denied that he was a man of rare gifts, and of a remarkable experience in life; and his life and the popularity of his writings will by and by help posterity to understand this our generation. Meanwhile I shall leave him in his resting-place in Norwood, among the hills and fields of Surrey, near the grave of the friend of his youth, the gentle and gifted Laman Blanchard, where he was laid on the 15th of June, amidst a concourse of people not often assembled round the remains of one who has begun life as humbly as he did.
His death made a great impression; and the acuteness with which his friends felt it said more than could be said in a long dissertation for the kindly and love-inspiring qualities of the man. As soon as it appeared that his family were left in less prosperous circumstances than had been hoped, their interest took an active form. A committee met to organize a plan by which the genius of those who had known Jerrold might be employed in raising a provision for his family. The rest has been duly recorded in the newspapers, where the success of these benevolent exertions may be read.
FLORENTINE MOSAICS.
I.
HISTORICAL.
The capital of Tuscany—according to its most respectable and veracious chroniclers—is the oldest city extant. Its history is traced with great accuracy up to the Deluge, which is as much as could be reasonably expected. The egg of Florence is Fiesole. This city, according to the conscientious and exhaustive Villani,[1] was built by a grandson of Noah, Attalus by name, who came into Italy in order "to avoid the confusion occasioned by the building of the Tower of Babel."[2] Noah and his wife had, however, already made a visit to Tuscany, soon after the Deluge; so that it is not remarkable that "King Attalus" should have felt inclined to visit the estates of his ancestor. At the same time, it is obvious that the Noahs had not been satisfied with the locality, and had reëmigrated; for Attalus, upon his arrival, found Italy entirely without inhabitants. He, therefore, with great propriety claimed jurisdiction over the whole country, elected himself king, and his wife Electra queen; built himself a palace, with a city attached to it; and in short, made himself, generally, at home. We are also fortunate in having some genealogical particulars as to his wife's antecedents; and it is to be regretted that modern historians, of the skeptical, the irreverent, and the startling schools, could not imitate the gravity, the good faith, and the respect for things established, by which the elder chroniclers were inspired. The apothecaries of the Middle Ages never dealt so unkindly with the Pharaohs of Egypt, as the historical excavators of more recent times have done with the embalmed, crowned, and consecrated mummies which they have been pleased to denounce as delusions. Your Potiphars or your Mizraims, even when converted into balsam, or employed as a styptic, were at least not denuded of their historical identity by the druggists who reduced their time-honored remains to a powder. Their dust was made merchandise, but their characters were respected. Moreover, there was an object and a motive, even if mistaken ones, on the part of the mediæval charla-
