The Dialect of Pistoja and of the Pistojese mountains forms one of the group of Tuscan dialects. The writer spent six months in 1892 at Pistoja and in the villages of the Pistojese mountains, in order to collect material for the following monograph, which is based chiefly on the patois spoken by the natives of this district.

Of the forty-three letters of Sealsfield here presented, twenty-five appear now for the first time. The remaining eighteen have already been published, but either in abridged form, or deviating greatly from an exact reproduction of the originals. The letters altogether include: I. Twenty to Frl. Elise Meyer; II. Five to Frl. Marie Meyer; III. Eighteen to Hrn. Heinrich Erhard. The earliest of these letters is dated September 1841; the greater number, however, were written after the author was already past the prime of life. Old age naturally intensifies human weaknesses, but like the setting sun, it also illumines the horizon of the past. Thus these letters written during our author's last years, illustrate something more than the eccentricities of an old man. Sealsfield's literary and social judgments, however carelessly thrown out,—his whole personality in fact,—concern not only the few who have devoted themselves to the study of Sealsfield, or who cherish his memory, but are calculated to interest as well that larger class in both hemispheres which still represents the extinct “citizen of the world,” the cosmopolitan who had learned to look beyond the fashions of his own time and country in politics and literature. In Sealsfield's home the memory of “Oesterreich's grösster Romanendichter” has recently been revived by the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of our author's birth. It is hoped that the present publication may be not unwelcome, as following opportunely in the wake of that event. Appended to these letters will be found a synopsis of the principal events of Seals-field's life, arranged in chronological order.

Among the many survivais which have come down to us from the childhood of humanity nothing seems to be so widespread, so prominent, so persistently vital, as the belief in Metamorphosis. Mythology and Legend are filled with it. Literature is indebted to it for some of her brightest jewels; in fact, some of her grandest monuments, without it, would hardly have a raison d'être. In all nations and times the gods enjoy this, their peculiar privilege, as a matter of course, and they use it, both on themselves and on others, with varying motives and more or less discretion. Among men, those who come by the gift naturally are comparatively rare, and seldom encountered outside of the most primitive nations; of the remainder, a few are presented with the gift by some higher power, but the great majority derive their ability wholly from the use of magic arts. There are the Bear-Men or“ Berserkers” and the Swan-Maidens of Scandinavia, the Tiger-Men of India, the Hyena-Men of Abyssinia and many other people of a similar character in all quarters of the earth.

As, during these Christmas days,1 I have sunk myself in the study of King Lear, I have felt that in the time itself, which you have given me, there is some fitness of coincidence. It was in the Christmas days of 1606 that Shakspere was busy with the preparation of his play for the stage. It was on the night after Christmas that the poet saw his play produced for the first time, produced before King and Court, in the palace of Whitehall. That night marks, at all events, an important epoch in the life of Shakspere. And, if Shelley was right when he called King Lear “the most perfect specimen of dramatic poetry existing in the world,” then that evening in Whitehall, 287 years ago, marks not only the culminating point of Shakspere's career but also the culminating point in the poetical achievement of mankind.

The fourteenth century was for England a period of storm and stress. The Saxon genius does not achieve its conqueste lightly; it does not march to victory with furled flags or muffled drums; it is profoundly conscious of its own effort and the object to be realized. True, it often attains more than it hopes or even knows; but it attains the larger result through the accomplishment of the immediate purpose. The internai struggles are those that cost, with nations as with men; and it is no small part of the greatness of England that she has been able to see and strong to resist those dangers whieh, rising from within, have threatened to overthrow that stability which outward foes have in vain assailed. In that century which marked the close of the middle ages and the beginning of the modem era, England was busy taking cities and ruling her own spirit, and only the wise knew which was the better.

Lope de Vega's ‘Comedia,’ Sin secreto no ay amor, is contained in a volume of manuscript Spanish plays marked ‘Egerton. 548,’ in the British Museum.1 This volume, which is a quarto, bound in brown morocco, contains, besides the above ‘comedia,’ a number of others by Lope; they are as follows: Lo que ha de ser, Ay verdades que en amor, La competencia en lot nobles, Argel fingido, and two ‘autos sacramentales:’ El yugo de Christo, and El principe de la paz. Of these ‘comedias,’ Lo que ha de ser is an autograph, dated September 2, 1624, and is printed in Tom. XXII, de las comedias del Fenix de Espafta Lope de Vega y de lot mejores que hasta ahora han salido, Zaragoza, 1630;2 and also in Parle veinte cinco perfeta y verdadera, de las comedias del Fenix de España Frey Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, etc., Caragoça, 1647. Ay verdades que en amor is also an autograph, dated Madrid, November 12, 1625, with an approbation by Vargas Machuca, dated Madrid, February 4, 1626, and appeared in Veinte y una parte verdadera de las comedias del Fenix de España, Frei Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, etc., Madrid, 1635;3 also in Parte XXIX de las comedias de diferentes autores, Valencia, 1636.4 The rest of the plays are not in Lope's handwriting. La compelencia en los nobles, dated November 16th, 1625, with a license to play signed by don Juan de Velasco, Pamplona, November 6, 1628, has, so far as I am aware, never been printed.1 The copy is very carelessly written, in a round hand, and contains at the end the following letter, bound with the play: “Con las noticias que tengo de las comedias de vuesa merced, é venido a buscar esta: porque me an dicho que es muy buena: estamos en duda si es conforme vuesa merced la izo, y ansi le suplico vuesa merced la aga de pasar los hojos por ella esta noche que yo le servire; y mañana a las nueve sere aqui a besar a vuesa merced las manos que [here follow a number of words that are illegible] a vida . . . .(?) de vuesa merced;” signed—D. Juan Alonso de Morestin (?). From this letter it has been inferred that the many corrections and erasures which the copy contains, are by the hand of Lope, though it must be confessed that the handwriting in no respect resembles that of the author.

In a recent doctor's dissertation of the University of Lausanne, P. Marchot examines the question of the pronunciation of the French nasal vowels ain, ein, and in during the xvi and xvii centuries, and cornes to some rather startling conclusions, principally with regard to the developmcnt of ain (and ein). He denies the possibility of the direct development of ãin > en. ‘Passe-t-on directement de ãin à en ? Absolument pas: phonétiquement l'évolution est impossible. C'est au xvie siècle que ãin, dénatalité en ayn, passe à eyn et ensuite à,’ (p. 49). It is this thesis which he attempts to prove on pp. 47–62 of his monograph. The whole argumentation is based on the material presented by Thurot, De la prononciation française, of whom he says (p. 47), ‘malheureusement, Thurot n'était pas un romaniste, et il est incontestable que plus d'une fois, il n'a pas su tirer des matériaux qu'il avait réunis tout le parti qu'il était possible d'en tirer.’ I think it is safe to say, that Marchot has not succeeded much better. To be sure, the history of these nasals is not an easy problem, the grammarians of the xvi and xvii centuries are in the highest degree obscure in their statements, and it is not an easy matter to arrive at a clear understanding of their meaning. The weak point in Marchot's method is, that he interprets the statements of these grammarians literally and that he seems to lose sight of the continuity of phonetic tendency, whereas the only safe method can be, to collate and compare all the statements to the point, to eliminate every thing that appears individual with each grammarian, and to interpret what remains, along lines that are demanded by our knowledge of the history of French nasalization in general, making due allowance, at the same time, for the ignorance of phonetic problems at that period, and the crude terminology then in vogue.