. An account of him is preserved in the "Turkish Spy," a curious and interesting book, whose authorship is doubtful. In Boswell's "Life of Johnson," it is ascribed to an Euglishman, named Manley, but the elder D'Israeli has since conclusively shown it to be the production of John Paul Mariana, an Italian resident in Paris from the year 1650-1700. Its form is fictitious, like that of the "Persian Letters" of Montesquieu, and Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," but it nevertheless records real

events. "Here (says the Turkish Spy) is a man come to this city, if he may be called a man, who pretends to have lived about sixteen hundred years. He says of himself that he was usher of the divan at the time when the Christian Messias was condemned by Pontius Pilate, and that for insulting the illustrious one he was condemned to live and wander the earth till the day of Judgment. One day I had the curiosity to discourse with him in various languages, and I found him master of all that I could speak. He told me that there was not a true history to be found.

"He was in Rome, he said, when Nero set fire to the city, and saw him stand triumphing on the top of the citadel to behold its flames. He saw Saladin's return from his conquests in the East, when he caused his shirt to be carried on the top of a spear with this proclamation

Saladin, prince of many countries, shall have no memorial left of him when he dies but this poor shirt.' He knew Tamerlane, the Scythian, and told me he was so-called because he was lame. He seemed to pity the insupportable calamity of Bajazet, whom he had seen carried about in a cage by Tamerlane's orders. He had heard the Emperor Vespasian say, when he understood the temple of Solomon was burnt to ashes, that he had rather all Rome had been set on fire. Here the old man fell a weeping, himself remembering the ruin of that noble structure which he described to me as familiarly as if he had seen it but yesterday. By his looks one would take him for a relic of the old world, or one of the long-lived fathers before the flood. To speak modestly he may pass for the younger brother of Time." The narrative continues to describe conferences held between this personage and the Parisian savans, who seemed at a loss what to think of an individual laying claim to so vast an

experience. The Hamburg Jew, if we may trust the ballad, had to submit to a like cross-examination"Most learned men with him conferre, Of those his lingering dayes, And wonder much to hear him tell His journeys and his ways."

The last impersonation of the Wandering Jew which we shall notice, and one which differed in some respects from any of the preceding, was made in Venice about the year 1700 by a certain Signor Gualdi. During his stay in the city three things were observed in his conduct. The first was that he had a small collection of remarkably fine pictures, which he readily showed to any one that desired it; the next that he was perfectly versed in all arts and sciences, and spoke on every subject with the utmost readiness and sagacity; and it was in the third place observed, that he never wrote or received any letter, desired no credit, made use of no bills of exchange, but lived in a style of unostentatious splendour, paying for everything he desired in gold of an antique coinage. One day he was visited by a nobleman, a connoisseur in the fine arts, who, having examined his collection, admired it excessively. At the close of the visit (the story goes on to say), the nobleman cast his eye by chance over the chamber door, where hung a picture of this stranger (Gualdi). The Venetian looked upon it, and then upon him. "This picture was drawn for you," he says to Signor Gualdi, to which the other made no answer, but a low bow. "You look," continued the Venetian, "like a man of fifty, and yet I know this picture to be from the hand of Titian, who hsa been dead one hundred and thirty years. How is this possible ?" "It is not easy," said Gualdi, gravely, "to understand all things that are possible, and yet there is surely no crime in my being

like a portrait drawn by Titian." The Venetian perceived by the stranger's manner that his remark had given offence, and hastened to take his leave. But he did not fail to communicate the circumstance to his friends; it speedily became the talk of the city, and various parties, urged by curiosity, went to call upon Gualdi. They were disappointed, however; the stranger had left the city, and was never seen again.

A theme more essentially romantic, fuller of boundless possibilities in the way of plot and incident than this can hardly be conceived; it is not therefore surprising to find it a general favourite with the poet and novelist. Among the various compositions which it has suggested first mention is due to Dr. Croly's "Salathiel the Immortal," a work which does not occupy the place among notable English novels in the public estimation, to which it is entitled by its merits. It is not a book to be devoured at a sitting, nor can it be read at all times with equal advantage, but when taken up at intervals, and when the mind is open to the influences of enthusiasm, it yields intense pleasure. It abounds in clear and picturesque descriptions of scenery and manners; the language is eloquent, if at times over rhetorical; steeped in the language of Scripture, its gorgeous orientalisms differ essentially from those of "Rasselas " or "Vathek." Perhaps the one blemish of the book is its slightly inartistic plot; the characters lack cohesion; they appear suddenly, dazzle our eyes for a brief space with their vivid brilliancy, and then flit away into darkness like the pictures on a magic lantern screen.

In "Salathiel" the attempt is made to present us with a picture of the Jew before the curse descended on him. He is represented as standing head and shoulders above

the rest of the people, not only on account of his position as Prince of the ancient house of Naphthali, but of his estimable personal qualities. His valour and wisdom in council mark him out as a born leader, and he soon becomes the life and soul of his countrymen's armed resistance to the encroachments of Rome. In common with every pious Jew of the time, his earnest expectation is the approaching advent of Messiah; but in proportion to his yearning desire for this event is his hatred for him whom he deems an impostor. He took a leading part in the accusation and condemnation of Jesus. As they conducted him to the place of execution, the concentrated fury of Salathiel found vent in words of blasphemous insult. Then Jesus turned, and while he looked upon him, more in sorrow than in anger, the veil was lifted from his eyes, the blackness of his crime became present to his mind with horrible clearness, and with the words of doom ringing in his ears he fled from the scene and the city. Thenceforth he was a fugitive and an alien.

From Croly's "Salathiel" to Godwin's "St. Leon" the descent is great. Those two heroes of romance differ from each other as Milton's Satan does from Goethe's Mephistopheles. Salathiel is a

grand Titanesque being, full of great ambitions and noble impulses ; St. Leon is the same Salathiel, reduced by the wear and tear of a thousand years to the rank of a commonplace mortal. He is a Spanish grandee, an astrologer, an alchemist, a lover, a parent. Indeed, were it not for his occasional outbursts of remorse and despair, we should fail to recognise in him the lineaments of the "Wandering Jew." Still further, and as if to illustrate the proverbially easy transition from the sublime to the ridiculous, Lord John Russell has almost burlesqued the old legend

in his " Essays by a Gentleman who has left his Lodgings."

In the department of poetry we may mention first, the Honble. Mrs. Norton's "Undying One," dead, it is to be feared, long ago. Among the bright aerial people who follow Ianthe through the mazes of "Queen Mab," the " unessential figure" of Ahasuerus glides like a spectre. Very characteristically, Shelley has chosen to represent him as defying the omnipotent power which holds him in thrall:-

"Thus have I stood-through a wild waste of years Struggling with whirlwinds of mad

Professor Aytoun a ballad, founded on a striking incident in Godwin's "St. Leon," neither of which merit particular notice. Several French writers have also handled the old theme with considerable artistic effect; not to speak of Eugene Sue's "Le Juif Errant," where the part of the Jew in the wonderful drama therein unfolded is rather that of a spectator than an actor, there is the poet Quinten's "Ahasuerus," of which Longfellow says in "Hyperion," "It is a weird mystery, a dramatic prose poem, in which the ocean, Mont Blanc, and the cathedral at Strasburgh have parts to play; and the saints on the stained windows of the Minster speak, and the statues and dead kings enact the dance of death." A chanson on the same topic, by Beranger, has been translated, and may be found by the curious reader in the "Minor Morals" of Sir John Bowring.

Here we must, somewhat regretfully, take leave of the "Wandering Jew." Common sense is never weary of reminding us that the narrative of his chequered life is but a legend

"A fable, a phantom, a show

Of the ancient Rabbinical lore;
Yet the old mediæval tradition,
The beautiful strange superstition,
But haunts us and holds us the
more."

If, however, we turn our thoughts from the individual to the race, we cannot fail to be struck with the legend's profound significance. The toils and sufferings of the apocryphal Ahasuerus, must surely be slight in comparison with those which the people of the "wandering foot and weary breast" have endured for centuries and will endure till the eternal purpose regarding them be fulfilled.

!

THE Appian Way was once the great highroad leading to Rome from Brundusium, the modern Brindisi. It is now open for carriage drives from Rome to Albano, and few of the environs of Rome present so much to interest the traveller. For many miles along this, as along the other great highways leading to Rome, the country was a vast cemetery, a city of the dead, in ancient times.

Nearest to the walls, at the modern gate of St. Sebastian, stood the tomb of the Scipios, as if the guardian of her impregnable gates. The ashes of the greatest of the Scipios, Africanus, do not rest here. He died, and was interred at Liternum. But Ennius, the great father of Roman poetry, the conservator of her legendary annals, was one of the occupants of this tomb. Cicero refers to the necropolis that lined the Appian Way when he asks, arguing for the immortality of the soul, "When you go out of the Capenian Gate, where you behold the tombs of Calatinus, of the Scipios, of the Servilii, and of the Metelli, can you suppose they are now miserable ?"

that

The practice of burning the dead was not general until the later days of the Republic, and this practice made a sepulchre of moderate dimensions sufficient to receive the remains of whole families, and even of their retainers. A small urn would hold the ashes of a hero, and these

urns were usually arranged in the columbaria, arched alcoves or niches, side by side, row by row, and close to them were the lachrymatories, or any other small memorials which the pious affection of the survivors might raise to the memory of the departed.

It is said that Sylla was the first of the Cornelii whose body was burned, and there can be little doubt that, from that time cremation was the ordinary form of burial with the wealthy. Ovid tells of plebeian pyres. In the poetry of the Augustan and later periods, allusions to coffins and to interment are very rare; whilst allusions to the funeral torch, to the pyre, to the ashes, and to cremation generally are common and perpetual. Consequently urns, and not large massive sarcophagi, are the usual features of the crowded cemeteries.

The approach to Rome in ancient times by the Appian Way, must have been singularly solemn and impressive. Even to comparatively diminutive Pompeii the approach through the Street of Tombs must have been grave and serious. But what must the journey to Rome have been, when the traveller had arrived within twelve miles of it, along the Appian Way? Think of a Westminster Abbey of twelve or thirteen miles in length, crowded with lofty tombs or votive monuments to the dead, extending from half a mile to a mile on either side!