were stones, under the beating rain, rather than bate their price. Regraters go round, trying to pick up bargains, as towards afternoon the courage of the sellers begins to flag a little. The big purchases are generally made last; and then, carefully stored in a special fourgon, the precious wares are sent off to Carpentras. Peasants and dealers may be pretty well trusted to take care of themselves; it is the amateur buyer who suffers. "Put on your boots, my dear, and walk into the market and buy us a quarter kilo. or so of truffles," says Madame Bonnechose to her dutiful husband. "Aunt Grognon dines with us to-morrow, and I want to give her a surprise. She has no children, you know." So père Bonnechose tries his hand at marketing; and ten to one some insinuating little dealer (he shuns the wholesale folks, thinking they'll be dearer) palms off on him a worm-eaten lot, the holes neatly filled in with black earth, or sells him, as a bargain, a splendid big truffle, made up of several little things, stuck dexterously together with clay and bits of stick; or perhaps he buys a little bagful. The edge of the bag was turned down, and the truffles looked so black and fresh inside. So they -those that he saw; but he didn't have the bag emptied out. The seller, a lively, pretty little woman, kept him in close talk till the money was paid-told him all about her farm and her turkeys and her husband's disagreeable relations. And so père Bonnechose gets "done," for the bottom of the bag is filled with "any kind of rubbish "-summer truffles, caicou (smelling like rotten cheese), pebra (pepper-truffle, smelling of petroleum) stained with gall-nuts or sulphate of iron. The truffle-bag is as deceptive as the old London "strawberry-pottle" used to be; and I should not like to stand in Bonnechose's shoes when Madame B. pours on him the vials of her wrath-tells him that it's all along of his flirting with the market-women; calls him a string of names, of which the mildest is "Grand imbécile," and winds up with a flood of tears, only to be stopped by the promise of a new bonnet for Easter. Sham truffles sometimes make their way to Paris, compacted of bits of bad potato, coloured and wrapped in a layer of truffle-earth, to give something like the right smell. The real thing is by no means appetising to look at. The man who first ate a truffle must have been almost as bold as he who first swallowed an oyster; but, despite the unpromising appearance, there is something in the smell which appeals strongly to the instinct of the epicure. There is plenty worth seeing at Carpentras-indeed, I do not know any part of Europe more full of interest than the whole of the old comtat (patrimony of the popes). Some of the interest is very painful. The village of Bedouin, now a great truffle-growing place, was cruelly destroyed in the old revolution, and one hundred and eighty of its inhabitants killed, because a tree of liberty" was sawn through one night. Suchet, afterwards a famous general, commanded the destroying party. Carpentras has its old wall and gates pretty complete. It has a triumphal arch, not a tithe so good as that grand one at Orange-for it was long built into the bishop's palace, and served as his kitchen-but recording in its basreliefs, as the Orange arch does, some forgotten Roman victory over invading barbarians. When you go to Carpentras, mind you see the cathedral, part dating from the tenth century, and Constantine's bridle-bit, made out of a nail of the true cross; but be sure, too, to see the trufflestores. Here what are not sent out fresh are preserved, either in tins, or in bottles for the sake of those who like to see what they buy. The quantity sent to Russia and America is enormous. All sorts of plans have been used for keeping them. You may have them in oil, in sugar, in brine, in vinegar. But eat them fresh if you have the chance; no preserved truffles, least of all the dried things one sometimes sees, give more than the faintest idea of their true flavour. You feel sure, as you eat a Perigord-pie, that the Romans could not have known the real truffle, or they would never have dreamt of spoiling it by dressing it with garum, asafoetida, and rue. Truffles have made many a Provençal peasant rich, since Joseph Talon, of the village of les Talons, in Vaucluse, discovered some seventy years ago that if you want truffles you must sow acorns. He began life as a poor truffle-hunter (rabassier), and somehow got into the habit of dropping in an acorn wherever he took out a tuber. Finding the crop increase, he took to planting, and used to show with pride the little field in which his oldest oaks were growing. "Ei d'aqui que sieou vengu au mounde" ("That's how I got up in the world "), he would say. His son sends some twenty pounds a week to Apt market. What makes Talon's dis MEMORIAL. covery such a blessing, is that want of THE STORY OF THE ALBERT wood was rapidly turning the whole country into a desert. Since the revo- FOURTEEN years ago the idea of a great lution, everybody had cut down as much national memorial to the late Prince Conas he pleased, and planted as little. The sort was launched at a public meeting, consequence is, that hill-sides which used convened at the Mansion House, by the to have good grass, are now torn and Lord Mayor (Mr. William Cubitt), to "conseamed, and all the earth washed down sider the propriety of inviting contributions from them by the floods of rain to which for the purpose of erecting a lasting methe forests used to act as a sponge. morial to H.R.H. the Prince Consort, and Vaucluse and its valley, and Petrarch's to adopt such measures," &c. At that forest and garden, were become an oasis in time the memory of the Prince, of the desert. The peasant hated trees, and whose virtues the world has since been shirked all edicts about replanting; all he made sufficiently cognisant, was yet fresh cared for was to secure right of common and green, and the great heart of the for his crabros, the goats that give him nation sympathised sincerely with the milk and cheese. But now that he finds Queen in her sorrow. Loyal resolutions money is to be made by what trees bring were passed and loyal persons opened with them-now that he sees a patch of their purses and subscribed, with all speed, poor gravelly soil bought for twenty some thirty-three thousand pounds. On pounds, bringing in after five years a the lord mayor fell the duty of communiyearly income of sixty pounds-he takes cating the result of the meeting to Her quite kindly to planting. The vine- Majesty. In addition to the formal disease, too, helped on the planting of resolutions, appeared one which influenced truffle-grounds. Many an acre of stony materially the destiny of the memorial. hill-side, where the phylloxera had killed It recommended that it "should be of a out the vines, is now covered with dwarf monumental and national character, and oaks, at whose roots truffle-hunting goes that its design and mode of execution be on every winter. If you go up Mont Ven-approved by Her most gracious Majesty toux, you will pass a deal of poor starved the Queen.' In an admirable letter, rye, which certainly is not worth, straw dated Osborne, February 19, 1862, the and all, three pounds an acre-and this Queen expressed her sense of the expres has to be halved between the owner and sion of her people's sympathy, and was his tenant; you then come to slopes on "much touched by the feeling which led which nothing grows but wild thyme, the promoters of the movement for erectand lavender, and "everlasting-flowers." ing a national monument to the Prince to But somehow it will all carry dwarf leave the nature of that monument to her oaks; and, in time, since the taste decision." There is little doubt that the for truffles is not likely to die out, all Queen considered that the foundation of these garrigues and galluches, as they some institution, of advantage to the comare called, will be planted with profit to munity at large, would show a just apposterity, who will have the timber, as preciation of the character of the deceased well as to the truffle-hunters. Moreover, Prince; but that, as it would be very diffithe climate will be improved and the cult to agree as to the nature of the institufloods will be less frequent and destruc- tion which should bear his name, she gave tive. No wonder the peasant-mind is her voice in favour of a monument directly going in for truffle-grounds, when the personal to its object. The passage in savoury tuber brings in yearly nearly which the Queen indicated the kind of four millions of francs to the little depart- monument she would prefer is striking ment of Vaucluse alone. Hence, though enough: "After giving the subject her gourmandise is not a virtue, and truffle- best consideration, Her Majesty has come selling does give rise to a deal of higgling to the conclusion that nothing would be and deception-though, moreover, truffle- more appropriate, provided it is on a scale poaching is the cause of no end of quarrels of sufficient grandeur, than an obelisk, to be (peasants set up little watch-boxes in their erected in Hyde-park on the site of the fields, and go about on wet nights with Great Exhibition of 1851, or on some spot dark lanterns)—we may consider the truffle immediately contiguous to it; nor would a boon to the human race, and may reckon any proposal that can be made be more Joseph Talon among the benefactors of gratifying to the Queen personally, for she his species. can never forget that the Prince himself had highly approved of the idea of a memorial of this character being raised on the same spot, in remembrance of that exhibition. There would also be this advantage in a monument of this nature-that several of the first artists might take part in its execution, for there would be room at the base of the obelisk for various fine groups of statuary, each of which might be entrusted to a different artist." This was the original idea of the Queen, simple in its majesty, artistic in its surroundings. Unhappily, the execution of the design was handed over to trustees and committees with the usual result. The first Committee of Advice was composed of the late Lord Derby, the late Lord Clarendon, the late Sir Charles Eastlake, and the then reigning Lord Mayor (the late Sir William Cubitt). The committee at once began to talk the matter over, and, by the gradual methods known to committees, accumulated a great deal of useless information. Instead of making up their minds as to the size of the obelisk required, and inviting tenders for the delivery of it in London, carriage paid, they went into possibilities and probabilities, and, in endeavouring to grasp the scientific side of the monolith, slipped from it altogether. They were unhappy in other respects. As if determined to thwart the plan suggested by the Queen, they hinted plainly, in their first report, that "considerable difficulties would have to be encountered in the ulterior arrangement of sculpture round the base, whether near or at some distance-bearing in mind the importance of giving the necessary prominence, in position and effect, to the statue of H.R.H. the Prince Consort." Now, in the Queen's letter to the lord mayor, there is no mention of a statue to the deceased Prince—a great obelisk, surrounded by "groups of statuary"-of course allegorical -being all that was proposed by her Majesty. An obelisk, with a statue of the Prince standing about somewhere near it, would, of course, have been ridiculous; but the said statue appears to have been evolved from the moral consciousness of the Committee of Advice. Having succeeded in getting into a preliminary muddle about the sculpture, the committee thought it well to defer the consideration of that section of the subject, and to confine their "attention exclusively, at first, to the question of the possibility of finding, in the United Kingdom, a monolith of sufficient dimensions, combining, with an approved colour, the important condition of durability." The attention of the committee was now directed to granite; but as so far as can be discovered-none of them, except Sir William Cubitt, knew anything about it, they sought the assistance of the Director-General of the Geological Survey, the late Sir Roderick Murchison, through whom they received the disheartening information that, wherever the granite was unobjectionable on the score of colour and structure, it was not capable of furnishing a block long enough to make an obelisk "on a scale of sufficient grandeur." With singular appropriateness, the committee extended their investigations to the island of Mull, where they discovered a mass of light red granite on the land belonging to the Duke of Argyll, who kindly offered them as much as they could carry away. The length of the excavated portion of the block exceeded a hundred and fifteen feet-a length considered sufficient for the intended obelisk. Fears, however, were entertained that the block was not sufficiently thick in the middle. Its weakness in the central region was not clearly made out; and the remark of an experienced contractor, that nothing could be affirmed, respecting the fitness of the stone till raised and turned out from its bed, effectually frightened the committee from recommending the necessary outlay. Scared away from Mull, they tried other places: Russian Finland, for instance; but were deterred from employing the handsome granite of that country, on account of some doubt as to its "durability" in the open air. The probable cost of the monolith also puzzled the Advice Committee, who got into another muddle by having too much artistic and scientific assistance. "the opinion of many that the obelisk would present an incomplete appearance unless the surface were enriched with incised sculpture, on the principle of execution adopted on Egyptian obelisks." Without, however, venturing to assign a limit to the entire cost, the committee were fully justified in expressing an opinion, that the whole of the sum already subscribed would be "absorbed by the obelisk alone." Without discussing the absorbent properties of a granite obelisk, it may be said that no more ridiculous report was ever signed by men of equal eminence in their particular walks of life-which were certainly not in the direction of monuments. Nothing would have marred the simple, chaste design suggested by the Queen more com It was pletely, than a monolith covered with imi-intimately associated with the Prince's tation hieroglyphics; but "some body," name; and the committee, therefore, set probably a joker, who did not like obelisks, themselves again to work, to consider what had-not to put too fine a point upon it- kind of institution Prince Albert would "chaffed" the Advice Committee by pro- have desired to promote if he had been posing "incised sculpture." This report alive. This difficult question was solved by appeared in April, 1862; and with the a vague recommendation to establish a International Exhibition, the Caractacus "central institution for the promotion, in (by Foley) exhibited there, and that other a largely useful sense, of science and art, Caractacus (by Kingston), who made an as applied to productive industry." The exhibition of the Marquis and Buckstone ground between the Brompton-road and on Epsom Downs, divided the conversation the Kensington-road was suggested as an of a very lively spring-time in London. appropriate site for the Central Hall of Society was divided into monolithists, Union for Science and Art. What the anti-monolithists, and those who did not Advice Committee imagined would be done quite know what a monolith was. Plenty in a Central Hall of Union will never be of people came forward to demonstrate that known, and it is thoroughly characteristic nothing was easier than to find the granite of men, born in the pre-scientific period, required; but the Committee of Advice that they should think that any building had advised, and unfortunately the Queen could be made strong enough to hold the was induced to attach importance to their scientific world assembled in congress. opinion. There is no doubt that Her Those born later know only too well that Majesty abandoned the idea of an obelisk as the spite of women, or artists, or actors, with very great reluctance; and it is or literary folk, musicians, or blood relacurious to find that in the letter ad- tions, is to the "odium theologicum," so dressed to Sir Charles Eastlake, in reply is the latter bitter hatred to that feeling to the report, occurs the first mention with which rival chemists, astronomers, or of a statue of the deceased Prince by the physiologists regard each other. To help Queen herself. The matter was then left in carrying out a double-barrelled mevery much to the committee, who at once morial-half institute, half monument—a proceeded to add a new element of con- committee of architects was called in to fusion. The Queen's choice of an obelisk, advise the Advice Committee. Messrs. surrounded by sculptural decorations, had Tite, Smirk, G. Gilbert Scott, Pennebeen generally acquiesced in, yet a strong thorne, Donaldson, Hardwick, and M. D. opinion prevailed-mainly among doctrin- Wyatt, produced a report on the joint aires and other troublesome people-that, scheme; and, very properly rejecting "although it was desirable to see the the idea of burying a national work Prince's memory perpetuated in some in a quadrangle or in the central hall monumental form which should attract of any institution, selected the site for the attention and excite the curiosity of all the memorial now occupied by it; rebeholders, some work of utility, such as commending also the site of the present His Royal Highness was known to have Albert Hall for the institution. Devoting taken a deep interest in, might form part, themselves more particularly to the monu at least, of the memorial, and thus might ment, the committee of architects rejected more strikingly bear witness to and reveal the idea of an obelisk other than as a those qualities of mind which he so pre- monolith, regarding a built-up obelisk as eminently possessed." This opinion was not showing an inferiority to the ancients. entirely artistic or sentimental; it was ex- Here, undoubtedly, they touched what repected that the adoption of some such mains a sore place to this day. How was scheme as that indicated would " 'give a it that only fourteen years ago the rematerial impetus to the flow of the national sources of England, backed by all the subscriptions." Having now succeeded in modern appliances of engineering, steam, reducing an originally grand and cosmic electricity, and the rest of it, proved unidea to utter chaos, the committee issued equal to the task of making an obelisk another report in June, 1862. In this which should rival those of Egypt? The remarkable document the obelisk disap- melancholy failure may be summed up in pears altogether, and a dim vision of a two words-committee and timidity. At possible Albert Hall is shadowed forth. The the time when the monolith scheme was public, it was said, desired to connect the finally abandoned, between fifty and sixty intended monument with some institution thousand pounds had been subscribed; but committees trembled at the cost of the "catch-penny" idea of proposing a an obelisk, and blundered into an outlay work of utility to attract subscriptions of one hundred and twenty thousand had turned out a complete failure. The on the structure just completed, whereof calculation that a monument, to be erected more presently. The committee of archi- in London, would be largely subscribed to tects thought the objections which ap- by the provinces was based on the mistaken plied to an obelisk applied with equal notion that, as Paris is France, so is force to a column, except in so far London, England. This is an error of that a statue might be placed on the peculiarly Cockney character-something top of the latter. It was, however, urged like that which assumed that, when the that, in the latter case, the statue could London daily newspapers were delivered not be well seen-perhaps no great disad- by early trains in the provinces, the local vantage, as statues go. All things having journals would have nothing to do but to been considered, the committee finally retire gracefully from business. Both exrecommended a memorial composed of pectations were disappointed. As provincial one or several groups of sculpture-of Englishmen stick to their Leeds Mercury bronze, if placed in the open air; and it or Manchester Guardian, so did they cling was also suggested that a better mixture to their own localities when the Albert of metals might be used than common Memorial was proposed. To what end, it bronze, and also that gilding might be was asked, should a merchant of Liverpool, partially employed. All these recommenda- or Manchester, or a dweller at Oxford or tions having been discussed by the Advice Dublin, put his hand in his pocket to adorn Committee, it was finally decided to build London? Why not adorn his own county a monument and a memorial hall, and town, and testify the respect of the local certain architects were invited to send population to the virtues of the dead? in designs; but it was found that sixty Coupled with this very reasonable feeling thousand pounds would barely suffice to was another of a somewhat different build a monument, and the central- sort. A memorial to anybody is a fine hall project was abandoned. It may be opportunity for forming a committee, and well to remark in this place that the is always seized hold of by fussy, but Albert Hall now existing-although built not otherwise immoral, persons, as a upon land granted for the purpose by pretext for pushing themselves forward the Commissioners of the Exhibition of in the world, at the cost of a small outlay. 1851-is not the central hall referred to Our active and public-spirited townsmen as part of the memorial project. It Mr. Todger and Major Bodger both make is not built from the designs prepared by the most of a memorial fund. One rubs Sir Gilbert Scott to harmonise with the shoulders with the mayor, and the other monument, nor were the memorial funds gets on speaking terms with the great applied to its construction. It was purely county people who ignore volunteer rank. a joint-stock speculation, and, so far as it Their first effort is to catch a lord for a has gone, an unsuccessful one. Far from chairman of committee, and, having once being able to divert any portion of the secured him, they take every means short funds collected towards the erection of the of cart-ropes to drag him to the meetings, "Central Hall of Science," the committee called frequently to the end that the said found themselves reduced to an abject Todger and Bodger may so fix their outcondition by the tremendous estimate of ward and visible husks upon the retina Sir Gilbert-then Mr.- Scott for his of the unfortunate peer, that he may design of a Gothic cross, somewhat after be unable to cut them when the busithe fashion of the Eleanor crosses, which ness is over. Thus Todger and Bodger were also built in memory of a deceased are made happy. For the rest of their 'consort. "The cost of Mr. Scott's me- natural lives they bow to Lord Tadpole, and morial, after reducing the height from walk with a firmer step as that goodone hundred and eighty-five to one hun-natured nobleman acknowledges their exdred and forty-eight feet," said the com-istence. Moreover, their names appear mittee, "cannot, we fear, be estimated at repeatedly in the local papers, and, on the much less than double the amount subscribed." Under these circumstances there was nothing to be done but to give up the hall, and appeal to Parliament for help to finish the monument. As a matter of fact, day when the statue is unveiled, they are, perhaps, allowed to make a speech. All this being understood, it becomes clear why the local Albert Memorials took so much of the " 'gilt off" the London |