and a Muslim of the old-fashioned order, | representative at Baghdad, though se when compared with the animosity of na- lected by the government of India from tions which, morally separated, are yet its own officers, works in the main under locally intermingled;" and the full force the orders of H.M.'s ambassador at Conof this great natural law is probably being stantinople - being considered as, strictly felt in Turkish Arabia by its present speaking, a consular, not a diplomatic, masters at this very day, notwithstanding functionary, whose raison d'être merely is the comparatively loose grasp which they the protection of British commercial and have taken of it, outside at least of the general interests, and of the persons of larger cities. In the smaller towns of British subjects. Arabia, the Turkish or Turanian gov. Of all the many wants of Mesopotaernor, where one has been set up at all, is mia, the want of money is perhaps the often more like a mere buoy floating, by greatest; and a good deal of this seems way of a mark, on the water, than any- to be poured into it both by India and thing with actual functions to perform; England in the course of every year. while as for the boundless and trackless The contributions sent annually from plains of which the face of the country is Lucknow, Hyderabad in the Deccan, and made up, their real masters, as is well other Shiyite cities, to the shrines round known, are those multitudinous tribes of Baghdad, must amount in the aggregate semi-pagan roamers, whose horses are to something considerable. A good deal objects of admiration and traffic in almost is spent also by domiciled and pensioned every part of the world. Whether these Indians, and by pilgrims. Even more least civilized of the Semitic races have a beneficial is the enterprise, as far as it future of their own. yet before them, or extends, of European merchants. The are destined to be absorbed in other and date-harvest of the Tigris valley, for inless abnormal communities, is a question stance, might rot in part on the ground, beyond the reach of conjecture. The Ot- but for the steamers which carry it to toman policy towards them, for the most London or Bombay. The fleeces shed on part, seems to be one of subsidizing and the banks of the Euphrates are to a large conciliation. Titles and dresses of honor extent woven into cloth in Yorkshire; and from Constantinople do not, however, ap- although the people are too poor, and the pear to fascinate them. With all their system of government is too uncertain, to cupidity and love of money, when they favor the production of surplus, cereals, can get it, they seem as jealous as the yet what little corn Baghdad has to spare Scottish Highlanders were a couple of is always sure to be bought up by Enhundred years ago of the smallest at-glishmen on the spot and exported. The tempt on the part of officialdom to convert their free and tribal state into a subject and feudal condition. When a Bedouin, or even a Shamar, or a Montafik shaikh accepts the title of pasha, his people generally begin to fall away from him, until in time perhaps he is ousted from his chiefship altogether, in favor of some kinsman of more conservative views. Whatever the future of these hardy and next to masterless nomads may prove to be, it is obvious that if ever during the next twenty or thirty years, the territory lying between the Persian Gulf and the southern shores of the Mediterranean becomes the scene of important military operations, the power knowing how to attach them, for the time being, to its cause, will secure for itself considerable advantages. In Turkish Arabia England is at all events jostling no one, and giving no offence or umbrage, except, of course, to the eye of downright ill-will and envy. Her status there evidently forms an integral part and necessary consequence of her ascendancy in Hindustan; but her

way we have of associating with the word "desert" the idea of a sandy waste, like that traversed by the old van-route between Cairo and Suez, often leads us far astray as to the aspect of Arabia generally. Deserted it may be, in the sense of uncultivated and uninhabited, but not in that of uncultivatable or barren. On the contrary, its light, loamy soils are, as a rule, amazingly fertile. At certain seasons, vast portions of it are clothed with natural pasturages not to be excelled in Canada or New South Wales. Even its barest surfaces are often to be seen covered with tiny verdure after the slightest shower. Its river-system is well adapted for works of irrigation of the small and useful kind. Speaking of the country as a whole, water is tobe obtained, and cultivation started, merely by the digging of a well. The time may arrive when all these things will be done. Meanwhile perhaps it is not outside the scope of creative wisdom that certain large portions of the world should, as it were, lie fallow till their turn come round.

From St. James's Gazette. minutes' retirement from a busy world. GEORGE HERBERT'S CHURCH. What a place to retire to, and what a seaTHE little church-door lies open wide, son for retirement! The fall of the year, though it is a week-day (why do they not as men commonly called it in George lie open oftener for quiet people to step Herbert's time, is full upon us: the tints in and muse a while?); the autumn wind on the leaves, the drops dripping slowly sighs gently among the yellow elm- from the wooden porch, the mist floating boughs; the big drops from last night's in the air, all blend together with the shower patter slowly down with even plash quiet awe of an empty church to carry from the tiled roof upon the ground out one's mind away from the stir and bustle side; and everything seems to harmonize of a too active age. If you want to feel with the peaceful mood that befits one as George Herbert felt, come away here who, turning aside from a morning stroll, on such an autumn morning as this. Call sits and meditates in George Herbert's yourself what you will, Churchman or church. There are some to whom a dissident, Anglican or agnostic, if you church appears all the more solemn and cannot feel the deep peacefulness of that impressive because they stand in it alone: little country altar, and the native holithe solitude carries more of religious sug-ness of that immemorial site, you have not gestion with it than the crowd of assem- the soul and root of the matter in you. bled worshippers could ever do. For And if you can, you have. such as these, our English churches are too often closed at the very time when their refuge is needed most. They are open only on the days and at the hours when all can come alike; they are shut when the passing wayfarer would fain step in and use the sacred building left by the charity of our forefathers accord-it that harmonizes in any way with the ing to the fashion wherein alone he can place or the person. It stands on higher use it to his own best advantage. Per- ground, overlooking the river, with closely haps some of us would enter oftener if we shaven lawn and trim gravel walks; could always enter when and how we while its humbler predecessor nestles unliked. All men's moods are not the obtrusively in the low-lying abandoned same; and in George Herbert's church at churchyard, making little pretence to anyleast we may quietly reflect that quiet re-thing more than a few old decorated winflection is no small worship, too, in its own way.

As you go to see Bemerton Church you leave behind you the tapering spire of Sarum, the quiet close, the old-world streets, the gabled houses, and you turn westward along the flooded Wiley, by roads overhung with mellow autumnal foliage, till you reach a sleepy hamlet by the swollen riverside. Beyond, the low range of chalk downs bounds the river valley in front, the woods of Wilton gleam crimson and primrose yellow in their dy ing hues close by, the modernized parsonage still bears a quaint old inscription above its simple lintel. On your right, a tiny church, built of raw flints in rude courses, invites you with its open door, and you enter perhaps hardly knowing or remembering that this is George Herbert's last resting-place. But whether you know or not, there is an air of holy calm and restfulness about the place that draws you in to seat yourself on one of the little rustic-bottomed chairs for ten

A little further up the side-road that leads to Wilton, the admirers of George Herbert have raised a great brand-new white church for the weekly parish services, in honor of their favorite poet. It is a pretty enough bit of modern architecture; but there is nothing at all about

dows and a pretty Early English font. Yet those who raised the new building have unconsciously secured the best and truest monument to George Herbert by leaving his own little church as a sort of unaltered memorial, a quiet relic of the seventeenth century surviving undesecrated. Nor that the old church is by any means neglected; skilful hands have adorned its low arches with emblems and ornaments which perhaps to Herbert himself, moderate Churchman as he was, might have smacked of Babylon: but who could quarrel now with these graceful symbols of reverent care which men of to-day have fixed upon the walls that come down to us intact from worshippers dead and gone centuries ago? Half-dis used now, the old church with its open door yet remains a refuge and haven for quiet souls as they pass by; and as one sits resting limbs and heart therein one can better understand the world and the times which produced such men as George Herbert.

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There is nothing to convince a man of error, believe that he shall know those persons in nothing in nature, nothing in Scripture, if he Heaven whom he knew [or whom any one else knew] upon earth. If he conceive soberly that it were a less degree of blessedness not to know them than to know them, he is bound to believe that he shall know them, for he is bound

to believe that all that conduces to blessedness shall be given him.

He seemed to move in old memorial tilts
And, doing battle with forgotten hosts,
Be this as it may, I find it quite impos-
To dream himself the shadow of a dream.
sible to resist the strong yearning, that
Whether the laureate be describing phe- comes upon me now and then, to specu-
nomena known to him by his own experi- | late upon the habits of life and looks and
ence I cannot tell, but I myself am only words and thoughts and quarrels and loves
too familiar with the "weird affection" of the dwellers in Arcadia, whose names
indicated. As I wander in my solitary and memories have quite passed away.
rambles past the old haunts of men, long There are moments when the desire to
since deserted of inhabitants, and stop question and cross-question the vanished
to follow the traces of some "moated dead becomes a passionate longing, and
grange or camp or byre, I find myself this life seems to me to be as prolix as an
raising up the dead from their graves, and | hour's sermon, while it keeps me from
passing them through their paces in wild looking, not into the future, but into the
dance or solemn pageantry. I often think
that one of the joys of the life hereafter
will consist in being permitted to project
oneself at will into remote periods in the
past, and to hold converse with primeval
man at one time, or with Roman or Saxon
or Dane at another, and for a while to
take part in the life of bygone ages.
What a curious joy it would be, for in-
stance, to hob-a-nob for a season with the
pigmies of the meiocene, listening to the
clicks of human creatures like unto "bar-
nacles or apes," with pendulous breasts
and "foreheads villanous low," and watch
them capering multitudinous round some
mastodon in difficulties, or tickling a dei-
notherium with a fishbone arrow, or job-
bing at the eyes of some mammoth floun-
dering in a hole, and viciously hacking at
him with hatchets of the palæolithic type,
or implements whose manipulation we
have lost the trick of!

past. What did he believe, this fellow
who fashioned the rude celt I kick against
in my walks? That is to me my "burn-
ing question," and it comes up again and
again as I stand by mighty monoliths, or
climb the Devil's Dyke, or prowl by the
gaunt ruins of abbey or shrine, or finger
some coin of a deified emperor -
coin which has been worn by the fingers
of Roman legionary, and been tossed for
a drink, or been pitched to a half-starved
Briton in payment for “butter and eggs
and a pound of cheese." What did they
believe? I ask - each and every of them?
How dumb or reticent they all are!

- some

Did men ever know what they believed? Do they now? At what period of our development is it supposed by Mr. Tyler and the anthropologists that the religious sentiment exhibits itself? What are the conditions favorable for its growth? In what tribes, peoples, and languages is it