the young and wealthy Romans could not resist the temptation to wear the forbidden luxury, though Tiberius branded it with the epithet of "effeminate," and passed a law forbidding men to appear in silken garments. Augustus passed the winter of of G. R. 734, at Samos, where a second Indian embassy waited upon him. The presents which the ambassadors brought to Augustus were a colossal partridge and tortoise, enormous serpents, and fierce Bengal tigers, the first ever seen in Europe. In the after-chapter following the reign of Aurelian it is noticed

A military club-book, belonging to this era, which was found in the old workings of a gold mine in Transylvania, in A.D. 1807, and is now in the Vienna Museum.

It is a triptye, that is, it consists of three tablets of wood coated over with wax, and bound together by a slight cord. The wax is indented with a pen of steel in cursive Roman characters, and contains the act of dissolution of a burial club, because its members had become too numerous for the funds to support. was sown up in linen and sealed; and its contents were written both upon the exterior and interior. The Romans besides had savings banks, in which every soldier was obliged to deposit money, which bore interest, in the hands of his officer.

This book

On the Fiscus as distinguished from the Erarium:

The revenues from the senatorial provinces constituted the Erarium, or the treasury of the state. The revenues of the imperial provinces were appropriated to the army, and formed a distinct treasury under the emperor's control, called the Fiscus. That which related to it was termed fiscal. The word fiscus meant, originally, a wicker basket in which money was kept. A man's fiscus therefore was his treasure or money-chest. The fiscal provinces were rated anew every fifteen years, and the taxes were farmed by the oppressive and detested publicani.

Such are a few specimens of the miscellaneous but interesting information which Mrs. Hamilton Gray has gathered into her after-chapters. They contain also an excellent enumeration of the distinguished men of each period, and a summary of contemporary ecclesiastical events.

In regard to facts, Mrs. Hamilton Gray is generally cautious and correct; but one or two of her statements are

very questionable, and in several instances she has made positive assertions with respect to things which are bility. For instance, Professor Wilson only matters of speculation or probanow denies that the inscriptions in Hindostan deciphered by Mr. Prinsep, to which Mrs. Hamilton Gray refers, belong at all to the reign of Asoka, to whom, without qualification, she ascribes them. Again, whilst Paley ascribes the Epistle to the Romans to the period of Paul's second visit to

Corinth, she assigns to it a date subalthough the tenor of the epistle itself sequent to his imprisonment at Rome, seems to indicate that he had not yet visited that city. Notwithstanding the uncertainty which rests upon the date of the Epistle to the Galatians, Mrs. Hamilton Gray unhesitatingly asserts that it was written by Paul at the period of his imprisonment in Rome; and in the same decided manner she states that the Gospel of St. Luke had been previously written in Achaia, although many learned men are of opinion that it was written during Paul's two years' detention at Cæsarea. We could wish also that, in her mention of ecclesiastical occurrences, she had more clearly distinguished between records of inspiration, and other facts those facts which are attested by the for which we rely upon historical tesWith these slight exceptions, we take timony or mere ancient tradition. leave of Mrs. Hamilton Gray and the present portion of her work with heartfelt commendation, hoping that we may have to welcome its concluding volume before long, and suggesting that that volume should commence-as previous one had done-with a Forewe have expressed a wish that the Chapter. It should contain, in this instance, an ethnological classification character of the various barbarian naand brief account of the origin and tions whose irruptions and conquests will form the main topic of the volume, and which, although occasionally emerging to view in the previous place until after the epoch of Conperiod, do not occupy a prominent

stantine.

LARES AND PENATES.

Lares and Penates; or, Cilicia and its Governors: being a short historical Account of that Province from the earliest Times to the present Day, together with a description of some Household Gods of the Ancient Cilicians, broken up by them on their conversion to Christianity, first discovered and brought to this country by the author, William Burckhardt Barker, M.R.A.S. Edited by William Francis Ainsworth, F.R.G.S., F.G.S. 8vo. (Ingram, Cooke, and Co.)

THIS volume, as its title indicates, is devoted to two distinct subjects the one general, the other special. Although the former appears somewhat of secondary consideration to the latter, it is by no means so in reality. Probably but for the discovery of the Lares and Penates we might not have been treated with historical and geographical details of Cilicia, ancient and modern, of high interest and value. The names of author and of editor are both honourably known. The latter especially has identified himself with the historical and monumental history of Cilicia and Syria; and Mr. Barker was the first to investigate the sources of the river Orontes, the account of which, drawn up by himself, is published in the Proceedings of the Geographical Society. A long residence in Syria, an early taste for the study of the Oriental languages, and an active spirit of observation and inquiry, have combined to adapt him to discharge well and faithfully his self-imposed task, and consequently we obtain from him a good deal of novel and instructive information. His account of the more modern history of Cilicia and its government, or rather misgovernment, down to the present day, will be found highly interesting. At the present moment, too, when political events are directing public attention to the manner in which the countries under the rule of the Sublime Porte have been treated, Mr. Barker's narrative, stamped, as it is, with the impress of candour and truth, will be read with that avidity and emotion which a detail of events of recent date, partaking somewhat of the romance of the middle ages, must inspire.

Cilicia, one of the fairest provinces of the Roman empire, and full of the monuments of civilisation and prosperity, capable of assuming a high political and commercial position, the highway between the nations of the east and the west, has for centuries,

under the withering rule of the Ottoman empire, been a scene of venality, injustice, cruelty, and barbarism. One only wonders that Christian Europe did not rise indignantly, and, in the name of mercy and charity, rescue it from its oppressors and tyrants. Like many of the provinces of Asia Minor, Cilicia for a long series of years was under a twofold despotism-that of the Porte and that of powerful chiefs, who in reality held supreme authority, and plundered and robbed the native populations for themselves and for the sultan at intervals according to circumstances. Mr. Barker unfolds many details of the career of these chiefs which have never before been published, and we select as a curious example some passages in the life of one of these worthies, Khalil Bey, or, as he was commonly called, Kutchuk Ali Uglu.

Kutchuk Ali was in 1800 a Turkman chief of the mountains in the vicinity of Bayas (near the ancient Issus), and he laid the foundation of his power by making nocturnal excursions to rob the gardens of Bayas. The gardeners, to be exempt from his depredations, agreed to pay him a yearly tribute or black-mail, and the petty merchants followed their example. He soon raised a fund sufficient to maintain a band of forty or fifty robbers, at the head of whom he waylaid the heads of the principal families, and in a few years exterminated every individual of influence at Bayas and its territory. One held out against him for some time, but Kutchuk Ali first induced him to marry his daughter, and then paternally murdered him with his own hands.

With a very inconsiderable number of dependants, who often did not exceed two hundred in number, Kutchuk Ali succeeded in impressing with terror and dismay the minds of the people by a system of cruelty continued for many years; and he occasioned much trouble to the Porte,

between whom and the rebel there existed, however, a reciprocal desire to be on a footing of friendship, founded on mutual advantage, and which prevented their continuing long on terms of either real or ostensible hostility.

Kutchuk Ali's revenue was chiefly derived from contributions exacted from travellers and caravans. The annual grand caravan of pilgrims from Constantinople to Mecca was harvest.

his

In order the better to dispose the pilgrims to submit to his extortions, Kutchuk Ali was always careful to exhibit, as proofs both of his power and his cruelty, the spectacle of two bodies impaled at the gate of Bayas. It happened on one of these occasions, when the caravan was approaching, that his prisons were empty, and he had no victims that he could impale. He imparted his embarrassment to a convivial companion. "The caravan," said he, "will be here to-morrow, and we have not yet prepared the customary execution. Look ye, pick me out two from among my servants." His friend expostulated, and while he was endeavouring to induce him to abandon his design by the assurance that everything would proceed in due order without the execution in question, Kutchuk Ali, still revolving the matter in his mind and stroking his beard, exclaimed, "I have it: go and fetch me Yakub the Christian; he has been four months in bed sick of a fever, and can never recover." The poor wretch was forthwith dragged out of his bed, strangled, impaled, and hung up!

We must refer our readers to Mr. Barker's book for the full account of the career of this monster, contenting ourselves with giving one more anecdote, in which it will be seen that religious hypocrisy was added to his other vices. He had entrapped in 1801 Mr. John Masseyk, the Dutch ConsulGeneral in Aleppo, who was returning from Constantinople, furnished with an imperial firman for the exercise of his

official functions:

and to extort from him the money required for his ransom; to which end, they would at one time confine him in a damp dungeon without light, and often without sustenance for twenty-four hours. At another, they would threaten him with immediate death; and once, in order to show that their menaces were not wholly nugatory, two innocent wretches, who had been arhimself, were impaled before him for havrested under similar circumstances with ing delayed, as he was informed, to procure the money for their ransom. When the news spread abroad that Kutchuk Ali had entrapped a European, the mountaineers descended in crowds to see how much humanity the tyrant exhibited; and Mr. Masseyk used to relate that, being one day engaged in writing, a man, who had thrust his head through the bars of his prison-window, after contemplating his person and occupation for some time, exclaimed with reproachful indignation, "What is it possible the wretch is so lost to all sense of shame as to hold an effendi (a clerk) in captivity ?" referring evidently to the well-known rights and immunities enjoyed by the learned as well in this barbarous region as in Europe. Although Kutchuk Ali persisted in refusing to admit his prisoner to his presence, he more than once sent to him his lieutenant with consoling messages to assure him of his sympathy. "Tell him," said he, "that unfortunately my coffers were empty when his fate brought him into this territory; but let him not despair; God is great, and mindful of us. Such vicissitudes of fortune are inseparable from the fate of men of renown, and from the lot of all born to fill high stations. has twice been mine, and once during nine Bid him be of good cheer: a similar doom months in the condemned cell of Abd'ul Rahman Pasha: but I never despaired of God's mercy, and all came right at last. Alla karim (God is bountiful)." length, fortunately for this poor man, the arrival at Bayas of a caravan from Smyrna Ali Uglu an excuse for extorting his ranproceeding to Aleppo, afforded Kutchuk obliging them to advance the money on som from the travelling merchants, by the bond of his prisoner, whom he delivered into their hands as a slave sold to them for 17,500 piastres.

At

Mr. Masseyk ultimately repaid the debt, but the Dutch republic only in part made good the loss he had sus

tained in its service.

We now approach the subject of the leading portion of Mr. Barker's work, -the Lares and Penates, as an immense quantity of fictile images, dis