bulk, which Fuller used to describe
Shakespeare and Ben Jonson as they appeared at the Mermaid Tavern.

As for the name of the false woman who ensnared two such noble hearts,
it is lost for ever, let us hope, in a deserved oblivion. The scanty
data that we have given here are about all that can be accepted without
wrenching history and poetry from their proper sphere. But so long as
the spirit is more than the letter, so long will the Sonnets of
Shakespeare be read by all true lovers of true poetry, whether their
historical significance ever be known or not. They are the saddest and
the sweetest story of friendship that we have in all literature; and
while one faithful friend remains possessed of that fine wit that can
"hear with eyes what silent love hath writ," his heart will beat in
answer to the perfect love of the greatest of all poets and the noblest
of all friends.

KATE HILLARD.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

ARTISTS' MODELS IN ROME.

Some visitors to the Eternal City leave it without having found time to
see this one of its wonders, while others are driven by the sad
inelasticity of the hours to leave a different class of objects for
"another time." But it may be safely asserted that none who have been at
Rome for even twenty-four hours ever left it without having had their
attention forcibly arrested by the groups of painters' and sculptors'
models--the former mainly--who haunt the upper part of the great steps
that lead up from the Piazza di Spagna to the Trinita di Monti, and
perhaps even more specially the corner where the Via Sistina falls into
the Piazza Barberini. But very few probably have asked for, and fewer
still obtained, information as to who and what these people are, and
whence they come. Yet to an attentive observer many points about the
appearance of these groups must suggest that a curious interest might
attach itself to the reply to such questions. There are sights in Rome
of grander and greater interest, but there is nothing in all the famous
centre of the Catholic world more distinctively, essentially and
exclusively Roman, more unlike anything that is seen elsewhere, more
instinct with _couleur locale_, than these singularly picturesque groups
of nomads.

Let us, then, take a stroll among them, starting from that bright centre
of the foreigners' quarter of Rome, the Piazza di Spagna. It is a
brilliant January day, and, we will say, ten o'clock