the sword the first-born of the land of Egypt. It was no imposture
when the shining hosts of the army of the Almighty smote the
Assyrians. It was no deception when Gabriel, the King's messenger
from the court of heaven, was sent to comfort Daniel by the river
Hiddekel; or when he announced to the maiden, whom all generations
have called blessed, that she was to be the mother of the Divine
Redeemer.... The written Word from first to last is full of the
holy angels. It begins with angels, it ends with angels._

THE VENERABLE ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE,
Westminster Abbey.

II

SOCIAL LIFE IN THE ETERNAL CITY

And others came,--Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and Veiled Destinies!

SHELLEY.

In what ethereal dances!
By what eternal streams!

POE.

Social life in Rome is no misnomer. From the most stately and beautiful
ceremonials of balls at the court of the Quirinale, in ducal palaces, or
at the embassies; of dinners whose every detail suggests stage pictures
in their magnificence, to the simple afternoon tea, where conversation
and music enchant the hours; the morning call _en tete-a-tete_, and the
morning stroll, or the late afternoon drive,--a season in Rome
prefigures itself, by the necromancy of retrospective vision, as a
resplendent panorama of pictorial scenes. There rise before one those
mornings, all gold and azure, of loitering over the stone parapet on
Monte Pincio, gazing down on the city in her most alluring mood. The
new bridge that is to connect the Pincio with the Villa Borghese is a
picturesque feature in its unfinished state; but the vision traverses
the deep ravine and revels in the scene of the Borghese grounds carpeted
with flowers. Its picturesque slopes under the great trees, with a view
of Michael Angelo's dome in the near distance, are the resort of morning
strollers, who find that lovely picture of Charles Walter Stetson's--a
stretch of landscape under the ilex trees, the scarlet gowns of the
divinity students giving vivid accents of color here and there--fairly
reproduced in nature before their vision. One should never be in haste
as the bewildering beauty of the Roman spring weaves its emerald
fantasies on grass and trees, and touches into magical bloom the scarlet
poppies that flame over all the meadows, and caress r