INTRODUCTION.

UR subject is a vast one; the field is the world,

and from its great cities we shall gather in our harvest of information. Untrammelled by any given routes, unappalled by intervening distances, we shall roam from place to place as fancy or convenience may dictate, passing, it may be, from the hoary monuments of Egypt, or the classic memorials of Greece and Rome, to the cities of the New World or of our far-away colonies; turning from the contemplation of curious customs in cities like Damascus or Bagdad, to watch the stream of life in the Boulevards of Paris, the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, or under the lindens of Berlin.

We shall, as far as possible, try to tell the story of the birth, infancy, development, and struggles of each city as it comes under review; of the great men who have made or marred its progress; of the sources of its material strength or weakness; of its trade and manufactures, and its commercial relations with other cities and nations; its distinctive

legends and traditions; its principal objects of interest, ancient and modern; its domain in science, literature, and art; its folk-lore, fêtes, festivals, and special characteristics. We shall place under contribution the personal experiences of many years of travel, and avail ourselves of the writings of all travellers of all countries and of all times, to throw light on the cities to be described. We shall draw largely, too, on the resources of art to depict scenes which the "clairvoyance of the imagination," as Lord Lytton calls it, would fail to picture.

It is not always desirable to let a reader see the foundations on which a writer. intends to build his work, but in the present instance they are so simple, and we venture to think so sound, that we make no secret about them. We shall, then, as far as possible, take the existing monuments in a city as clues to guide us through the labyrinth of the past, and give us a deeper interest in the present. For example:-In Venice, that strange city, founded in the fifth century by a band of fugitives who fled from the devouring sword of Attila, King of the Huns, we hail a gondola and glide along the Grand Canal. There rises before us the magnificent Palace of the Doges, and we are introduced to the political history of Venice, with its strange stories of the Council of the Ten and the dreaded Tribunal of the Three. Close by is the Church of St. Mark, where, according to tradition, rests the body of the Evangelist, piously stolen in 829 by Venetian citizens from the Temple at Alexandria. Here we may trace without any difficulty the ecclesiastical history of the city. A little farther on, and we come to the Academy of Arts, around which clusters a host of tales concerning artists and art. At Salviati's, or any of the other tempting manufactories, we are reminded of the specialties of the city-Venetian glass, mosaics, and beads. Passing under the Rialto, "where merchants most do congregate," and where descendants of Shylock may still be found, we tarry to tell of the commercial history of Venice, how from small beginnings it grew to be the grand focus of the entire commerce of Europe; how the Queen of the Adriatic held "the gorgeous East in fee," and how her merchantkings with their overflowing wealth were able to rear the costly monuments which even in their ruin grace the city and are the admiration of all the world.

On broad lines such as these we shall proceed, and on our way we shall be brought into contact with stories about Venice and the Crusades, the defeat of Barbarossa, the conquest of Constantinople, the acquisition of Candia, the sea-victories over Genoa and Pisa, the oft-told-and often incorrectly told-story of the treason of Marino Faliero, of the melancholy fates of Carrara, Carmagnola, and the two Foscari, the marriage of Catharine Cornaro, the acquisition of Cyprus, wars with the Turks, and the naval battle of Lepanto. We shall see Galileo introducing his telescope, Loyola organising the Order of Jesus, and Gian Bellini establishing portrait-painting. We shall overhear Titian talking with the notorious Pietro Aretino, and tell stories of their contemporaries, Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese. And then we shall look at Venice as it is, and describe the comparatively near past, when the French took possession of the city and the Austrians held sway; of the struggles for freedom from the hateful rule, during the presidency of Manin; of the great siege of fifteen months by the Austrians, during which time they lost 20,000 men; and of the union with Italy in 1866.

ANCIENT AND MODERN ROME.

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If the history of Venice can be traced by its monuments, much more so can that of Rome. There, as we stand upon some height, the panorama of two thousand five hundred years will pass before us. There, for instance, is the Palatine, the cradle of Rome, where Romulus, the shepherd-boy, watched his flight of birds of good augury; and there the Aventine, where Remus surveyed his own unsuccessful flight; there is the Forum, ringing still, to our ears, with the cheers of the crowd just loosed from the spell of Cicero's eloquence; we hear once more the tramp of the Roman legions as they come from their mighty conquests and bend their way along this same Via Sacra on which we stand, passing under yonder gates, familiar to our eyes as to theirs, to the Capitoline, crowned now with the towers of the Ara Coeli. Here Titus brought up and deposited the spoils of Jerusalem, and there is the arch commemorating the triumph. Turn which way we will, every spot is sacred with the memories of ages. Here great Cæsar fell; yonder is the Appian Way, where Paul, the prisoner from Jerusalem, walked with weary footsteps; there is the Colosseum, where the Christians were led forth to the lions; there the Campagna, hollowed into catacombs, in which they hid themselves in days of cruel persecution, and where they laid themselves down to die. Vestiges of Regal Rome, Republican Rome, Imperial Rome will be found scattered around on every hand, in palaces and baths, temples and ruined walls, basilicas and triumphal arches ; while the splendours of St. Peter's and the Vatican, and hundreds of churches, yield ample records of Ecclesiastical Rome.

The modernness of modern Rome does not clash like a rude anachronism with other parts of the city. Somehow or other, in Rome the old and the new meet together naturally, and no great revulsion of feeling is experienced in passing from the Corso, or the Palace of the Quirinal, to the Via Sacra, or the Palace of the Cæsars. We can note by the way the sanitary improvements in the city since it became the capital of Italy, and then look at the Cloaca Maxima, that solidly-made sewer-one of the mammoth structures of Regal Rome-and find that it serves the city to-day, subject to modern scientific principles, as well as it served Rome hundreds of years ago. So it is as regards her art treasures. Passing from the palaces, where marvellous exhibitions of the world's choicest works excite our imagination to the very utmost, to the steps of the Trinità dé Monti, where modern artists' models congregate, we feel there is no inconsistency between ancient and modern subjects. That venerable patriarch with long white beard, clad in sheepskins and reposing on the steps, might have been the very model that Domenichino selected for his immortal picture in the Vatican, "The Last Communion of St. Jerome;" those brigands with blood-thirsty weapons in their girdles, yonder shepherds from the Campagna, those maidens weaving flowers, are as familiar to us as the faces of Beatrice Cenci or the men in the lower section of Raphael's divine "Transfiguration," for they have been models to all artists of all countries, and their faces. are familiar to visitors in every art gallery in Europe. We shall witness some of the sumptuous ecclesiastical pageants and gorgeous ritual of Papal Rome, and not feel oppressed with a sense of incongruity, even though a procession of white-robed priests pass by temples where, in imagination, we have been beholding the great processions in honour of the gods.

If we were, therefore, in the structure of our chapters on Rome, to fix upon the Forum and the Palatine as a text for a description of Ancient Rome; the Colosseum and the catacombs for early Christian Rome; St. Peter's and the Vatican for Ecclesiastical Rome, and the churches and palaces for Medieval and Modern Rome, we could trace the whole history of the Eternal City. And clues similar to these we shall find in Florence, Naples, Genoa, Milan, or any other city in Italy.

Let us now take a rapid glance

But enough as to the structure of the work. at some of the countries and cities to be visited, just to whet our appetites for fuller details. We are going abroad, "anywhere, everywhere under the sun." Like Goldsmith's "Traveller," we may say

and Australasia shall be the directions in which we will now take our flight of imagination in this brief summary of our subject-exhaustless in the variety of interest that it involves.

Turning northward, we must of course visit Russia, and equally of course proceed first to St. Petersburg, the present capital, although it represents in a less degree than Moscow, the capital of the past, what we shall most seek in our journeyings-the chief corner-stones on which the fabric of a nation is built. There is a striking difference between the

stateliness of St. Petersburg and the picturesqueness of Moscow. The former is an unbroken level, with wide streets and handsome buildings, formal and a little monotonous; the latter is on undulating ground, with winding streets and an infinite number of surprises in the variety of styles of architecture. Still, there is a great deal to see and admire in St. Petersburg-the sumptuous Isaac's Church; the beautiful Cathedral of the Mother of God of Casan; the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, containing the tombs of the Imperial family; the Winter Palace, in which many strange events have happened, but none stranger than the escape of the late Emperor and his guests when the Nihilists were thwarted in their diabolical scheme to destroy them while at dinner. There are wonderful palaces and crown-buildings to examine, and many curious domestic and social habits to consider. It is strange, for example, to see spring burst suddenly