From The Grocer.

ANCHOVIES.

set out in the evening. They light their torches and go about a couple of leagues IN former times our own coasts were out to sea, upon the spots where they think able to supply occasional delicacies to grace the fish are likely to be most numerous. the banquets of the patricians of ancient Behind them comes noiselessly and in the Rome. Since then the commerce of the shadow the boat which carries the net. world has changed its basis to these small This boat, which has four or five men on islands, and we in our turn have laid other board, is called the rissollier, after the net countries under tribute. The Mediterra- used for the purpose. The fastiers, which is nean is said to swarm with fish of all kinds, the name also of the boat with the torches, and amongst others the anchovy has long keep at a certain distance apart, about been known and appreciated by the Ital- 150 or 200 yards, and when they see that ians, and of late years has been exported in the anchovies, collected together by the ilincreasing quantities to this country. Like lumination, are in great numbers, they make the herring, the sardine, and the sprat, the a s gnal to the rissollier, which approaches shoals appear at certain seasons of the year, gradually and cautiously, until the fisherwhen the catching and curing give occupa- men can slip their nets into the water tion to a large number of people. The around the fastiers. Then, when this is best descriptions are taken not far distant done, at a given signal all the torches are from the port of Leghorn, near the island extinguished, the fishermen lash the water, of Gorgona, where the population are all en- at the same time making as much noise as gaged in these fisheries. The anchovy is possible. The anchovies, frightened, and caught off the islands of Elba and Corsica, endeavouring to escape, dash heedlessly and lower down around the coasts of Sicily, into the meshes of the nets, in which their also at Antibes, Fréjus, Saint-Tropez, heads are transfixed. It it only necessary Cannes, Martigues, along the coast of then to haul in the nets to secure the catch, France. It is to be found in the Baltic and proceed to a distance and renew the and the North Sea, although of a larger same operation if the night be sufficiently and coarser kind, and unfitted for the table. | dark. The season lasts from May to July, the ar- The curing of the anchovy takes place in rival of the shoals being heralded and made brine, and not in oil like the sardine. The known by the appearance of the porpoise, heads, gills, and entrails are separated from the dog-fish, and other scavengers of the the bodies, which are salted, and arranged deep. The powers of increase must be pro- in circular boxes called drums, varying digious which can survive all the modes from 5lb to 20lb weight. Messrs. Burgess & of attack, and yet return again in innumer- Sons, 107, Strand, hive been for many able swarms, coming one knows not from years large importers of the real Gorgona whence or whither bound. Formerly, it is anchovy, and any one who desires to besaid, they were very abundant along the come acquainted with the mode of curing shores of Brittany, and in one month up- and packing cannot do better than visit wards of a million were taken off the town their establishment. The essence of anof Douarnenez. These were smaller than chovy was first introduced by this firm so usual, and mixed with the sprats, the wives long ago as the year 1760. At the present and children of the fishermen being em- time their consumption of the Gorgonas is ployed in picking them out from the nets. between 200 and 300 gross monthly. These As many as 100,000 were taken at a single are sold in labelled bottles, in the original cast of the net, and, although these have brine in which they are cured, also prepared disappeared, the sardine has since been in oil like the sardine, and in vinegar. The cured like the anchovy, and sold under pre-paste, for toast and sandwiches, is also tence of being the same fish. We have, therefore, a guarantee, when dealing with certain well-known firms, that we are purchasing the real Gorgona anchovies.

The mode in which they are taken is somewhat peculiar and deserving of mention. It is customary to select a cloudy night for the purpose, when three or four boats, each manned by two or three men,

well-known for its piquant flavour. The demand has increased so much of late, that it is difficult to obtain the requisite supplies from Gorgona, and other houses are importing from different parts of France, with a view to supply the public with an article which they claim to be almost equal to the Italian anchovy.

Some months ago we had ready for THE LIVING AGE, a translated article upon French Living Poets. In some mysterious way the manuscript has disappeared. It is possible that by mistake we sent it to some contributor, whose MS. was not suited to our pages. If it were so, he is respectfully requested to send it to this office at our expense.

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From The Contemporary Review.
RRUPTION OF CHRISTIANITY
BY PAGANISM

IAST AGE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
man

nan Empire, although more than d years have elapsed since its fall, indelible traces on all the instituthe subject countries. As we have to the code of Justinian and the the Cæsars in order to explain the and government of Southern Europe; account for its religious usages, we go back to the ancient classics and the tions of Olympus. The system from most Teutonic races revolted in the eenth century, is a compromise between nitive Christianity and the older faiths ich it is falsely imagined to have sup

inted.

first made the Christian profession safe and respectable. Heathenism, avowed in its own person, long, it is true, lingered not only in the rural solitudes, whence it derived the name pagan, but in the principal cities too. So late as in the time of St. Chrysostom the city where the disciples were first called Christians contained quite as many believers in Jupiter as in Christ. At length, however, the triumph of the cross, or, to speak more accurately, the amalgamation of the two religions, was complete. The temples were closed by the government, and the stream of worshippers diverted into the Churches, but they brought in most of their superstitions with them; and though the names of the ancient poetic mythology were no longer heard, a new collection of similar legendary lore soon gathered round the most revered personages of Christianity.

These convictions have often struck at

tentive observers of the popular religion on the shores of the Mediterranean. For where the peculiar civilization of the Roman world was most firmly seated the vestiges of its religion are naturally most conspicuous. The authors of "the Silver Age" afford valuable hints for working out the same train of thought. Neglected by students of classical elegance, they are of no small interest to the theologian; since they offer a lively picture of the latest form of heathenism, just before it merged in corrupt Christianity, and so enable us to perceive how the conquered religion, like ancient Greece, has enslaved its conqueror. At the present time, when Rome is pressing her claims upon us so imperiously, and when the even semi-barbarous East has its partisans, this historical argument seems peculiarly seasonable.

If the English Church is founded on the "econciliation of two adverse systems of religion, each of which finds its appropriate expression in our formularies, the same is no less true of the Churches of Rome and Greece. The Christian and heathen elements are quite as distinguishable to this day in those unreformed Churches, as are the Protestant and Catholic ones in what has been sneeringly called "the Elizabethan compromise." We must not be misled by the retention of venerable creeds, the name Catholic, and the episcopal succession. Great part of Christendom has never been generally converted to anything like the religion revealed in the New Testament. A minority of the inhabitants of the empire really embraced the Gospel, and were nominally joined by the rest of their fellow-subjects after Christianity became the religion of the sovereign. The united body, though still called by the old names, was as different from what it had been before as the mixed It is a duty we owe to common sense to population of Samaria, after the Assyrian bring theory and emotion to the test of fact, conquest, from the Israelites of pure descent and to investigate the origin of the vast orwho had studied in the schools of the proph-ganizations which confront us, before, like ets. As the great river of America, after so much inanimate matter, we yield to the its junction with the muddy current of a mere attraction of their bulk, and rush longer and larger stream, preserves the name it bore when its waters were still clear, so we still read of Catholic Churches of the East and West, though their whole nature had been altered by the irruption of the halfconverted Greeks, Asiatics, and Romans, since Constantine, himself a half-convert,

blindly into union with we know not what. Nor would we permit our judgment to be so warped by discontent at our domestic troubles as to accept en masse whatever foreigners offer. Should the Anglican Church be fallible or fallen, it by no means follows that the Roman is any surer guide.