LITERATURE.

The Church and the Nation.*

Though all the papers that make up this posthumous volume, of one of the greatest English scholars of our generation, and one of the wisest rulers of the Church, have already appeared in some form, no person who reads this volume, with any care, will doubt that it was eminently desirable that these papers should have been gathered together and given to the world in a permanent form. For, various as were the occasions of these sixteen addresses, they are bound together by a philosophic continuity of thought, and they deal with present day problems on permanent principles, so that their thought is of value beyond England, and will be beyond our day.

The first of the papers, on Christian Ethics, shows how Dr. Creighton thought religion must influence the moral ideas of a nation, and is a fit introduction to the whole. The addresses delivered during the Peterborough episcopate deal immediately with voluntary schools, religious education, Welsh disestablishment, the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, which seems determined not to follow the deceased wife to the grave, Biblical criticism, and some social problems. Valuable as these are, they yield in interest to the others, which deal with the position and meaning of the Church of England, and its relation to the life of the nation. That was the ultimate aim of Dr. Creighton's study from the first, and of his teaching, public and private. Only two years before his death he wrote: "We must fall into line on a liberal interpretation of the Anglican system; this must be by reference to its principles, not to its letter. This is the aim which I am steadily pursuing without, I trust, undue haste or pressure, or pedantry." "The real question now raised," he wrote at about the same time in another letter, "is the maintenance of the Church of England as it has been accepted by the English people, in relation to their national life, during three centuries and a half." He doubted if people in general were interested either in ritual, as such, or in dogmatic teaching, as such. The cause of the crisis in the Church was, in his opinion, an anxiety and a determination that a useful and powerful institution should not be turned "into something which it never has been and which they do not want." They objected to Roman ways, he said, not as such, but because they led up to the Roman conception of the Church. "Do not let us make any mistake," he adds. "The question to be decided is, How much of the results of the Oxford movement are to be permanently. incorporated into the Anglican system? The answer is, from my point of view, As much as is compatible with the maintenance of that system as founded on a view of the Church which safeguards liberty."

To the elucidation of this position he brought the resources of an immense historical learning which enabled him to condense marvellously into a few pages the results of years of reflection. Noteworthy from this point of view is a paper on "The National Church: Its Continuity and Order, Doctrine and Autonomy," and another on "The Abolition of the Roman

"The Church and the Nation": Charges and Addresses. By Mandell Creighton, D.D.. D.C.L.. LL.D., sometime Bishop of London. Edited by Louise Creighton. $2.50. [Longmans, Green & Co.]

Jurisdiction." But his best thought is gathered in three other addresses: "The Church and History," "The Idea of a National Church," and "The Church and the Nation." To these we shall devote what follows in this review, mindful of his own words that "progress can only be made when all that is good in the past is retained. We do not want to subvert 1559, but to absorb it."

The first of the three papers that we have chosen for special examination condenses into ten pages the conclusions of a lifetime's study on the relation of England to the Papacy. The Church of England, he says, became connected with the Church of Rome because England wisely wished to share the advantages of European civilization. Till the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Papacy made for good in England. Politically it made for good as long as its power lasted there, though after the thirteenth century Englishmen failed to recognize that it did more good than harm, and by the fourteenth century "the Papacy had ceased to be useful to the Church and had become oppressive," largely because the Church had been split up into a number of wealthy corporations drifting farther and farther away from the main current of the national life. The Papal power had ceased to be dangerous or aggressive, but it was obstructive. When the breach came the King was morally wrong, the means which he used to compel the English clergy were "absolutely iniquitous." The Papacy was overthrown in England because "it did not dare, much as it might wish, to be blindly subservient to the royal will. That was the occasion of its fall; but the cause was that no one in England trusted or respected it." It

would not work reforms and it would not let the national Church attempt them. They were left for the State and were wrought by rude hands and in rough ways. Men murmured, but they acquiesced, and Mary's reign taught them that the Papacy had long been an exotic. It had been, it was, and it still remains, "alien from the aims and from the modes of thought of the average Englishman."

The National Church, he goes on to show, in the second of the papers we have selected, involved no new principle of ecclesiastical administration. Experience had shown that interference from outside was a hindrance, not a help. England would manage its own ecclesiastical affairs. It was in no way repugnant to the conception of the one Catholic Church that local bodies, though they might not change the creed or the early organization, might determine the best method of setting forth to the people the contents of the Christian faith, or regulate, according to their wisdom and experience of the needs of the people, the rites, ceremonies, usages, observances and discipline of the Church. That, he says, "is all that a national Church implies; and its principles simply recognize the facts of human history." Its idea must be judged by comparison with its alternative. "The idea of a Church, universal in its organization, has been tried, and, as a matter of fact, has failed, because it could not make room for two forces which have been most powerful in shaping the modern world-the forces of nationality and liberty." Of these forces the modern state is largely a product. It is not hard to see which ecclesiastical system has done most to train nations to a sense of Christian duty.

The great object of any ecclesiastical institution is obviously to keep religion in close contact with life. That is the test of efficiency. The danger of any efficient

organization is that it will come to exist for its own good, not for the work it has to do. "It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the history of the Church in the West is a series of struggles to keep it a humane institution." And in Bishop Creighton's great charge of February, 1900, on The Church and The Nation, he shows how this struggle of the ages is manifesting itself in the England of today. The mediaeval Church fell, he says, because, through excessive endeavors to accommodate itself to the needs of men, it ceased to influence human life. It sought to meet the requirements of feeble consciences, and made them feebler. It undertook to do so much for men's souls, that they almost forgot their souls were their own. It was when the Church organization seemed strongest that it was found to be intolerable. That, in general, is the meaning of the Reformation movement, and that is the cause of the suspicion with which English people today regard any movement that looks toward Rome. Prejudiced and unreasonable they may be, though Dr. Creighton says he would hesitate to call any uneasiness unreasonable in the demand that ecclesiastical development "should maintain that sense of individual responsibility in the sight of God which was won by much toil and has been preserved by many sacrifices." The question of the sixteenth century was not merely of papal jurisdiction. It was of where the Church was to stand toward the aspirations of national life. And that is the question today. "Antiquity has a charm to many minds, especially when it can be viewed from a safe distance and is seen through a haze of sentiment." It also seems easy to avoid past dangers by cutting one's self adrift from the past altogether, "hoping to remake human nature by starving its finer side out of existence." Each tendency allures some. Between them the Church stands for a middle course between excess and defect. The struggle will always recur, for the two points of view correspond to differences of temperament. Every ecclesiastical system must make room for both. It is hopeless that one should struggle to oust the other.

Once more the test of the system is its proof. The object of the Church is to train her children to a sense of their responsibility, to set forth Christian truth as something to be apprehended from within, that shall make for character. The vital point is whether the conscience shall be trained to dependence on another, or to a growing sense of its own responsibility. "It makes a great deal of difference whether I am taught to believe in my teacher or in the subject which he teaches." It is not enough, concludes the bishop, that we should do our work; we must be recognized as doing it, and as doing it in the right temper. The frank acceptance of the historic position of the Church of England, founded on a recognition of its great possibilities, is a basis of agreement. He counts it the only possible one. Such is the great historian's posthumous eirenicon.

Philosophy and the Sciences.

That the solid qualities of Professor Windelband's "History of Philosophy" have not passed unnoticed by the reading public, is proved by the appearance of a second edition. (Macmillan, $4.) There are several rivals in the same field of study, but a comparison with any of them will only raise this work in the estimation of the critic. No one need expect to find here an off-hand or sketchy

account of any of the great historic systems of philosophy. Windelband does his own thinking. An an expositor, his treatment, as well as his standpoint, is always original. The biographical and bibliographical additions introduced into the volume make it more complete as a work of reference. In the new edition, too, the latest phases of modern philosophy have been accorded a more extended treatment. In fact, in its present form, Windelband's history is a volume which no student of philosophy can dispense with.

Dr. Nicholl, the genial English critic and manifold editor, has gathered the less ephemeral of his journalistic essays into "Letters on Life" (Dodd, Mead, $1.75), which he puts forth under his well-known pen-name, Claudius Clear. It is hard to open this volume anywhere without coming across a quotable sentence, and our interest in it has seldom flagged. There is a common-sense outlook about it all, a twinkling humor in the point of view, and a resource.ulness of anecdote that keeps the reader in such excellent humor that, however much he may dislike an idea or distrust a counsel, he always feels on good terms with the author, who, in this connection, commends to us the wisdom of Carlyle, "except in opinion, we do not disagree."

Those who recall the fascination that Figuier's "World before the Deluge" exercised on the youth of the last generation will welcome a somewhat similar though much more scientific volume, "Animals of the Past," by Frederick A. Lucas, the Curator of the Division of Comparative Anatomy in the United States National Museum. (McClure, Phillips, $2.) The volume is one, so far as we know, first, of the series with the attractive title "Science for Everybody." The illustrations are from drawings by Mr. Charles R. Knight, whose work at the New York Museum of Natural History is the subject of constant admiration, both of the scientists who appreciate its accuracy and of the multitude who admire the geniality of its reconstructive imagination. Lucas begins by telling us how fossils are formed, and passes quickly from the early traces of life to the gigantic rulers of sea and air, of swamp, and finally of land, ending by answering the question all visitors to museums are apt to ask, why these curious but somewhat fearsome creatures ever became extinct.

If you are verging toward the years that bring a philosophic mind you will do well to possess yourself of Sir Henry Thompson's "Diet in Relation to Age and Activity." (Warne, $1.) This is something much more than the ordinary "health book." No Englishman would need to be told, though an American may be pardoned if he does not know, that Sir Henry is a distinguished fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, and a writer of no mean eminence in medical matters. This is a revision, with large editions, of a book that first appeared in 1886. The author, then sixty-five, is now eighty-two, and in his pen, at least, shows no sign of failing vigor. He writes wisely, incisively, genially. If you wish to sample before buying, turn to page 34 and see what he says about geese, Strasburg and other. A very valuable work, though one of a comparatively narrow appeal, is Dr. Pierre Janet's "The Mental State of Hystericals" (Putnams, $3.50), translated by the late Caroline Rollin Corson, wife of Professor Hiram Corson of Cornell, with a preface by Professor Charcot, of whom Dr. Janet is a distinguished pupil. The general conclusion of the essay, which in parts is highly technical, is that hysteria is to a very large extent a mental malady, requiring philosophical and psychological knowledge for its treatment, as well as

what is commonly thought of as medical diagnosis. Very much of what Dr. Janet has to say is tentative and provisional, no one knows that better than he; but it is by such studies as he is making that we shall ultimately discover that element of truth which explains and partly palliates, the vagaries of Christian Scientists, though it does not excuse the exploitation of them by those who confine their study of human weakness to removing the defences of the pocket book.

Marianna Wheeler, who for ten years has been superintendent of the Babies' Hospital in New York City, sets down such parts of her experience as may be useful to those on whom the care of children is imposed by nature rather than professionally sought, in "The Baby; His Care and Training." (Harpers, $1.) The book will be found very valuable in nurseries, full of practical suggestion, such as may not merely save a doctor's visit, but add greatly to the comfort of child, nurse and mother.

It is a welcome relief from the overwrought melodramatic and historicctragic fiction, of which we have had such a tidal wave of late, to find so finely drawn and so admirably word-painted a picture of real life as is presented in "Margaret Warrener," by Alice Brown. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $1.50.) The deep, strong love of Margaret for her husband, who, at first a passionate lover, by degrees allows himself to transfer his affection to another, develops through the suffering thus engendered into an unselfish devotion to his happiness that is in marked contrast to the cold, calculating, heartless character of Laura Neale, who uses her seductive charms to make men her tools only so long as they serve her selfish ends. Other characters are made to show still other development of love through suffering. The dominant tone of the book is sad, because the buoyancy of the happiness springing from true and earnest affection is shattered and torn by the blows and strains to which it is subjected in each instance. Yet the book is an intensely interesting one, character balanced against character, and all woven and interwoven with a skill that leaves the impression upon the reader of scenes from real life. In a word, the story is clean, wholesome, strong and well worth careful reading.

A theme not worn threadbare, a locale out of the well-beaten track, a group of characters whose individuality is maintained with admirable distinctness, and a succession of incidents involving the unexpected, if not sometimes the dramatic, combine to place "Angel: A Sketch in Indian Ink," by B. M. Croker (Dodd, Mead & Co., $1.50), among the more interesting novels of the day. There are vivid and entertaining descriptions of army life in India, in barrack, and in camp, and of engineering in the misty Himalayas. Camp and club gossips get in their mischievous work, and Cupid's darts are sent where they should not go; but in the end character, purity and truth prevail, and the reader closes the book satisfied that it can be passed on to a friend with generous words of commendation.

One of the most attractive puzzles for the analytically minded critic that we have come across for many a day is Robert Barr's "The Victors." (Stokes, $1.50.) It is not a particularly good novel, though it has in it the best pages (182-5) of fiction that we have read this season, namely, those that describe the sensations and emotions of a young man on

first entering New York, but it is one of the most remarkably uneven productions that we can recall. When we had half finished it we thought we had a clue to the mystery. It then seemed that the author must have had in his drawer a juvenile effort to depict the struggles and successes of Ben and Jim, and had superimposed on these the story of Patrick; for the chapters which concerned the former were crude in the extreme, and those that concerned the latter or both always mature and sometimes admirable. Later on, however, we were obliged to abandon this theory, for though the two stories separate as naturally as oil and water, and are joined by little more than the bookbinder's thread, the close of the career of Boss Maguire is as unreal as anything in the cometary progress of Ben and Jim to their Sixth avenue success. Altogether, we think the higher critics will need to assume almost as many original documents and editorial revisions as Genesis has required at their hands, in order to explain the evolution of this novel. But the critical problem is much more interesting than the story itself.

"Before the Dawn" (Houghton, Mifflin, $1.50) is a story of Russian life which, if we interpret rightly the title-page, is the result of collaboration between Edmund Noble, a well-known writer on Russian affairs, and Lydia Lvovna Pimenoff Noble, a lady, as the name suggests, of Russian birth, and there are several indications in the novel that we have to do here, in considerable degree, with things seen in the Russia and Siberia of the 'seventies, though the volume ends with hero and heroine in affluent English exile, still laboring, as the title implies, for the sunrise of culture and intellectual freedom in their native land. The book is exceptionally well written and gives a very effective, and, we should suppose, a very true, picture of the struggles of patriot idealists against the intellectual, moral, and social tyranny of the Russian Church and State.

A book about children, though by no means for them, is Mary Skrine's "The World's Delight" (Lane), commended by one of the most attractive cover-designs that we recall: A little child stepping out of the sunrise on a bright but devious path, and holding up one hand in blessing, while with the other it gropes its onward way. Thus it stands as the symbol of the children who introduce us here to a world we have outgrown, though thereby we have come no nearer to the eternal realities, dim recollections of which seem to cling around childhood, as thou in Wordsworth's exquisite phrase birth were indeed "but a sleep and a forgetting." It is a background of this mystic thought that gives to these stories a strange charm.

No book seems to bring us into closer touch with Colonial life than Jane deForest Shelton's newly edited "Salt-Box House." (Baker, Taylor, $1.50.) Not but what many others have a greater abundance of curious detail of old customs and happenings, but because here we have a record that palpitates with life, the carefully gathered letters and traditions of a single family in a Connecticut hill-town, a family of marked personality, and withal of sturdy Churchmanship. There is a fragrance here, like that faint odor of musk in an ancestral bureau drawer, about these loving reconstructions of the past, and the chords of pathos, that vibrate so naturally for the loves of long ago, are very deftly touched, especially in the last pages, whose gentle art deserves special recognition.

Whoever wrote the anonymous "Ordeal of Elizabeth" (J. F. Taylor, $1.50) has no

reason to be ashamed of his work, for it is nobly conceived, clearly thought out, and well told. Of course it is not a great novel. There has been no great novel written in America this year, and there have been better stories than this, but it deserves high commendation for its skilful unravelling of the interacting effects of heredity and environment on a young girl, who gains strength from suffering to make an heroic though unaccepted sacrifice. There is crime in the novel, scenes in the Tombs, and a trial for life; but all this is handled with a restraint that is often the most effective kind of realism. We find it hard to believe that this is the author's first book; but in any case it is a worthy one.

Art and Artists.

the en

Of unique interest in its illustration, and of very considerable value for the sympathetic appreciation of its text, is "Japan: A Record in Color," by Mortimer Menpes, transcribed by Dorothy Menpes. (Macmillan, $6.) The writer is daughter of the artist, who has deavored to present her father's impressions as seen through the medium of her own, which were not less vivid nor less keenly appreciative. Mr. Menpes is a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colors and of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, as well as a Fellow of the Geographical Society. He recently attracted attention, in England, by his sketches of the South-African War in black and white and his War Impressions in color. To our mind, he is happier in his present subject than in the African one. These hundred colored plates of Japanese life are reproduced with an art that conveys surprisingly the peculiar effects of water color. The accompanying essays on various aspects of Japanese art, in the drama, in practical life, the studio, the conservatory and the garden, with special chapters on the Geisha, of whom Miss Menpes is a chivalrous defender, on Japanese children, by whom she is fascinated, and on the workers, whom she admires, are genial and full of personal touches. One closes the beautiful volume with the impression that the thesis of its first pages is proved, and that it would be impossible for the Japanese to keep art out of their lives, for with them art seems as living to-day as ever it was in the palmy days of Greece.

Other gleanings of the artistic aftermath are more conventional. Perhaps

the most erudite of the volumes before us is Mrs. Arthur Bell's "Lives and Legends of the Evangelists, Apostles and Other Early Saints" (Macmillan, $4.50), which exists not so much for its hagiography as for the contribution that the study of symbolism and legend throws on the history of art. Fifty illustrations from the old masters accompany the text, with a sort of pictorial commentary. The arrangement of the materials is chronological: St. John Baptist first, then the parents of the Blessed Virgin; then St. Joseph, the Evangelists, the Apostles, Mary and Martha, Mary Magdalen, Veronica, Joseph of Arimathea and St. Stephen make up the Biblical group; then follow the great saints of the second century, and the martyrs of the third, arranged hierarchically, first the popes and bishops, then the priests and deacons, then the soldiers and laymen, the "saintly matrons and maidens," and then, with a rather pathetic anxiety to be on the safe side, "other martyred women," saints, too, according to the Roman calendar. The method is to sketch first the history and legend, especially as it

caught the artistic fancy, then to detail the symbols that accompany the saints in frescoes, bas-reliefs, paintings and manuscript illuminations. If there is little that is new, much is here first made easily accessible. We note with pleasure that the subject is to be continued in a study of the Fathers of the Church, the great hermits and other early saints.

More popular in its appeal, very unpretending, yet full of true artistic feeling and joy in the beautiful, is Albinia Wherry's "Stories of the Tuscan Artists." (Dutton, $4.) Her object, she says, is to awaken interest not only in the wellchosen and admirably reproduced pictures that ornament the volume, but in the stories of the artists who painted them, and so to develop latent taste. For this she approaches history not in the spirit of the critic, but of the Italian maxim si non e vero, e ben trovato. The gossip of Vasari is more to her than the erudite research of Cavalcaselle or Morelli. But though the book makes no pretence to erudition those who turn its pages "may build up for themselves a world of fancy, and dwelling in spirit with these old artists forget for a time all the sordid ugliness of life in the cultivation of pleasant thoughts and the infinite possí

bilities to be found in art."

Finally, we may mention the two latest volumes to reach us of the Great Masters in Painting and Sculpture, "Rembrandt van Rijn," by Malcolm Bell, and "Giotto," by F. M. Perkins. (Macmillan, $1.75 each.) The plan of both is the same that has made this series so widely valued; the illustrations from etchings in the Rembrandt are remarkably good, those of the paintings are uneven, some being almost valueless, others strikingly successful reproductions. Giotto has not fared well, but that was inevitable. Mr. Bell's study is a condensation of his volume of 1899, and his expository; while Mr. Perkins's work is more severely critical.

Recent Biography.

so

"The lives of the saints are for all time, just as are their words," says the author of "Monsieur Vincent: A Sketch of a Christian Social Reformer of the Seventeenth Century." (Longmans, $1.25.) "We can read them in the light of modern problems, and discover fresh lessons that the Spirit of God would teach us in them." It is in this spirit that this brief and most admirably condensed biography of St. Vincent de Paul has been written. It would seem as though no salient feature of his long, busy and useful life had been overlooked. Of humblest peasant origin, he became a mighty power for good among all classes, drawing into his bands of Christian workers peasants and ladies of wealth and of the highest culture. The first to organize confraternities of charity, which he managed with marvellous ability, he has well become the patron saint of the poor and needy. Of deepest humility, yet full of Christian courage, most devout, yet wisely politic, his life may be read to advantage by all. Furthermore, this little book brings us into closest touch with the life of the seventeenth century, by its revelation of the sufferings and needs of the common people and the self-sacrificing devotion of Vincent and his followers to their alleviation and relief. It affords a striking picture of the levelling and uniting power of Christian love and charity in bringing laborers from all classes of society to work together harmoniously for the benefit of the poor and the suffering.

Any volume that serves to make clearer our view of life and customs in England

in the darker and more obscure periods of its history is gladly welcomed. The sources of this history are numerous, but too widely scattered and too heavy in character for any but the specialist to examine. "Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln: A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England," by Charles L. Marson (Longmans, $1.25), is a little manual that condenses within its pages informa tion gleaned from many sources. The author tells us that we "must expect short statements, rather than detailed arguments," but he has followed too closely the Carlylean method. His work is disjointed, and lacks a smoothness of style and the clearness of connection necessary to give his word-picture unity, vividness and force. Hugh was a many-sided man of intense personality, wonderful tact and marvellous skill in managing men of low as well as high degree-as witness his influence on the Great King Henry, his son Richard the Viking, whose funeral rites he himself celebrated, and the counsel he gave to John. He stood for the incorruptible in public and private life; he advocated peace at home and abroad; he checked the power of the Crown and paved the way for Magna Charta; he was a power for good in church policy, and a liberal patron of letters and learning. Lincoln cathedral is the ever-enduring monument of his skill as a builder. The record of all this and much more of his personal character gives value to this book, and wins for it a place on our li brary shelf with more pretentious tomes.

Our Colonial Church counts few worthies more worthy than Commissary Blair, founder of William and Mary College, the alma mater of our early presidents, and it was a happy thought of Daniel Motley to make his Life (Johns Hopkins Press, 25 cents), the subject of a monograph, tenth in the Nineteenth Series of Johns Hopkins University Studies, that come to us now under the editorship of J. M. Vincent, after having been twenty years conducted, with distinguished ability, by Professor Herbert Adams. Antiquarians among us may read here strange evidence of the low religious ebb of the Colony when Dr. Blair was mad Commissary, and of the success of his indefatigable fifty-four years' labor to give strength and dignity to the Colonial Church. "Being human," says Mr. Motley, "he made errors; yet had he been perfect he would have made enemies." When he came there were twenty-two clergy for fifty parishes. A year before his death he could write to the Bishop of London that there were only two vacant churches in Virginia. Even his enemies admitted that the clergy, once so slack, "had a mind to do their duty and live happily." The latter part of Mr. Motley's monograph is given to the College Presidency of Blair, and enshrines among other interesting ana of this period the. story already familiar to antiquarians, how Dr. Blair was sent with a Royal Order to Attorney General Seymour to issue a charter for William and Mary. Seymour objected that England could not then afford this Colonial expense. Dr. Blair said the institution was needed to educate missionaries, suggesting that the Virginians had souls as well as their English countrymen, to which Seymour made the historic response: "Souls, damn your souls! Make tobacco." Such, adds Mr. Motley modestly, were the obstacles that confronted Blair in this enterprise, but he persevered and succeeded to such a degree that Professor Adams could say of William and Mary that the alma mater of statesmen is only another name for Virginia.

(FOR NEW BOOKS OF THE WEEK, SEE P. II.)

W

E left New York one cold and snowy morning at the end of January, and, after a week of tossing on a gray and wintry sea, we awoke one morning with the assurance that we should see a blue African sky through our porthole. We were not deceived, for, on looking out, we discovered we were nearing the Island of Madeira. After a week at able, and in this case we were exchanging an arctic mid-winter climate for mid-winter in the tropics, which for us would practically be almost a mid-summer. Our first view of the island was charming; it seemed a fairyland rising, bathed in the rosy morning light, straight out of the sea. Everywhere the mountains sloped gently down to the water's edge, clothed in a profuse verdure of green, touched here and there near the shore with dashes of rose and purple, which we found afterwards were due to the poinsettias and bougainvilleas which clothed the walls in some of the gardens. We soon discovered the little white town of Funchal nestling at the foot of the hills, and coming quite down to the water's edge, its mass of white buildings divided by dark masses of almost black foliage. Behind the town the mountains rose like a perpendicular wall, varying in height from 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Their tops were cloud-covered, and we found later that these clouds were ominous signs of the frequent and very heavy rains, which fall on the island at this season.

Our ship anchored about a quarter of a mile from shore, and by this time the blue waters of the bay were covered with tiny boats, each heavily laden with a cargo of wicker chairs, the embroidered Madeira work, and all kinds of miscellaneous merchandise. The decks were soon covered with every variety of goods, and a lively business was being conducted for the benefit of those passengers who were remaining on the ship.

The landing was a little unpleasant for those inclined to be timid. It was necessary to descend the temporary stairway on the side of the ship, and then wait for the right moment to jump into the heavy but safe Madeira boats, which were skilfully managed by the good-tempered, brown-skinned boatmen. We had to wait for a big wave to lift the boat high on the water and bring it against the gangway, then the jump, somewhat nervously taken, was apt to land one in a confused heap

In front of us a narrow white road led between evergreen trees of a peculiar shape up to the town square and public garden, round which are some of the civic buildings. The whole scene was so small and so glisteningly white in the morning sun as to be almost theatrical in effect. We were at first struck by hearing English spoken by the guides and people generally, a fact, we discovered, due to the frequent landing of passengers from the South-African steamers. However, a slight knowledge of Portuguese is a most useful and necessary possession for travellers, the English words of the natives being really very few and scanty, and hardly heard beyond the landing stage. Walking is not very pleasant, and one soon ceased to wonder at the numerous ox wagons which beset the steps of the traveller. The streets are paved with a small variety of cobble stones, which are most tiring and apt to be dangerous in wet weather, owing to the steepness of the streets. The little ox carts on runners are slow, but very safe; they have curtains for cool or wet weather, which can be pulled back at will. The driver walks by the side of the oxen, and his understudy runs ahead and constantly drags a greasy cloth under the runners, which seem to require very frequent lubrication.

The clouds on the mountain top did not in this instance mean rain, and the blue sky was brilliant. The streets were a mass of light and shade; the irregular houses of all sizes and shapes, from the one-story cottage to quite imposing mansions of five and six, making a very pleasant diversity of line. Here and there a railing or garden wall gave a glimpse of color, and a view of flowers which we had met before only as the denizens of hot-houses. Later on we found growing wild, and also in the gardens, masses of arum or calla lilies, camelia bushes which were quite large trees, azaleas, orange trumpet flowers,