which is nearly as incongruous on a mountain aja as a carbonaro in a Florentine drawing-room. He is indefatigable in the dance, however, and tires out partner after partner. Then there is the boy with exuberant spirits, who dances with all his might, and wheels round his partners unmercifully, but carries so smiling a face under the brim of his new straw hat that no one has the heart to scold him. The youths smoke short cigars, and fortunately their amiable partners do not seem to object to the pungent fumes which are puffed into their faces.

The pretty Maria is a good waltzer, and has plenty of partners; her solemn admirer Luigi, on the contrary, is not given to dancing, but leans in a Napoleonic attitude against his door-post, doing the honours by entering into polite conversation with the ladies of our party, while he follows with his eyes every movement of Maria.

The best dancer is said to be a handsome young woman, but she steadily refuses every offer this evening. On being pressed, she says that her husband is away in the Maremma, and that she never dances in his absence. This is quite the traditional Roman virtue, is it not?

The Adonis in blue next proposes a quadrille (quadriglia). Doubtful of the success of this among

what looks like so much raw material, we suggest that they should dance a trescone, which we are very anxious to see. The trescone is to the Tuscans what the tarantella is to the Neapolitans, the old national dance. But our proposal does not meet with approval, they have not yet got enough spirit for the trescone, and prefer the quadriglia. The blue youth takes on himself to be M. C., and marshals the couples into their places with pushes and pulls, till a square of sixteen couples is formed.

"Now, then, musica!" he shouts to the player, who forthwith strikes up, and we prepare ourselves to see "confusion worse confounded." Never were we more mistaken! Our Adonis shouts out the figures in French like the M. C. of a Florentine ball, and all the coatless swains and country lasses follow their orders of "chassez croisez" and "changez vos dames," as if they had learned dancing all their lives. They choose the fashionable impromptu quadrille too, in which the leader alters or invents figures as he likes. They perform the prettiest mazy evolutions, and the most intricate transpositions,—it is like a living kaleidoscope. Then a waltz follows, danced with great spirit by all, including our pretty nurse.

We are amused watching the vicissitudes of a

certain Mass book, which is passed from hand to hand as its successive holders go forth to dance, and is in danger several times of being carried into the whirl. At length the spirit of the dance has thoroughly imbued them, and shouts arise of "Il Trescone! Il Trescone!" The men seize their partners, and holding them in the old-fashioned way at arms' length, begin to whirl and jump, to turn and wave till the threshing-floor seems bewitched. Such a shaking of right toes and left heels! such a

weaving of magic paces," and waving of linked hands over two heads, that one begins to wonder how many elbows will be dislocated. The musician plays faster and faster, the dancers spin and weave their mazes with wild speed; the music slackens, they dance more slowly and seem weary,-the music ceases, they all stop as if turned to stone. After a moment's pause it goes on again, and the dance continues till it wears itself out.

So we have seen a trescone, and like the tarentella as danced in the old temples at Baiæ, it is a revelation. We wonder who was its inventor, and who first danced it. The Antiquary thinks that the Umbrian and Etruscan maidens, who successively occupied these mountains, were its originators, giving as proof the figures of dancing women clad in light garments which are depicted on the

walls of Etruscan tombs. Truly the attitudes of those ancient ballerine are very similar to the Tuscan maidens' trescone, the uplifted and pointed toe, the arms weaving mazes around the head, are almost identical, and when, as is often the case, they dance to the sound of the double pipe, the Etrus

can subulo, which has survived only in these mountain districts, one seems carried back to remote

ages.

But now comes a new sensation; we are aware of a gradually increasing group round two men (strangers) who sit on the wall farthest from us. Luigi tells us they are "poete" (improvisatore), and

we eagerly approach to listen to their inspirations.

This is another remnant of ancient civilization, which is lingering out in remote parts. In Etruscan times poets (similar to our Welsh bards), were indispensable in the celebration of any public event.

ETRUSCAN DANCER AND SUBULO PLAYER.

(From a tomb at Grotto Margi. From "Dennis's Etruria.")

They composed the carmi bellici, or war songs; they sang odes of congratulation to the victor at his triumph, and odes of praise to the host at great feasts. In Italian cities, to the present day, the ode or sonnet written by some friend of the family, and printed on fine paper, is an indispensable part of every wedding, as the "eulogy" is of