and lighted with gas. The dogs, though innumerable and noisy, are placable and funny, not savage and mangy as they are in Constantinople. There are no mosquito nets to the bed; so that you can imagine how innocuous are those elsewhere intolerable little pests here. The sirocco does not blow oftener than twice a week, and the locusts and grasshoppers don't ravage the country more than once in two years. It is never too hot, and never cold. If it rains, the ground dries up within twenty minutes after a shower. Cigars are a halfpenny each, and less. Oranges are four sous for as many as you like to take. What more would you have?-Daily Telegraph.

4. ACTIONS, NOT WORDS.

A youngster at school, more sedate than the rest,
Had once his integrity put to the test :

His comrades had plotted an orchard to rob,
And asked him to go and assist in the job.

go.

He was very much shocked, and answered, 'Oh no!
What, rob our poor neighbour! I pray you don't
Besides, the man's poor, his orchard's his bread;
Then think of his children, for they must be fed.'

"You speak very fine, and you look very grave;
But apples we want, and apples we'll have :

If

you will go with us, we'll give you a share ;

If not, you shall have neither apple nor pear.'

They spoke, and Tom pondered-'I see they will go ;
Poor man, what a pity to injure him so !

Poor man, I would save him his fruit if I could,

But staying behind will do him no good.

'If this matter depended alone upon me,

His apples might hang till they dropped from the tree;
But since they will take them, I think I'll go too;
He will lose none by me, though I get a few.'

His scruples thus silenced, Tom felt more at ease,
And went with his comrades the apples to seize ;
He blamed and protested, but joined in the plan;
He joined in the plunder, but pitied the man.

Conscience slumbered awhile, but soon woke in his breast, And in language severe the delinquent address'd : 'With such empty and selfish pretences away!

By your actions you're judged be your speech what it may.' W. Cowper.

5. COMMONPLACE MAXIMS.

It is curious to reflect upon some of those well-worn platitudes upon which we used to write themes in our schoolboy days. They have a faded and melancholy appearance now. We smile rather sadly when a young George Osborne informs us, with all gravity, that selfishness is the most odious and contemptible of all the vices which degrade the human character. Absurd as that piece of information seems, we remember that there was a period in our own lives when we were innocent enough to be considerably impressed by the remark, and even that there was a period in the world's history when it passed for a profound and original observation. We can never look upon a copybook maxim without reflections—not much more original, perhaps, than those in the copybook itself—on the sad vicissitudes of fortune. The maxim resembles some venerable old lady, in whom we dimly discern the traces of youthful beauty. It is a kind of memento mori; a proof that not only human beings, but even what are called eternal truths, may lose their freshness in the lapse of centuries. Just consider, for example, all the platitudes that have been uttered about the love of fame. There was a time when the advantages and disadvantages of that passion were gravely discussed by philosophers and men of the world. When they had squeezed all the freshness out of the subject, it was turned over to the moralists; and now it has sunk in its downward course to the hands of schoolmasters. It would apparently be as useless to extract any valuable matter from such an antiquated topic as to make soup from bones that have been exposed for years upon a dust-heap.—The Saturday Review.

6. THE FRANCO-ARAB COLLEGE AT ALGIERS.

The French professors who speak Arabic do their very utmost to convince a perverse generation of little Mussulmans

of the blessings of centralisation and civilisation. Whereupon the little Mussulmans go home to their papas and mammas to play about the courtyard, and eat rice; and are informed— frequently with a slipper smartly applied, by way of enforcing the argument that the Christians are sons of dogs. The efforts which the French have made to get hold of the rising generation of Mahometans have been prodigious, most laudable, but mainly unsuccessful. They treat the pupils who come to them kindly, never striking them, whereas their own parents thrash them like sacks; they give them an excellent education; but the little Mussulmans, or rather their parents, are as shy as the ducklings were in responding to the invitation of Mrs. Bond, when, with the endearing appellatives of 'Dilly, dilly,' she conjured them to come and be killed. In the interior the case is still worse. The Arabs have a notion that their children should be taught in their own schools, by their own masters, and in their own fashion. To all the mosques there are attached Mussulman colleges, called Zaouias, and in every village there is a Derrar, which answers to our dame schools, only the teacher is of the male sex. Du reste, the pupils are boys. The girls, as a rule, never get any education at all. The economy of an Arab school is a very simple affair indeed. In a room with plastered walls and an earthen floor, something between a back kitchen and a cowshed, several little boys in red caps and baggy breeches squat in a semicircle on their haunches, occupied in a languid pursuit of knowledge and an indefatigable search for fleas. Between the horns of the juvenile horseshoe is enthroned, likewise squatting, on a ragged scrap of carpet, a dirty old man with a long stick. He says something in Arabic in a sing-song tone, and his pupils repeat the words after him. If one of the pupils manifests greater assiduity in flea-hunting or in skylarking with his neighbours than in droning out sing-song, the preceptor hits him over the head with the long stick. Should that fail to make him a scholar and a gentleman, the rod is changed to the soles of his feet, and not unfrequently recourse is had to the ministrations of the never-failing slipper, applied in a succession of staccato movements. The writing exercises consist in tracing Arabic characters in a box full of sand, the attempts at caligraphy being rendered interesting by a shower of raps on the knuckles of the

י,

student—the whole reminding the spectator of a search for eels in a basket where there are no eels. This is a derrar. The pleasantest part of the thing is when the youngsters come tumbling out of school at the hour of prayer. They are ragged and filthy, but oh, they look so happy! In the Zaouius, or colleges, a higher class of tuition is dispensed. The master is quite a Don. He may leave something to be desired on the score of facial cleanliness, but he wears at least a clean turban. The boys or youths are taught to get certain verses of the Koran by heart; and he who knows most Koran at the age of adolescence is Senior Wrangler in the schools of Islamism. The course of instruction does not, however, stop here. Scorn and hatred of Christians in general, and of the French in particular, are a branch of ethics sedulously instilled into the alumni of the Zaouias. They are taught that the power of France is only transitory; that the successes of the French arms are due simply to the will of Allah, who for some wise purpose desires to chastise his elect; they are informed that patience and resignation are the ordeals through which the Arab race is bound to pass until the Mahometan Messiah-the Moula-saa, or 'Lord of the Hour '—comes, as he may come at any moment, to vindicate the true faith, and hurl the Giaours over the quays of El Djezzaïr into the sea. I wonder whether any doctrines similar to these are ever taught by oily olivecoloured men in turbans to little Mahometans in British India?

7. DEATH OF CHARLES THE BOLD.

Charles saw himself stripped of both his wings, assailed at once on both his flanks. He had his choice between a rapid flight and a speedy death. Well, then-death! As he fastened his helmet, the golden lion in the crest became detached, and fell to the ground. He forbad it to be replaced. Hoc est signum Dei! 'It is a sign from God,' he said. From God? Ah yes, he knew now the hand that was laid upon him! Leading his troops, he plunged into the midst of his foes, now closing in on every side. Among enemies and friends the recollection of his surpassing valour in that hour of perdition, after the last gleam of hope had vanished, was long preserved. Old men of Franche Comté were accustomed to tell how their fathers

had seen the Duke, his face streaming with blood, charging and recharging 'like a lion,' even in the thick of the combat, bringing help where the need was greatest. In Lorraine the same tradition existed. 'Had all his men,' says a chronicler of that province, fought with a like ardour, our army must infallibly have been repulsed.' But no; so engaged, so overmatched, what courage could have availed? 'The foot stood long and manfully,' is the testimony of a hostile eye-witness. But the final struggle, though obstinate, was short. Broken and dispersed, the men had no resource but flight. Some went eastward, in the direction of Essey, such as gained the river crossing where the ice bore, and breaking it behind them. The greater number kept to the west of Nancy, to gain the road to Condé and Luxembourg. Charles, with the handful that still remained around him, followed in the same direction. The mass, both of fugitives and pursuers, was already far ahead. There was no choice now. Flight, combat, death-it was all one. Closing up, the little band of nobles, last relic of chivalry, charged into the centre of a body of foot. A halberdier swung his weapon, and brought it down on the head of Charles. He reeled in the saddle. Citey flung his arms round him, and steadied him, receiving while so engaged a thrust from a spear through the parted joints of his corslet. Pressing on, still fighting, still hemmed in, they dropped one by one. Charles's page, a Roman, of the ancient family of Colonna, rode a little behind, a gilt helmet hanging from his saddle-bow. He kept his eye upon his master—saw him surrounded, saw him at the edge of a ditch, saw his horse stumble, the rider fall.-John Foster Kirk (History of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy).

8. CORRUPT STATE OF THE CHURCH BEFORE THE
REFORMATION.

Henry VIII., a mere boy on his accession, trained from childhood by theologians, entered on his reign (1509) saturated with theological prepossessions. The intensity of his nature recognising no half measures, he was prepared to make them the law of his life; and it seemed as if the restoration was to lose no part of its completeness, and that in Henry the Church