notes to what seemed to me then a sort of | But though the flowers returned home

much crushed and dilapidated, and though
we did not hear the song, it was a reality
for me until a day long years after, when I
heard that stately and glorious voice flash-
ing into my darkness with a shock of
amazement never to be forgotten, and then
realized how futile an imagination may be.
Alas! I never possessed a note of music
of my own, though I have cared for it in
a patient, unrequited way all my life long.
My father always loved music and under-
stood it, too; he knew his opera tunes by
heart. I have always liked the little story
of his landing with his companions at
Malta on his way to the East, and as no
one of the company happened to speak
Italian he was able to interpret for the
whole party by humming the lines from
various operas, "Un biglietto - Eccolo
quâ,' says my father to the man from
the shore," Lasce darem' la mano,'
" and
he helped Lady T. up the gangway, and
so on. He used sometimes to bring Mr.
Ella home to dine with him, and he liked
to hear his interesting talk about music.
Through Mr. Ella's kindness the doors of
the Musical Union flew open wide to us,
and it was there I first heard Dr. Joseph
Joachim play. Yesterday, when I listened
to the familiar, happy stream flowing once
more before the crowding listeners, I could
only marvel with wondering gratitude that
such a strain should have accompanied the
opera of one's long life in all its varying
scenes and combinations.

fairy in white. She stood on tiny feet, she put up a delicate finger and sent forth a sweet vibration of song in answer, sweeter, shriller, more charming every instant. Did she fly right up into the air, or was it my own head that came down with a sleepy nod? I slept, I awoke; and each time I was conscious of this exquisite, floating ripple of music flowing in and out of my dreams. The singer was Mademoiselle Sontag; it was the "Elisire," or some such opera, overflowing like a lark's carol. All the great, golden house applauded; my father applauded. I longed to hear more, but in vain I struggled, I only slumbered again, waking from minute to minute to see the lovely little lady in white still standing there, still pouring forth her melody to the thousand lights and people. I find when I consult my faithful confidante and sympathizer in these small memories of what is now so nearly forgotten, that I am not alone in my admiring impressions of this charming person. My confidante is the " Biographie Générale," where I find an account, no sleepy, visionary impression, such as my own, but a very definite and charming portrait of the bright fairy of my dreams, of Mademoiselle Sontag, Comtesse Rossi, who came to London in 1849: "On rémarquait surtout la limpidité de ses gammes chromatiques et l'éclat de ses trilles... Et toutes ces merveilles s'accomplissaient avec une grâce parfaite, sans que le regard fût jamais attristé par le moindre effort. La figure charmante de Mademoiselle Sontag, ses beaux yeux bleus, limpides et doux, ses formes élégantes, sa taille élancée et souple ache-medlar-tree, and the Spanish jessamines vaient le tableau et complétaient l'enchantement."

It seems sad to have enjoyed this delightful performance only in one's dreams, but in the humiliating circumstances, when the whole world was heaving and struggling to hear the great singer of the North, and when the usual box arrived for the "Figlia del Reggimento," my grandmother, who was with us, invited two friends of her own, grown up and accustomed to keep awake, and my sister and I were not taken. We were not disappointed, we imagined the songs for ourselves as children do. We gathered all our verbenas and geraniums for a nosegay, and gave it to our guests to carry, and watched the carriage roll off in the twilight with wild hopes, unexpressed, that perhaps the flowers would be cast upon the stage at the feet of the great singer.

My father used to write in his study at the back of the house in Young Street. The vine shaded his two windows, which looked out upon the bit of garden, and the

of which the yellow flowers scented our old brick walls. I can remember the tortoise belonging to the boys next door crawling along the top of the wall and making its way between the jessamine sprigs. Jessamines won't grow now any more, as they did then, in the gardens of Kensington, nor will medlars and vine trees take root and spread their green branches; only herbs and bulbs, such as lilies and Solomon seals, seem to flourish, though I have a faint hope that all the things people put in will come up all right some centuries hence, when London is resting and at peace, and has turned into the grass-grown ruin one so often hears described. Our garden was not tidy (though on one grand occasion a man came to mow the grass) but it was full of sweet things. There were verbenas - red, blue, and scented; and there were lovely stacks

"You

of flags, blades of green with purple heads | for the sake of old times. I don't know
between, and bunches of London pride how I should feel if I were to meet one
growing luxuriantly; and there were some agreeable, cordial gentleman, who used to
blush roses at the end of the garden which come on horseback and invite us to all
were not always quite eaten up by the cat- sorts of dazzling treats and entertainments
erpillars. Lady Duff Gordon came to stay which, to our great disappointment, my
with us once (it was on that occasion, I father invariably refused, saying "No, I
think, that the grass was mowed) and she don't like him, I don't want to have any-
afterwards sent us some doves, which used thing to do with him." The wretched
to hang high up in a wicker cage from the man fully justified these objections by
windows of the schoolroom. The top getting himself transported long after for
schoolroom was over my father's bedroom, a protracted course of peculiarly delib-
and the bedroom was over the study where erate and cold-blooded fraud. On one
he used to write. I liked the top school- occasion a friend told me he was talking
room the best of all the rooms in the dear to my father, and mentioning some one in
old house, the sky was in it and the even- good repute at the time, and my father in-
ing bells used to ring into it across the cidentally spoke as if he knew of a mur-
garden, and seemed to come in dancing der that person had committed.
and clanging with the sunset; and the floor know it then!" said the other man. "Who
sloped so, that if you put down a ball it could have told you?" My father had
would roll in a leisurely way right across never been told, but he had known it all
the room of its own accord. And then there along, he said; and indeed he sometimes
was a mystery-a small trap-door between spoke of this curious feeling he had about
the windows which we never could open. people at times, as if uncomfortable facts
Where did not that trap-door lead to ! It in their past history were actually revealed
was the gateway of Paradise, of many to him. At the same time I do not think
paradises to us. We kept our dolls, our anybody had a greater enjoyment than he
bricks, our books, our baby-houses in the in other people's goodness and well-doing;
top room, and most of our stupid little fan- he used to be proud of a boy's prizes at
cies. My little sister had a menagerie of school, he used to be proud of a woman's
snails and flies in the sunny window-sill; sweet voice or of her success in house-
these latter chiefly invalids rescued out of keeping. He had a friend in the Victoria
milk-jugs, lay upon rose-leaves in various Road hard by whose delightful household
little pots and receptacles. She was very ways he used to describe, and I can still
fond of animals, and so was my father hear the lady he called "Jingleby war-
at least he always liked our animals. bling "O du schöne Müllerin," to his great
Now, looking back, I am full of wonder at delight. Any generous thing or word
the number of cats we were allowed to seemed like something happening to him-
keep, though De la Pluche, the butler, and self. How proudly he used to tell the
Gray, the housekeeper, waged war against story of his old friend Mr. F., of the Gar-
them. The cats used to come to us from rick, who gave up half a fortune as a mat-
the garden, for then, as now, the open ter of course, because he thought it right
spaces of Kensington abounded in fauna. to do so, and how he used to be stirred by
My sister used to adopt and christen them a piece of fine work. I can remember,
all in turn by the names of her favorite when "David Copperfield" came out,
heroes; she had Nicholas Nickleby, a hearing him say to my grandmother that
huge grey tabby, and Martin Chuzzlewit, "little Em'ly's letter to old Peggotty was
and a poor little half-starved Barnaby a masterpiece." I wondered to hear him
Rudge, and many others. Their saucers at the time for that was not at all the part
used to be placed in a row on the little ter- I cared for most, nor indeed could I im-
race at the back of my father's study, un-agine how little Em'ly ever was so stupid
der the vine where the sour green grapes as to run away from Peggotty's enchanted
grew-not at all out of reach; and at the house-boat. But we each and all enjoyed
farther end of which was an empty green-in turn our share of those thin green books
house ornamented by the busts of my
father as a boy, and of a relation in a mil-
itary cloak.

One of my friends - she never lived to be an old woman - used to laugh and say that she had reached the time of life when she loved to see even the people her parents had particularly disliked, just

full of delicious things, and how glad we were when they came to our youthful portion at last, after our elders and our governess and our butler had read them.

It is curious to me now to remember, considering how little we met and what a long way off they lived, what an important part the Dickens household played in our

her. And then he made a little speech,

childhood. But those books were as much a part of our home as our own father's. with one hand on the table; I think it was Certainly the Dickens children's parties thanking the jeunesse dorée for their ap. were shining facts in our early London plause, and they again clapped and days nothing came near them. There laughed - but here my memory fails me were other parties and they were very and everything grows very vague and like nice, but nothing to compare to these; a dream. not nearly so light, not nearly so shining, Only this much I do remember very not nearly so going round and round. Per- clearly, that we had danced and supped haps so dear K. P. suggests it was not and danced again, and that we were all all as brilliantly wonderful as I imagined standing in a hall lighted and hung with it, but most assuredly the spirit of mirth bunches of Christmas green, and, as I and kindly jollity was a reality to every have said, everything seemed altogether one present, and the master of the house magnificent and important, more magnifi had that wondrous fairy gift of leadership. cent and important every minute, for as I know not what to call that power by the evening went on, more and more peowhich he inspired every one with spirit ple kept arriving. The hall was crowded, and interest. One special party I remem- and the broad staircase was lined with ber, which seemed to me to go on for years little boys thousands of little boys with its kind, gay hospitality, its music, whose heads and legs and arms were wavits streams of children passing and re- ing about together. They were making a passing. We were a little shy coming in great noise, and talking and shouting, and alone in all the consciousness of new the eldest son of the house seemed to be shoes and ribbons, but Mrs. Dickens marshalling them. Presently their noise called us to sit beside her till the long, became a cheer, and then another, and we sweeping dance was over, and talked to looked up and saw that our own father us as if we were grown up, which is al-had come to fetch us, and that his white ways flattering to little girls. Then Miss head was there above the others; then Hogarth found us partners, and we too came a third final ringing cheer, and some formed part of the throng. I remember one went up to him—it was Mr. Dickens watching the white satin shoes and long, himself and laughed and said quickly, flowing white sashes of the little Dickens "That is for you!" and my father looked girls, who were just about our own age, up surprised, pleased, touched, settled his but how much more gracefully and beauti-spectacles and nodded gravely to the little fully dressed. Our sashes were bright boys. plaids of red and blue (tributes from one of our father's admirers. Is it ungrateful to confess now after all these years that

ANNE RITCHIE.

From Blackwood's Magazine.

CILICIA.

WE started with three months of nomad life before us from Mersina, a port of Asia Minor, real genuine nomad life in a hitherto unexplored district, without a village or a town to speak of, up in the lofty mountains of "rugged Cilicia," where for this period we should meet none save wanderers like ourselves; pastoral wanderers, who go from pasture to pasture as necessity compels; whilst we professed to be archæological nomads, who went from one set of ruins to another in search of fresh material concerning a long ago defunct race of mankind.

we could not bear them ?), our shoes were only bronze. Shall I also own to this passing shadow, even in all that radiance? ARCHEOLOGICAL NOMADS IN RUGGED But when people are once dancing they are all equal again and happy. Somehow after the music we all floated into a long supper room, and I found myself sitting near the head of the table by Mr. Dickens, with another little girl much younger than myself; she wore a necklace and pretty little sausage curls all round her head. Mr. Dickens was very kind to the little girl, and presently I heard him persuading her to sing, and he put his arm round her to encourage her; and then, wonderful to say, the little girl stood up (she was little Miss Hullah) and began very shyly, trembling and blushing at first, but as she blushed and trembled she sang more and A word or two concerning this country, more sweetly; and then all the jeunesse its present and its past, before we dive dorée, consisting of the little Dickens boys into its gorges and lose ourselves in its and their friends, ranged along the supper maze of rock and brushwood. This distable, clapped and clapped, and Mr. Dick-trict, known to the ancients as "Cilicia ens bent down to her smiling and thanking | Aspera," from its rugged appearance, lies

on the southern slopes of the Taurus to acknowledge the conquering arm of
mountains, where they push their spurs Rome, like the Highlanders of Scotland
right down to the sea, and has for cen- or the Mahrattas of the Deccan, who
turies been only inhabited by wandering fought a hopeless contest against the
tribes, offering as it does no attractions to overwhelming power of civilization.
the sedentary inhabitants of Asia Minor. We drove for thirty miles along a
For the centuries immediately preceding wretched Turkish road which skirts the
our era, it was inhabited by a race known coast, in a rickety carriage, to a spot
to the Romans as the "Cilician Pirates," called Lamas, where the mountains come
who appear from time to time on the pages right down to the sea, and where we met
of history, and whose misfortune it has the horses which were to convey us into
been to have that history written by their those mountains. These horses had three
enemies. They were then practically mas-owners, one Maronite and two Armenians.
ters of the Mediterranean, and carried We had a servant to administer to our
their predatory expeditions as far as Italy. personal comforts, and a curious individual
Pompey reduced them in a big sea-fight in who called himself Captain Achmed, who
the year 67 B.C., and planted the remainder was to act as guide and mediator between
of them in a town by the sea, and hence- us and the wandering tribes. A man of
forward we only hear of them as peaceably no definite race, who dressed himself in a
acquiescing to the yoke of Rome. Our fine Albanian dress though he was no Al-
researches led us to respect these pirates, banian, bristling with quaint and useless
and rather to regret their name, for they arms, he was one of those mongrel prod-
built for themselves great temples to Jove ucts of the East who had, once upon a
and Hermes, and mighty fortress towns time, indulged in brigandage himself, and
with polygonal masonry in the heart of the passed many years in prison, but who in
Taurus. They buried their dead in rock- his old age had found a certain degree of
cut tombs, embellished with fine figures in honesty the best policy. He had been
relief on the rocks. In short, they gave handsome, and still was vain; and though
evidence of possessing a civilization in- carrying but little luggage, in it was a bot-
ferior to none existing in Asia Minor. tle of hair-dye, which would stream down
Their origin is lost in uncertainty and his forbidding face in black currents when
myth a wild mountainous race, who it rained. His great recommendation was
gained for themselves independence after that he knew how to impose his authority
the power of the Seleucidæ began to wane, on the pastoral nomads, and he would
and who originally came under Greek in have done the same on the archæological
fluence four centuries before the Christian ones had they not at once reduced him to
era. * Their kingdom, as Strabo, who is order by the threat of reduction in wages
almost our only authority, tells us, was a never-failing weapon when wielded
called Olba. They were ruled over by against an Oriental.
priest-kings-priests of Jove, and dynasts Strabo, the geographer, was our only
of Olba; and from the coasts of the Med-guide-book, and oddly enough one of our
iterranean up to a height of four thousand horses was called Strabo by his Greek-
feet in the recesses of the Taurus, this speaking master, because it was blind of
district was studded with prosperous towns one eye, one of those miserable quadru-
and villages, now entirely abandoned to the peds of the East, totally unfitted for a
Yourouks, as the Turks call this nomad mountaineering expedition such as we
race, from a word in their language, you- were about to undertake, which fell on
roumek, to wander. There is a glamor every possible occasion, once nearly
about these mountain slopes, their deep drowning itself in a stream, and sending
gorges and craggy heights, in their pres- our chattels floating away; and again fall-
ent state of utter abandonment, when one ing with our jar of wine against a rock,
tries to people it with a hardy and inde- and thereby reducing us to a condition
pendent race of freebooters who refused of enforced abstinence. The other five
horses of our cavalcade were moderate
specimens of their kind, and carried us
safely over many an awkward spot.

• Isocrates Panegyricus (Or. 4, § 161).

+ Strabo, xiv., ch. 5, 10. "And then higher up than

this place (Anchiale, mod. Mersina) and Soli is a moun-
tainous district, in which is the city of Olba, and a tem-
ple of Jove, the foundation of Ajax the son of Teucer,
and the priest became dynast of Rugged Cilicia: then
many tyrants succeeded in the government and formed
piratical companies, and after the destruction of these,
in our days even it is called the Teucrid dynasty and
the priesthood of Teucer." See also Head, "Historia
Nummorum,' on Olba.

We took everything with us beds, tables, chairs, tent, and groceries - trusting only to find a sufficiency of meat and milk amongst the nomad tribes. But in the former case we were doomed to disappointment, owing to two somewhat differ

ent causes. In the first place, they would | quired if they were not afraid of it, and if not part with their lambs and kids, because the flocks had run down during the recent years of famine; and secondly, the fowls were scarce, because they had last year found an excellent market for them at Mersina, where the French steamer touches, and all the poultry had been conveyed to France for consumption during the exhibition time. Consequently though milk and butter were plentiful we had to content ourselves with the flesh of goats well stricken in years, and every one knows that this is by no means palatable.

On the first plateau above the sea-level we visited three curious depressions in the ground, averaging two hundred feet in depth; one was eight hundred feet long, another was a quarter of a mile round, and the third three-quarters. The walls of these holes were of calcareous formation, and had in places been decorated by the pirates of old with quaint bas-reliefs and inscriptions. At the bottom of these holes flourished the wild verdure of the mountains, a dense jungle of carobs, pomegranates, myrtle, and prickly thorns; and Strabo told us how in his time flourished here excellent saffron, and I doubt not that he was right, for though we found none there, we saw abundance of it on the mountains around.

The largest of these depressions had a cave at its southern extremity, eating its way for a couple of hundred feet into the rock. This was the anciently famed Corycian Cave, about three miles behind the old town of Corycos, which Strabo tells us was celebrated in ancient cult as the prison where Jove kept bound the giant Typhon,* and where in those olden days frenzied oracles were uttered by its priests. Here we found several inscriptions identifying it, and accidentally by pulling down an outer wall in the temple of Jove which stood at the lip of the cave, we came across a list of the priest-kings of this district, one hundred and sixty-two in all, the rulers of the race of pirates down to the very last name before they were formed into a Roman province. This last name was that of King Archelaus, about whom Josephus has a good deal to tell us, whose daughter, Glaphyra, married the son of Herod the Great, and whose advice was much sought after by that monarch in settling his family disputes.

they never saw dread sights therein.
"No," said the oldest man amongst them;
"I and my father before me have spent
the winter months here all our lives, and
we have never seen anything. In fact, we
call this hole Paradise, for we can tether
our camels and stable our flocks in it. But
there is another hole hard by, which we
call Purgatory, into which no one can de-
scend." So under his guidance we visited
this place. It is separated from the Cory-
cian Cave by a sea of pointed calcareous
rocks, and it is a round hole a quarter of
a mile round, with sides sloping inwards
to the depth of two hundred feet, all hung
with stalactites, amongst which countless
pigeons build their nests. Without a
good strong rope no one could possibly
descend into it, and as we had not this
wherewithal we were reluctantly obliged
to forego the pleasure. Only once to my
knowledge has any one been down," said
the old Yourouk.
"About thirty years
ago, a nomad shot a Turk, and dragged
him still living to the hole. The Turk
clung to the roots which hung around, but
the nomad cut the stalks, and the unfortu-
nate man was hurled into the abyss. A
friend of his got a ship's rope, and went
down to collect the scattered bones and
gave them burial."

66

The old man also told us that the smoke of fires lighted in the Corycian Cave comes out here, and it is doubtless true; for these depressions have been made by one of those subterranean streams common in Asia Minor, and known by the name of dudens, making its way to the surface, so that there is probably an underground communication between the two.

Five miles from this spot there is a third depression similar in every respect to the Corycian Cave, with an old polygonal fortress of the pirates built at its lip, and anciently entered by a sloping road made of polygonal masonry. All this older masonry belongs to the pirate period, whereas the fine buildings by the coast and the magnificent tombs and sarcophagi were constructed after the Romans subdued the district. The pirates were naturally great devotees of Hermes, the god of illicit gain, and in our wanderings through this district we found three cave-temples walled up with polygonal This is quite one of the most awe-in-masonry and dedicated to the god of plunspiring spots I have ever seen, and from the nomads who dwell on its edge we in * Strabo, p. 670; Æschylus, Prom. 351; and Pindar,

Pyth. i. 31.

der. From inscriptions we learned that this third depression was dedicated to the Olbian Jove, of whom classic lore is silent, though I doubt not in those dark ages he