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up with them, are pigs, such as the prodigal must have fed in a far country. Not your revoltingly human, flesh-coloured pigs ; but swine with thick, strong, bristling hair growing obstinately from a hastily-made parting in the back. Glorious purple and blue-grej- beasts, that suit the stony olive-grown landscape to perfection. Here is our friend of last night — still grunting out his for ever unanswered question, ' " Is life worth living," after all?' in intervals of making the most of it in the meanwhile by snatching up all that is most savoury in the pathway, and followed by a dozen of the most adorable and blackest little pigs that ever squeaked and squabbled in imitation of their glut- tonous mamma. These pigs are being driven by a young prodigal to a pasturage in the valley, where every day meet all the pigs of the village to grunt and fight and guzzle together, or bask in abandoned ease beneath the fierce sun, under the care of the common pig-herd of the place — an older and far more important jirodigal, with matted hair, and clothes torn and patched in a manner « fairc rcwir any young landscape-painter with an eye for the poetry of the ' ragged and tanned.' To tlie care of this wikl-looking swineherd are consigned all the pigs of the place, their owners paying him so much a head to keep them grazing here ; and I am told he gets about 300 francs a year altogether, so he is held in much esteem.

It is astonishing to see the admirable way in which he and liis children throw stones at the errant pigs, whose talent for investigation leads them beyond the limits of the pasturage. They hardly ever miss their shot, and a dog is rendered quite unnecessary, as the pig knows he lias no business so far afield, and returns to his ever-dining brethren with many a grunt and (juery over the problems of life and the hardness of his luck. Pkrcv Sturdek.

ARTIST AND AUTHOR.

i.

ANY one much interested in art or artists has read old C'ennino Cennini's Treatise on Paiiiiiiig, or at all events has heard his name ; but there may be some to whom his book is not well known. Yet this pre-Raphaelite artist and author deserves to be a well-recognised figure, not only because lie gives us the earliest information we have on Florentine art in the latter part of the fourteenth cen- tury, or the beginning of the fifteenth, but also because his personality comes out so strongly in his writing, even when he is telling us merely about mixing colours and making charcoal pencils, that we can easily conjure up the old man before our mind's eye with a distinctness not often attainable about men of that period. We can feel sure that he had a kind, genial spirit, a keen wit and ready tongue, and perhaps, too, was not above a little harmless flattery of great people ; but, withal, devoted to his art for art's sake, and ready to tell the young men about him that, if they wished for success, they must follow in the footsteps of their master, and not imagine thej' could discover a short cut in art, or a royal road to success. As to becoming great and famous in a short time, that was not to be thought of. We can almost hear him garrulously holding forth to his pupils, when the light has waned on a winter's evening, and telling them all he did when he was young, and how he had patiently learned from his mastei', Agnolo Gaddi, whose father was the more famous Taddeo Gaddi ; and then Cennino adds that Taddeo had learned everything from his godfather Giotto, for, for twenty-four years he had been a pupil of this great Giotto, whose fame had spread every- where ; and that through this brilliant chain there had come down yet older sayings from Cimabue, because Taddeo's father, Gaddo, had been the friend of Cimabue and of Andreas Tafi. Much as we are interested, however, in old Cennino's book, we know very little of his history, and it seems doubtful whether any of his pictures remain, but nevertheless his Treatise has lived, and we must be satisfied with his words, and he with the fame of the writer instead of the artist. As to dates, we know Cennino's master was vVgnolo Gaddi, who died (so Vasari says, but he is not always accurate) in 1387. The more famous Taddeo, his father, is represented in the Louvre, so that we can get a good idea of the traditional manner which Cennino thought ought to be handed down intact to future generations. Tambroni, who in 1821 discovei'ed a copy of the MS. in the Vatican, says the Treatise was finished in 1437, but the oldest copy in the Iliccardi Library at Florence has no such date, though, perhaps, that is near enough for us, and the author himself leaves us in no doubt as to his birthplace, which was Colle di Valdelsa. So we see that it was nearly four hundred years before the Treatise was made generally known through print, being published by Tambroni, edited by the brothers Milanesi, and translated into English by Mrs. Merri- field. All these, .seeing in the copied Ms. that the work was written from prison, believed that Cennino had