here; and I shall have to sign your time-bill, and to see if we haven't got something for Naples. You're for Naples, an't you? And I want to send Damer some cigars and a pot of caviare that's been here these two months, and that he must have smelled from Naples."

"Then be hasty, for heaven's sake, for I'm starving.

"You're starving! how strange, and it only eight o'clock! Why, we don't breakfast here till one, and I rarely eat anything."

"I mean the bag the Naples bag; it is under flying seal, and Sir Joseph wants to see the despatches.'

"Oh, that is below in the cab. I'll go down and fetch it," and without waiting for more, he hastened down stairs. The cab was "My appetite gone. "Naturally enough," thought Tony, "he got tired waiting; he's off to order breakfast."

"So much the worse for you," said Tony, gruffly. "My appetite gone. is excellent, if I only had a chance to gratify it."

What's the news in town -- is there anything stirring?"

"Not as I know."

He hurried up-stairs again to report that a friend with whom he travelled had just driven away to

"Has Lumley engaged Teresina the hotel with all the baggage. again?”

'Never heard of her!"

"He ought; tell him I said so. She's fifty times better than La Gradina. Our chef here," added he in a whisper, says she has better legs than Pochini."

66

"And the bags!" cried the other, in a sort of horror.

"Yes, the bags, of course; but I'll go after him. What's the chief hotel called ?"

"The Trombetta."

"I don't think that was the name."

"The Czar de Russie ?"

66

66

No, nor that."

Perhaps Feder?" "Yes, that's it.

Just send some one to show me the way, and I'll be back immediately. I suspect my unlucky breakfast must be prorogued to luncheon-time."

Not a bit of it!" cried a fine, fresh-looking, handsome man who entered the room with a ridingwhip in his hand; "come in and take share of mine."

"He has to go over to Feder's for the bags, Sir Joseph," whispered the attaché, submissively.

"Send the porter-send Jasper

send any one you like. Come along," said he, drawing his arm within Tony's. "You've not been in Italy before, and your first impression ought to be favourable; so I'll introduce you to a Mont Cenis trout."

"And I'll profit by the acquaintance," said Tony. "I have the appetite of a wolf."

66

aries, that every young fellow had a learned slave or two at his elbow to help him over the difficulties of languages. As well say that the reason why they had no railways was because their slaves carried them about in litters. The reason why they had no dictionaries is the same as the reason why they had no

As we apply the term "Periodicals" to Maga and other less meritorious portions of literature appearing at regular intervals of time, the word Alphabeticals" seems not inappropriate to a class of works, the peculiarity of which is that their parts are distributed according to the order of the alphabet. If the reader will stop for a mo- railways-they had not invented ment to contemplate all that is meant by "the alphabeticals," he will see in his mind's eye a vast district of the world of letters, multiplied and varied, and capable of infinite multiplication and variation. He will see that, from its very characteristic of the alphabetical, it has an enormous influence on human thought, and power of usefulness for human purposes. And yet the alphabetical machinery itself is comparatively a modern invention, not perhaps yet brought to its full development. Even the form of arrangement by the sequence of letters, not only at the beginning, but throughout the words, was not so obvious as it is to those trained to it by invariable custom in the use of good dictionaries. In the older dictionaries and indexes we find continual deviations from it, owing to the warping effect of some association or assimilation of sound bringing words together out of their exact order. We will easily see the tendency to this kind of deflection in the street-directories of minor towns, and other compilations made up by uneducated people. Simple as the rule is-in fact, it is a rule of the nature of a law in an exact science-they cannot observe it. But while the rule of sequence in virtue of this very exactness is absolutely attainable, the adjustment of the matter to be subjected to it is a more difficult affair, as we shall presently find.

There is a puerile reason given for the Romans having no diction

them. And there are many things
in our modern social system that
seem to us quite simple, and so
natural that they must occur to
every one from the beginning, which
yet are modern inventions, and were
entirely missed by the great em-
pires and cities that have passed
away. The Romans must have had
a powerful repressive machinery to
keep together their great city. They
had, as we all know, a wonderful
organisation for preserving the in-
tegrity of, the empire we still
make use of fragments of it in our
social institutions, and are glad to
have them. But there are many
things which seem trifling in com-
parison, yet are the source of safety
and comfort to millions, which they
did not know. The mere number-
ing of the houses in our streets is,
for instance, a great institution-
we would like to know what man
of genius invented it.
the directory and the post-office
system, the lighting of streets at
night, and the various other ad-
juncts, which give each member
of a vast community access to all
others without forcing him into
contact with them. What a chaos
London must have been in Dr.
Johnson's days, when it was about
the quarter of its present size! No
one knew what its size was, indeed,
or what it contained; and there
were fabulous ideas about it, as
there have since been about the
interior cities of China, whose in-
habitants have no notion of their
actual contents. There were mys-
terious notions then about multi-

Then comes

tudes of people disappearing in that great whirlpool; but with the population multiplied, and no interference with liberty of action which is, in fact, much fuller than it used to be- London is, on the whole, as safe a place as any country village, and the mysterious disappearances among its three millions are probably not so numerous as those among any other equal number of people dispersed through the country. If the Romans had, as they must have had, a strong organisation, it cannot have possessed those subtle influences for the protection of the individual person among the millions which ours has; and, in fact, human life was carelessly looked after then, and left a prey to many enemies from which it is with us sedulously protected.

What can appear simpler than an index to the contents of a book, or an alphabetical directory of the householders in a town?-and yet Rome could no more produce such an article than she could print it if it were made. Perhaps indeed this touches the secret of the long time that the world had to wait for so obvious an assistant to its operations. It may have been only after books were multiplied that human genius was stimulated to provide ready means of access to the accumulating stores of knowledge.

man of great power, both in literature and politics, in his own day. Whether it has been editorially rectified or is pretty much in its native shape, his Lexicon, as published by Porson, has, so far as it goes, a very systematic look, entitling it much more to the name of a dictionary than the Etymologicum Magnum' in the collection attributed to Midas.

But nothing will illustrate better how difficult it was to rectify all arrangements into pure alphabetical order, than looking back at old indexes. One of the earliest ever printed, by the way. that of the

Nuremberg Chronicle'-is better than one will see for centuries after it, and is one of, the admirable features in that very wonderful book. It was printed close to the end of the fifteenth century, and contained opinions and elucidations, the full import of which was not understood until the Reformation had made progress. Its services in enlightening the public mind of Germany have not been sufficiently brought to light in later times; nor yet its services to art, which were of a high order. Its multitudinous woodcuts are attributed to Wohlgemuth, the teacher of Albert Durer; but one cannot help thinking that Albert had a cut at them with his own hand.

But to come back to the Index. The Arabian school of philoso- It now very nearly achieves uniforphers, who had orderly minds, are mity in method, which is everything. supposed to have been the first to Turn to any index of a book printed suggest an alphabetical arrange- even so late as the reign of Queen ment; and the idea was a worthy Annie or George I., and ten to one companion to that powerful ma- but you will find that the manufacchine, the Arabic numeration. Our turer has not made up his mind own private belief is, that the old- whether he is to index by the est actual dictionary in existence is Christian or surname, or whether the Greek Lexicon of Photius, the he is to give titled persons their man who became so celebrated for names or their titles. In some collecting passages from blasphem- instances a battle will be found by ous and heretical works in order its name in history-the name, that that he might confute them, and is, of the place where it is foughtwho thus was the means of pre- but in others it will be entered serving for the delectation of the under the word Battle; and so on profane a large quantity of that with everything. kind of literature which otherwise would have perished. He was a

As the index is about the most simple and obvious of all the al

then to issue it without an index' is a gross dereliction of duty. You profess to endow the reading world with a storehouse of facts, and you must give them the key of the storehouse, otherwise you are utterly deceiving them. But, on the other hand, if your contribution to the world's literature be a pure work of genius, either in prose or verse, with the title of 'Moonlight Moments; or, World Wanderings in the Wonderful,' supplying it with an index is equivalent to an expectation that the world will accept all its ideas as household phrases, and will want to know where to find them so that they

phabeticals, let us offer some casual remarks on its nature as an intellectual production. The preparation of an index is a work of labour decidedly of the drier kind. There is no getting through it with an impetuous rush of thought, nor does it brighten up its own details with that self-supplying light which carries the enthusiastic investigator in nature or archæology-or his brother, the worker in the powers of the exact sciences-lightly over the ground. "There is nothing so ravishing as records," said Prynne about those piles of musty parchment which would have appalled many other people, perhaps, but had charms to beguile him of his may recall them accurately, like dinner, and keep him deciphering and deciphering until nature told her wants in the dim eye and the trembling fingers. Nobody finds index-making to be a ravishing pursuit; nor does the world reward it with the honour of high in tellectual achievement. Instances, it is said, there have been, of men who, on taking breath after the long toil of a heavy index, have looked round upon the public for Essays, miscellanies, historical the usual distinctions of successful and biographical sketches, and the authorship, but have found not like, not intended as absolute comonly that there is no prize for them prehensive solid books of reference, in the Temple of Fame, but they are yet containing sometimes valuable not held even to be ticket-holders, facts which people might like to who have a right to feel disappoint- go back upon, are the staple of this ed on drawing a blank. When transition state. And it may be conditions permit, an author is apt to leave this function to some other, as the coachman of old used to drop the reins when he drove up to the posting house.

Being entirely a matter of duty, the question, What books should have indexes, and what should not? comes into the department of ethics, and, like everything else that has to be adjusted there, it admits of significant distinctions. If the book professes to deal with matter of fact, either by supplying the old stock with new things, or by making a complete digest of some group already in existence-if it is a history of the world, or of Europe, or of Little Pedlington,

passages from Shakespeare or the
classics. The difficulty lies just in
the quarter where there always are
difficulties - the transition stratum
of literature; that kind which Ten-
nyson, by the way, says, deserves
to have a special peal of bells,-

"For all the past of time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals
Wherever thought hath wedded fact."

said that, however the author may act, he has the benefit of the doubt. If he be so generous as to supply the public with an index, especially if it adhere to facts, he is not amenable to the charge of inflated conceit.

If he withhold it, on the other hand, he is not a traitor. He has promised nothing but sketchy matter, intended rather to amuse than to teach his reader. His responsibility is that of the companion, not of the schoolmaster.

But "if you have it, have it good," is applicable to the index as well as to most other things; and there is a larger scale of excellence here than one would at first think. Humbly as the place of the index