je mes soirées ?" In 1795 this courtship came to a violent end, and Lord Templetown was ordered to leave Berlin. Madame Rietz now determined to go abroad for a change of scene.

The king gave her carte blanche to buy works of art, and unlimited credit upon bankers in Milan, Florence, Leghorn, Rome, and Naples. She travelled like a princess. Although past forty, she had numerous love adventures, old and young men had their heads turned by this siren. One of her most enthusiastic admirers was the Chevalier de Saxe, the son of Prince Xavier of Saxony, a young man of twenty, who was living in Italy; he subsequently was made governor of Naples, and was killed in a duel, in 1802, at Töplitz. His letters breathe the most violent love. Another equally vehement admirer was the archæologist Hirt, whose love for art had brought him to Rome. Aloys Hirt had been a monk, and acted in 1796 as the guide to strangers in Rome. Hirt followed Madame Rietz to Potsdam.

Among other admirers we ought to mention Lord Bristol, Bishop of Londonderry, who had met Madame Rietz at Munich, on her way to Italy. He followed her from Italy to Berlin, and at the age of sixty offered her his hand. Another admirer, of whom Madame Rietz made sport, was a rich manufacturer in Berlin, named Schmidts, better known as the 'fat Adonis,' who made her splendid presents. In her subsequent disgrace Le gros Smith, who cherished her with all the faculties of his fat soul, remained her devoted friend.

All the minor courts in Italy vied with each other to do honour to their distinguished guest. To insure a better reception for her, Madame Rietz had sixteen quarterings bestowed upon her, and was created Countess

of Lichtenau. of the king's illness, and Countess Lichtenau left Italy and went back to Potsdam, where she took every charge of the sick monarch, without however giving up the advantages or pleasures of her new rank and position.

In 1796 news came

Countess Lichtenau continued prime favourite till the king's death. During his last illness there was some talk of her having some millions of thalers placed in an English banker's hands, and she was advised to fly and to settle in England, but she remained with the king to the last. On his death she was arrested, and all her property confiscated. Her friends, many of whom she had promoted, turned their backs upon her and became her accusers. In 1798 she was sent to the fortress of Glogau, with a yearly allowance of 4000 thalers; at the end of three years she was released, and lived afterwards at Breslau, where, at the age of fifty she married Franz von Holbein, the well known dramatic writer, a young man of eight-andtwenty. Countess Lichtenau was deserted by her husband in 1802— she quitted Breslau during the war, and lived in Vienna. In 1809 she returned again to Breslau, after the peace of Tilsit, and eventually died at Berlin, in 1820, at the advanced age of eighty. She was accused in various publications of the most flagitious crimes, but she found many defenders; she has written her own apology in two volumes, at the end of which she has printed many very interesting letters, which form by far the most valuable part of the work, and which prove that even in her disgrace she still retained many warm friends and admirers.

We must here close our extracts from a book which, although full of repetitions and useless detail, has afforded us much amusement.

but as they have not the fleshy palate, and are also well known fish, the reference of course cannot be to them. Again, though the original titular name has not in this instance, like that of some other fish, maintained its place everywhere throughout Greece, too much importance is not to be attached to the partial extinction of a title; whilst, on the other hand, the fact recorded by Belon, that cyprinus was in his day the still recognised designation for this fish in Etolia, is, we think, what Napoleon the Third would phrase 'a significant circumstance' in favour of the identity of the two. It is quite easy, indeed, to conceive how a fish like the one in question, never held in any esteem, and probably seldom brought to market, should come to receive, in a country so much subdivided as Greece, a vast variety of aliases, each province capriciously imposing some patois soubriquet of its own; whilst itois wholly inexplicable how, unless it were by regular transmission, the word KUTρivos should ever have become Etolianized. The exception here really establishes the rule. The last item of evidence in favour of the ancient κUπpos being the carp is, that both possessors of these names have obtained an equal celebrity for their fecundity: our own being a noted breeder; whilst the KUTρIVOS, according to Aristotle, spawns six, and according to Oppian five times a-year.*

The etymology of this ancient word is confessedly obscure, and many conjectures have not thrown much light upon it. Could the KUTρIVOS, indeed, be made out to have been, as some suppose, Venus' own fish, we need go no further for a derivation thus made to our hands; but this being wholly conjectural, we will venture for once on the perils of etymology, and suggest (though liable, of course, to be carped at) whether κυπειρον (ε marshy weed), whence κUTIepigw (to smell of the feculence of a marsh), may not be the real derivative for

KUπρIVOS, a fish whose latitat is amongst reeds, and whose favourite gîte is the mud? The common vernacular designation, bulbulus, burbaro, bulbarum,† by which the carp is known both at Mantua and in other Italian localities, serves at once to illustrate and countenance this conjecture. The unde derivatur of the English word carp is not less obscure and uncertain than that of the ancient cyprinus. Menage (but he was a wag) shows us how we may transmute one from the other, by taking French leave with the alphabet, and changing letters, pro re natâ, ad libitum-an ingenious process through which any word may, by simple addition and subtraction, be prestoed into any other: thus, KUπρшvos, says he, aliter cuprius, aliter cuprus, aliter cupra, aliter carpa ; and then, without further difficulty, carpe, carpione, carp. Those who object to Menage's etymology have invented another equally strangeviz., from carpere quod semen maris ore carpens parit; and of these the reader may take his choice. The word carpa, whatever may be its origin, is a very old one, occurring in Cassiodorus, a writer of the sixth century; long after him we find the words carpera and carpo used as designations for this fish by writers of the thirteenth century; the latter occurs in a legend of Cæsarius, quoted by Beckmann, where the prince of evil, indulging in a frolic, appears in a coat of mail, having

scales like a carpo.' The English form of the word does not occur in the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary of Alfric Archbishop of York, who died in 1051, but is used in Dame Berners' book on Angling, published in 1486, wherein this is declared to be 'a daynteous fysshe, but there ben but few in Englonde, and therefore I wryte the lesse of hym. He is an evyll fysshe to take, for he is so stronge enarmyd in the mouthe that there maye noo weke harnays hold hym.' The usually assigned period for their introduction into our country, by Leonard Mascal, of

1853.] Plumpstead (Sussex), in the reign of Henry the Eighth, must consequently be erroneous. The precise dates when carp were severally transported into France, Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark, and from what aboriginal stock all these different colonists proceed, are points not easily determined; as, however, they appear to thrive most in warm latitudes, and are found to dwindle remarkably in the north (Pontoppidian), the supposition of their having a southern origin is by no means improbable. Hardy and prolific beyond almost any other fish, their spread, when once the ancient hordes began to migrate, was rapid; they soon became almost ubiquitous, till about the middle of the sixteenth century there was scarce a country left by them unvisited; in many, vast and innumerable stews were stocked exclusively with carp, for the benefit of the faithful; that every part of Christendom, however remote from the sea, might henceforth be enabled to satisfy conscience, and the church, by having at hand an unfailing supply of orthodox diet for Lent and meagre days, 'in larder and pond.' About this time, the Reformation having completely emancipated us from an enforced diet, this fish was left to stand or fall upon its own personal merits alone; and being found by no means first-rate, either as regards digesti bility or flavour, soon came to be scarce at market and seldom seen at a feast.

The C. carpio presents some phy. siological phenomena sufficiently remarkable to deserve a particular notice. In the first place, as to age, we find it stated on respectable authority that they will reach two hundred years in a water congenial to their tastes.* Countless, indeed, are the sites at home and abroad, where some sly old cyprian attains to true Nestorian longevity: almost every piece of water maintains its traditional patriarch. Not long ago a hale old water-fox was to be seen,

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in the parallelogram pond of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, which was quite an antique in the days of our pupillary state, twenty years ago, who still continued to champ the green duck-weed with a smack, and flounder heavily on his veteran flank amongst the startled waterlilies. He has seen out many generations of bed-makers and ten-year men. The Lodge has had many a new 'caput,' and the kitchen many a new cook since he matriculated; yet, amidst all these changes, no Mæson has been permitted to lay fraudulent hands upon him: identified with the traditions of the College, he is protected by common consent, and swims about the preserve without fear or danger, secured from all harm, and punctually fed by his attentive nomenclator, a whistling gyp.t

6

With regard to size: though at home a carp of fifteen pounds is considered immense, the weight and dimensions of many foreign cyprians go far beyond this-twenty, twentyfive, and even thirty pounds, being by no means unusual counterpoises of specimens filched from some German lakes; in Prussia, fortypounders' are not unheard of. Pallas speaks of one taken in the Volga which measured five feet; Valmont de Bomare, of another served at the table of Prince Conti, at Offenburg, weighing forty-five pounds; and another monster was dragged from the Oder, near Frankfort, in 1711, of the incredible size of nine feet long, by three deep, the weight of which was seventy pounds. Jovius speaks of carp in the Larian Lake (Como) of two hundred pounds, which were assailed with harpoons or arrows shot from a cross bow with a string attached; and adds, that in using these weapons it was necessary to strike the fish against the scales, otherwise they would glance off without penetrating the flesh. The tenacity of life exhibited by carp is another very remarkable circumstance in their physiology: not only will they flourish for a very

long term of years under favourable conditions for growth and development, but they have been not unfrequently found alive in the consolidating mud of an almost empty pond, where their bodies, potted and preserved, sometimes assume very strange forms, being moulded into the shape of the hole in which they lay embedded. Carp, properly packed in wet moss, with only a mouthful of bread steeped in brandy occasionally renewed en route, may be carried, it is said, almost to any distance in safety. In Holland they are often thus kept alive for months, in cellars, where, being dry-nursed on bread-and-milk, they soon fatten surprisingly, and become fit for the table. The cat-like vitality of carp has subjected them to an extraordinary mode of evisceration, unparalleled, we believe, in the history of fish.

Unfortunately for him, he has a very large roe, which makes fine caviare; this was well known to the Jews at Constantinople, in Belon's day, who, debarred by Levitical prohibition the use of the caviare proper made from the sturgeon, were glad to find so good a legal substitute in that manufactured from the carpa scaly, and therefore perfectly orthodox fish. We cannot pretend to determine whether it was in consequence of the rise in the market value of the roe (to satisfy the palates of these Shylocks), coupled with the ascertained powers of endurance in the fish, that first led to the experiment of extracting the sexual organs entire, or whether the Turks ever practised the art; but the modern results obtained from it have been very remarkable. It was well known long ago that pike might be opened with impunity; the belly being afterwards sewed up, and thus restored to the pond whence they came, without any material detriment to health or longevity.

But Samuel Full, about eighty years ago, proceeded a step further. Having cut open some male and female carp, he entirely removed their milts and ovaries, and then substituting pieces of felt, reunited the wounds by suture, and replaced his patients in their pond. Here they soon recovered strength, and began to grow rapidly; and after awhile became so obese and heavy, as to induce him to try them, when he found the flavour of these castrated fish superior in delicacy to carp that had never been felted. His observations were sent to Sir Hans Sloane, the then President of the Royal Society, by whom they were communicated to the members. The experiments were afterwards repeated on a larger scale, and with the same results. The sexual organization of the cyprinus carpio is remarkable in several other particulars: besides males and females, some have been found neuters (Arist.,* Gesner), and some hermaphrodites (Bloch). Renard further made the curious discovery that the milt, besides the usual animal components of hydrogen, oxygen, and azote, yielded phosphorus as well. The females, as we have already seen, are wonderfully prolific, and are soon in a condition to multiply, a three-yearold fish producing seven hundred thousand new representatives of their race in the course of the year. Carp is a great lover of vegetables, and he is a clever angler who can beguile him with any bait.t Salad leaves and salad seeds constitute his favourite fare, upon which he fattens quicker than upon any other aliment. Though able to sustain long fasts, a surfeit on this favourite diet is said sometimes to prove fatal. So much in regard to cyprian physiology: in regard to pathology, this fish is subject, imprimis, to a mossy efflorescence above, and to the small-pox beneath,