Certainly, I do not yet see what antidote there is for the primitive and pastoral against seven miles of iron pipe; but it is cheerful to know that ghosts are beginning to come about railroads, and all may yet be well with Lorette.

BEHIND THE MASK.

  It was an old, distorted face,—­
  An uncouth visage, rough and wild;
  Yet from behind, with laughing grace,
  Peeped the fresh beauty of a child.

  And so contrasting, fair and bright,
  It made me of my fancy ask
  If half earth’s wrinkled grimness might
  Be but the baby in the mask.

  Behind gray hairs and furrowed brow
  And withered look that life puts on,
  Each, as he wears it, comes to know
  How the child hides, and is not gone.

  For, while the inexorable years
  To saddened features fit their mould,
  Beneath the work of time and tears
  Waits something that will not grow old!

  And pain and petulance and care
  And wasted hope and sinful stain
  Shape the strange guise the soul doth wear,
  Till her young life look forth again.

  The beauty of his boyhood’s smile,—­
  What human faith could find it now
  In yonder man of grief and guile,—­
  A very Cain, with branded brow?

  Yet, overlaid and hidden, still
  It lingers,—­of his life a part;
  As the scathed pine upon the hill
  Holds the young fibres at its heart.

  And, haply, round the Eternal Throne,
  Heaven’s pitying angels shall not ask
  For that last look the world hath known,
  But for the face behind the mask!

DIAMONDS AND PEARLS.

We were lately lounging away a Roman morning among the gems in Castellani’s sparkling rooms in the Via Poli.  One of the treasures handed out for rapturous examination was a diamond necklace, just finished for a Russian princess, at the cost of sixty thousand dollars, and a set of pearls for an English lady, who must pay, before she bears her prize homeward, the sum of ten thousand dollars.  Castellani junior, a fine, patriotic young fellow, who has since been banished for his liberal ideas of government, smiled as he read astonishment in our eyes, and proceeded forthwith to dazzle us still further with more gems of rarest beauty, till then hidden away in his strong iron boxes.

Castellani, father and son, are princes among jewellers, and deserve to be ranked as artists of a superior order.  Do not fail to visit their charming apartments, as among the most attractive lesser glories, when you go to Rome.  They have a grand way of doing things, right good to look upon; and we once saw a countrywoman of ours, who has written immortal words in the cause of freedom, made the recipient of a gem at their hands, which she cannot but prize as among the chief tributes so numerously bestowed in all parts of the Christian world where her feet have wandered.