If we inquire what seems suggested by the actual available evidence respecting the sun's condition, inside that glowing globular surface which conceals from us all that lies within, we find reason to believe that the sun's interior is thus enormously compressed. It can readily be shown that if the sun's mass is not thus compressed, then, rotating at the observed rate, his globe should be flattened to an extent which should be recognisable by the best methods of modern measurement. The flattening, be it understood, would still be very small. It might even escape observation, so small would it be; but the probability is that it would have been detected. On the other hand, if the sun's interior is exceedingly dense, then the flattening of his globe would certainly not be observable. Since, as a matter of fact, no flattening has been observed, the probability is that the sun is enormously compressed near the centre. It must be admitted that this part of the evidence is not very strong; but, such as it is, it bears in the direction indicated.

Strangely enough, we derive from a different orb the strongest evidence on this particular point. Jupiter's mean density is the same as the sun's, if we take the visible disc of Jupiter as indicating the true size of the planet. Now it has been shown by Mr. George Darwin (from a careful comparison of the motions of Jupiter's moons with those calculated on the assumption that Jupiter's mass is not greatly compressed at the centre) that Jupiter must be very much denser at the centre than near the visible surface of his globe. This agrees with all that is known respecting that planet. We have pointed out, on former occasions, in these pages, how utterly impossible it is to explain the phenomena presented by the giant planet, on the assumption that the disc we see and measure is the true globe of Jupiter. Mr. Darwin's reasoning proves in another way that this globe lies far within the apparent outline of the planet, which in reality represents probably the region where lie the feathery clouds forming his outermost cloud-layer. Within it lie other cloud-layers, and an atmosphere of exceeding depth. Nay, it is probable that the greater part, if not the entire mass, of each of the planets Jupiter and Saturn exists at so intense a heat (though the cloud-envelopes we see are not intensely hot) that solidification and liquefaction are impossible at any pressure, however great. In this case the density of the internal parts of these planets, as of the internal parts of the sun, would be due to the vastness of the pressures exerted upon the nuclear regions.

Without insisting on this, let it simply be noted that in the case of Jupiter and Saturn it has been to all intents and purposes demonstrated that the condensation of the planet's mass is very much greater than we should infer from the apparent dimensions of the planet's globe. Since these planets are probably intermediate in condition, as they are in size, between our earth and the sun, we find another reason for inferring that the nuclear parts of the sun are exceedingly dense. If so, the difficulty which Mr. Croll has sought to deal with by imagining that not our sun

only, but every sun peopling space, has been produced by the collision of formerly dark masses rushing hither and thither with inconceivable velocities, would no longer exist.

One circumstance, however, remains to be noticed. We have endeavoured to explain the apparent age of our earth's strata by an assumption which in reality implies that the sun is a great deal older than he had been supposed to be. Not merely does our hypothesis require that he should be regarded as a great deal older, but, as it has not directly enhanced our estimate of his possible total duration, it assumes in fact that he is many millions of years nearer to his end as a living sun (so to speak) than has been commonly supposed. The process of contraction, on which his vitality as a sun depends, has gone on much farther, if our theory be sound, than if we suppose the globe of the sun, as we see it, to be of uniform or nearly uniform density throughout.

But it does not seem to us that the estimate of the sun's duration which would result from our theory, would fall short of that which astronomers had formed on the hypothesis that the sun is of uniform density. (We call our view a theory, because it is based on observed facts; the usual view an hypothesis, because no one has ever ventured to assert that any facts indicate its correctness.) On the contrary, according to the usual view, astronomers had recognised a certain limiting density not very far removed from the present supposed density of the sun, beyond which the process of contraction could not probably compress his globe. According to the theory we have brought forward in explanation of observed facts, the elements composing a mass at so high a temperature and subject to such enormous pressure as the sun's may attain even in the gaseous form a density far greater than has hitherto been considered possible. Enormously though we suppose the process of contraction to have gone beyond the extent heretofore believed in, we no longer recognise as close at hand any limit beyond which that process cannot pass. For our own part, in fine, while we consider it quite possible that the nucleus of the sun may be so tremendously compressed as to correspond to a past emission of solar heat for many hundreds of millions of years, we see no reason to believe that the process of contraction may not continue with the same emission of heat as at present for hundreds of millions of years to come. It appears to us as absurd to measure the probable amount of solar energy either already exerted in the past or available for the future, by considerations based on the behaviour of the elements at the temperatures and pressures we can obtain experimentally, as it was of old times to estimate the proportions of the heavenly bodies on the assumption that the earth is the allimportant body which they were made to serve, or as it is in our own time to estimate the duration of the heavenly orbs by the minute timeintervals corresponding to the various stages of our earth's relatively insignificant existence.

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Como and Il Medeghino.

To which of the Italian lakes should the palm of beauty be accorded ? This question may not unfrequently have moved the idle minds of tra vellers, wandering through that loveliest region from Orta to Gardafrom little Orta, with her gem-like island, rosy granite crags, and chestnut-covered swards above the Colma; to Garda, bluest of all waters, surveyed in majestic length from Desenzano or poetic Sirmione, a silvery sleeping haze of hill and cloud and heaven and clear waves bathed in modulated azure. And between these extreme points what varied lovelinesses lie in broad Maggiore, winding Como, Varese with the laughing face upturned to heaven, Lugano overshadowed by the crested crags of Monte Generoso, and Iseo far withdrawn among its rocky Alps! He who loves immense space, cloud shadows slowly sailing over purple slopes, island gardens, distant glimpses of snowcapped mountains, breadth, air, immensity, and flooding sunlight, will choose Maggiore. But scarcely has he cast his vote for this, the Juno of the divine rivals, when he remembers the triple lovelinesses of the Larian Aphrodite, disclosed in all their placid grace from Villa Serbelloni;-the green blue of the waters, clear as glass, opaque through depth; the millefleurs roses clambering into cypresses by Cadenabbia; the laburnums hanging their yellow clusters from the clefts of Sasso Rancio; the oleander arcades of Varenna; the wild white lime stone crags of San Martino, which he has climbed to feast his eyes with the perspective, magical, serene, Lionardesquely perfect, of the distant gates of Adda. Then while this modern Paris is yet doubting, perhaps a thought may cross his mind of sterner, solitary Lake Iseo-the Pallas of the three. She offers her own attractions. The sublimity of Monte Adamello, dominating Lovere and all the lowland like Hesiod's hill of Virtue reared aloft above the plain of common life, has charms to tempt heroic lovers. Nor can Varese be neglected. In some picturesque respects, Varese is the most perfect of the lakes. Those long lines of swelling hills that lead into the level, yield an infinite series of placid foregrounds, pleasant to the eye by contrast with the dominant snowsummits, from Monte Viso to Monte Leone: the sky is limitless to southward the low horizons are broken by bell-towers and farmhouses while armaments of clouds are ever rolling in the interval of Alps and plain.

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Of a truth, to decide which is the queen of the Italian lakes, is but an infinita quæstio; and the mere raising of it is folly. Still each lover

of the beautiful may give his vote; and mine, like that of shepherd Paris, is already given to the Larian goddess. Words fail in attempting to set forth charms which have to be enjoyed, or can at best but lightly be touched with most consummate tact, even as great poets have already touched on Como Lake-from Virgil with his "Lari maxume," to Tennyson and the Italian Manzoni. The threshold of the shrine is, however, less consecrated ground; and the Cathedral of Como may form a vestibule to the temple where silence is more golden than the speech of a describer.

The Cathedral of Como is perhaps the most perfect building in Italy for illustrating the fusion of Gothic and Renaissance styles, both of a good type and exquisite in their sobriety. The Gothic ends with the nave. The noble transepts and the choir, each terminating in a rounded tribune of the same dimensions, are carried out in a simple and decorous Bramantesque manner. The transition from the one style to the other is managed so felicitously, and the sympathies between them are so well developed, that there is no discord. What we here call Gothic, is conceived in a truly southern spirit, without fantastic efflorescence or imaginative complexity of multiplied parts; while the Renaissance manner, as applied by Tommaso Rodari, has not yet stiffened into the lifeless neo-Latinism of the later Cinque Cento: it is still distinguished by delicate inventiveness, and beautiful subordination of decorative detail to architectural effect. Under these happy conditions we feel that the Gothic of the nave, with its superior severity and sombreness, dilates into the lucid harmonies of choir and transepts like a flower unfolding. In the one the mind is tuned to inner meditation and religious awe; in the other the worshipper passes into a temple of the clear explicit faith-as an initiated neophyte might be received into the meaning of the mysteries.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire the district of Como seems to have maintained more vividly than the rest of Northern Italy some memory of classic art. Magistri Comacini is a title frequently inscribed upon deeds and charters of the earlier Middle Ages, as synonymous with sculptors and architects. This fact may help to account for the purity and beauty of the Duomo. It is the work of a race in which the tradition of delicate artistic invention had never been wholly inter rupted. To Tommaso Rodari and his brothers Bernardino and Jacopo, the world owes this sympathetic fusion of the Gothic and the Bramantesque styles; and theirs too is the sculpture with which the Duomo is so richly decorated. They were natives of Maroggia, a village near Mendrisio, beneath the crests of Monte Generoso, close to Campione, which sent so many able craftsmen out into the world between the years 1300 and 1500. Indeed the name of Campionesi would probably have been given to the Rodari, had they left their native province for service in Eastern Lombardy. The body of the Duomo had been finished when Tommaso Rodari was appointed master of the fabric in 1487. To

complete the work by the addition of a tribune was his duty. He prepared a wooden model and exposed it, after the fashion of those times, for criticism in his bottega; and the usual difference of opinion arose among the citizens of Como concerning its merits. Cristoforo Solaro, surnamed Il Gobbo, was called in to advise. It may be remembered that when Michelangelo first placed his Pietà in St. Peter's, rumour gave it to this celebrated Lombard sculptor, and the Florentine was constrained to set his own signature upon the marble. The same Solaro carved the monument of Beatrice Sforza in the Certosa of Pavia. He was indeed in all points competent to criticise or to confirm the design of his fellowcraftsman. Il Gobbo disapproved of the proportions chosen by Rodari, and ordered a new model to be made; but after much discussion, and some concessions on the part of Rodari, who is said to have increased the number of the windows and lightened the orders of his model, the work was finally entrusted to the master of Maroggia.

Not less creditable than the general design of the tribune is the sculpture executed by the brothers. The north side door is a master-work of early Renaissance chiselling, combining mixed Christian and classical motives with a wealth of floral ornament. Inside, over the same door, is a procession of children, seeming to represent the Triumph of Bacchus, with perhaps some Christian symbolism. Opposite, above the south door, is a frieze of fighting Tritons-horsed sea deities pounding one another with bunches of fish and splashing the water, in Mantegna's spirit. The doorways of the façade are decorated with the same rare workmanship; and the canopies, supported by naked fauns and slender twisted figures, under which the two Plinies are seated, may be reckoned among the supreme achievements of delicate Renaissance sculpture. The Plinies are not like the work of the same master. They are older, stiffer, and more Gothic. The chief interest attaching to them is that they are habited and seated after the fashion of Humanists. This consecration of the two Pagan saints beside the portals of the Christian temple is truly characteristic of the fifteenth century in Italy. Beneath, are little bas-reliefs representing scenes from their respective lives, in the style of carved predellas on the altars of saints.

The whole church is peopled with detached statues, among which a Sebastian in the Chapel of the Madonna must be mentioned as singularly beautiful. It is a finely modelled figure, with the full life and exuberant adolescence of Venetian inspiration. A peculiar feature of the external architecture is the series of Atlantes, bearing on their shoulders urns, heads of lions, and other devices, and standing on brackets round the upper cornice just below the roof. They are of all sorts; young and old, male and female; classically nude, and boldly outlined. These water-conduits, the work of Bernardo Bianco and Francesco Rusca, illustrate the departure of the earlier Renaissance from the Gothic style. They are gargoyles; but they have lost the grotesque element. At the same time the sculptor, while discarding Gothic tra