the centre of the town, a red flag marks the Konak or government house and barracks of the troops; while the other flagstaffs that appear above some of the houses near, distinguish the residences of the consuls. To our right, and on. the outskirts of the city, stands a huge, gaunt building, with no ornament or decoration on its plain plastered walls; this is the Roman Catholic cathedral; and on Sundays and holy-days it is crowded with mountaineers and Christian townsmen.

taken the trouble to plaster it up, though it is probably plugged on the inside to keep out the draught. There are two kinds of justice in this country, and that bullet-hole will serve as the visible sign of one, as the president of the court does of the other. Long before the Ottomans were heard of, the law of the blood feud and of the responsibility of the family for the misdeeds of all its members, was the only code known; and as yet the Albanians have not become sufficiently civilized to perceive the advantages of the govern ment method, and so those of them who have not mixed much with Europeans, draw their pistols when they meet an enemy, instead of dragging him before the court. The Mussulmans of the city and the Christians of the mountains go everywhere with pistols and yataghan in their belt; only the Christians of the city carry no arms. The justice of the law court is uncertain, expensive, and unsuited to a nation of warrors; while the blood-hides the Adriatic from our view, and feud is honorable, and costs no more than a charge of powder and a bullet, and so the streets and bazaar of Scodra continue to be enlivened by an interchange of shots, whenever the members of families which have blood between them encounter one another.

But the subject is too vast for consideration at this moment; let us, before we go any further, try to realize what kind of a town it is we are in. For this purpose the best thing to do is to ascend the low hill just under the castle, for from that point we shall be able to see the country all round us and the city at our feet. Looking out to the north-east, we see a wide plain hemmed in on all sides by lofty mountains: the great Lake of Scodra stretches away from the base of the castle rock to the mountains of Montenegro, the steep cliffs springing directly from the water on its western shore, but with a broad flat plain between the lake and the mountains to the east. Below us lies the city, the wide, low, red-tiled roofs of its houses half hidden by the thick foliage of its trees. Every house stands by itself, shut off from its neighbors by a high wall, and surrounded by its garden, except in the Christian quarter, where the houses are generally smaller, and in many instances without gardens. Here and there is an open space, dotted all over with white tombstones, carved at the top to represent a turban; and from among the trees the tall, slender minarets of some thirty mosques shoot up into the air. Nearly in

On a steep rock to our left is the ancient castle, now crumbling into ruin, and shorn of its strength by the proximity of Mount Tarabos, to which modern artillery has given the command of the key of North Albania; and beyond, the Boiana winds slowly through fat lowlands to the sea. Behind us to the south-west is the rich plain of the Zadrima, cut up in every direction by the erratic wanderings of the Drin; and then a range of hills, which

forms the port of San Giovanni di Medua by sending a spur out into the sea. Crushed in between the Boiana and the castle rock is the bazaar, a network of narrow streets, each one of which is devoted to a separate trade. The bazaar serves the men of Scodra instead of a club. Every man has his little shop whether he does any business or not, and there he sits and gossips with his friends, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee till about half an hour before aksham, when he rises, shuts up his shop, and returns to his house, leaving the bazaar and its wealth to the care of the night-watchers only.

They do things in leisurely fashion at Scodra. There are no startling advertisements, no flaming posters. If a merchant knows you, he will offer you coffee and cigarettes as a matter of course. If you press him, he will show you his goods, but he will not worry you to buy; nay, if he has nothing to your taste, he will tell you of a friend or neighbor who may perhaps be able to supply your wants. He never sells at an alarming sacrifice, nor even considerably under cost price; but what he does sell is thoroughly good, and well worth what he asks for it. It seems incredible at first to a visitor coming from Europe or from Greece; but Albania is a land of surprises, and therefore, gentle reader, we will note things while they are fresh and strange, and before the novelty has had time to wear off.

Walter Thomas made his Epitaph.

Dear to his parents here doth lye,
A youth admired for Piety,
His years eleven, yet knew more
Of God than many of threescore.

"who served Queen Elizabeth forty years | Richard Nott, aged 11 years. His Schoolfellow lying in the bed - chamber; or Lady Blanche Parry, "chief gentlewoman of Queen Elizabeth's Privy Chamber, and keeper of her Majesty's jewels, whom she faithfully served from her Highness's birth; "or Anne Ellis, "who was born in Denmark, and was bedchamber woman to But the glory of the whole is the wonQueen Anne." We come on a record derful window over the communion-table, "To the memory of the right virtuous and with its fine depth of blue, a treat for the beautiful gentlewoman, Mistress Margaret eye satiating one with color. This imRadcliffe, one of the maids of honor to poverishes, as it were, all the modern perQueen Elizabeth, and who died at Rich-formances near it. A great authority on mond." Many of the men, too, have painted glass, Mr. Winston, declares it to served their king, like Cornelius Vandum, be "the most beautiful work in this re"souldier with King Henry at Turney, Yeoman of the Guard, and Usher to Prince Henry, King Edward, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth;" or Peter Newton, "who served King James and King Charles, and was Usher of the Black Rod."

Some of the inscriptions are quaint and touching, like that which celebrates, "the late deceased Virgin Mistress Elizabeth Hereicke: "

spect, of harmonious coloring," he was acquainted with. The subject is the Crucifixion. It is divided into five compartments, three of which are filled by pictures of our Saviour and the two thieves. Below them are the holy women, a crowd of Roman soldiers, etc.; over the good thief a tiny angel is seen, bearing off his soul to Paradise, while a little demon has the impenitent one on his back. On one side is the portrait of a young king at his prayers, arrayed in crown and mantle, with the armed St. George overhead; on the other side a lady, also kneeling, over whom watches St. Catherine. This window had quite a strange course of adventures. According to one account, it was a present to King Henry VII. from the Dutch States-General, and was intended for his beautiful chapel. Another version runs that it was a present from the king and queen of Spain. The two figures represent either Henry VIII. and his betrothed, Catherine of Aragon, or, according to the other account, Prince Arthur With much simplicity another lady, and Catherine. It took five years to Dame Billing, frankly tells us of the hap- make, and by that time the young prince piness she enjoyed with her three hus- had died, and King Henry had succeeded. bands, whom she sets down in their order, Whether his religious views had altogether "garnishing the tablet with their armies." changed, or from other reason, the winAnother widow records on an old battered dow was not set up, and he made it a pres"brass "the merits of one Cole, her hus-ent to the abbey at Waltham. On the band, at great length; whereof an ex

Sweet Virgin, that I do not set
Thy grave verse up in mournful jet
Or dappled marble, let thy shade
Not wrathful seeme, or fright the Maid
Who hither, at the weeping Howres,
Shall come to strew thy Earth with Flowres.
No: know, blest Soule, when there's not one
Reminder left of Brasse or Stone
Thy living Epitaph shall be,
Though lost in them, yet found in me.
Deare, in thy bed of Roses then,
Till this world shall dissolve, as Men
Sleepe, while we hide thee from the light,
Drawing thy curtains round-Good-night.

dissolution it was bought by General Monk, who brought it down to New Hall, where it was well protected during the Civil War. From New Hall it passed to to Mr. Conyers, of Copt Hall, where it a Mr. John Olmius, who sold the window was set up; and there it seemed likely to remain. Unluckily, it entered into the minds of the churchwardens' committee of St. Margaret's, in 1758, to have a thorough restoration of their old church. Dreadful windows, the same that were yet to be seen about twenty years ago, were put in; a common "household parapet," as it was called, was added, with the

homely porch. But now they bethought set out deliberately intending to master themselves of Mr. Conyers's beautiful the world, and who in twelve years of window, and bought it for four hundred a life magnificently full, conquered alike guineas. Thereupon the chapter, offended by its "Popish "character, commenced a lawsuit to have the window removed; but the action was decided against them. Thus this rich and glowing feast of color was retained. Below it there is a curious oaken reredos, elaborately carved into the shape of a large picture" The Last Supper at Emmaus " the work of a Soho artist some one hundred and twenty years ago. The pulpit is a poor fantastic thing colored like a sugarplum. There is an antique bench in the porch which is used at the distribution of the weekly dole of sixpences and bread to a number of poor widows.

Greece and Persia, Egypt and Afghanistan, Turkey in Asia and the Punjab; who stood master in Thebes, Babylon, and Samarcand; who made the march we dare not try, through Beloochistan; who founded a city which continued to flourish through ancient history, and the new barbarian time, and the Middle Ages, and modern history, and flourishes even now, though the greater conquerors of whose island Alexander had never heard, were supposed but yesterday to have burned it up; who, above all, dared believe that he could reconcile Europe and Asia, and who alone among mankind succeeded, while he lived, in realizing that dream. Alexander, as painted by historians, is still a sort of monster, a man with irreconcilable qualities, a wise statesman, a great ruler, a soldier beyond compare, gifted with insight that seemed independent of knowl

From this sketch it will be seen how much of interest there is in this old church. Perhaps Canon Farrar may be induced to throw it open to the public for a couple of hours every day; and, we will answer for it, the indulgence will be ap-edge and almost supernatural, and yet preciated.

From The Spectator.

THE SECRET OF ALEXANDER.

THE discovery of the sarcophagus of Alexander at Saida, in Syria, is, if truly reported, an interesting incident; but it will not help the historian much. The body has almost certainly perished, or if it were embalmed, we shall learn from seeing the mummy little that we did not know from coins and statues, and the tradition which has lived so long and burned so brightly. What men now desire of antiquarians and explorers, is to find for them new facts which may reveal to them more fully the personality of the wonderful boy with Shelley's face made strong, the first of European mankind who broke by force into the secluded life of Asia, and so stamped the impression of himself into two continents, that to the Arab who knows nothing but his own legends, and the Hindoo peasant who knows nothing at all, his name is as familiar as to the European. We know in an unusually minute and, so to speak, intelligible way the sources of his power; we know that he must have been a true genius, a "daimonic being," rare as that character has been among legitimate dynasts we cannot recall another of the first rank- but we know comparatively little of the real character of the man who at twenty-two

amidst it all nearly a lunatic. There are points in his character which are as yet absolutely unintelligible, and it is chiefly on one of these that the present writer has to-day a word to speak.

About the beginning of the seventh century B.C., a family called the Temenids, which Dr. Curtius thinks may have sprung from a cadet of the great house of the Heraclidæ, and which certainly claimed to be so descended, appeared among the fierce clans of the Macedonian highlands, and gradually assumed a position and pursued a policy which resemble with curious exactness those of the earlier Hohenzollerns. Always brave and competent men, always fighting, and generally victorious, they from generation to generation mastered, or conciliated, or bribed their neighbors, advanced their claims to an undefined superiority, and were at last recognized as in some more or less titular sense kings in Macedonia. It was a kingship like that of the Stuarts in Scotland, which maintained itself above a hundred half-independent lower jurisdictions. At length, more than two centuries after its appearance, the race produced a great man, "Philip of Macedon," who, if we only knew of his difficulties as we know of his successes, would probably be pronounced one of the greatest kings who ever lived. Born a barbarian, but bred a Greek in Thebes, he combined the barbaric force which in Greece had begun to wane, with the Hellenic intelligence and varied range of intellectual interest. He

protected Aristotle, and he mastered not only master of what his people knew Greece. A good soldier, a great diplo- as "the world," but was a master who had matist, a sound financier, he had discov- developed loyalty in the conquered. We ered the value of honesty, and his gold are not about to weary our readers with coin was held in such esteem as was after- his history; that, so far as it can be wards won by the byzant of Constantinople known, is known well enough, though or the English sovereign, he was, above what we think its supreme incident has all, a capable administrator. Coercing been generally forgotter; our only busior purchasing all his clan-chiefs, paying ness is with the quality in his mind which his followers regularly, and holding out gave Alexander his surpassing strength. magnificent hopes, he was able to keep Recollect, he had neither experience nor together a small standing army, whom the results of experience to help him. he called his companions, and, finally, by Neither he nor his had ever fought the introducing what we now style "the con- Persians. He had no proof that his army scription," to form a body destined to be was the resistless machine it proved itself known through all history as the Mace- to be. He had no reason for believing donian soldiers. The highlanders of that, with an army not equal to a Persian Macedonia, aided by recruits from the division, he could conquer the great king north, supplied him with magnificent ma- in his own home, nay, every reason terial; their chiefs, whose descent rivalled against it, for the Persians numbered milor surpassed their own, he turned into lions, and were so little an exhausted or efficient officers; and he imposed upon "effete" race that Alexander himself, the all a discipline which many stories show best judge on such a point of all mankind, to have been as rigid as that of Rome. believed that, with Persian soldiers only, When his army was complete, he found he could conquer the Oriental world. He himself possessed of a weapon so match- knew nothing, except from travellers' tales, less in his day, that he believed himself of the countries he was to invade; his nocapable of conquering Greece, and even tions of their geography were like the noof trying conclusions with the great king. tions of schoolboys about South America; He had, it would seem from all accounts, he took the Oxus for a continuation of the an army of fifty thousand men, four-fifths Don, and was astounded by the tide in the of whom were trained to charge with a Persian Gulf, yet he dared stake his long bayonet (sarissa) in the resistless for- throne, and his leadership in Greece, and mation known as the phalanx, fed by the all that leadership might yield him, on conscription with probably twelve thou his chance of subduing what must have sand recruits a year, and drilled and dis- seemed to him like a new planet. No ciplined like modern Germans. His work doubt in entering Asia "he broke," as Pyrhad been done when he had forged this rhus afterwards said, “into the women's weapon, and he died, murdered, in 336 chamber," while Pyrrhus himself, in meeting the Romans, "found himself in the men's ;" and no doubt, also, with his wonderful insight, he may have suspected the permanent secret of Asia, which is that nowhere on the continent at any time has there been any race which, unmoved by religious feeling, could withstand for a day the onset of a competent European force. From Darius to Surajah Dowlah, that record has always been the same. But then, though he might have suspected this, he could not have known it, any more than he could have known the second secret of Asia, — which is, that her weakness is the weakness of an ocean that gives way to every keel, and every swimmer, and every little fish, but closes in on their path again, and remains for all their passage, swift and stormy as it may be, unchanged and immutable. Always throughout history the European wins, but always the Asiatic survives, and sits calmly reflecting upon death and eternity above his conqueror's

B.C.

His son should by all analogies, previous and subsequent, have been a weak man of the indolently reflective, or even indolently sensual type, the force of a family exhausting itself in a man like Philip; but nature had a kindness for the race of the Temenids. Philip's wife, Olympias, was a fiercely able woman of the Sarah Jennings type, with a power of saying things at once witty and brutal; and the race, drawing near its end, flowered in Alexander. The statesman soldier of ability was succeeded by a man with the highest genius at once for war and statesmanship, a lad who at sixteen grudged victory to his father lest nothing should be left for him to do, who at eighteen crushed the previously irresistible Theban organization, and at twenty-two saw the great king, as great to him at least as the czar is to the king of Servia, flying before his arms, and at thirty was