during the sack of Magdeburg, except that of the Sepoys in India"putrid Delhi" is the only instance which at all approaches a parallel. Tilly, the savage fanatic, wrote to the Emperor an exulting despatch, in which he said:-"Never since the destruction of Troy and Jerusalem has there been such a victory." Some of his own officers, heart-sickened by

the sights they beheld, besought him to put a stop to the massacre, but he answered:-"Give the soldiers another hour or two and then come to me again."

Another hour or two, and the streets were running with blood, and all quarters of the city in flames. One petition only would Tilly grant, and

that was the sparing of the cathedral at the special request of his old schoolfellow, Canon Bake.

Thirty thousand persons perished during the massacre. So long did it require to clear the streets of the dead, that five days elapsed before Tilly made his triumphant entry. Nearly seven thousand corpses were thrown into the Elbe. Only one hundred and thirty-nine houses were left standing.

A convulsive shudder thrilled Europe at the news of the fate of Magdeburg. And as you visit the city to-day you are reminded of that frightful drama. The cathedral spared by Tilly-one of the noblest Gothic

edifices in Germany-still lifts its beautiful pyramidal tower, and is still rich in art treasures-and there you may see Tilly's helmet and gloves. The gate by which he entered the town has been walled up, and upon the house of the commandant whom he beheaded may still be read the words"REMEMBER THE 10TH OF MAY, 1631."

Laden with enormous booty the Austrian army quitted the neighbourhood of Magdeburg. On the 17th of September, Gustavus Adolphus gave battle to Tilly before Leipsic and routed him with great slaughter. This victory turned the scale of war. The German princes revived under the stimulating influence of their ally's success. They joined heartily in the war, drove the Austrians from the greater part of their country, took

Hanover and Frankfort-on-the-Maine. Frederick the Palsgrave united himself to the victorious army of Gustavus, hoping to be reinstated by that monarch in his patrimony; but the Swedish king was so much incensed against Charles of England for not joining in the enterprise against Austrian despotism, that although he received the Palsgrave kindly he gave him no immediate hope of restoration.

After this Gustavus rescued Darmstadt, Oppenheim, and Mainz. In the meanwhile the Saxon field-marshal, Von Arnim, invaded Bohemia and captured Prague; the landgrave of Hesse Cassel and Bernard of Weimar defeated Tilly's troops in the lands of the Upper Rhine.

"This sweeping reverse compelled the emperor to recall Wallenstein to the chief command; who, assembling forty thousand men at Zuaim, in Bohemia, marched on Prague and drove the Saxons not only thence, but out of Bohemia altogether. Meantime Gustavus issuing from his winter quarters on the Rhine directed his course to Nuremberg, and so to Dunauworth, and at Rain on the Lech fought with Tilly and the Duke of Bavaria. Tilly was killed, and Gustavus advanced and took Augsburg in April, and Munich in May, and after in vain attacking Wallenstein before Nuremberg he encountered him at Lutzen in Saxony, and beat him, but fell himself at the hour of victory. He had, however, saved Protestantism. Wallenstein lost favour after his defeat, was suspected by the emperor, and finally assassinated by his own officers. The generals of Gustavus, under the orders of Gustavus's great minister, Oxenstjerna, continued the contest and enabled the German Protestant princes to establish their power and the exercise of their religion, at the peace of Westphalia in 1648."

The peace which was signed at Westphalia at the termination of the thirty years' war comprised three distinct treaties. The first between Spain and the United Provinces, which proclaimed the complete independence of the Netherlands. The second between France and Austria. It stipulated for liberty of conscience for the Protestants, regulated the rights and relations of the Germanic States; gave Alsatia to France, less the imperial city of Strasburg; confirmed it in the possession of the three bishoprics, Toul, Metz, and Verdun; and decreed perpetual peace between France and Rome. The third treaty conferred Pomerania and some other places, besides money, on Sweden for the valuable help rendered throughout the war.

APLES is one of the fairest and foulest spots in Italy. The bay is magnificent, dotted with islands here and there, and surrounded by shores remarkable for their luxuriant fer

tility. Extending in a long and gentle curve from Posilippo to Portici, Naples charms the eye with its graceful variety of town and country, as if art and nature were contesting in a loving rivalry which should contribute the most to make the city and its environs the loveliest in Europe. A mole formed something like the letter L stretches out into the bay, and offers a convenient harbour for vessels of small draught; a lighthouse sends its friendly and inviting beams over the water when the sun goes down. In the rear of the city are numerous acclivities clothed with vineyards and gardens, and farms and villas; behind these are wooded mountains and old monastic houses and villages that nestle among the brotherhood of pine trees; and in the rear of all these, its graceful outline clearly defined against the azure sky, is Vesuvius, with a distant view of some of the boldest summits of the Appenine chain.

But the interior of Naples is nothing like so beautiful as the visitor might be led to expect from its outward aspect. Many of the streets are narrow, dark, and dismal; the houses are so lofty that the strip of bl

sky can scarcely send its light to the bottom, where hungry ill-clad children are gesticulating in the mud, and hungry grown-up people-with traces of masculine vigour and feminine grace, which rags and wretchedness cannot altogether obliterate-are lounging lazily. The poorest quarters of every city in the world bear a striking resemblance to each other, and the same sort of squalor to be found in London is to be seen in Naples, only under a more picturesque aspect. Since the Italian revolution there is a marked change in the Neapolitans. They are not what they were. There used to be a saying in their city that feste, farine, forche (shows, food, and gibbet), were all that were required to keep the lower classes quiet. They want more now. Of the gibbet Bomba gave them enough and to spare; but with food they were not equally well supplied. Now-a-days, they are getting less gibbet and more food; as for the shows the spectacles-they like them as well as ever.

As a rule Neapolitans are not much enamoured of roofs; they like the open air, and the sellers come into the streets to sell, and the buyers come into the streets to buy, and the manufacturers and menders to make and to cobble, and the loungers to look on, and the mountebanks to amuse them all. Suppose yourself in a Neapolitan street, or on the mole, if it be a holiday time, which it is almost sure to be; be good enough to look around: what do you see? Crowds of people everywhere, going this way in a tolerably steady line, going that way in a tolerably steady line again, but for the most part mingled in a fluctuating current which obeys no law, but ebbs and flows all sorts of ways at once and whirls you about as in an ever-varying eddy. There sits a tailor stitching at a coat, with shears and threadpapers, needles and paper patterns all strewn about him in the sunny little niche he has chosen for his perch this day. There stands a busy carpenter-not busy with his work, but industriously idle in a gossip with his friend who deals in ice-water and who at intervals utters the peculiar cry of the tribe. There are some gipsey-looking fellows lounging on the ground-they are Lazzaroni, famous all the world over as peculiar to Naples-a gay but ignorant host, content with hard. fare and little work-a fill of maccaroni and a sun bath. Cannot you imagine as you look at these fellows, as you see one or more of them laying flat and fast asleep, their bronzed faces turned up to the sun for further tanning-cannot you imagine as you look at yonder fishermen sitting on the shore and mending their nets in an indolent manner peculiar to themselves, that of all men in the world these are the very last whose