nance." This testing of the metals gradually grew in importance, till two centuries later the privilege of assay was handed over to the Goldshiths' Company, very stringent regulations being laid down. No gold was to be worse in quality than gold of "the touch of Paris; " silver was to be of the sterling alloy, and in no case worse than the silver of money. The leopard's head was to be stamped on every piece, to show that it had duly passed the wardens of the craft. In those days Paris was famous for the purity of its gold, and the touch of Paris and the sterling of England were well-known terms all over Europe. It is still a question how this "sterling" came into our language. It is so often applied to money - pounds sterling, sterling coin of the realm that one expects its introduction through some relation with the mint. Camden tells us that in Richard I.'s time a quantity of money was imported from Germany of an excellence that gave great satisfaction. Old deeds of that reign allude to payments rendered with nummi easterling - money that came from the east.

Silver goods were made all over England, and not in the capital only; and notwithstanding all the assays, fraud seems to have been pretty brisk. Cutlers covered tin with silver so subtly, that the plated article was readily sold for the solid. So the law ordered that, in every town where goldsmiths worked, once a year two of their body should come up to the capital "to be ascertained of their touch" and have the leopard's head punched into their work. And now there were to be three marks instead of one. The goldsmith had his own mark-his initials. The assay mark was a letter of the alphabet; and, lastly, the leopard's head showed that the Goldsmiths' Hall had passed the piece. It is curious to turn over all the old statutes that deal with this subject, - we are so much accustomed to think fraud a nineteenth-century production. In one reign after another it seems to have been a struggle between the framers of the law and the artificers of silver plate as to which should outwit the other. All localities and all ranks were guarded and provided for. We may read how William de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, caused the London goldsmiths to make for him certain vessels of silver and belts of gold of questionable fineness; wherefore two gentlemen were commanded to examine these by the touch and to report the assay to the king in chancery. This was in 1369. But in the stringency of the rules

some favor was shown to the Church. The general law was that there was to be no gilding of copper or latten. Bad habits had crept in. Candlesticks, harness, powder-boxes, sword-hilts, were covered with gold, or, as we should say gilt, "to the great deceit, loss, and hindrance of the common people and the wasting of gold and silver." This was not to be from the year 1403, and one hundred shillings was the penalty for defying the law. But Church ornaments might be gilt only the vile metal must show through in the foot "for to eschew deceit." Louis XI. of France copied this provision of Henry IV., and the goldsmiths of Tours were allowed to make reliquaries of base alloy; but each was to be stamped "Non venundetur;" such wares might not be sold. But relaxations came in gradually. Knights' spurs might be silvered, and all the apparel of a baron or of the holder of superior estate might be gilt. In Henry VII.'s time there is legislation touching the mints of London, Calais, and Canterbury. Things seem to have been going very badly with the mint. The coinage was debased, and gold and silver plate sunk to a very low condition; and so the standard for gold was fixed at twentytwo carats, and no solder was to be used beyond what was necessary. Soon afterwards a great raid was made on the fraudulent goldsmiths; two of them were caught, and certainly their punishment seems to have exceeded their offence. Their ears were nailed to the pillory at Westminster; then they were put in the pillory at Cheapside, and were taken through Foster Lane to Fleet Prison. That was the old English way of dealing with fraudulent goldsmiths. It was perhaps more merciful than the Belgian. In Brussels the culprit was nailed by the ear to a pillar, there to remain till he thought fit to walk away, leaving more or less of his ear behind him.

Hall marking gives to the collector of old silver a security rity which the amateur of other curiosities sadly needs. It amazingly adds to the price, if not to the value, of old plate. Absolutely plain patens and salvers of Queen Anne's time have been sold quite recently at five-and-twenty shillings an ounce. The workmanship was the simplest, but the authenticity was indisputable. Of course there are now and then cases of fraud. To no purchaser in all commerce does caveat emptor apply more significantly than to the collector of those kinds of curiosities which are said to be old. But the hall-mark in silver

THE PIXIES' GARDEN.

SLEEPLESS I lay, though softly rocked
Upon the bosom of the night;
The steadfast stars looked down and mocked
My waking dreams of dead delight,
They everlastingly as bright

As when her hand in mine was locked.

The moon swept out through deeps of sky,
Dim trailing clouds she left behind;
"Come out," she said, "all clouds pass by;
Thou for thy soul shalt solace find.
These fevers of a tortured mind

My light will soothe or sanctify."

I rose and passed where hawthorns grow
Beside the path where, glad and gay,
I and my sweetheart used to go
By meadows wreathed with new-mown hay;
Through fields by moonlit dew made grey,
I and my heart went, sad and slow.

I reached the garden where the hops
Make fairy garlands everywhere,
From each tall pole a dream-wreath drops,
And strong keen scent fills all the air.
I saw the pixies dancing there
Their magic dance that never stops.

Around the poles in circling rings

From dawn of moon till dawn of day, With dewy cobwebs for their wings, They glide and gleam and swing and sway, And mortal lips may never say

The song that every pixy sings.

And rainbows day has never seen

With unnamed colors make them fair. Their feet are shod with Spring's first green, Green gems of glow-worms deck their hair That floats upon the moonlit air,

Like golden webs on silver sheen.

Their dance goes on through all the years,
But those who see it, few they be.
Only by eyes which many tears
And vigils have made clear to see
Are they beholden: and wishes three
Are his to whom that dance appears.

My first wish? Ah! what room for doubt?
The wish that eats me night and day:
"Would she were here!" No thought about
The other wishes came my way;
For round my neck her dear arms lay,

And all the world was well shut out.

How glad each was of each, and how

Life blossomed then, one heart records. I shall remember that, I know,

Lost dream, too perfect not to break! Yet here I might have held her now, And so forever - but she spake,

(O my soul's voice, divinely low!) "Ah, might we but our future know!" And I wished with her, for love's sake.

And lo! a sea of blackness broke

About us, and we knew our fate. Close, close we clung, and neither spoke, So widely, wildly desolate The destiny we could not wait For time to seal or to revoke.

Yet to my heart hers beat, although
It beat in fear and not in bliss.
O fool, to court a deeper woe
Together we had conquered this:
No woe could live beneath the kiss
That joined our souls an hour ago.

"Would that we two were dead!" I cried,

"And in the quiet churchyard laid,
We should sleep sweetly side by side,
Of past and future unafraid,
By never a hope or fear dismayed,
Together, still, and satisfied."

And, as I wished it, she was gone!
For that one gift no pixies give.
I only woke, and woke alone,
As I henceforth must wake and live,
Must serve and suffer, strain and strive,

And in my eyes the sunlight shone.
Longman's Magazine.

THE PRISONER.

E. NESBIT.

The cloistered nun who sits in narrow cell. Sending her soul in heaven afar to dwell, May show thee how

Within a cage to spread thy wings and love.

Academy.

No pris'ner now.

B. L. TOLLEMACHE.

From Blackwood's Magazine. CÆSAR BORGIA.

[THE discovery of a number of hitherto unknown documents at Simancas and Pamplona, at Pau and in Romagna, has thrown new light upon the eventful and extraordinary career of Cæsar Borgia, especially with regard to the latter part of his life in Spain. The romantic story of his escape from prison and his death in an obscure skirmish are as yet practically unknown to history. It does not come within our limits to give an exhaustive description of the mass of new material unearthed by M. Charles Yriarte, whose name will be well known to our readers as one of the greatest authorities upon the life and manners of mediæ val Italy, but the following paper forms the first instalment of what may be taken as a brief résumé of the subject and of the valuable historical material referred to. Thus undoubtedly a great service has been rendered to history by the presentation of the life of Cæsar Borgia, as it can now be really given by correcting the previous narratives by the aid of the State papers, private correspondence, and as yet unpublished diarii to be found in the various storehouses of Italy, as

also of Castile and the two Navarres. This biography may be divided into three parts: Cæsar, Cardinal of Valencia; Cæsar, Duke of Valentinois and Prince of Romagna; Cæsar in Spain.

The first part of M. Yriarte's important paper describes the beginning of the life of Cæsar Borgia, his early days at Perugia and Pisa, and his attitude as a prince of the Church up to his abjuration. The second will present him to us as the captain-general of the pontifical troops, and now the ally of France and the husband of the sister of the king of Navarre, assuming the ducal crown, and exerting himself to reconstitute for his own advantage the kingdom of central Italy, up to the day when the sudden death of his father, the wrath of Julius II., and the treachery of Gonzalo de Cordoba put an end to his vast projects by exile and imprisonment. The last chapter, "Cæsar in Spain," treats of what is as yet unrecorded by the historian: it recounts his captivity, the singular vicissitudes of his flight, his last struggles, and his dramatic death before the fortress of Viana in Navarre. - ED. B. M.]

I.

THE CARDINAL OF VALENCIA (1476-1498).

THE conditions amid which Cæsar Borgia was born are well known. Spanish by his father, Cardinal Rodrigo de Borja, of a noble family of Valencia, and Roman by his mother, Vanozza Catanei, who belonged to a family of the middle class, and owed her fortune to her beauty, he came into the world at Rome in 1476, and was legitimized in October, 1480, by a bull of Pope Sixtus IV. He was the fifth child of the vice-chancellor of the Roman Church. At a very early age he was removed from his mother - to whom, however, he remained attached to the last day of his life, as did his sister Lucrezia Borgia, and his two other brothers, Giovanni, Duke of Gandia, and Don Gioffre, Prince of Squillace - and confided to the care of Adriana Mila, daughter of Pedro Mila, son of a sister of Alonso de Borja (Pope Calixtus III.). This Adriana Mila had come to Rome with the Borgias, and was the constant confidant of Rodrigo, who married her to Ludovico Ursino Orsini towards the year 1473.

At the age of eight, Cæsar, who was already inscribed on the list of the protonotaries of the Vatican, was provided with benefices, being provost of Albar and treasurer of the church of Carthagena. At ten years of age he was sent to the Sapienza of Perugia to commence his studies there, for which purpose the vicechancellor appointed two preceptors, both Spaniards like himself - Romolino of Ilerda (destined one day to draw up the indictment against Savonarola) and Giovanni Vera of Ercilla. From the year 1488 Cæsar was already to a certain extent a great personage, for Paolo Pampilio dedicated to him the "Syllabica," which he published at Rome about this period. The preface to this volume is one of the few documents we have which throw any light on Borgia's early youth. In 1491 we catch sight of Cæsar again at Pisa, where he is studying law under the famous Filippo Decio; and the same year a bull of Innocent XII. names him titular Bishop of Pampeluna. The municipal archives of this town have supplied us