CHAPTER XXXV.

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Lesley Halamek and the

Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

=LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE=

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.

AUGUST, 1878.

* * * * *

Footnote: Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at

Washington.

* * * * *

ALONG THE DANUBE.

[Illustration: SOMENDRIA.]

Ada-Kale is a Turkish fortress which seems to spring directly from the

bosom of the Danube at a point where three curious and quarrelsome

races come into contact, and where the Ottoman thought it necessary to

have a foothold even in times of profound peace. To the traveller

from Western Europe no spectacle on the way to Constantinople was so

impressive as this ancient and picturesque fortification, suddenly

affronting the vision with its odd walls, its minarets, its red-capped

sentries, and the yellow sinister faces peering from balconies

suspended above the current. It was the first glimpse of the Orient

which one obtained; it appropriately introduced one to a domain which

is governed by sword and gun; and it was a pretty spot of color in the

midst of the severe and rather solemn scenery of the Danubian stream.

Ada-Kale is to be razed to the water's edge--so, at least, the treaty

between Russia and Turkey has ordained--and the Servian mountaineers

will no longer see the Crescent flag flying within rifle-shot of the

crags from which, by their heroic devotion in unequal battle, they

long ago banished it.

The Turks occupying this fortress during the recent war evidently

relied upon Fate for their protection, for the walls of Ada-Kale are

within a stone's throw of the Roumanian shore, and every Mussulman

in the place could have been captured in twenty minutes. I passed by

there one morning on the road from Orsova, on the frontier of Hungary,

to Bucharest, and was somewhat amused to see an elderly Turk seated

in a small boat near the Roumanian bank fishing. Behind him were two

soldiers, who served as oarsmen, and rowed him gently from point to

point when he gave the signal. Scarcely six hundred feet from him

stood a Wallachian sentry, watching his movements in lazy, indifferent

fashion. And this was at the moment that the Turks were bombarding

Kalafat in Roumania from Widdin on the Bulgarian side of the Danube!

Such a spectacle could be witnessed nowhere save in this land, "where

it is always afternoon," where people at times seem to suspend

respiration because they are too idle to breathe, and where even a dog

will protest if you ask him to move quickly out of your path. The old

Turk doubtless fished in silence and calm until the end of the war,

for I never heard of the removal of either himself or his companions.

The journeys by river and by rail from Lower Roumania to the romantic

and broken country surrounding Orsova are extremely interesting. The

Danube-stretches of shimmering water among the reedy lowlands--where

the only sign of life is a quaint craft painted with gaudy colors

becalmed in some nook, or a guardhouse built on piles driven into the

mud--are perhaps a trifle monotonous, but one has only to turn from

them to the people who come on board the steamer to have a rich fund

of enjoyment. Nowhere are types so abundant and various as on the

routes of travel between Bucharest and Rustchuk, or Pesth and

Belgrade. Every complexion, an extraordinary piquancy and variety of

costume, and a bewildering array of languages and dialects, are

set before the careful observer. As for myself, I found a special

enchantment in the scenery of the lower Danube--in the lonely inlets,

the wildernesses of young shoots in the marshes, the flights of

aquatic birds as the sound of the steamer was heard, the long tongues

of land on which the water-buffaloes lay huddled in stupid content,

the tiny hummocks where villages of wattled hovels were assembled. The

Bulgarian shore stands out in bold relief: Sistova, from the river,

is positively beautiful, but the now historical Simnitza seems only

a mud-flat. At night the boats touch upon the Roumanian side for

fuel--the Turks have always been too lazy and vicious to develop the

splendid mineral resources of Bulgaria--and the stout peasants and

their wives trundle thousands of barrows of coal along the swinging

planks. Here is raw life, lusty, full of rude beauty, but utterly

incult. The men and women appear to be merely animals gifted with

speech. The women wear almost no clothing: their matted hair drops

about their shapely shoulders as they toil at their burden, singing

meanwhile some merry chorus. Little tenderness is bestowed on these

creatures, and it was not without a slight twinge of the nerves that

I saw the huge, burly master of the boat's crew now and then bestow a

ringing slap with his open hand upon the neck or cheek of one of the

poor women who stumbled with her load or who hesitated for a moment to

indulge in abuse of a comrade. As the boat moved away these people,

dancing about the heaps of coal in the torchlight, looked not unlike

demons disporting in some gruesome nook of Enchanted Land. When they

were gypsies they did not need the aid of the torches: they were

sufficiently demoniacal without artificial aid.

Kalafat and Turnu-Severinu are small towns which would never have been

much heard of had they not been in the region visited by the war.

Turnu-Severinu is noted, however, as the point where Severinus once

built a mighty tower; and not far from the little hamlet may still

be seen the ruins of Trajan's immemorial bridge. Where the Danube is

twelve hundred yards wide and nearly twenty feet deep, Apollodorus

of Damascus did not hesitate, at Trajan's command, to undertake the

construction of a bridge with twenty stone and wooden arches. He

builded well, for one or two of the stone piers still remain perfect

after a lapse of sixteen centuries, and eleven of them, more or less

ruined, are yet visible at low water. Apollodorus was a man of genius,

as his other work, the Trajan Column, proudly standing in Rome, amply

testifies. No doubt he was richly rewarded by Trajan for constructing

a work which, flanked as it was by noble fortifications, bound the

newly-captured Dacian colony to the Roman empire. What mighty men were

these Romans, who carved their way along the Danube banks, hewing

roads and levelling mountains at the same time that they engaged the

savages of the locality in daily battle! There were indeed giants in

those days.

[Illustration: RUSTCHUK.]

When Ada-Kale is passed, and pretty Orsova, lying in slumbrous quiet

at the foot of noble mountains, is reached, the last trace of Turkish

domination is left behind. In future years, if the treaty of San

Stefano holds, there will be little evidence of Ottoman lack of

civilization anywhere on the Danube, for the forts of the Turks will

gradually disappear, and the Mussulman cannot for an instant hold

his own among Christians where he has no military advantage. But at

Orsova, although the red fez and voluminous trousers are rarely seen,

the influence of Turkey is keenly felt. It is in these remote

regions of Hungary that the real rage against Russia and the burning

enthusiasm and sympathy for the Turks is most openly expressed. Every

cottage in the neighborhood is filled with crude pictures representing

events of the Hungarian revolution; and the peasants, as they look

upon those reminders of perturbed times, reflect that the Russians

were instrumental in preventing the accomplishment of their dearest

wishes. Here the Hungarian is eminently patriotic: he endeavors as

much as possible to forget that he and his are bound to the empire

of Austria, and he speaks of the German and the Slav who are his

fellow-subjects with a sneer. The people whom one encounters in that

corner of Hungary profess a dense ignorance of the German language,

but if pressed can speak it glibly enough. I won an angry frown and

an unpleasant remark from an innkeeper because I did not know that

Austrian postage-stamps are not good in Hungary. Such melancholy

ignorance of the simplest details of existence seemed to my host meet

subject for reproach.

Orsova became an important point as soon as the Turks and Russians

were at war. The peasants of the Banat stared as they saw long lines

of travellers leaving the steamers which had come from Pesth and

Bazros, and invading the two small inns, which are usually more than

half empty. Englishmen, Russians, Austrian officers sent down to keep

careful watch upon the land, French and Prussian, Swiss and Belgian

military attaches and couriers, journalists, artists, amateur

army-followers, crowded the two long streets and exhausted the market.

Next came a hungry and thirsty mob of refugees from Widdin--Jews,

Greeks and gypsies--and these promenaded their variegated misery on

the river-banks from sunrise until sunset. Then out from Roumanian

land poured thousands of wretched peasants, bare-footed, bareheaded,

dying of starvation, fleeing from Turkish invasion, which, happily,

never assumed large proportions. These poor people slept on the

ground, content with the shelter of house-walls: they subsisted on

unripe fruits and that unfailing fund of mild tobacco which every male

being in all those countries invariably manages to secure. Walking

abroad in Orsova was no easy task, for one was constantly compelled to

step over these poor fugitives, who packed themselves into the sand at

noonday, and managed for a few hours before the cool evening breezes

came to forget their miseries. The vast fleet of river-steamers

belonging to the Austrian company was laid up at Orsova, and dozens

of captains, conversing in the liquid Slav or the graceful Italian or

guttural German, were for ever seated about the doors of the little

cafes smoking long cigars and quaffing beakers of the potent white

wine produced in Austrian vineyards.

Opposite Orsova lie the Servian Mountains, bold, majestic, inspiring.

Their noble forests and the deep ravines between them are exquisite in

color when the sun flashes along their sides. A few miles below

the point where the Hungarian and Roumanian territories meet

the mountainous region declines into foot-hills, and then to an

uninteresting plain. The Orsovan dell is the culminating point of

all the beauty and grandeur of the Danubian hills. From one eminence

richly laden with vineyards I looked out on a fresh April morning

across a delicious valley filled with pretty farms and white cottages

and ornamented by long rows of shapely poplars. Turning to the right,

I saw Servia's barriers, shutting in from the cold winds the fat

lands of the interior; vast hillsides dotted from point to point with

peaceful villages, in the midst of which white churches with slender

spires arose; and to the left the irregular line of the Roumanian

peaks stood up, jagged and broken, against the horizon. Out from

Orsova runs a rude highway into the rocky and savage back-country. The

celebrated baths of Mehadia, the "hot springs" of the Austro-Hungarian

empire, are yearly frequented by three or four thousand sufferers, who

come from the European capitals to Temesvar, and are thence trundled

in diligences to the water-cure. But the railway is penetrating even

this far-off land, where once brigands delighted to wander, and

Temesvar and Bucharest will be bound together by a daily

"through-service" as regular as that between Pesth and Vienna.

[Illustration: SISTOVA.]

I sat one evening on the balcony of the diminutive inn known as "The

Hungarian Crown," watching the sunbeams on the broad current of the

Danube and listening to the ripple, the plash and the gurgle of the

swollen stream as it rushed impetuously against the banks. A group

of Servians, in canoes light and swift as those of Indians, had made

their way across the river, and were struggling vigorously to prevent

the current from carrying them below a favorable landing-place. These

tall, slender men, with bronzed faces and gleaming eyes, with their

round skull-caps, their gaudy jackets and ornamental leggings, bore

no small resemblance at a distance to certain of our North American

red-skins. Each man had a long knife in his belt, and from experience

I can say that a Servian knife is in itself a complete tool-chest.

With its one tough and keen blade one may skin a sheep, file a saw,

split wood, mend a wagon, defend one's self vigorously if need be,

make a buttonhole and eat one's breakfast. No Servian who adheres to

the ancient costume would consider himself dressed unless the crooked

knife hung from his girdle. Although the country-side along the Danube

is rough, and travellers are said to need protection among the Servian

hills, I could not discover that the inhabitants wore other weapons

than these useful articles of cutlery. Yet they are daring smugglers,

and sometimes openly defy the Hungarian authorities when discovered.

"Ah!" said Master Josef, the head-servant of the Hungarian Crown,

"many a good fight have I seen in mid-stream, the boats grappled

together, knives flashing, and our fellows drawing their pistols. All

that, too, for a few flasks of Negotin, which is a musty red, thick

wine that Heaven would forbid me to recommend to your honorable self

and companions so long as I put in the cellar the pearl dew of yonder

vineyards!" pointing to the vines of Orsova.

While the Servians were anxiously endeavoring to land, and seemed to

be in imminent danger of upsetting, the roll of thunder was heard and

a few drops of rain fell with heavy plash. Master Josef forthwith

began making shutters fast and tying the curtains; "For now we _shall_

have a wind!" quoth he. And it came. As by magic the Servian shore was

blotted out, and before me I could see little save the river, which

seemed transformed into a roaring and foaming ocean. The refugees,

the gypsies, the Jews, the Greeks, scampered in all directions. Then

tremendous echoes awoke among the hills. Peal after peal echoed and

re-echoed, until it seemed as if the cliffs must crack and crumble.

Sheets of rain were blown by the mischievous winds now full upon the

unhappy fugitives, or now descended with seemingly crushing force

on the Servians in their dancing canoes. Then came vivid lightning,

brilliant and instant glances of electricity, disclosing the forests

and hills for a moment, then seeming by their quick departure to

render the obscurity more painful than before. The fiery darts were

hurled by dozens upon the devoted trees, and the tall and graceful

stems were bent like reeds before the rushing of the blast. Cold swept

through the vale, and shadows seemed to follow it. Such contrast

with the luminous, lovely semi-tropical afternoon, in the dreamy

restfulness of which man and beast seemed settling into lethargy, was

crushing. It pained and disturbed the spirit. Master Josef, who never

lost an occasion to cross himself and to do a few turns on a little

rosary of amber beads, came and went in a kind of dazed mood while the

storm was at its height. Just as a blow was struck among the hills

which seemed to make the earth quiver to its centre, the varlet

approached and modestly inquired if the "honorable society"--myself

and chance companions--would visit that very afternoon the famous

chapel in which the crown of Hungary lies buried. I glanced curiously

at him, thinking that possibly the thunder had addled his brain. "Oh,

the honorable society may walk in sunshine all the way to the chapel

at five o'clock," he said with an encouraging grin. "These Danube

storms come and go as quickly as a Tsigane from a hen-roost. See! the

thunder has stopped its howling, and there is not a wink of lightning.

Even the raindrops are so few that one may almost walk between them."

[Illustration: NICOPOLIS.]

I returned to the balcony from which the storm had driven me, and was

gratified by the sight of the mountain-side studded with pearls, which

a faint glow in the sky was gently touching. The Danube roared and

foamed with malicious glee as the poor Servians were still whirled

about on the water. But presently, through the deep gorges and along

the sombre stream and over the vineyards, the rocks and the roofs of

humble cottages, stole a warm breeze, followed by dazzling sunlight,

which returned in mad haste to atone for the displeasure of the wind

and rain. In a few moments the refugees were again afield, spreading

their drenched garments on the wooden railings, and stalking about in

a condition narrowly approaching nakedness. A gypsy four feet high,

clad in a linen shirt and trousers so wide as to resemble petticoats,

strolled thoughtlessly on the bank singing a plaintive melody, and now

and then turning his brown face skyward as if to salute the sun. This

child of mysterious ancestry, this wanderer from the East, this robber

of roosts and cunning worker in metals, possessed nor hat nor shoes:

his naked breast and his unprotected arms must suffer cold at night,

yet he seemed wonderfully happy. The Jews and Greeks gave him scornful

glances, which he returned with quizzical, provoking smiles. At last

he threw himself down on a plank from which the generous sun was

rapidly drying the rain, and, coiling up as a dog might have done, he

was soon asleep.

With a marine glass I could see distinctly every movement on the

Servian shore. Close to the water's edge nestled a small village of

neat white cottages. Around a little wharf hovered fifty or sixty

stout farmers, mounted on sturdy ponies, watching the arrival of the

Mercur, the Servian steamer from Belgrade and the Sava River. The

Mercur came puffing valiantly forward, as unconcerned as if no

whirlwind had swept across her path, although she must have been in

the narrow and dangerous canon of the "Iron Gates" when the blast

and the shower were most furious. On the roads leading down the

mountain-sides I saw long processions of squealing and grunting swine,

black, white and gray, all active and self-willed, fighting each other

for the right of way. Before each procession marched a swineherd

playing on a rustic pipe, the sounds from which primitive instrument

seemed to exercise Circean enchantment upon the rude flocks. It was

inexpressibly comical to watch the masses of swine after they had

been enclosed in the "folds"--huge tracts fenced in and provided with

shelters at the corners. Each herd knew its master, and as he passed

to and fro would salute him with a delighted squeal, which died away

into a series of disappointed and cynical groans as soon as the

porkers had discovered that no evening repast was to be offered them.

Good fare do these Servian swine find in the abundant provision

of acorns in the vast forests. The men who spend their lives in

restraining the vagabond instincts of these vulgar animals may perhaps

be thought a collection of brutal hinds; but, on the contrary, they

are fellows of shrewd common sense and much dignity of feeling.

Kara-George, the terror of the Turk at the beginning of this century,

the majestic character who won the admiration of Europe, whose genius

as a soldier was praised by Napoleon the Great, and who freed his

countrymen from bondage,--Kara-George was a swineherd in the woods of

the Schaumadia until the wind of the spirit fanned his brow and called

him from his simple toil to immortalize his homely name.

Master Josef and his fellows in Orsova did not hate the Servians with

the bitterness manifested toward the Roumanians, yet they considered

them as aliens and as dangerous conspirators against the public weal.

"Who knows at what moment they may go over to the Russians?" was the

constant cry. And in process of time they went, but although Master

Josef had professed the utmost willingness to take up arms on such an

occasion, it does not appear that he did it, doubtless preferring, on

reflection, the quiet of his inn and his flask of white wine in the

courtyard rather than an excursion among the trans-Danubian hills and

the chances of an untoward fate at the point of a Servian knife. It

is not astonishing that the two peoples do not understand each other,

although only a strip of water separates their frontiers for a long

stretch; for the difference in language and in its written form is a

most effectual barrier to intercourse. The Servians learn something of

the Hungarian dialects, since they come to till the rich lands of the

Banat in the summer season. Bulgarians and Servians by thousands find

employment in Hungary in summer, and return home when autumn sets

in. But the dreams and ambitions of the two peoples have nothing in

common. Servia looks longingly to Slavic unification, and is anxious

to secure for herself a predominance in the new nation to be moulded

out of the old scattered elements: Hungary believes that the

consolidation of the Slavs would place her in a dangerous and

humiliating position, and conspires day and night to compass

exactly the reverse of Servian wishes. Thus the two countries are

theoretically at peace and practically at war. While the conflict of

1877 was in progress collisions between Servian and Hungarian were of

almost daily occurrence.

The Hungarian's intolerance of the Slav does not proceed from unworthy

jealousy, but rather from an exaggerated idea of the importance of his

own country, and of the evils which might befall it if the old Serb

stock began to renew its ancient glory. In corners of Hungary, such as

Orsova, the peasant imagines that his native land is the main world,

and that the rest of Europe is an unnecessary and troublesome fringe

around the edges of it. There is a story of a gentleman in Pesth who

went to a dealer in maps and inquired for a _globus_ of Hungary,

showing that he imagined it to be the whole round earth.

[Illustration: THE DANUBE AT TRAJAN'S BRIDGE.]

So fair were the land and the stream after the storm that I lingered

until sunset gazing out over river and on Servian hills, and did not

accept Josef's invitation to visit the chapel of the Hungarian crown

that evening. But next morning, before the sun was high, I wandered

alone in the direction of the Roumanian frontier, and by accident came

upon the chapel. It is a modest structure in a nook surrounded by tall

poplars, and within is a simple chapel with Latin inscriptions. Here

the historic crown reposes, now that there is no longer any use for it

at Presburg, the ancient capital. Here it was brought by pious hands

after the troubles between Austria and Hungary were settled. During

the revolution the sacred bauble was hidden by the command of noblemen

to whom it had been confided, and the servitors who concealed it at

the behest of their masters were slain, lest in an indiscreet moment

they might betray the secret. For thousands of enthusiasts this tiny

chapel is the holiest of shrines, and should trouble come anew upon

Hungary in the present perturbed times, the crown would perhaps

journey once more.

It seems pitiful that the railway should ever invade this

out-of-the-way corner of Europe. But it is already crawling through

the mountains: hundreds of Italian laborers are putting down the

shining rails in woods and glens where no sounds save the song of

birds or the carol of the infrequent passer-by have heretofore been

heard. For the present, however, the old-fashioned, comfortless

diligence keeps the roads: the beribboned postilion winds his merry

horn, and as the afternoon sun is getting low the dusty, antique

vehicle rattles up to the court of the inn, the guard gets down, dusts

the leather casing of the gun which now-a-days he is never compelled

to use: then he touches his square hat, ornamented with a feather, to

the maids and men of the hostelry. When the mails are claimed, the

horses refreshed and the stage is covered with its leathern hood,

postilion and guard sit down together in a cool corner under the

gallery in the courtyard and crack various small flasks of wine. They

smoke their porcelain pipes imported from Vienna with the air of men

of the world who have travelled and who could tell you a thing or two

if they liked. They are never tired of talking of Mehadia, which is

one of their principal stations. The sad-faced nobleman, followed by

the decorous old man-servant in fantastic Magyar livery, who arrived

in the diligence, has been to the baths. The master is vainly seeking

cure, comes every year, and always supplies postilion and guard with

the money to buy flasks of wine. This the postilion tells me and my

fellows, and suggests that the "honorable society" should follow the

worthy nobleman's example. No sooner is it done than postilion and

guard kiss our hands; which is likewise an evidence that they have

travelled, are well met with every stranger and all customs, and know

more than they say.

The Romans had extensive establishments at Mehadia, which they called

the "Baths of Hercules," and it is in memory of this that a statue

of the good giant stands in the square of the little town. Scattered

through the hills, many inscriptions to Hercules, to Mercury and

to Venus have been found during the ages. The villages on the road

thither are few and far between, and are inhabited by peasants

decidedly Dacian in type. It is estimated that a million and a half

of Roumanians are settled in Hungary, and in this section they are

exceedingly numerous. Men and women wear showy costumes, quite

barbaric and uncomfortable. The women seem determined to wear as

few garments as possible, and to compensate for lack of number by

brightness of coloring. In many a pretty face traces of gypsy blood

may be seen. This vagabond taint gives an inexpressible charm to

a face for which the Hungarian strain has already done much. The

coal-black hair and wild, mutinous eyes set off to perfection the pale

face and exquisitely thin lips, the delicate nostrils and beautifully

moulded chin. Angel or devil? queries the beholder. Sometimes he is

constrained to think that the possessor of such a face has the mingled

souls of saint and siren. The light undertone of melancholy which

pervades gypsy beauty, gypsy music, gypsy manners, has an extremely

remarkable fascination for all who perceive it. Even when it is almost

buried beneath ignorance and animal craft, it is still to be found

in the gypsy nature after diligent search. This strange race seems

overshadowed by the sorrow of some haunting memory. Each individual

belonging to the Tsiganes whom I saw impressed me as a fugitive from

Fate. To look back was impossible; of the present he was careless; the

future tempted him on. In their music one now and then hears hints of

a desire to return to some far-off and half-forgotten land. But this

is rare.

There are a large number of "civilized gypsies," so called, in the

neighborhood of Orsova. I never saw one of them without a profound

compassion for him, so utterly unhappy did he look in ordinary attire.

The musicians who came nightly to play on the lawn in front of the

Hungarian Crown inn belonged to these civilized Tsiganes. They had

lost all the freedom of gesture, the proud, half-savage stateliness of

those who remained nomadic and untrammelled by local law and custom.

The old instinct was in their music, but sometimes there drifted

into it the same mixture of saint and devil which I had seen in the

"composite" faces.

[Illustration: BOATS ON THE DANUBE.]

As soon as supper was set forth, piping hot and flanked by flagons of

beer and wine, on the lawn, and the guests had assembled to partake

of the good cheer, while yet the afterglow lingered along the Danube,

these dusky musicians appeared and installed themselves in a corner.

The old stream's murmur could not drown the piercing and pathetic

notes of the violin, the gentle wail of the guzla or the soft

thrumming of the rude tambourine. Little poetry as a spectacled and

frosty Austrian officer might have in his soul, that little must have

been awakened by the songs and the orchestral performances of the

Tsiganes as the sun sank low. The dusk began to creep athwart the

lawn, and a cool breeze fanned the foreheads of the listeners. When

the light was all gone, these men, as if inspired by the darkness,

sometimes improvised most angelic melody. There was never any loud

or boisterous note, never any direct appeal to the attention. I

invariably forgot the singers and players, and the music seemed a

part of the harmony of Nature. While the pleasant notes echoed in the

twilight, troops of jaunty young Hungarian soldiers, dressed in red

hose, dark-green doublets and small caps sometimes adorned with

feathers, sauntered up and down the principal street; the refugees

huddled in corners and listened with delight; the Austrian officials

lumbered by, pouring clouds of smoke from their long, strong and

inevitable cigars; and the dogs forgot their perennial quarrel for a

few instants at a time.

The dogs of Orsova and of all the neighboring country have many of the

characteristics of their fellow-creatures in Turkey. Orsova is divided

into "beats," which are thoroughly and carefully patrolled night and

day by bands of dogs who recognize the limits of their domain and

severely resent intrusion. In front of the Hungarian Crown a large

dog, aided by a small yellow cur and a black spaniel mainly made up

of ears and tail, maintained order. The afternoon quiet was generally

disturbed about four o'clock by the advent of a strange canine, who,

with that expression of extreme innocence which always characterizes

the animal that knows he is doing wrong, would venture on to the

forbidden ground. A low growl in chorus from the three guardians was

the inevitable preliminary warning. The new-comer usually seemed much

surprised at this, and gave an astonished glance: then, wagging

his tail merrily, as much as to say, "Nonsense! I must have been

mistaken," he approached anew. One of the trio of guardians thereupon

sallied forth to meet him, followed by the others a little distance

behind. If the strange dog showed his teeth, assumed a defiant

attitude and seemed inclined to make his way through any number of

enemies, the trio held a consultation, which, I am bound to say,

almost invariably resulted in a fight. The intruder would either fly

yelping, or would work his way across the interdicted territory by

means of a series of encounters, accompanied by the most terrific

barking, snapping and shrieking, and by a very considerable effusion

of blood. The person who should interfere to prevent a dog-fight in

Orsova would be regarded as a lunatic. Sometimes a large white dog,

accompanied by two shaggy animals resembling wolves so closely that it

was almost impossible to believe them guardians of flocks of sheep,

passed by the Hungarian Crown unchallenged, but these were probably

tried warriors whose valor was so well known that they were no longer

questioned anywhere.

The gypsies have in their wagons or following in their train small

black dogs of temper unparalleled for ugliness. It is impossible to

approach a Tsigane tent or wagon without encountering a swarm of these

diminutive creatures, whose rage is not only amusing, but sometimes

rather appalling to contemplate. Driving rapidly by a camp one morning

in a farmer's cart drawn by two stout horses adorned with jingling

bells, I was followed by a pack of these dark-skinned animals. The

bells awoke such rage within them that they seemed insane under its

influence. As they leaped and snapped around me, I felt like some

traveller in a Russian forest pursued by hungry wolves. A dog scarcely

six inches high, and but twice as long, would spring from the ground

as if a pound of dynamite had exploded beneath him, and would make a

desperate effort to throw himself into the wagon. Another, howling

in impotent anger, would jump full at a horse's throat, would roll

beneath the feet of the team, but in some miraculous fashion would

escape unhurt, and would scramble upon a bank to try again. It was a

real relief when the discouraged pack fell away. Had I shot one of the

animals, the gypsies would have found a way to avenge the death of

their enterprising though somewhat too zealous camp-follower. Animals

everywhere on these border-lines of the Orient are treated with much

more tenderness than men and women are. The grandee who would scowl

furiously in this wild region of the Banat if the peasants did not

stand by the roadside and doff their hats in token of respect and

submission as he whirled by in his carriage, would not kick a dog out

of his way, and would manifest the utmost tenderness for his horses.

[Illustration: Orsova.]

Much as the Hungarian inhabitants of the Banat hate the Roumanians,

they do not fail to appreciate the commercial advantages which will

follow on the union of the two countries by rail. Pretty Orsova may in

due time become a bustling town filled with grain- and coal-depots and

with small manufactories. The railway from Verciorova on the frontier

runs through the large towns Pitesti and Craiova on its way to

Bucharest. It is a marvellous railroad: it climbs hills, descends into

deep gullies, and has as little of the air-line about it as a great

river has, for the contractors built it on the principle of "keeping

near the surface," and they much preferred climbing ten high mountains

to cutting one tunnel. Craiova takes its name, according to a somewhat

misty legend, from John Assan, who was one of the Romano-Bulgarian

kings, Craiova being a corruption of _Crai Ivan_ ("King John"). This

John was the same who drank his wine from a cup made out of the skull

of the unlucky emperor Baldwin I. The old bans of Craiova gave their

title to the Roumanian silver pieces now known as _bani_. Slatina,

farther down the line, on the river Altu (the _Aluta_ of the

ancients), is a pretty town, where a proud and brave community love to

recite to the stranger the valorous deeds of their ancestors. It is

the centre from which have spread out most of the modern revolutionary

movements in Roumania. "Little Wallachia," in which Slatina stands, is

rich in well-tilled fields and uplands covered with fat cattle: it is

as fertile as Kansas, and its people seemed to me more agreeable and

energetic than those in and around Bucharest.

He who clings to the steamers plying up and down the Danube sees much

romantic scenery and many curious types, but he loses all the real

charm of travel in these regions. The future tourist on his way to or

from Bulgaria and the battle-fields of the "new crusade" will be wise

if he journeys leisurely by farm-wagon--he will not be likely to find

a carriage--along the Hungarian bank of the stream. I made the journey

in April, when in that gentle southward climate the wayside was

already radiant with flowers and the mellow sunshine was unbroken by

cloud or rain. There were discomfort and dust, but there was a rare

pleasure in the arrival at a quaint inn whose exterior front, boldly

asserting itself in the bolder row of house-fronts in a long village

street, was uninviting enough, but the interior of which was charming.

In such a hostelry I always found the wharfmaster, in green coat and

cap, asleep in an arm-chair, with the burgomaster and one or two idle

landed proprietors sitting near him at a card-table, enveloped in such

a cloud of smoke that one could scarcely see the long-necked flasks of

white wine which they were rapidly emptying. The host was a massive

man with bulbous nose and sleepy eyes: he responded to all questions

with a stare and the statement that he did not know, and seemed

anxious to leave everything in doubt until the latest moment possible.

His daughter, who was brighter and less dubious in her responses than

her father, was a slight girl with lustrous black eyes, wistful lips,

a perfect form, and black hair covered with a linen cloth that the

dust might not come near its glossy threads. When she made her

appearance, flashing out of a huge dark room which was stone paved and

arched overhead, and in which peasants sat drinking sour beer, she

seemed like a ray of sunshine in the middle of night. But there was

more dignity about her than is to be found in most sunbeams: she was

modest and civil in answer, but understood no compliments. There was

something of the princess-reduced-in-circumstances in her demeanor. A

royal supper could she serve, and the linen which she spread on the

small wooden table in the back courtyard smelled of lavender. I took

my dinners, after the long days' rides, in inns which commanded

delicious views of the Danube--points where willows overhung the

rushing stream, or where crags towered above it, or where it flowed

in smooth yet resistless might through plains in which hundreds of

peasants were toiling, their red-and-white costumes contrasting

sharply with the brilliant blue of the sky and the tender green of the

foliage.

[Illustration: BELGRADE, FROM SEMLIN.]

If the inns were uniformly cleanly and agreeable, as much could not

be said for the villages, which were sometimes decidedly dirty. The

cottages of the peasants--that is, of the agricultural laborers--were

windowless to a degree which led me to look for a small- and dull-eyed

race, but the eloquent orbs of youths and maidens in all this Banat

land are rarely equalled in beauty. I found it in my heart to object

to the omnipresent swine. These cheerful animals were sometimes so

domesticated that they followed their masters and mistresses afield in

the morning. In this section of Hungary, as indeed in most parts of

Europe, the farm-houses are all huddled together in compact villages,

and the lands tilled by the dwellers in these communities extend for

miles around them. At dawn the procession of laborers goes forth,

and at sunset it returns. Nothing can give a better idea of rural

simplicity and peace than the return of the peasants of a hamlet

at eventide from their vineyards and meadows. Just as the sun was

deluging the broad Danube with glory before relinquishing the current

to the twilight's shades I came, in the soft April evening, into the

neighborhood of Drenkova. A tranquil afterglow was here and there

visible near the hills, which warded off the sun's passionate farewell

glances at the vines and flowers. Beside the way, on the green banks,

sat groups of children, clad with paradisiacal simplicity, awaiting

their fathers and mothers. At a vineyard's hedge a sweet girl, tall,

stately and melancholy, was twining a garland in the cap of a stout

young fellow who rested one broad hand lightly upon her shoulder. Old

women, bent and wrinkled, hobbled out from the fields, getting help

from their sons or grandsons. Sometimes I met a shaggy white horse

drawing a cart in which a dozen sonsie lasses, their faces browned by

wind and their tresses blown back from their brows in most bewitching

manner by the libertine breeze, were jolting homeward, singing as

they went. The young men in their loose linen garments, with their

primitive hoes and spades on their shoulders, were as goodly specimens

of manly strength and beauty as one could wish to look upon. It hurt

me to see them stand humbly ranged in rows as I passed. But it was

pleasant to note the fervor with which they knelt around the cross

rearing its sainted form amid the waving grasses. They knew nothing

of the outer world, save that from time to time the emperor claimed

certain of their number for his service, and that perhaps their lot

might lead them to the great city of Buda-Pesth. Everywhere as far as

the eye could reach the land was cultivated with greatest care,

and plenty seemed the lot of all. The peasant lived in an ugly and

windowless house because his father and grandfather had done so before

him, not because it was necessary. It was odd to see girls tall as

Dian, and as fair, bending their pretty bodies to come out of the

contemptible little apertures in the peasant-houses called "doors."

Drenkova is a long street of low cottages, with here and there a

two-story mansion to denote that the proprietors of the land reside

there. As I approached the entrance to this street I saw a most

remarkable train coming to meet me. One glance told me that it was a

large company of gypsies who had come up from Roumania, and were going

northward in search of work or plunder. My driver drew rein, and

we allowed the swart Bohemians to pass on--a courtesy which was

gracefully acknowledged with a singularly sweet smile from the driver

of the first cart. There were about two hundred men and women in

this wagon-train, and I verily believe that there were twice as many

children. Each cart, drawn by a small Roumanian pony, contained two or

three families huddled together, and seemingly lost in contemplation

of the beautiful sunset, for your real gypsy is a keen admirer of

Nature and her charms. Some of the women were intensely hideous: age

had made them as unattractive as in youth they had been pretty; others

were graceful and well-formed. Many wore but a single garment. The men

were wilder than any that I had ever before seen: their matted hair,

their thick lips and their dark eyes gave them almost the appearance

of negroes. One or two of them had been foraging, and bore sheeps'

heads and hares which they had purchased or "taken" in the village.

They halted as soon as they had passed me, and prepared to go into

camp; so I waited a little to observe them. During the process of

arranging the carts for the night one of the women became enraged

at the father of her brood because he would not aid her in the

preparation of the simple tent under which the family was to repose.

The woman ran to him, clenching her fist and screaming forth invective

which, I am convinced, had I understood it and had it been directed at

me, I should have found extremely disagreeable. After thus lashing the

culprit with language for some time, she broke forth into screams and

danced frantically around him. He arose, visibly disturbed, and I

fancied that his savage nature would come uppermost, and that he might

be impelled to give her a brutal beating. But he, on the contrary,

advanced leisurely toward her and spat upon the ground with an

expression of extreme contempt. She seemed to feel this much more than

she would have felt a blow, and her fury redoubled. She likewise spat;

he again repeated the contemptuous act; and after both had gratified

the anger which was consuming them, they walked off in different

directions. The battle was over, and I was not sorry to notice a few

minutes later that _paterfamilias_ had thought better of his conduct,

and was himself spreading the tent and setting forth his wandering

Lares and Penates.

A few hundred yards from the point where these wanderers had settled

for the night I found some rude huts in which other gypsies were

residing permanently. These huts were mere shelters placed against

steep banks or hedges, and within there was no furniture save one

or two blankets, a camp-kettle and some wicker baskets. Young girls

twelve or thirteen years of age crouched naked about a smouldering

fire. They did not seem unhappy or hungry; and none of these strange

people paid any attention to me as I drove on to the inn, which, oddly

enough, was at some distance from the main village, hard by the Danube

side, in a gully between the mountains, where coal-barges lay moored.

The Servian Mountains, covered from base to summit with dense forests,

cast a deep gloom over the vale. In a garden on a terrace behind the

inn, by the light of a flickering candle, I ate a frugal dinner, and

went to bed much impressed by the darkness, in such striking contrast

to the delightful and picturesque scenes through which I had wandered

all day.

[Illustration: THE IRON GATES]

But I speedily forgot this next morning, when the landlord informed

me that, instead of toiling over the road along the crags to Orsova,

whither I was returning, I could embark on a tug-boat bound for that

cheerful spot, and could thus inspect the grand scenery of the Iron

Gates from the river. The swift express-boats which in time of peace

run from Vienna to Rustchuk whisk the traveller so rapidly through

these famous defiles that he sees little else than a panorama of high

rocky walls. But the slow-moving and clumsy tug, with its train of

barges attached, offers better facilities to the lover of natural

beauty. We had dropped down only a short distance below Drenkova

before we found the river-path filled with eddies, miniature

whirlpools, denoting the vicinity of the gorges into which the great

current is compressed. These whirlpools all have names: one is called

the "Buffalo;" a second, Kerdaps; a third is known as the "Devourer."

The Turks have a healthy awe of this passage, which in old times was a

terrible trial to these stupid and always inefficient navigators. For

three or four hours we ran in the shade of mighty walls of porphyry

and granite, on whose tops were forests of oaks and elms. High up on

cliffs around which the eagles circle, and low in glens where one

sometimes sees a bear swimming, the sun threw a flood of mellow glory.

I could fancy that the veins of red porphyry running along the face

of the granite were blood-stains, the tragic memorials of ancient

battles. For, wild and inaccessible as this region seems, it has been

fought over and through in sternest fashion. Perched on a little

promontory on the Servian side is the tiny town of Poretch, where

the brave shepherds and swineherds fought the Turk, against whose

oppression they had risen, until they were overwhelmed by numbers, and

their leader, Hadji Nikolos, lost his head. The Austrians point out

with pride the cave on the tremendous flank of Mount Choukourou where,

two centuries ago, an Austrian general at the head of seven hundred

men, all that was left to him of a goodly army, sustained a three

months' siege against large Turkish forces. This cave is perched high

above the road at a point where it absolutely commands it, and the

government of to-day, realizing its importance, has had it fortified

and furnished with walls pierced by loopholes. Trajan fought his way

through these defiles in the very infancy of the Christian era; and in

memory of his first splendid campaign against the Dacians he carved

in the solid rock the letters, some of which are still visible, and

which, by their very grandiloquence, offer a mournful commentary on

the fleeting nature of human greatness. Little did he think when his

eyes rested lovingly on this inscription, beginning--

IMP. CAES. D. NERVAE FILIUS NERVA. TRAJANUS. GERM. PONT. MAXIMUS.

--that Time with profane hand would wipe out the memory of many of his

glories and would undo all the work that he had done.

On we drifted, through huge landlocked lakes, out of which there

seemed no issue until we chanced upon a miraculous corner where there

was an outlet frowned upon by angry rocks; on to the "Caldron," as the

Turks called the most imposing portion of the gorge; on through an

amphitheatre where densely-wooded mountains on either side were

reflected in smooth water; on beneath masses that appeared about to

topple, and over shallows where it looked as if we must be grounded;

on round a bluff which had hidden the sudden opening of the valley

into a broad sweep, and which had hindered us from seeing Orsova the

Fair nestling closely to her beloved mountains.

EDWARD KING.

THE PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1878.

I.--BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS.

[Illustration: THE TROCADERO AND GROUNDS.]

It is customary to speak of things by comparison, and the question is

constantly propounded here, as it will be to returned Americans: "How

does the Exposition compare with the Centennial of 1876?" This is not

to be answered by vague generalities nor by sweeping statements.

It must of course be true that a great nation could not fail to make

interesting an object upon which it has lavished money and which has

obtained the co-operation of the principal foreign nations. So much

is true equally of Philadelphia and Paris, and the merits of each are

such that comparisons may be instituted which shall be derogatory to

neither.

The scale of each is immense, and the buildings of both well filled

and overflowing into numerous annexes. Fairmount had the advantage of

breadth of ground for all comers. The Champ de Mars is but little

over one hundred acres in area, while the portion of Fairmount Park

conceded to the Exposition was two hundred and sixty acres.

The Champ de Mars is simply crowded with buildings, and is hemmed in

by houses except at the end where it abuts upon the Seine. The space

between the river and the main building is the only breathing-ground

on that side of the river, the only place large enough for a band to

play in the open air with allowance for a moderate crowd of listeners;

and even this portion has a far larger number of detached houses than

elegance or convenience of view would dictate. It was otherwise in

Philadelphia, where the ample room gave a sensation of freedom, and

the wide lawns, and even rustic hollows, permitted rambles, picnic

lunches and parties. Herein consists one of the most striking features

of dissimilarity between the Philadelphia and Paris expositions. The

former had plenty of room--the latter has insufficient. The former,

with the exception of the Main and Machinery Buildings, with a

few adjuncts, and the Art-Gallery, a little retired from the Main

Building, had its structures dotted over a wide expanse bordering its

lakes or along an encircling drive. For want of any other sufficient

opportunity to display the architecture of the countries assembled,

one of the interior facades of the Paris building has a series of

characteristic house-fronts looking upon an allee of but fifty feet in

width, which is dignified by the title of "The Street of Nations."

This tight packing has, however, one compensation: it has permitted a

degree of finish to the grounds far superior to what was possible at

Philadelphia. All the space inside the enclosure is admirably laid out

in walks and parterres, and the two open places between the principal

buildings and the Seine display a truly beautiful and picturesque

garden, with winding walks, ponds, fountains, artificial mounds with

clumps of trees and evergreens, grottos, statues, trickling rivulets

with ferns and mosses, cozy dells with little cascades, and the walks

in the more open spots bordered with charming flowers and plants of

rich leafage. The lawns are something marvellous in the speed with

which they have been created. Thousands of tons, as it seems, of rich

mould have been deposited and levelled or laid upon the swelling

tumuli which border the more open space, and the grass grows with

denseness and vigor under the stimulating treatment of phosphates, its

greenness mocking the emerald, and forming a most vivid setting for

the darker leaves of the tree-rhododendrons, whose globular masses of

bloom look like balls of fire.

After all, it is only justice to mention two things at Philadelphia

which render it memorable among exhibitions, and which, I observe in

conversation with foreigners who visited it and are here now, made a

great and lasting impression. I do not mean that it had but two, but

these are so frequently referred to that it is fair to cite them

specially, even at the risk of a little repetition as to the

first--namely, the wide area and beautiful situation, with the views

of hill and river; the means of approach by carriage-drives through

the lovely Park, those so disposed being able to drive for miles along

the water-side, in the groves and to various commanding points of view

on their way to such of the remoter entrances as they might elect;

the railway, which enabled one not only to see the grounds without

fatigue, but while resting from the pedestrian work of the interiors

of the buildings; the sense of comfort in being able to retire for a

while to sylvan or floral retreats to digest the thoughts and rest

from seeing. Secondly, the various and ample accommodations offered

to the public--the postal and telegraph facilities; the Department

of Public Comfort; the lavatories and retiring-rooms so abundantly

furnished. A Moresque gentleman in turban who was in Philadelphia

fairly rubbed his hands as he referred to the lavish opportunities for

washing which were freely given in Philadelphia, and contrasted them

with the state of things here, where it costs ten cents to wash your

hands, and the supply of water is but meagre at that. But he is an

African, you know, and had learned to appreciate water, and plenty of

it, in a land where the washing of the face, hands and feet is among

the first civilities offered to a stranger.

A few figures, dry enough in themselves if there were nothing more,

will serve as a means of comparison of the relative spaces under

cover. The building on the Champ de Mars is stated officially to

be 650 metres long by 350 metres broad, which, reduced to our

measurement, will give 2,447,536 square feet. Deducting 150,000 feet

for two enclosed alleys, the area under roof will be 2,297,536 feet.

The area of the five principal buildings at the Centennial Exhibition

was:

Square feet.

Main Building.................... 872,320

Machinery Hall.................. 504,720

Art-Gallery..................... 76,650

Agricultural Hall................ 442,800

Horticultural Hall............... 73,919

_________

1,970,409

So that the difference in favor of Paris is 327,127 feet. In round

numbers, the Paris Exposition building is one-fifth larger than the

united areas of the five principal buildings at the Centennial.

Without making a close calculation of the areas of the annexes and

detached buildings either of Philadelphia or Paris, I am disposed to

think that the 1876 Exhibition was not in excess of the present one in

this respect. Either exceeds, both in the main buildings and the swarm

of detached structures, any preceding exhibitions. The difference

between the Paris exhibitions of 1867 and 1878 is as 153 is to 240:

the London building of 1862 would bear to both the proportion of 92,

without any important annexes.

The high ground on the right bank of the Seine is occupied by the

Trocadero Palace, which faces that on the Champ de Mars, each building

being about five hundred yards from the bank of the river, which flows

in so deep a depression that it is visible from neither building, and

the grounds between the two appear to be continuous, though the bridge

suggests the contrary.

The cascade in front of the Trocadero occupies the site of the old

steps by which the steep hill was ascended, but the ground nearer to

the Seine has been so raised that the river-roads on each side run

in subways spanned by bridges, thus permitting free use of the great

thoroughfares without impeding communication between the two portions

of the Exposition. Indeed, they appear as one viewed in either

direction, notwithstanding the intervening streets and wide and rapid

river.

The change in the shape of the Trocadero hill to bring it into a

symmetrical position in front of the Champ de Mars has required the

quarrying of twenty-four thousand cubic metres of rock, leaving a

rough scarp on the northern edge quarried into steps, walks and

grottos, with flowers, ferns and mosses cunningly planted on the ledge

and creepers on the walls.

The Trocadero Palace is the most striking architectural feature of the

Exposition. Standing on a level one hundred and six feet above

the Quai de Billy and overlooking the city of Paris, the dome and

glittering minarets of the building are visible from many miles'

distance. It is not easy to describe its architecture, though it is

called "half Moorish, half Renaissance;" which is not very definite.

It has a large rotunda capable of accommodating seven thousand

persons, and the river-front has two spacious corridors on as

many stories. The central building is flanked by two tall square

campaniles, and from its sides extend long wings which curve toward

the river: these have colonnades and terraces in front overlooking

the garden, its picturesque and grotesque cottages and pavilions, its

fountains and its parterres of gay flowers.

The Trocadero has been purchased by the town council of Paris, and is

to be a permanent structure, its flanking salons, forty-two feet wide,

being known as "Galeries de l'Art Retrospective." Its collection is

to form a history of civilization, and will probably include the

Egyptian, Assyrian and similar collections from the Louvre, as well as

the Ethnological, which is at St. Germain. It is designed to represent

in chronological order ancient and historic art, both liberal and

mechanical, with the furniture, arms and tools of the Middle Ages and

Renaissance, arms, implements and fabrics from the East, Africa and

Oceanica, and a collection of musical instruments of all ages and

countries. This is an ambitious programme, but will no doubt be well

accomplished. Its general color is that of the beautiful stone of this

region, a delicate cream. The uniformity is broken by great boldness

and variety in the structural form of the building, and by its

pillars, deep colonnades and heavy cornices, giving shadows which

prevent monotony of tint.

While artists and architects disagree like the proverbial doctors, and

purists shudder at the jumble of orders, periods and nationalities, a

tyro may well hesitate. An opinion of the building will no more suit

everybody than does the building itself; but one cannot entirely

forfeit one's reputation for taste, for each will find some agreeing

judgments. All must acknowledge that it has a gala air. Its central

dome, tall minarets and wings widespread toward the river crown the

height and seem to foster the beauties they partly enclose.

The circular corridor of the rotunda is surmounted by the Muses and

other figures typical of the future purposes of the building. The

rotunda-walls are themselves castellated, the towers being interplaced

with windows of Saracenic arched form. The beton pavement of the

corridors and balcony is made of annular fragments, facets upward,

of black, red, white and slate-colored marbles, feldspar and other

stones. It is as hard as natural rock and as smooth as half-polished

marble. A tessellated fret pattern is made along the borders of the

corridor floor, consisting of triple rows of smooth cubes of marble

inserted in the cement. The square balusters are of red-mottled

marble, with base and entablature of dull rose. The square corner

pillars support figures allegorizing the six divisions of the earth.

The vestibules at the sides of the tower are open east and west for

the passage to and from the garden, and at the sides have doors which

admit to the Grande Salle and the flanking galleries respectively. The

interior red scagliola columns of the vestibule are in pairs, with

white bases and capitals, the latter combining the lotus-leaf with the

volute. The soffits of the ceiling have panels of yellow with orange

border, contrasting with iron beams painted a chocolate brown.

The uniformity of the long and curved colonnades which form the wings

of the building is broken by square porticoes, which have entrances to

the galleries and small terraces in front, with steps leading to the

garden. The wall back of the white pillars of this long promenade

is painted of a warm but not glaring red. The roof is of tile and

skylight. The base of the colonnade beneath the balustrade and pillars

is a rough concrete wall hidden by a sloping bank of evergreens,

upon which the eye rests pleasantly amid so much wall-space and

architectural decoration.

In front of the corridor of the rotunda is a projecting balcony,

with six gigantic female figures on the corners of its balustrade

representing Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and

Australia. These statues are of metal gilt, and typify by countenance

and accompanying emblems the portions of the globe they represent.

Europe is an armed figure with sword: at her side are the caduceus,

olive-branch, books and easel. Asia has a spear and a couch with

elephant heads. Africa is a negress, with the characteristic

grass-rope basket containing dates. North America is an Indian, but

the civilization of the land is indicated by an anchor, beehive and

cog-wheel. Australia is a gin, with a waddy, boomerang and kangaroo.

South America sits on a cotton-bale, has a condor by her side, and at

her feet are tropical fruits--pineapples, bananas and brazil-nuts.

The balustrade of the balcony is of a light marble with faint red

mottling, and in front of it is a boiling pool of water at the level

of the hand-rail. A large volume of water overflows the curved edge of

this pool and falls twenty feet into a basin beneath, the first of a

series of nine whose overflows in successive steps form the cascade

technically known as a "chateau d'eau," the finest of which

description of ornamental waterworks is at the Chateau St. Cloud, one

of the mementos of the fatal luxury which precipitated the Revolution

of 1789. The cascade of St. Cloud plays once a month for half an

hour--that at the Exposition during the whole day. From one jet at

St. Cloud issue five thousand gallons per minute: the supply at the

Exposition is twenty-four thousand cubic feet per hour. Most of

this water runs over the edge of the balcony-pool, and the fall of

fifty-six cubic feet per second a distance of twenty feet creates no

mean roar and mist in the archway beneath the balcony, where visitors

walk behind the falls and look through the sheet of water. It is not

fair to compare at all points the cascades of the Exposition and St.

Cloud. The amount of water may probably not be greatly different, but

the fantastic profusion of spiratory objects and long succession of

overflow basins and urns in the works at the chateau has no

parallel in those of the Trocadero. The cascades of St. Cloud are

disappointing: the object should be to add to landscape effect by

water in motion, and the principle is entirely missed when the

water is made a mere accessory to a series of stone steps, jars

and monsters. Steps are made to walk upon, jars to hold water. An

interminable series of either with water poured over them is not the

work of a genius. If the first suggestion to the mind be that a thing

is a stairway, the fact that it is made too wet to walk upon does not

constitute it a beautiful cascade. A row of jars on pedestals around a

grass-plat has a pretty effect, because they do or may hold flowers,

but to set several rows of them on a hillside and turn on the water is

not art. As an admirable illustration of fantasy well wrought out the

Fountain of Latona at Versailles may be cited. There Latona, having

appealed to Jupiter against the inhabitants of Argos, who had deprived

her of water, is deluged by jets from the unfortunates, who appear in

various degrees of transformation into frogs.

[Illustration: THE ENGLISH QUARTER, ON INTERNATIONAL AVENUE.]

The cascade of the Trocadero has nothing meretricious about it. It is,

like the building of which it is the finest ornament, of Jura marble,

while much of the adjacent work is of artificial stone so admirably

made that one cannot tell the difference, and is disposed to give the

preference to the latter as evincing greater ingenuity than the mere

patient chiselling of the quarry-stone. The pools are symmetrical, in

conformity to the style of their surroundings, their overflows curved,

the successive falls being about two feet after the first dash nine

hundred and twenty feet from the balcony level. Each side of the

cascade is flanked by six small pools in which are spouting and spray

jets. The course ends in a pool which may be described as square, with

circular bays on three of its sides. In this are one large jet and two

smaller ones, which are themselves beautiful and keep the surface in

a pleasant ripple. The corner pillars are crowned by colossal gilt

figures of animals, supposed to represent what we were used to call

the "four quarters of the earth"--Europe, Asia, Africa and America, as

the books had it before America had attained any prominence in public

estimation. These are typified by a horse, an elephant, a rhinoceros

and a bull, the latter probably a tribute to our bison, but not much

like him. These face the four winds, so to speak, and do indeed more

nearly, as they are set obliquely, than do the grounds and buildings,

the length of which runs north-west and south-east. Each animal has

his back to the pool, and with one exception is in a rampant attitude.

Many thousands of cubic metres of stone were quarried away to afford a

site for the cascade, for the system of water-pipes which supply the

various pools and jets and conduct off the surplus. The size of the

site occupied by these hydraulic works is 360 by 75 feet.

The balcony of the Trocadero facing toward the river and the Champ

de Mars affords the most extensive view obtainable in the grounds.

Beneath is the cascade with its basins and fountains, and spreading

away on each side is the garden with its various national buildings,

neat, gaudy or grotesque. Spanning the invisible roads and river is

the broad Pont d'Iena, and then comes a repetition of the garden, the

sward dotted with parterres and buildings. A broad terrace, crowned

with the splendid facade of the main building, does not quite

terminate the view, for from the height of the lower corridor of

the rotunda the buildings of Paris are seen to stretch away in the

distance. The hill of Montmartre on the north and the heights of

Chatillon and Clamart on the south terminate the view in those

directions.

The cascade immediately beneath us has been already described, but

how shall we give an impression of the appearance of the buildings

collected in groups on each side of the main avenue? So great is

the variety of objects to be presented that any very large unbroken

surface of sward is impossible. The general plan is geometrical, and

the absence of large trees on the newly-made ground has prevented any

attempt at woodland scenery.

The French make great use of common flowers in obtaining effects of

color. Some square beds of large size have centres of purple and white

stocks, giving a mottled appearance, with a border of the tender blue

forget-me-nots and a fringe of double daisies. Other beds are full

of purple, red and white anemones, multicolored poppies or yellow

marigolds. The sober mignonette is too great a favorite to be

excluded, though it lends little to the effect. The gorgeous

rhododendron is here massed in large beds, and there forms a standard

tree with a formal clump of foliage and gay flowers, contrasting with

the bright green of the succulent grass. The roses are by thousands

in beds and lining the walks, and here are especially to be seen the

standard roses for which Europe is so famous, but which do not seem to

prosper with us.

Besides the flowers and flowering shrubs, a most profuse use is made

of evergreens, which are removed of surprising size and forwardness of

spring growth. We can form little conception from our gardens at home

of the wealth, variety and exuberance of the evergreen foliage in

Southern England and Northern France--the Spanish and Portuguese

laurel, laurustinus, arbutus, occuba, bay, hollies in variety,

tree-box, with scores of species of pines, firs, arborvitae and yews,

relieved by the contorted foliage of the auraucarias, the sombre cedar

of Lebanon and the graceful deodar cedar of the Himalayas. As already

remarked, the tree-growth is small, as the ground was a blank and

rocky hillside two years ago, and was quarried to make a site for the

garden. The tree which seems best to bear moving, and is consequently

used in the emergency, is the horse-chestnut, the red and white

flowering varieties being intermingled. This is perhaps the most

common tree in the streets of Paris, though the plane and maple are

also favorites.

[Illustration: BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE MAIN BUILDING AND ITS

SURROUNDINGS.]

Against the rocky scarp on the south of the garden a plantation of

aloes, yuccas and cactus has been made. These are in great variety,

and some of them in flower. It was especially pleasant to see the

independence which the gardener has shown in placing a fine clump of

rhubarb in one place where he wanted a green bunch. Some persons would

have been afraid of injurious criticism in the use of so common a

plant, but we all know what a vigorous, healthy green it is, and

as such not to be despised by the artist in color. There are a few

specialties in the way of gardening which are worth notice: one is the

array of tulips planted by the city of Haarlem, and representing the

municipal coat-of-arms in tulips of every imaginable color of which

the plant is capable, and around the figures the words "Haarlem,

Holland," in scarlet tulips on a ground of white ones.

Another novelty is the Japanese garden with its bamboo fence, the

posts and door of entrance being carved with remarkable taste and

boldness. The double gates are surmounted by a cock and hen in natural

attitudes, which is a relief from the absurdities of their impossible

storks and hideous griffins. Perhaps it shows that modern and European

ideas are at work there. The flag of Japan, by the way--a red circle

on a white ground--is a sensible design, and can be seen at a

distance: it contrasts favorably with the dragon on a yellow ground of

the Chinese pavilion. The Japanese garden has several large standard

umbrellas for permanent shade, and little bamboo-fenced yards for the

game chickens and the ducks. Two shrines are in the garden, and a

fountain with a feeble jet issuing from a stump and falling into

a little fanciful pond with small bays and promontories. On the

miniature deep a walnut-shell ship might ride, and on the shoals near

the bank aquatic plants are beginning to sprout, and their leaves will

soon touch the opposite shore if they are not attended to.

Rather a disparagement, as a matter of taste, to the somewhat formal

grace but undoubted beauty of this floral scene are the buildings

which are placed here and there over the surface. However, it is these

that we have come to see, for if we were in search of landscape or

Dutch gardening we should find it better elsewhere. This gardening

is only a setting, a frame, in which the various nations have set up

their cottages and villas. The ground surface between the houses has

been laid off ornamentally to please the eye and satisfy the sense

of order and beauty, but is not itself the object of which we are in

search. It is impossible perhaps to harmonize such an incongruous

set of buildings, adapted for different climates, habits, tastes and

needs. Here on the left is a large white castellated house of Algiers.

It has blank walls and loopholed towers, and no suggestion of a tree

or flower, but gives an idea of the land where the sand of the desert

comes up to the doorstep and beggars and thieves go on horseback. On

the opposite extremity, at the right, is a Chinese house with its

peculiar curved roof, suggested originally, doubtless, by the Tartar

tent, but having more curves and points than were ever shown by canvas

or felt. In a district by themselves the readers of the Koran--or a

set of people passing for such--have their Persian, Tunisian, Morocco

and Turkish kiosques, and the inhabitants seem perhaps one shade

cleaner than they did in Philadelphia. They are supposed, at least,

to be the same, and have an exactly similar lot of rubbish and brass

jewelry for sale, and oil of cassia, which they sell for the attar of

the "gardens of Gul in their bloom." Next is a campanile of Sweden,

and near it are the Swedish and Norwegian houses, armed against

winter. Then the Japanese cottage with sides all open, mats on the

floors and no furniture to speak of. Then comes a Moorish pavilion

of Spain with nondescript ornaments, the bulbous domes and pinnacles

supporting the flags of yellow and red--of barbaric taste, color and

significance.

We have yet to notice the Italian villa, the Oriental mosque, the

Swiss chalet and the log hut; also the modern pavilion with zinc

roof, the thatched houses of Britain and of Normandy, the Elizabethan

cottage and the English farm-house. What they lack in size they make

up in variety, may be said of the greenhouses and conservatories

dotted about the place. In and outside of them the marvellous

skill and patience of the gardener is seen in the rigidly-formal or

abnormally-directed limbs of the fruit trees. The fish-ponds and

fountains are neither numerous nor large, but the aquarium may merit

more extended description when completed.

Standing, sensible-looking and tasteful, in the midst of much that is

trumpery, but good enough for a summer fete, and placed here not as

exhibits of good taste, but of what their owners think good, rises the

wooden building with skylight roof of "The Administration of Forests

and Waters." It is on a beautiful knoll, and has a wooden frame with

tongued and grooved panels, the whole varnished to show the natural

grain of the timber. On the panels outside are arranged the tools and

implements of arboriculture and forestry.

The flags of the different nations displayed upon these buildings give

animation to the scene, and the glance might pass at once from this

panorama to the other side of the Seine, where the scene is repeated,

but for the intervention of long barnlike sheds with tile roofs which

intrude themselves along the banks of the river, and quench the poetry

of the fanciful and picturesque as the eye passes from the immediate

foreground and seeks the magnificent facade of the Salle d'Iena, the

river front of the main building occupying the Champ de Mars. The

flags of all nations are flying from the numerous minor pinnacles,

while the six domes on the ends and centres of the east and west

facades display the tricolor of France.

The best view of the exterior is obtained from the Trocadero. The

building itself is so large that some distance is necessary to take in

the whole at a glance. The approach to it by way of the Pont d'Iena

has been marred by raising the bridge to too great a height, so that

the impression in crossing the Seine is that the building stands upon

low ground. Standing upon the east end of the bridge, one cannot see

the base on the other side of the river, which suggests descent and

dwarfs the building. The bridge retains its colossal statuary, each

of the four groups consisting of an unmounted man and a horse. They

respectively represent a Greek, Roman, Gaul and Arab. The bridge was

erected to commemorate the victory over the Prussians in 1806, and

Bluecher, who had his head-quarters at St. Cloud in 1815, threatened to

blow it up. After crossing the bridge we find ourselves reaching

the work-a-day world. On the left are represented the foundries and

workshops of Creuzot, Chaumont and Serrenorri. Near by is a model

of the observatory of Mount Jouvis and an annex of the state

tobacco-factory of France.

The building on the Champ de Mars is 2132 feet by 1148. A wide and

lofty vestibule runs across the full extent of each end, and these

afford the most imposing interior views of the building. They are

known respectively as the Galerie d'Iena and Galerie de l'Ecole

Militaire, from their vicinity to the bridge and school respectively.

Being lofty themselves, and having central and flanking domed towers

which break the uniformity, their fronts form the principal facades

of the building, of which, architecturally speaking, they are the

principal entrances; but in fact, as happens with buildings of such

acreage, the actual inlets depend upon the predominance in numbers

of the people on one or another side of the building, the means of

approach by land and water, and the contiguous streets of favorite and

convenient travel. In the present case the bulk of the people reach

the grounds either by water at the south-east corner or by land at the

intersection of Avenue Rapp with the Avenue Bourdonnaye, which latter

bounds the Champ de Mars on its southern side.

The end-vestibules are connected by five longitudinal galleries on

each side of the open area in the middle of the building. The five

galleries on the southern side belong to France, and the five on the

northern side are divided by transverse partitions among the foreign

nations present, in very greatly differing quantities. England, for

instance, occupies nearly two-sevenths of the whole space devoted to

foreign exhibitors, being more than the sum of the amounts allotted to

Spain, China, Japan, Italy, Sweden, Norway and the United States. The

end-vestibules have curved roofs with highly ornamented ceilings of a

succession of flat domes along the centres, with three rows of deep

soffits on each side, gayly painted. The walls are nearly all glass

in iron frames, and the panes of white glass alternate in checkerwork

with those having blue tracery upon them. The whole building is

principally of iron and glass, the roof of wood, with zinc plates

and numerous skylights over the interior galleries. The machinery

galleries of each side are much the largest of the longitudinal ones,

and have high roofs with side windows above the levels of the roofs on

each side of them; but the four other galleries on each side of the

building have quite low ceilings, which make one fear for the quality

of the ventilation when the heat is at its greatest.

In the interior of the quadrangular building is an open space about

two hundred feet broad and nearly two thousand feet long, reaching

from one vestibule to the other; and in this space are two rows of

fine-art pavilions and a building for the exhibition of the municipal

works of the city. This isolated building is in the central portion

of the whole structure, the fine-art pavilions being arranged in line

with it, four in a group, the salons of a group connected by lobbies

and also with the large end-vestibules at the end upon which they

abut.

The French and foreign sides of the Exposition building on the Champ

de Mars have frontages upon the interior court, and the facades of

the foreign sections are made ornamental and are intended to be

characteristic of the countries. There is a great discrepancy in

the space assigned to each: that of Great Britain is the longest,

amounting to five hundred and forty feet in length, while the little

territories of Luxembourg, Andorra, Monaco and San Marino, which are

clubbed together, have unitedly about twenty-five feet of frontage. In

some cases the space assigned to a nation does not run back the full

four hundred feet to the outside of the building, but it is intended

that each shall have some part of the facade in this allee. Much

taste and more expense have been lavished upon the architectural

construction and embellishment of the facades, and the row reminds one

of the scenes in a theatre, where palace, cottage, mosque and jail

stand side by side, giving a particolored effect as various as the

different emotions which the respective buildings might be supposed

to elicit. The English space being so large, no single design was

adopted, as it could have but a monotonous effect, but the frontage

was divided into five portions, each of which illustrates some style

of villa or cottage architecture, and is separated from the adjoining

one by garden-beds. The first, counting from the Salle de la Seine,

is of the style of Queen Anne's reign. It is built of a patented

imitation of red brickwork. Thin slabs of Portland cement concrete are

faced with smaller slabs of red concrete of the size of bricks and

screwed to the wooden frame of the building. The house has tall

casements in a bay with a balcony, and an entablature on top of the

wall. The second house is the pavilion of the prince of Wales, and

is of the Elizabethan style. It is built of rubble-work faced

with colored plaster in imitation of red brickwork and Bath-stone

dressings. The front has niches for statuary, and above the windows

are shield-shaped panels for armorial bearings. The windows are in

square clusters, with small lights in hexagonal leaden cames. The

union jack flies from the staff. The third house is constructed of

red brick and terra-cotta, and is not specially characteristic of any

period. It is, in fact, a jumble of the early Gothic with a Moorish

entablature and a balustrade parapet. The stained-glass casement

windows are surmounted with circular lights in the arches. The fourth

house is built of pitch-pine framework, enriched with carving and

filled in with plaster panels--a style of construction known as

"half-timbered work," much employed in England from the fifteenth to

the seventeenth century. This house is placed at the disposal of the

Canadian commissioners. It has a large square two-story bay-window,

with the customary small glass panes in cames of lozenge and other

patterns, and is perhaps the neatest and most cozy house in the row.

The fifth is of the construction of an English country-house in the

reign of William III. It is of timber, with stucco and rough-cast

panels, and has a large bay-window in the second story, surmounted by

a gable to the street and covering an old-fashioned stoop with seats

on each side. The five houses have a pretty effect, and each has a

home look. The facades only are on exhibition, the interiors being

private. They contrast with others in the "street" in the same way as

the habits of the different peoples. Some build their houses to retire

into, and others to exhibit themselves. Each nation being asked for

the facade of a house, the Italian has built a portico where he

can lounge, see and be seen; the Englishman has in all serenity

represented what he deems comfort, and shuts the front door.

[Illustration: VIEW IN THE PARK OF THE TROCADERO, SHOWING THE

PAVILIONS OF PERSIA AND SIAM.]

The next in order is the United States house, which is plain and

commodious; the latch-string would be out, but that the front door is

everlastingly open. The style is perhaps to advertise to the world

that we have not yet had time to invent an order of architecture or

devise anything adapted to our climate, which has extremes utterly

unknown to our ancestors in Britain. The building is light and airy,

has office-rooms on each floor, and is described by one English

paper as "a sort of school-building which combines elegance with

usefulness." Another paper states that "it exemplifies the utilitarian

notions of our Transatlantic cousins rather than any artistic intent."

These comments are as favorable as anything we ourselves can say: we

accept the verdict with thanks and think we have got off pretty well.

In the squareness of its general lines, with arched windows on the

second floor and square tower over the centre, perhaps the architect

thought it was Italian. Sixteen coats-of-arms on the outside excite

admiration.

The building of Norway and Sweden is a charming cottage of handsome

and ample proportions. It has three sections: one of two stories with

low-pitched roof, and gable to the street, a middle structure with

colonnade, and one of three stories with high-pitched roof. The

windows are round-topped, made in an ingenious way, the upper member

being an arched piece with sloping ends, to match the springing on

the tops of the posts which divide the openings. The horizontal and

vertical bands are enriched by carving.

The facade of Italy may be pronounced pretentious and disappointing.

It is constructed of various kinds of unpolished marble and

terra-cotta panels. A tall archway is flanked by two wings having each

two smaller arches, the entablatures of which are enriched, if we

must so term it, with gaudy mosaic figures, portraits and heraldic

bearings, while the spans of the arches surmount pyramidal groups of

emblems, scientific, medical, lyrical and so forth. Red curtains with

heavy gilt cords and tassels behind the arches throw the columns with

composition (not Composite) capitals and the emblems into high relief.

Beneath the centre arch is the armorial bearing of the country. The

vestibules display statuary.

Japan has a quaint little house with a very massive gateway of solid

timber, flanked by two characteristic fountains of terra-cotta.

These represent stumps of trees, with gigantic lily-cups, leaves of

water-lilies, and frogs in grotesque attitudes in and around the

water.

China has a grotesque house, painted in imitation of octagonal

slate-colored bricks, covered with a pagoda-roof full of curves and

points. The red door has rows of large knobs and is surmounted by

colored and gilded carvings, representing genii probably. The pointed

flag has in a yellow field a blue dragon in the later stages of

consumption.

Spain has a Moorish building rich in gold and color--a central

portion with Italian roof, and two colonnade side-sections flanked by

castellated towers. Five forms of arches span the doors and windows,

and the artist has contrived to associate all forms of ornament,

running from an approach to the Greek fret down through the Arabesque

to the Brussels carpet.

Austro-Hungary has a long colonnade of white stone ornamented with

black filigree-work and supported by columns in pairs. The entablature

is surmounted by a row of statues, and the end-towers have parapets

with balustrade. The colonnade, with a chocolate-brown back wall,

affords shelter and relief for bronze and marble statuary. At each end

of this facade is a tall flagstaff striped like a barber's pole, and

so familiar to all who have visited the Austrian stations, at Trieste,

for example. From it flies the flag of horizontal stripes of red,

white and green, with the shield of many quarterings and two angelic

supporters.

Russia has a log-and-frame house of somewhat more than average

picturesque character. The projecting centres and wing-towers, the

outside staircase, and roofs conical, flat, pyramidal, bulbous and

Oriental, give it a miscellaneous toyshop appearance, characteristic

perhaps of the mosaic character of the nation. Barge-boards and

brackets of various cheap patterns are plentifully strewed over the

building.

Passing from the Russian to the Swiss building suggests inevitably

Mr. Mantalini's description of his former _cheres amies_: "The two

countesses had no outline at all, and the dowager's was a demmed

outline." A semicircular archway, over which is a high-flying arch

with a roof of six slopes surmounted by a bell-tower and pinnacle

roof; on the pillars two lions supporting a red shield with white

Greek cross in the field; two wings with flat arches containing

gorgeous stained-glass windows. But what avails description? There are

twenty-two armorial bearings on the spandrils of the arches, beating

the United States by six; but we had only room for the original

thirteen, the United States and two more. Oh that they had granted us

more space! High up aloft is the motto _Un pour tous, tons pour un_,

which was adopted by the French Commune.

Belgium is pre-eminent in the whole row, if expense determines. This

country has about three times as much space in the building as the

United States, and has worthily filled it. The Belgian facade on the

"Street of Nations" is reputed to have cost nearly as much as the

whole appropriation made by Congress for the United States exhibit. It

is of dark red brick with gray stone quoins and corners and blue and

gray marble pillars. The centre building is joined by two colonnades

to a flanking tower at one end and an ornate gable at the other. The

style is one familiar in the times when the great William of Orange

was alive, and was to some extent introduced into England soon after

another William took the place of his bigoted father-in-law. It

cannot be denied that the general effect is gray, sombre and

uncomfortable--that it is too much crowded with objects, and, though

of admirable and enduring materials, suggests a spasmodic attempt to

assimilate itself to the gala character of the occasion which called

it forth. It is the saturnine one of the row. It is said that the

pieces are numbered for re-erection in some other place.

Greece has an Athenian house painfully crude in color, white picked

out with all the hues of the rainbow and some others, suggesting muddy

coffee and chibouques.

Denmark has about twenty feet of front, utilized by a gable-end of

brick with facings of imitation stone.

The Central American States have about sixty feet of yellow front,

with three arched openings into the vestibule, which is flanked by a

tower and a gable.

Anam, Persia, Siam, Morocco and Tunis have unitedly a gingerbread

affair of four distinct patterns--we cannot call them styles. Siam in

the centre has a chocolate-colored tower picked out with silver, and

surmounted by a triple pagoda roof, whence floats the flag, a white

elephant in a red field. The six feet of homeliness belonging to Tunis

has a balcony of wood which neither reveals nor hides the almond-eyed

whose supposed relatives are selling trumpery in booths on the other

side of the Seine.

Luxembourg, Andorra, Monaco and San Marino unite in a facade

representing the different styles of architecture which prevail in the

several states: 1. A portion faintly suggesting the ancient palace

of Luxembourg, to-day the residence of Prince Henry of Holland; 2. An

entrance erected by the principality of Monaco as the model of that of

the royal palace; 3. A window contributed by San Marino, and showing

that the prevalent type in the little republic is more useful than

ornamental; 4. A balustrade surmounting the facade, supplied by the

republic of Andorra.

Portugal has an imitation in cream-colored plaster of a Gothic

church-entrance, and a highly-enriched arch with flanking towers,

whose canopied niches have figures of warriors and wise men.

Holland shows an architecture of two hundred years ago, the

counterpart of the houses we see in the old Dutch pictures. It is of

dark red brick with stone courses, and a tall slate roof behind its

balustered parapet.

We are at the end of the Street of Nations, somewhat under a third of

a mile in length.

It is evening, and the sun in this latitude--for we are farther north

than Quebec--seems in no hurry to reach the horizon. Two hours ago the

whistle sounded "No more steam," and the life of the building went

out. The attendants, tired of the show and _blases_ or "used up,"

according to their nationality, with exhibitions, have shrouded their

cases in sack-cloth and gone to sip ordinaire, absinthe or bitter ale.

I sit on a terrace of the Champ de Mars, the gorgeous building at my

back, and look riverward. Before me stretches away the green carpet of

sward one hundred feet wide and six hundred long, a broad level band

of emerald reaching to the gravel approach to the Pont d'Iena, each

side of which is guarded by a colossal figure of a man leading a

horse. The gravel around the _tapis vert_ is black with the figures of

those whom the fineness of the evening has induced to take a parting

stroll in the ground before retiring.

Flanking the gravel-walks the ground is more uneven, and Art, in

imitation of the wilder aspects of Nature, has done what the limited

space permitted to enhance the allied beauties of land and water,

where

Each gives each a double charm,

Like pearls upon an Ethiop's arm.

On the left is a rockery and waterfall on no mean scale, with a

romantic little lake in front. On the right a rocky island in a

corresponding lake is crowned with a thatched pavilion, the reflection

of which shines broken in the water ruffled by the evening breeze.

Groups of detached buildings hem in the view on each side, and their

flags wave with the sky for a background. Paris is invisible: at this

point the grounds are isolated from outside view.

Rising clear beyond the bridge, the approach to it on the other side

hidden by the lowness of the point of view, stands the palace of the

Trocadero, a broad sweep of green covering the hill, along whose

summit are the widespread wings of the colonnade, uniting at the

central rotunda, of which the domed roof and square campaniles rise

one hundred feet above all and dominate the middle of the picture. The

traces of the indefatigable swarms of workmen are obliterated, except

in the magical and finished work. The spray of the fountains of the

chateau d'eau drifts to leeward and hides at times patches of the

velvety grass on the hill. The central jet plays sturdily, and from

where I sit appears to reach the level of the second corridor of the

rotunda.

The eye fails to detect a single object, excepting the four statues on

the bridge, which is not the creation of a few months. The hill beyond

has been torn to pieces and sloped, and the palace built upon it.

Every house in sight is new. The very ground in front on which I look

down has been raised, and the terrace on which I sit has been built.

The ponds have been excavated, the mimic rocky hills have been piled

up, and the water led to the brink of the tiny precipice from the

artesian wells which supply this part of Paris.

The hum of many voices and the dash of waters make a deep undertone,

and one comes away with the feeling--not exactly that the scene is

too good to last, but--of regret that the result of such lavish care

should be ephemeral. In a few months all on the left side of the river

may again be parade-ground, and the thirty thousand troops which can

be readily man[oe]uvred upon it be getting ready for another conflict,

while the palace which the Genius of the Lamp had builded, as in

a night, shall be a thing of the past, as if whirled away by the

malevolent magician.

EDWARD H. KNIGHT.

SENIORITY.

Child! Such thou seemest to me that am more old

In sorrow than in years,

With that long pain that turns us bitter cold,

Far worse than these hot tears

Of thine, that fall so fast upon my breast.

I know they ease thy grief:

I know they comfort, and will bring thee rest,

Thou poor wind-shaken leaf!

Ah yes, thy storm will pass, thy skies will clear.

Thou smilest beneath my kiss:

Lift up the blue eyes cleansed by weeping, dear,

Of every thought amiss.

What seest thou, child, in these dry eyes of mine?

Grief that hath spent its tears--

Grief that its right to weeping must resign,

Not told by days, but years.

The bitterest is that weeping of the heart

That mounts not to the eyes:

In its lone chamber we sit down apart,

And no one hears our cries.

It comes to this with every deep, true soul:

'Tis neither kill nor cure,

But a strong sorrow held in strong control,

A girding to endure.

For no such soul lives in this tangled world

But, like Achilles' heel,

Hath in the quick a shaft too truly hurled--

Flesh growing round the steel.

And with its outcome would come all Life's flood:

Joy is so twined with pain,

Sweetness and tears so blended in our blood,

They will not part again.

For at the last the heart grows round its grief,

And holds it without strife:

So used we are, we cry not for relief,

For we know all of life.

And this is why I kiss thy tear-wet eyes,

Nor think thy grief so great.

Thou untried child! at every fresh surprise

Thy heart springs to the gate.

HOWARD GLYNDON.

"FOR PERCIVAL."

CHAPTER XXXV.

OF THE LANDLADY'S DAUGHTER.

[Illustration]

Early in that December the landlady's daughter came home. Percival

could not fix the precise date, but he knew it was early in the month,

because about the eighth or ninth he was suddenly aware that he

had more than once encountered a smile, a long curl and a pair of

turquoise earrings on the stairs. He had noticed the earrings: he

could speak positively as to them. He had seen turquoises before, and

taken little heed of them, but possibly his friends had happened to

buy rather small ones. He felt pretty certain about the long curl. And

he thought there was a smile, but he was not so absolutely sure of the

smile.

By the twelfth he was quite sure of it. It seemed to him that it was

cold work for any one to be so continually on the stairs in December.

The owner of the smile had said, "Good-morning, Mr. Thorne."

On the thirteenth a question suggested itself to him: "Was she--could

she be--always running up and down stairs? Or did it happen that just

when he went out and came back--?" He balanced his pen in his fingers

for a minute, and sat pondering. "Oh, confound it!" he said to

himself, and went on writing.

That evening he left the office to the minute, and hurried to Bellevue

street. He got halfway up the stairs and met no one, but he heard a

voice on the landing exclaim, "Go to old Fordham's caddy, then, for

you sha'n't--Oh, good gracious!" and there was a hurried rustle. He

went more slowly the rest of the way, reflecting. Fordham was another

lodger--elderly, as the voice had said. Percival went to his

sitting-room and looked thoughtfully into his tea-caddy. It was nearly

half full, and he calculated that, according to the ordinary rate of

consumption, it should have been empty, and yet he had not been more

sparing than usual. His landlady had told him where to get his tea:

she said she found it cheap--it was a fine-flavored tea, and she

always drank it. Percival supposed so, and wondered where old Fordham

got his tea, and whether that was fine-flavored too.

There was a giggle outside the door, a knock, and in answer to

Percival's "Come in," the landlady's daughter appeared. She explained

that Emma had gone out shopping--Emma was the grimy girl who

ordinarily waited on him--so, with a nervous little laugh, with a toss

of the long curl, which was supposed to have got in the way somehow,

and with the turquoise earrings quivering in the candlelight, she

brought in the tray. She conveyed by her manner that it was a new and

amusing experience in her life, but that the burden was almost more

than her strength could support, and that she required assistance.

Percival, who had stood up when she came in and thanked her gravely

from his position on the hearthrug, came forward and swept some books

and papers out of the way to make room for her load. In so doing their

hands touched--his white and beautifully shaped, hers clumsy and

coarsely colored. (It was not poor Lydia's fault. She had written to

more than one of those amiable editors who devote a column or two in

family magazines to settling questions of etiquette, giving recipes

for pomades and puddings, and telling you how you may take stains

out of silk, get rid of freckles or know whether a young man means

anything by his attentions. There had been a little paragraph

beginning, "L.'s hands are not as white as she could wish, and she

asks us what she is to do. We can only recommend," etc. Poor L. had

tried every recommendation in faith and in vain, and was in a fair way

to learn the hopelessness of her quest.)

The touch thrilled her with pleasure and Thorne with repugnance. He

drew back, while she busied herself in arranging his cup, saucer and

plate. She dropped the spoon on the tray, scolded herself for her own

stupidity, looked up at him with a hurried apology, and laughed.

If she did not blush, she conveyed by her manner a sort of idea of

blushing, and went out of the room with a final giggle, being confused

by his opening the door for her.

Percival breathed again, relieved from an oppression, and wondered

what on earth had made her take an interest in his tea and him. Yet

the reason was not far to seek. It was that tragic, melancholy, hero's

face of his--he felt so little like a hero that it was hard for him

to realize that he looked like one--his sombre eyes, which might have

been those of an exile thinking of his home, the air of proud and

rather old-fashioned courtesy which he had inherited from his

grandfather the rector and developed for himself. Every girl is ready

to find something of the prince in one who treats her with deference

as if she were a princess. Percival had an unconscious grace of

bearing and attitude, and the considerable advantage of well-made

clothes. Poverty had not yet reduced him to cheap coats and advertised

trousers. And perhaps the crowning fascination in poor Lydia's eyes

was the slight, dark, silky moustache which emphasized without hiding

his lips.

Another rustling outside, a giggle and a whisper--Percival would have

sworn that the whisper was Emma's if it had been possible that

she could have left it behind her when she went out shopping--an

ejaculation, "Gracious! I've blacked my hand!" a pause, presumably

for the purpose of removing the stain, and Lydia reappeared with the

kettle. She poured a portion of its contents over the fender in her

anxiety to plant it firmly on the fire. "Oh dear!" she exclaimed,

"how stupid of me! Oh, Mr. Thorne"--this half archly, half pensively,

fingering the curl and surveying the steaming pool--"I'm afraid you'll

wish Emma hadn't gone out: such a mess as I've made of it! What will

you think of me?"

"Pray, don't trouble yourself," said Percival. "The fender can't

signify, except perhaps from Emma's point of view. It doesn't

interfere with my comfort, I assure you."

She departed, only half convinced. Percival, with another sigh of

relief, proceeded to make the tea. The water was boiling and the fire

good. Emma was apt to set a chilly kettle on a glimmering spark, but

Lydia treated him better. The bit of cold meat on the table looked

bigger than he expected, the butter wore a cheerful sprig of green.

Percival saw his advantages, but he thought them dearly bought,

especially as he had to take a turn up and down Bellevue street while

the table was cleared.

After that day it was astonishing how often Emma went out shopping or

was busy, or had a bad finger or a bad foot, or was helping ma with

something or other, or hadn't made herself tidy, so that Lydia had to

wait on Mr. Thorne. But it was always with the same air of its being

something very droll and amusing to do, and there were always some

artless mistakes which required giggling apologies. Nor could he doubt

that he was in her thoughts during his absence. She had a piano down

stairs on which she accompanied herself as she sang, but she found

time for domestic cares. His buttons were carefully sewn on and his

fire was always bright. One evening his table was adorned with a

bright blue vase--as blue as Lydia's earrings--filled with dried

grasses and paper flowers. He gazed blankly at it in unspeakable

horror, and then paced up and down the room, wondering how he should

endure life with it continually before his eyes. Some books lay on a

side-table, and as he passed he looked absently at them and halted. On

his Shelley, slightly askew, as if to preclude all thought of care and

design, lay a little volume bound in dingy white and gold. Percival

did not touch it, but he stooped and read the title, _The Language

of Flowers_, and saw that--purely by accident of course--a leaf was

doubled down as if to mark a place. He straightened himself again, and

his proud lip curled in disgust as he glanced from the tawdry flowers

to the tawdry book. And from below came suddenly the jingling notes

of Lydia's piano and Lydia's voice--not exactly harsh and only

occasionally out of tune, but with something hopelessly vulgar in its

intonation--singing her favorite song--

Oh, if I had some one to love me,

My troubles and trials to share!

Percival turned his back on the blue vase and the little book, and

flinging himself into a chair before the fire sickened at the thought

of the life he was doomed to lead. Lydia, who was just mounting with

a little uncertainty to a high note, was a good girl in her way,

and good-looking, and had a kind sympathy for him in his evident

loneliness. But was she to be the highest type of womanhood that he

would meet henceforth? And was Bellevue street to be his world? He

glided into a mournful dream of Brackenhill, which would never be

his, and of Sissy, who had loved him so well, yet failed to love him

altogether--Sissy, who had begged for her freedom with such tender

pain in her voice while she pierced him so cruelly with her frightened

eyes. Percival looked very stern in his sadness as he sat brooding

over his fire, while from the room below came a triumphant burst of

song--

But I will marry my own love,

For true of heart am I.

Sometimes he would picture to himself the future which lay before

Horace's three-months-old child, whose little life already played so

all--important a part in his own destiny. He had questioned Hammond

about him, and Hammond had replied that he heard that Lottie and the

boy were both doing well. "They say that the child is a regular Blake,

just like Lottie herself," said Godfrey, "and doesn't look like a

Thorne at all." Percival thought, not unkindly, of Lottie's boy, of

Lottie's great clear eyes in an innocent baby face, and imagined him

growing up slim and tall, to range the woods of Brackenhill in future

years as Lottie herself had wandered in the copses about Fordborough.

And yet sometimes he could not but think of the change that it might

make if little James William Thorne were to die. Horace was very ill,

they said: Brackenhill was shut up, and they had all gone to winter

abroad. The doctors had declared that there was not a chance for him

in England.

At this time Percival kept a sort of rough diary. Here is a leaf from

it: "I am much troubled by a certain little devil who comes as soon as

I am safely in bed and sits on my pillow. He flattens it abominably,

or else I do it myself tossing about in my impatience. He is quite

still for a minute or two, and I try my best to think he isn't there

at all. Then he stoops down and whispers in my ear 'Convulsions!' and

starts up again like india-rubber. I won't listen. I recall some tune

or other: it won't come, and there is a hitch, a horrible blank, in

the midst of which he is down again--I knew he would be--suggesting

'Croup.' I repeat some bit of a poem, but it won't do: what is the

next line? I think of old days with my father, when I knew nothing of

Brackenhill: I try to remember my mother's face. I am getting on very

well, but all at once I become conscious that he has been for

some time murmuring, as to himself, 'Whooping-cough and scarlet

fever--scarlet fever.' I grow fierce, and say, 'I pray God he may

escape them all!' To which he softly replies, 'His grandfather

died--his father is dying--of decline.'

"I roll over to the other side, and encounter him or his twin brother

there. A perfectly silent little devil this time, with a faculty for

calling up pictures. He shows me the office: I see it, I smell it,

with its flaring gaslights and sickly atmosphere. Then he shows me

the long drawing-room at Brackenhill, the quaint old furniture, the

pictures on the walls, the terrace with its balustrade and balls of

mossy stone, and through the windows come odors of jasmine and roses

and far-off fields, while inside there is the sweetness of dried

blossoms and spices in the great china jars. A moment more and it is

Bellevue street, with its rows of hideous whited houses. And then

again it is a river, curving swiftly and grandly between its castled

rocks, or a bridge of many arches in the twilight, and the lights

coming out one by one in the old walled town, and the road and river

travelling one knows not where, into regions just falling asleep in

the quiet dusk. Or there is a holiday crowd, a moonlit ferry, steep

wooded hills, and songs and laughter which echo in the streets and

float across the tide. Or the Alps, keenly cut against the infinite

depth of blue, with a whiteness and a far-off glory no tongue can

utter. Or a solemn cathedral, or a busy town piled up, with church and

castle high aloft and a still, transparent lake below. But through it

all, and underlying it all, is Bellevue street, with the dirty men and

women, who scream and shout at each other and wrangle in its filthy

courts and alleys. Still, God knows that I don't repent, and that I

wish my little cousin well."