nia, the good and wicked fairies, who, on the night after the festival, come down the chimney to reward or punish the children, and the little folks carefully hang their clothes, with empty pockets, round the hearth, that the good fairy may fill them with confectionery, and other presents, according to their previous good behaviour. The term Befana is also applied to a very ugly woman, and a frightful phantom is called Befanaccia. Manni, in his his torical notice of the Befana, affirms that this festival is a relic of the ancient mysteries, and that it especially alludes to the arrival of the Magi. In fact, the black faces of the rag-dolls, which are hung in the windows of Florence, on the day of the Epiphany, resemble the Magi, as pourtrayed in pictures of ancient date. The gifts which the children expect to receive are supposed to be in commemoration of the presents brought by the Magi to the Holy Family. This popular belief is of high antiquity, and in the house of the Epiphani, otherwise called the Befani, at Florence, a head of one of the royal Magi is preserved in the repository.

The fairies play an important part in the popular tales of Tuscany, and their abodes are still pointed out by the people.

The hollows of the fairies, called le Buche delle Fate, on the lovely hill of Fiesole, near Florence, are the ruins of subterraneous buildings, and are supposed to have been the substructions of an amphitheatre, or of public baths. These cavernous places are shown by every child as the abodes of fairies, and it was here that Charlemagne is said to have brought rich presents to these elementary spirits. Another haunt of fairies is in the Gonfalina between Florence and Pisa, where a remarkable rock, called I Masso delle Fate, and resembling an immense square tower, inclines to wards another rock of similar configuration. The intermediate cavity forms a spacious grotto, and has a character of romantic seclusion which well accords with the popular tradition. Many curious details of the Tuscan fairies are interwoven with the narratives of the rural improvisatori, some of whom possess no inconsider able degree of erudition. The marvellous history of Ferragosto and Calendi-Maggio, as related on the first

of May by a rustic narrator, was committed to paper by an intelligent traveller, who witnessed the festival of the Maio, at a farm-house near Florence, and from whose journal I have extracted this May-day adventure.

Tempted by a beautiful spring morning, I rose early, and quitted Florence by the gate of Santa Croce. Passing the mills and the fall of the Arno, I followed the direction of the river, and gazed with delight upon the fresh and lovely landscape. A vine-covered hill was crowned with small and elegant villas, which stood in relief before the romantic cliffs of Fiesole, still surmounted with Etrus can walls, and distinguished by the bold tower which serves as a belfry to the cathedral.

"I now began to observe that the fields were without labourers, and that every peasant I met was attired in holiday apparel, and proceeding with eager step, as if to some scene of festivity. Walking leisurely onward, I reached at length a farm-house, before the door of which a young tree had just been planted. Streamers and knots of ribands, adorned with tinsel, were suspended from the branches, and glit tered gaily in the foliage; branches with similar adornments, and a crown of flowers, shaded one of the windows, and the air was resounding with the matin-music of several peasants. Suddenly the bowery window was opened, and three young peasant beauties, fresh and brilliant as the morning, appear ed in picturesque costume, and repaid with graceful smiles the salutations of their friends and lovers. This pastoral scene reminded me that it was the first of May, and that the antique festival of Calendi Maggio was about to be celebrated by these happy dwellers in the vale of Arno. Soon the rustic minstrels began a lively measure, the young people assembled before the house, aud, joining hands, danced with a rapid and bounding movement round the May-tree, while the older peasants were busily arranging breakfast upon a long table under the shade of a vine trellice which served as a vestibule to the house. These pleasing groups formed a picture worthy of Teniers or Bassano, or rather of the more graceful pencil of Paolina Gauffier of Florence. Taking out my sketch-book, I began to draw the picturesque scene before me, and had

tival, during which my return to earth should be annually celebrated by rejoicings and banquets. You shall now hear how I terminate my annual existence. I go at midnight to the abode of the fairies, whose door is always open to me, and there I find a cask of wine, the delicious poison of which takes away my life. I drink and drink until I fall asleep, and then. I expire in good faith, and very comfortably. On the day appointed for my resusci tation, the fairies bring me to life again in this manner. They cut open a large, fat, well-pickled sow, put me into the inside, and carefully stitch up the orifice. Then the fairies apply a melon to the pig's snout, through which the grateful odour penetrates to my nos trils. Gradually I return to life; the sow is again cut open, and I jump out of my grave as handsome and lively

as ever.

"My brother Calendi Maggio was gifted with music, and ever since, the first of May has been a festival on which the Tuscans honour his memo→ ry by songs and May-trees. My eldest sister Befana had the audacity to beg that she might herself become a fairy, and her ambition was gratified on condition that every year, on the night of the sixth of January, she would fright en the children by threatening to cut in two all those who plagued their nurses, or would not eat their porridge without pulling faces. My other sister, who unwisely rejected the proffered gifts of the fairies, had soon reason to repent; for, had she only asked permission to eat neat in Lent, she would have escaped a miserable death. During her pregnancy, she was seized at Mid-Lent with an irresistible long ing for a Bologna sausage; and, to make bad worse, she devoured it ea gerly, and without cooking. This heinous crime was discovered, betrayed, and pronounced unpardonable. My poor sister was condemned to the dreadful punishment of being sawn in two, and the only remission granted was the privilege of dying incognita in the garb of a nun. In memory of this catastrophe, and in the Piazza Padella, the very spot where it took place, the sad spectacle is renewed every year at Mid-Lent, by sawing in two a wooden puppet, which is still called the Monaca."

Ferragosto having finished the story of his family, which he had inter

rupted by frequent applications to his wine-flask, threw his gilt crown amidst the crowd of listeners, jumped down from the table, and took leave of his hosts, to attend his duty as a chorister in the next parish. At the same time I quitted the hospitable peasants, and accompanied him, followed by long-repeated exclamations from the children of " Viva Ferragosto, Calen di Maggio, e tutti quanti!"

As we paced onward together, I questioned the old improvisatore as to the real origin of the festival of Calendi Maggio, and the garrulous old man, pleased with the opportunity to display his erudition, gave me the fol. lowing details. "The story I have just related," he began," is no inven tion of my own. The materials are borrowed from the historian Buonarotti, and, in the works of the Della Crusca academicians will be found the source of all the jokes, puns, and pas quinades, which the people make on Ferragosto and his family. Their ad ventures belong to the tales called Fa taggine in Italy, and Féeries in France; and they deserve a place in the Bi bliothèque bleue.' The name of Ca lendi Maggio proves the ancient date of this festival, which is a relic of the old Roman custom of celebrating the calends of May. The songs composed for this occasion are called Maggio late: the decorated tree, and the branches with which our rustic lovers decorate the windows of their fair ones, are called Maio. This annual festivity, which is preserved only in rural districts, was once celebrated in cities, and dignified by songs, dances, and feastings, which lasted several days; for instance, the grand banquet of the first of May, given in the Portinari palace, where Dante fell in love. Evidence of the former prevalence of these festivals exists in the numerous maggiolate composed by different authors, and amongst others by the magnificent Lorenzo de Medici, whose poems are not at all worse than those of a common citizen. One of his songs commences thus

festival in Florence, was in 1612, when a Maio was planted and sung before the Pitti palace, in honour of the ArchDuchess of Austria.

"The festival of Ferragosto, which is a relic of the Augustan games, is celebrated only in the states of Rome and Tuscany; and the festival of the Fierucolone, which is not mentioned in the tale of Ferragosto is of unknown origin. It takes place in Florence on the 7th of September, the day before the Nativity of the Virgin, when the female peasants of Casentino and the mountains of Pistoia come to offer up their prayers before the miraculous image of the Madonna dell' Annon ciata. During this festival, the streets of Florence, and especially those near L'Annonciata, present the appearance of a city given up to fire and plunder. Crowds of boys run about shaking their blazing fierucolone, which are torches of oiled paper fixed at the end of long reeds. These noisy urchins pursue each other with sticks, and the streets resound with shrill whistles and the clangour of pieces of old metal, accompanied by the discordant shouts and howlings of the populace. There is in this strange festivity a remarkable affinity with the game of torches cele brated in ancient days at Athens. The players ran about the city with torches, which they transferred to each other, without pausing in their career; and those who ceased to run, or whose torches were extinguished, were hooted at and even beaten by the populace. Lucretius drew from this game a simile, which he applied to the course of human life, and the rapid extinction of successive generations :

"Et quasi cursores, vitæ lampada tradunt."

Here the chorister of Belgioso concluded his dissertation. We had reached the door of his parish church, where we exchanged a friendly adieu, and I proceeded on the road to Fiesole.

To gain an accurate knowledge of the devotional superstitions of Italy, the Protestant traveller must for a time divest himself of his Protestantism, or he will be unable to discriminate between an authorized belief and a popular superstition. In my investigation of these absurdities, I shall therefore avoid all reference to clerical abuses, and confine myself to those

aberrations of a miracle-hunting people, which the Romish church neither excites nor sanctions; and that the papal government often checks and punishes these ridiculous explosions of vulgar superstition may be proved by instances, to one of which I was accidentally a witness.-Passing one evening through a narrow street in Rome, called La Sabina, I saw before a recess a tumultuous crowd of people, intermingled with the papal gensd'armes, who were endeavouring to disperse them. Enquiring from an inhabitant the cause of this agitation, I heard that the recess had been long occupied by an image of the Madonna, which was deemed so unimportant that few passengers deigned to raise their hats before her shrine. This evening, two women conversing in the recess, accidentally looked at the Madonna's face, and saw her eyes moving with an expression of sadness, sometimes upturned to Heaven, and then down upon the gazers, who fell upon their knees, and called out, "A miracle! a miracle!" Immediately the neighbours crowded to the spot, the passengers collected round them, and the tale of wonder was rapidly circulated through every quarter of the city. Soon, however, the inquisition, as head of the police, sent the gensd'armes to the spot, with orders to extinguish the Madonna's two tapers, and to disperse the people. This vio lent interference roused the indignation of the credulous Romans, many of whom, in the true spirit of martyrdom, allowed themselves to be arrested.

To this instance of popular superstition, the legend of the Pantheon Madonna is an appropriate appendage. The now miraculous image of Santa Maria della Rotonda had long been inactive and unimportant; but one small lamp shone dimly before her altar, which now blazes with the light of innumerable tapers; and not even one votive offering adorned her person, which is now loaded with hearts, crowns, bracelets, and necklaces. One day the custos of the Pantheon had forgotten to feed the Madonna's lamp with oil, and towards evening, after the doors were closed, the sacred flame expired. Suddenly the people in the piazza heard from within the church a loud complaining voice call out," Oglio! Oglio!" The

listeners hastened to the custos; the doors of the sanctuary were opened, the want of oil was discovered, and the miracle loudly proclaimed. The custos narrowly escaped from the violence of the crowding worshippers, and on the same night tapers were lighted round the altar of the insulted image, which ever since has healed the sick, forgiven sins, and worked all sorts of miracles. I collected these details from the people, but how far the miracle was acknowledged by the Romish church, I could not ascer tain.

Were the legends of the numerous images which patronise the provincial cities of Italy investigated, the votive offerings appended to each would reveal miracles surpassing those I have related. These images were doubtless originally placed in the churches of Italy as substitutes for the protecting gods of Heathenism. In Rome, the miraculous statue of St Peter replaced the Jupiter Capitolinus, the bronze of which is said to have furnished materials for the image of the Christian saint; although Zoega, the Swede, one of the most acute and learned of modern antiquarians, asserts that the image of St Peter is the antique statue of an anonymous Roman senator.

Most of the churches of modern Rome were built upon the foundations of ancient temples; in like manner, Catholic observances were grafted upon old Roman superstitions, and statues of Jupiter and Venus required only the substitution of new heads to become objects of Christian veneration as saints and Madonnas. Of these various adoptions Rome supplies abundant examples. Where, for instance, is the difference between the Votiva Paries of the ancient and modern Romans? Did not models of arms and legs, with records of their cure, once hang upon the walls of the Temple of Esculapius, on the Tiber island, as they do now near the images of wonder-working saints and Madonnas? The heathen Romans, after escape from shipwreck, hung pictures of the tempest, and sometimes also their seadrenched apparel in the temple of Neptune, or made the votive offering of a miniature marble galley to Jupiter Redux. Now the returning tra veller offers to S. Rocco, or to S. Antonio Abbate, or to some Madonna, a

gaudy painting of his perilous adventures. On Monte Celio, and on the spot where once stood the temple of the home-guiding Zeus, S. Maria della Navicella is now worshipped. Before her small temple Leo X., either as a Christian or a classical enthusiast, affixed a small marble ship, in token of gratitude for his escape from a storm; and from the ground beneath fragments of antique votive ships have been excavated.

On the north side of the Palatine Mount, and where, according to tradition, Romulus and Remus were nourished by the she-wolf, stood the temple of the deified Romulus, in which was the statue of the suckling wolf. To this temple the mothers of ancient Rome carried their sickly children, and their faith derived healing from their wonder-working hero. The rotunda of S. Teodoro now occupies the same spot, and the healing powers of the heathen have been transferred to his Christian substitute, for here only do the Roman mothers pray for the convalescence of their sick children, as in ancient days their progenitors prayed to the founder of their city.

The Pantheon, once the temple of all the gods, was converted into a temple of all the martyrs, by Pope Boniface, who interred twenty-eight loads of relics under the high altar. The bronze rosettes of the dome were melted by the Barberini Pope, Urban VIII., who recast them into cannon, into decorations for his tomb, and into the Baldachin of St Peter's. In modern times, this magnificent rotunda has been metamorphosed into a temple of all the artists by Canova, whose wealth and chisel have so thickly peopled the niches with marble poets, painters, sculptors, architects, and musicians, that he has hardly left room enough for his own bust.

In ancient Rome, the consul or prætor touched the heads of manumitted slaves with his rod, in token of their release from slavery; and in modern Rome, the penitentiary gives a similar tap with a stick to the penitent after confession, and thereby releases him from the bondage of sin.

On the first of May, the Roman children place upon a chair before the house-door a puppet of the Madonna, crowned with a garland. Every pas