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make room for a string of camels, into the Street of David, a narrow lane guiltless of pavement, and with a descent of a step to every eight or ten paces. In the booths on either side Birmingham lamps and Manchester cottons are largely in evidence, but the West is little represented in the throng which comes surging up the hill. Veiled women shuffling along on large black boots, which have a singularly ungraceful appearance as they emerge from the sheet-like wrappings; the

poor Jew in greasy hat and long straight robe; the rich man, gorgeous in purple plush and fur edgings; Greeks, Moslems, Armenians-they swarm past in an unending stream, while the camel rears his scornful head over all, and grey and white donkeys bear their picturesque riders to and fro.

All that we had experienced in the way of insanitary conditions palled before the condition of the streets of Jerusalem, and the first impression of the city can hardly fail to be painful. To ascend the Mount of Olives by a stony road penned in by two walls, and to find the summit disfigured by Bedouin huts of most evil-smelling condition, is a severe disappointment. To be asked a shilling admittance to see the Garden of Gethsemane, walled in and laid out in geometrical order, is neither more nor less than horrible, though hardly more depressing than the reality of that "Mount Zion," which has been in imagination the type of all that was noble and beautiful. To see the sick, the maimed, and the blind as they really are in Palestine is, moreover, a heartrending experience. The number of beggars is so overwhelming that one must be adamant in self-defence, though there are occasions when the hardest heart softens, as, for instance, when a small specimen of humanity, clad in innocency and half a yard of cotton, toddles after one and rolls its big brown eyes in entreaty. "Back

sheesh" is an abominable word, and ought to be abolished, but "Bak-seese!" can be beguiling beyond the power of refusal.

In springtime the verdure of Palestine is said to be delightful, but it is almost impossible for the autumn visitor to believe these reports as he looks over a country desert-like in barrenness; hills of arid earth, and valleys covered with stones. It was only when we drove out of Jerusalem, emerged somewhat from the blinding cloud of dust, and saw the swelling outline of the hills stretching around, that we could realize the possibility of beauty or feel anything of the spell of the Holy Land. We were glad to feel that the streets of the old Jerusalem were many feet below the present level of the city, and to confine ourselves to studying the formation of the country and the life of the people, which seem to have altered so little in the course of eighteen hundred years. To live in Palestine is to have the words of the parables brought before one at every turn. The sparrows offered for sale in the street, the Bethlehem woman searching for the lost coin from her headdress, the shepherd leading his flocks of sheep and goats-they are all there, and the sight gives fresh meaning to the well-known words. One of the most interesting visits which we paid in Jerusalem was to the house of Doctor Schick, a venerable German, who has spent a lifetime in studying the Temple, and in making a model of the ancient enclosure, which is a miracle of delicate workmanship. The doctor's principal difficulty lay in discovering the number of inches represented by the ancient cubit. He tried one number after another, and in each case was stopped in his work by finding that the plan would not work out; but at last he fixed on eighteen inches, when all became easy, and the complicated bits fitted together with the accuracy of a puzzle.

AN AUGUST WOOD ROAD.

When the partridge coveys fly
In the birch-tops cool and high:

When the dry cicadas twang Where the purpling fir-cones hang:

When the bunch berries embossScarlet beads-the roadside moss:

Brown with shadows, bright with sun, All day long till day is done

Sleeps in murmuring solitude

The worn old road that threads the wood.

In its deep cup-grassy, coolSleeps the little roadside pool:

Sleeps the butterfly on the weed, Sleeps the drifted thistle-seed,

Like a great and blazing gem, Basks the beetle on the stem.

Up and down the shining rays Dancing midgets weave their maze.

High among the moveless boughs,
Drunk with day, the night-hawks drowse.

Far up, unfathomably blue, August's heaven vibrates through.

The old road leads to all things good: The year's at full, and time's at flood. CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS.

Prithee where
Goes Love a-hiding?
Is he long in his abiding
Anywhere?

Can you bind him when you find him?
Prithee where?

With Spring days

Love comes and dallies;

Up the mountains, through the valleys Lie Love's ways.

Then he leaves you and deceives you In Spring days.

ERNEST Dowson.

ON A DULL DOG.

This dog was dull. He had so little wit That other dogs would flout him, nose in air.

But was he wretched? Did he care
How dogdom snarled, or even think of it?
He thought of nothing, but all day would
sit

Warm in the sun, with placid vacant stare,
Content, at ease, oblivious, unaware:
And all because he had so little wit!
O happy dulness which is dull indeed,
And cannot hear the critic's-world's "Go
hang!"

Small bliss we get from our too-conscious breed,

We semi-dullards of the middle gang! To mark the rose, and know oneself a weed,

And know that others knew,-there lies the pang!

EDWARD CRACROFT LEfroy.

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From Cosmopolis.

ROYALTIES.

I.

By royal I do not mean kings and emperors only, or queens and empresses. I should have very little to tell of them. But royal, as is well known, has a wider meaning. The families of all reigning sovereigns, whether grand dukes, dukes, princes, landgraves, electors, etc., are royalty, nay even certain mediatized families, families that have ceased to be reigning, and which are very numerous on the Continent, claim the same status, and may therefore intermarry with royal princes and princesses. Princes and princesses may also marry persons who are not royalty, but in that case the marriage is morganatic-a perfectly good and legal form of marriage both from an ecclesiastical and civil point of view, only that the children of such marriages, though perfectly legitimate, cannot succeed to the throne; in many cases no great loss to them. It has been my good fortune to see a good deal of royalty during the whole of my life. I say "good fortune" on purpose, for, with all the drawbacks inherent in court life, royal persons enjoy some great advantages. Their position is assured and well defined. It requires no kind of self-assertion, and wherever they appear, they have no equals, no rivals, and hardly any enviers. They know that their presence always gives pleasure, and that every kind word or look from them is highly appreciated. They seldom have any inducement to try to appear different 1rom what they are, or to disguise what they think or feel. What is the use of being a bishop, Stanley used to say, except that you can speak your own mind! The same applies to crowned heads, and if some of them, and it may be some bishops also, do not avail themselves of their privilege, it is surely their own fault. No doubt, if a bishop wants to become an archbishop, he has to think twice about what he may and what he may not say. But a king or a prince does not generally want to become anything else, and as they want nothing from anybody, they are not likely to scheme, to flatter, or to deceive. What

ever people may say of the atmosphere of courts and the insincerity of courtiers, the sovereign himself, if only left to himself, if only seen in his own private cabinet, is generally above the vitiated atmosphere that pervades his palace, nor does he, as a rule, while speaking with perfect freedom himself, dislike perfect freedom in others.

Of course there are differences among royalty as well as among commonalty. Some sovereigns have become so accustomed to the daily supply of the very cheapest flattery, that the slightest divergence from the tone of their courtiers is apt to startle or to offend them. Still most human beings like

fresh air.

And have we not known persons who display their initres and shake their crosiers before our faces, far more than kings their crowns and their sceptres? There is a whole class of people in ordinary life who have become something, and who seem always to be thanking God that they are not as other men are. They have ceased to be what they were, quite unaware that even in becoming something, there ought always to be or to remain something that becomes or has become. They seem to have been created afresh when they were created peers, temporal or spiritual.

But we must not be unfair to these new creations or creatures. I have known bishops, and archbishops too, in England, who, to their friends, always remained Thirlwalls or Thomsons, and in the second place only Bishops of St. David's or Archbishops of York. My friend Arthur Stanley never became a dean. He was always Stanley; Dean of Westminster, if necessary. If he had been what he ought to have been, Archbishop of Canterbury, he would never have ceased to be A. P. Stanley, his chuckle would always have been just the same, and if his admirers had presented him with a mitre and crosier, he would probably have put the mitre on his head sideways, and said to his friends what another bishop is reported to have said on a similar occasion: "Thank you, my friends, but a new hat and an alpaca umbrella would have been more useful than a mitre and a

crosier." With regard to royal personages, they have the great advantage that they are to their business born. They have not become, they were born royal. I was much struck by the extraordinary power of observation of a French friend of mine, who, when in 1855 the queen and the Empress Eugénie entered the Grand Opera at Paris together, and were received with immense applause, turned to his neighbor, an Englishman, and said, "Look at the difference between your queen and our empress." They had both bowed most graciously, and then sat down. "Did you not observe," he continued, "how the empress looked round to see if there was a chair for her before she sat down. But your queen, a born queen, sat down without looking. She knew a chair must be there, as surely as she is Queen of England."

There must be something to hedge a king. While most people have to move in a crowd, and hold their own even in a mob-and it is difficult to move with ease when you are hustled and pushedroyal persons are never in a crowd, and have never to adopt a position of selfdefence or self-assertion. Still there is a difference between royal persons also. Some of them with all their dignity manage to hide their crown in every-day life; others seem always conscious that it is there, and that they must not condescend too low, lest it should tumble from their head.

My first acquaintance with royalty was at Dessau, my native town. Much has been written to ridicule the small German princes and their small courts. And it cannot be denied that the etiquette kept up by the courtiers, and the nobility, in some of the small capitals of Germany is ludicrous in the extreme. But there is in the sovereigns themselves an inherited dignity, a sentiment of noblesse oblige, which demands spect. The reigning duke of AnhaltDessau was to us boys a being by himself, and no wonder. Though the Duchy was so small that on one occasion a troublesome political agitator, who had been expelled from the Duchy, threatened to throw stones and break the duke's windows as soon as he had crossed the frontier, to us chil

re

dren Dessau was our world. When I was a child, the town of Dessau, the capital of the Duchy, contained not more than ten or twelve thousand inhabitants, but the duke, Leopold Friedrich (1817-1871) was really the most independent sovereign in Europe. He was perfectly irresponsible, a constitution did not exist, and was never allowed to be mentioned. All appointments were made by the duke, all salaries and pensions were paid from the ducal chest, whatever existed in the whole Duchy belonged, or seemed to belong to him. There was no appeal from him, at least not in practice, whatever it may have been in theory. I believe if more money was wanted, the dukes had only to issue a new tax, and the money was forthcoming. And with all that one never, or hardly ever, heard of any act of injustice. The duke was rich, nearly the whole of the Duchy belonged to him, and he had large landed property elsewhere also. Taxation was low, and during years of war and distress, taxes were actually remitted by the dukes. The only public opinion there was, was represented by the duke's own permanent civil service, and certainly in it tradition was so strong that even the duke, independent as he was, would have hesitated before going against it.

But the duke himself was a splendid example of uprightness, fairness, and justice. He belonged to one of the oldest reigning families in Europe. The Hohenzollern, and even the Hohenstaufen, were but of yesterday compared with the glorious ancestors of the Ascanian princes. They did not actually claim descent from Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, nor from Askenas, the grandson of Japhet, though some crazy genealogists may have done so; but there is no flaw in their pedigree from the present duke to Albrecht the Bear, Markgrave of Brandenburg in 1134 Some people would probably say that he belonged to a totemistic age. The duke whom I knew, and who died in 1871, was the eighteenth successor of this Albrecht the Bear, and though his possessions had been much reduced in the course of centuries, he knew what was due from him to his name, and to

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