had dir tices, agit nt to 12 iY, and atic ts to with great vigour. He was aided by Giovanni Rizzardo, Muscorno's successor, who was able to show up Muscorno as a liar, a rascal, and a heretic. The result of this first attempt against the ex-Ambassador was the liberation of Foscarini and the incarceration of Muscorno for two years in the fortress of Palmanova. There, no doubt, he nursed his schemes of revenge, and planned a new attack on his enemy which was to be only too successful. He was, as I said, the real villain of the piece; but it is certain that his hand was immensely strengthened by Foscarini's unpopularity; it is certain, too, that Foscarini's extravagant and senseless behaviour made many people hate him. eccentrics have paid so terribly for their eccentricity. Few Amongst the other scapigliati described by Signor Gargano, the painter and architect De Servi is mainly remarkable for his assiduous attempts to extort or borrow money from every one with whom he came in contact, and for his collaboration with Thomas Campion in the production of a masque written by that poet. After a successful career at various European Courts, he came to England in 1611, and enjoyed the patronage of the Queen and the Prince of Wales, to whom he was presented by Ottaviano Lotti. The Prince, as we have seen, was engaged in forming a collection of pictures. De Servi was welcomed at the Court and provided with board and lodging at Greenwich Palace; his pictures were admired; he received commissions from the royal family, but he was not happy. He had hoped that his path in England would be paved with gold, but the early extravagance of James I. had apparently compelled subsequent economy both on his part and on that of his son, greatly to De Servi's disappointment; "I seem to have arrived at a bad moment," he laments. During the whole period of his sojourn in England, however, he was receiving a salary (paid to his family in Florence) from the Grand Duke of Tuscany; both Lotti and Cioli made him generous advances, but the insatiable painter was as greedy as a fledgling sparrow. He poured the tale of his alleged poverty into the ears of the Prince and of Princess Elizabeth, and persuaded the latter to write a note to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany on his behalf. This might have resulted in trouble, for the Princess, being ignorant of diplomatic usage, omitted to address the Grand Duchess as your Most Serene Highness. They were sticklers for etiquette at the Tuscan Court. The malign Lotti, who by this time had grown heartily sick of being sponged upon by De Servi, allowed the letter to go to Florence. 66 De Servi's correspondence is mainly devoted to his own financial grievances, and contains little that is of general interest. He seems to have been a subordinate of Inigo work with some short biogJones, but that great man apparently did not impress him. Indeed, he makes no allusion to art in England-an instance of the fact, as Signor Gargano remarks, that Italians in the early seventeenth century regarded English culture as negligible, and England merely as a base for financial exploitation. He esteemed himself, and tried to make other people esteem him, as an amateur diplomatist, but his observations in that genre are without importance. but His most important commission was that of designing and producing the "Somerset Masque of Campion; the standard set by Inigo Jones in the "Masque of Lords," where the stars moved in an exceeding strange and delightful manner," and "few had ever seen more neat artifice than Master Inigo Jones showed in contriving their motions," was too high for De Servi; his pageant was a dismal failure, and the pageant - master was utterly discredited. Campion himself described in "Masques " how the pigheaded independence of De Servi made real collaboration impossible. The Italian stayed in England for a few more months, painting portraits; then he departed to serve Prince Maurice at the Hague. his Signor Gargano concludes his raphies of various rascals: of Petrucci, "il Cavaliere dell' Imperatore," who lived by writing scurrilous verses about every one who refused to lend him money; of another "Cavaliere Imperiale" (they were nearly all Cavalieri) who tried and failed to get round the wily James I.; of Chiti, who worked the confidence trick; of the Archbishop of Spalato, who became Canon of Windsor and Prebendary of Canterbury; of "The Son of the Pope," who intrigued with Spain, and forged a letter from the Constable of Rome; of the Abate Scaglia, who dressed his page as a woman, and so enabled Lady Purbeck to escape from a humanitarian crowd which had assembled to watch her doing penance for adultery-rogues all, and many of them destined to find an end to their operations in the prisons of the Inquisitors or at the stake in the Campo dei Fiori. I have plundered Signor Gargano's treasury with both hands, but even so I have made no allusion to a large amount of delightful material. My excuse for the plundering must lie in the charm and interest of his book, both from the point of view of the historian and the student of life. Every one who knows Italian ought to read it, and it certainly deserves translation. SKELETTA RECOMMISSIONED. BY ISOBEL JAMIESON. JACK'S clothes were a real worry to me! Goodness knows! he had enough of them, quite three times as much as I had. He had suits and shirts of varying thicknesses and shades to suit every weather condition -cold fine weather, cold wet weather, warm bright weather, warm dull weather! Having once accepted the unalterable fact that his luggage would fill an ark, let alone a small yacht, and even managed to stow the stuff away-that was not my complaint. What I found hard to bear was that, with all this wardrobe to choose from, he never appeared in anything but the perfectly dreadful remnants of a tweed suit and a Shetland sweater of dubious colour! The rest were "in case "the weather conditions required them; but, like the Mad Hatter's jam, it was always yesterday or tomorrow, but never the necessary weather to-day. The Don needs severe feminine supervision at any time in the matter of clothes, so with Jack's awful example and none of his own womankind, he degenerated rapidly, but more from want of thought than want of heart, and appeared in whilom tennis trousers and an aged Norfolk jacket, which, I fancy, is an heirloom. VOL. COXVI.-NO. MCCOVI. III. Sandy, being young and ignorant, had irreproachable yachting clothes! The Don's feet were a constant worry to him-and others. He seemed always to have on sea-boots when we landed for a walk, yet on coming on board he had frequently to be helped across the deck because he had nails in his shoes! The day after our midnight arrival at Crinan the wind was still howling and blustering from the south-west, a point of the compass which seems to contain the main supply of wind. Jack, of course, wanted to stay where we were; to leave a good anchorage merely to go out into a sou'wester, for no special reason, was what he calls " a mug's game." A mug is evidently a person who thinks differently from oneself, as far as I can gather from Jack's frequent, but diverse, use of the expression. I have a soft spot for the mug myself, as it is always towards the side of fun and games that the poor thing errs, and he seems to have very little serious sense of responsibility. Sandy and I decided to back the mug this time, and Jack gave in to a certain extent. "I shall certainly not go outside the Dorus Mor in this H counter, and trying to eliminate one's feet till the baling is finished. weather," said Jack, with immense dignity and decision; "but if you must always be on the move when there is more than enough to do where we are-well, we can go into Loch Craignish.' "Thank you, papa," I said The farmer's wife welcomed us humbly. This journey took us about an hour; an hour's sailing, of course, I mean-there is always the great untimed period of starting and stopping! Jack washed his hands of us, and let us play our little game with the mug as we chose. But his detachment was not as complete as the pretence of it, for he bobbed on deck just in time to verify his cross-bearings for the anchorage, and make it clear that we had not. We anchored close to an island of fair size, and on that island there was a farm, so, the moving successfully over, of course we wanted to go ashore and explore. Good Lord! You can't be happy now you have moved, but must go ashore! What do you want with a yacht at all, I wonder? Your one idea always seems to be leaving it!" This island is certainly one that likes to be visited," like Mary Rose's, but is infinitely less sinister, if equally romantic. with charming Highland hospitality, more as if we were expected guests than stray strangers. I asked if we might have some eggs and butter, even a chicken, perhaps? Oh, yess-she would see about it if we would wait in the parlour. Scotch farm parlours are sometimes a little awesome in their ugliness. The air has an almost sepulchral feeling, from the lack of use and open windows, and ranged around stiffly are photographs of stiff self-conscious relatives in unaccustomed clothes, with expressions of grim endurance-I suppose they knew the result would be forever entombed in the best parlour! This room was delightfully different, and without the least feeling of a recently removed corpse ! A spinningwheel, obviously for use, not ornament, was by one side of the fire, and by the other a table with mending and knitting-and books; these also for use, not ornament, which seemed more surprising even than the spinning-wheel. The Don cannot be near a book without picking it up, and as I was examining the wheel he almost shouted with surprise and pleasure-— "By my halidom, these are unexpected books to find on a min ling : ed וב desolate island! Their titles I said it was exceedingly kind of her, as our man was not very equal to dealing with anything less prepared for cooking than a slice of bacon. At that she offered to cook the "Perhaps they belong to birds for us as well, and when lodgers," I guessed. she added that it would be Not much," said Sandy; easy, as they had the fresh "look at this." And there, on many of the fly-leaves, was the name of the farmer himself, and his certificates and prizes from the University where he had taken a degree ! Unlike Voltaire's God, if this were not true one could not invent it, for it was such pure Barrie as to be rank plagiarism. "O Lord! Sandy groaned. I am off! Reading these sorts of things is bad enough at college, and living in a farm like this bad enough at any time-but, O ye gods! fancy combining them for pleasure! I'm off to explore the islandI really can't stick this; when the good lady returns, I suppose, you will talk philosophy, interlarded with pig-fare-theewell!" And he tiptoed out of the house, and then escaped, whistling. The lady of the house soon returned with a large basket of eggs, butter, and wonderful home-made scones, still warm from the girdle, and oatcakes as thin and curled as autumn leaves. "I have got a chicken and two young ducks I could let you have, but I will send them down to the yacht, as they have still to be plucked." herbs in the garden, the Don intervened and thanked her elaborately, but from the heart I suppose "heart" is the right expression! I asked about the spinningwheel, a thing I have never seen working, except in 'Faust and The Yeomen of the Guard,' when the vocal preoccupations of the spinner seemed detrimental to the spinning, for the wheel generally goes as much backwards as forwards! Mistress Farmer offered to teach me if we were staying a little longer at the anchorage. 'I should be much interested," to her surprise the Don, not I, answered; "spinning is an art that much intrigues me." His short-sighted peering at it, and his long tentatively poking finger, seemed to intrigue the owner of the wheel too! I said we would certainly come up next morning, when the light was better, if she could spare us some time. When we got back on board we found the restless Sandy had explored enough of the island, and wanted to row across to the opposite shore, which certainly looked attractive, and where Donald told |