where they now are. But should circum- | we soon became friends; and after comstances demanding concert or action paring minds, I admitted you at your rearise, you may be sure that I will either quest, into this Secret Council. Now, in summon a meeting or transmit instruc-proposing to you the conduct of the jourtions to such of our members as may be nal I would establish, for which I am most usefully employed. For the pres- prepared to find all necessary funds, I ent, confrères, you are relieved. Remain am compelled to make imperative cononly you, dear young author." ditions. Nominally you will be editor-inchief that station, if the journal succeeds, will secure you position and fortune; if it fail, you fail with it. But we will not speak of failure; I must have it succeed. Our interest, then, is the same. Before that interest all puerile vanities fade away. Nominally, I say, you are editor-in-chief; but all the real work of editing will, at first, be done by others."

CHAPTER VII.

LEFT alone with Gustave Rameau, the President of the Secret Council remained silently musing for some moments; but his countenance was no longer moody and overcast his nostrils were dilated, as in triumph-there was a half-smile of pride on his lips. Rameau watched him curiously and admiringly. The young man had the impressionable, excitable temperament common to Parisian genius - especially when it nourishes itself on absinthe. He enjoyed the romance of belonging to a secret society; he was acute enough to recognize the sagacity by which this small conclave was kept out of those crazed combinations for impracticable theories more likely to lead adventurers to the Tarpeian Rock than to the Capitol; while yet those crazed combinations might, in some critical moment, become strong instruments in the hands of practical ambition. Lebeau fascinated him, and took colossal proportions in his intoxicated vision -vision indeed intoxicated at this moment, for before it floated the realized image of his aspirations,— a journal of which he was to be the editor-in-chief-in which his poetry, his prose, should occupy space as large as he pleased - through which his name, hitherto scarce known beyond a literary clique, would resound in salon and club and café, and become a familiar music on the lips of fashion. And he owed this to the man seated there, a prodigious man!

"Cher poète," said Lebeau, breaking silence, "it gives me no mean pleasure to think I am opening a career to one whose talents fit him for those goals on which they who reach write names that posterity shall read. Struck with certain articles of yours in the journal made celebrated by the wit and gaiety of Savarin, I took pains privately to inquire into your birth, your history, connections, antecedents. All confirmed my first impression, that you were exactly the writer I wish to secure to Our cause. I therefore sought you in your rooms, unintroduced and a stranger, in order to express my admiration of your compositions. Bref,

"Ah!" exclaimed Rameau, aghast and stunned. Lebeau resumed

"To establish the journal I propose needs more than the genius of youth; it needs the tact and experience of mature years."

Rameau sank back on his chair with a sullen sneer on his pale lips. Decidedly Lebeau was not so great a man as he had thought.

66

"A certain portion of the journal," continued Lebeau, "will be exclusively appropriated to your pen." Rameau's lip lost the sneer.

"But your pen must be therein restricted to compositions of pure fancy,, disporting in a world that does not exist; or, if on graver themes connected with the beings of the world that does exist, the subjects will be dictated to you and revised. Yet even in the higher departments of a journal intended to make way at its first start, we need the aid, not indeed of men who write better than you, but of men whose fame is established whose writings, good or bad, the public run to read, and will find good even if they are bad. You must consign one column to the playful comments and witticisms of Savarin."

"Savarin? But he has a journal of his own. He will not, as an author, condescend to write in one just set up by me. And as a politician, he as certainly will not aid in an ultra-democratic revolution. If he care for politics at all, he is a constitutionalist, an Orleanist."

"Enfant as an author Savarin will condescend to contribute to your journal, Istly, because it in no way attempts to interfere with his own; 2ndly- I can tell you a secret Savarin's journal no longer suffices for his existence; he has sold more than two-thirds of its property;

""

―

he is in debt, and his creditor is urgent; | in this kind of writing, more than one of and to-morrow you will offer Savarin 30,- them of high social rank, whom it is diffiooo francs for one column from his pen, cult for me even to approach - if, I say, and signed by his name, for two months I fail? from the day the journal starts. He will accept, partly because the sum will clear off the debt that hampers him, partly because he will take care that the amount becomes known; and that will help him to command higher terms for the sale of the remaining shares in the journal he now edits, for the new book which you told me he intended to write, and for the new journal which he will be sure to set up as soon as he has disposed of the old one. You say that, as a politician, Savarin, an Orleanist, will not aid in an ultra-him the terms I have specified, the 30,000 democratic revolution. Who asks him to francs paid to him in advance the moment do so? Did I not imply at the meeting he signs the simple memorandum of that we commence our journal with poli- agreement. The more mysterious you tics the mildest? Though revolutions are, the more you will impose - - that is, are not made with rose-water, it is rose- wherever you offer money and don't ask water that nourishes their roots. The for it." polite cynicism of authors, read by those who float on the surface of society, prepares the way for the social ferment in its deeps. Had there been no Voltaire there would have been no Camille Desmoulins.. Had there been no Diderot, there would have been no Marat. We start as polite cynics. Of all cynics Savarin is the politest. But when I bid high for him, it is his clique that I bid for. SOMEBODY once said, and probably Without his clique he is but a wit; with thought himself uncommonly clever for his clique, a power. Partly out of that saying it, that broken bottles-empty clique, partly out of a circle beyond it, soda-water bottles is a popular, but I do which Savarin can more or less influence, not know if a correct, version - will one I select ten. Here is the list of them; day be the only abiding memorial of Britstudy it. Entre nous, I esteem their writ-ish rule in India. Like most of these exings as little as I do artificial flies; but tremely smart epigrams, the remark comthey are the artificial flies at which, in this bined a small amount of superficial truth particular season of the year, the public with a much larger quantity of real misrise. You must procure at least five of statement. But when the long predicted the ten; and I leave you carte blanche as to day arrives for the Osmanlee to strike the the terms. Savarin gained, the best of tent he has for so many centuries pitched them will be proud of being his associ- over some of the very fairest portions of ates. Observe, none of these messieurs of God's earth, I wonder what except broken brilliant imagination are to write political bottles will remain behind to denote the articles; those will be furnished to you spot of his protracted encampment. Not anonymously, and inserted without eras- literal but metaphorical bottles, of course, ure or omission. When you have secured for neither beer nor wine nor even sodaSavarin, and five at least of the collabora- water are the more's the pity-common teurs in the list, write me at my office. I enough articles of consumption in the give you four days to do this; and the lands of the Crescent to furnish any large day the journal starts you enter into the amount of vitreous relics; when Osmanincome of 15,000 francs a-year, with a lees do violate the anti-alcoholic precepts rise in salary proportioned to profits. of their law, it is ordinarily with the vilest Are you contented with the terms?" rakee; and that unwholesome fluid is wont to be dispensed, not in bottles, but in misshapen jars of congenial ugliness and coarseness. No; breakages in plenty he will have, only they will not be of glass,

--

"Of course I am; but supposing I do not gain the aid of Savarin, or five at least of the list you give, which I see at a glance contains names the most à la mode'

"What! with a carte blanche of terms? fie! Are you a Parisian? Well, to answer you frankly, if you fail in so easy a task, you are not the man to edit our journal, and I shall find another. Allez, courage! Take my advice; see Savarin the first thing to-morrow morning. Of course my name and calling you will keep a profound secret from him as from all. Say as mysteriously as you can that parties you are forbidden to name instruct you to treat with M. Savarin, and offer

Here Lebeau took up his hat, and, with a courteous nod of adieu, lightly descended the gloomy stairs.

From The Cornhill Magazine. BYZANTINE ANATOLIA.

but of far more precious things; and not | dering— zig-zagging I might call it, were of what he imported with him, like the not the word inadmissible from its affectEnglish ware in the hypothesis, but of ed uncouthness among the mountains, what he found more or less entire when dolomitic or otherwise, of that wild region, he came, and afterwards broke on his own we have seen, broadly speaking, only one clear and strongly marked sign of Osmanlee rule - that is, ruin.

Needless to say, our journeyings have been all on horseback, except indeed where the unmanageable steepness or dangerous narrowness of the path compelled us to dismount even from those surest-footed of all known quadrupeds, Anatolian nags; for in these favoured regions of countless railroad concessions and projected lines, the most primitive waggon-road that ever led from an English"-ham" to a "-bro" is an unknown luxury. That highways will be constructed throughout the Ottoman dominions, are constructed, are daily traversed by whole processions of wheeled conveyances, are delusions which Mr. Farley of Bristol and his disciples may possibly entertain, but in which a traveller through his Sultanic Majesty's dominions will hardly share. Horses, mules, camels, asses, even the classical caravan is still, as in the days of Mahomet II. or Marco Polo, the picturesque but clumsy and costly means of transport for the merchandise of the gorgeous East. Here they come - now hidden, now re-appearing between the deep-wooded windings of the mountain side; one can hear their jangling bells at a mile's distance. An endless file of raw-boned sinewy beasts, each with its crimson tassel, or glittering brass star, or some other gewgaw charm against the evil eye, at its collar, and a couple of more or less evenly balanced packages, secured by a more complicated tackle of rope than ever Ulysses tied round his sea-chest, dangling at its sides; all crowding, pushing, jostling, stumbling over the rock steps of the narrow pathway; not unfrequently, too, hustling each other right off the edge to a fall of many hundred feet into the ravine below, where, with a crash or two on the stones, the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest— that is, so far as the mule's future is concerned; unless some lucky shrub intervenes to stay the overrapid descent. Alongside, behind them, trudge on foot the grey-coated, sheepskin-capped, heavy-limbed, heavy-featured, pale-eyed Turkoman drivers, who with thong and cry have brought them from the great plains across the Persian frontier. Or it is a string of huge woolly camels, most powerful and ungainliest of

account.

This, where I am now writing, is the Osmanlee's own proper land, this his camping-ground of predilection - Anatolia, the birthplace of his wide-extended empire, its cradle, its stronghold, its reserve hope. And here all around me I see Pontine breakages, Greek breakages, Roman breakages, Byzantine breakages, Armenian breakages, Seljook breakages, not to mention some minor breakages of less world-spread fame, such as Turkoman, Mingrelian and Georgian; all these there are and will mostly be still remaining too, no doubt, when reckoning-day comes. Nor do I say that they may not, each in its kind, be regarded as Osmanlee breakages after a sort; since they are of things which either he found whole and broke them, or found them broken, and broke them still more. Only of what he has himself brought, himself made, there will be left after the first ten years next to nothing, and after fifty absolutely nothing at all. Relics of Osmanlee labour, of Osmanlee magnificence, of Osmanlee science, art, skill, learning, industry, there will be hardly any, or none- for the simple reason that he will leave none which can, even at the most liberal computation, outlast half a century. True; the lively author of Morning Land claims an exception in favour of "heaps of broken gravestones." But even this, if we embrace half a century in our prospective view, cannot be admitted; for the tombstones are scratched rather than carved; the feeble and exceptional attempts at a mausoleum are as flimsy as the other constructions; and the vestiges of the dead Osmanlee are evidently fated to not less speedy obliteration than those of the living.

Even at the capital, where the Osmanlee has concentrated his whole energy in an effort not over-successful there, and most ruinous to his dominions elsewhere, at the expense of which that capital has been patched up, these remarks are correct in the main; in the provinces they are absolutely so. And certainly in the frontier corner of the empire, east of Trebizond, where the Classic Atlas marks the uncertain limits of Pontus and Colchis, and where myself and my companions the usual eastern medley of colour and race - have now been for ten weeks wan

-

has

their kind, swaying along beneath their pending loss for Trebizond, in spite of loads as they thrust out their shaggy its almost pre-historical memories and snaky necks in an aimless fashion from high-sounding name, would, if deprived side to side, and frightening our nags of its intercourse with Persia, soon sink into a desperate scramble to get out of into a mere coast village, remarkable for the way up the mountain slope; for the nothing but its ruined Comnenian castle secular terror of the horse at sight or - roused at last even Ottoman apathy even at smell of the camel is not in the into something of an effort. A real road, least diminished since the days of Herod- a carriage road, from Trebizond to Perotus; though how it originated, or why sia, was resolved on, was begun, and it is kept up, seeing that the camel for even, after a fashion, was completed. his part manifests no disposition except Now, so it is that Turks- modern that of the most absolute indifference Turks, I mean- very slow hands at towards the horse, is a problem which commencing any work, public or private, might tax the ingenuity of a Darwin of real utility, are slower still at finishing himself to solve. Grazing and loitering it; while as to keeping it up, or repairas it goes, accomplishing barely twelve ing it, that is what they never think of or fourteen miles a day, and taking a at all. From a mosque to a sentry-box, month to get over ground which, with from a palace to a policeman's jacket, decent roads and proper conveyances, so soon as the object -no matter how might easily be traversed, and at one- costly at first or how necessary fourth of the cost, too, in a week, the once begun to go to wrack, it may folcaravan, like the Ten Thousand of old, low on in the same direction as long as salutes the sea at Trebizond. There on it pleases, even to the "bitter end." A the appropriate resting-place of "Giaour new article of the same sort may perhaps, Meidan," or "Unbelievers' Square," a regardless of expense, be provided; but large open space at the entry of the town, as to the old one, not a brick will be rein the Perso-European or "unbelieving " placed, not a tile re-arranged, not a board quarter-for in Turkish opinion a Per- nailed up, not a stitch bestowed in time sian's creed is hardly more orthodox than or out of it. Were I general family tutor, a Christians, if at all-it deposits the or governess, or something of the kind products of Central Asia ; and then, laden to the "young idea" of the Turkish genin exchange with European merchandise, eration," For want of a nail," with the winds slowly back, as it came, to Persia. rest of that rhythmical nursery wisdom, But whoever would witness at Trebi- should be the Alpha and the Omega of zond this not uninteresting spectacle, as my daily lessons. Unfortunately, that characteristic of the Ottoman East as the lesson, so far as the Osmanlee is constage coach and the lumbering van once cerned, is still to learn; and experience, were of England, must hasten his visit to say what the wise ones may, is for huthese shores, whence caravans and cara- man beings in general, not for Stuarts van drivers are fast passing away. Not, and Bourbons alone, the least effective however, owing to any more expeditious of teachers. substitute introduced by the Osmanlee, who, content with levying absurd transitdues, and harassing merchants and muleteers alike by custom-house vexations and frontier annoyances, leaves the rest to circumstance and chance; but by the competitive energy of the Russians, masters of the long-disused but rival Caucasian route. Caravans are soon distanced by steam-engines; and the railroad that has this very year connected Tiflis with the Black Sea coast, and promises soon to reach the frontiers of Persia itself, has already appropriated to itself more than half the traffic that formerly cumbered side with tolerable ease and freedom the "Unbelievers' Square," or crammed along a macadamized road. But, alas! the massive warehouses the largest is not for long. This fair portion of the Byzantine in construction and date of highway, which is only five or six miles Trebizond. in length, is that completed some years However, the seriousness of the im- since by some French engineers, who,

Let us judge for ourselves. So we leave behind the brown Byzantine walls of volcanic stone, tower and battlement, and the card-paper lath-and-plaster houses clustered beneath their shadow, among black cypress-spears, and glistening orchard foliage in a word, Trebizond generally, ancient and modern, lazily basking in the hot mid-day July sun; and winding our way past the harbour cliffs, enter on the broad Pyxites valley, the Persian winter route, which it is our programme to follow for some distance. And behold, our horses canter side by

after laying down the general line of miles across the entire mountain tract route, and getting through with the more intervening between the Black Sea and serious difficulties of the work, were the central highlands of Anatolia, we bid rather unceremoniously dismissed to farewell, not to Osmanlee public works make room for a fat Osmanlee head-en- only, but also to almost every trace of gineer with a Turkish staff. Forced la- Osmanlee rule and nationality whatever. Bour-that curse of the East - was now brought into play; and after the road had been patched up in an incomplete fashion, it was pronounced finished, and has since then been left to take care of itself, amid the rains, storms, snows, and other vagaries of the Pontic climate.

"Government extends as far as the town gates," says an Arab proverb, relative to Turkish rule in Syria; and no one who has passed some time in that country can have failed to remark that, once beyond city limits, impoverishment and ruin are in fact almost the only indications that the Osmanlee is lord of the land. It is the same here, with this difference only, that instead of being Arab, the population, customs, buildings, all things, whether of the present or the past, are in the main Greek.

It is now, of course, in full progress through the three phases common to everything at the mercy of Osmanlee administration slovenliness, dilapidation, and, lastly, disappearance. The macadam broken up into pits and hollows that would upset a Devonshire cart; the side- Not "Greek" in the "Hellene" sense cuttings slipping down in huge shell-like of the word, for, search as I might, I masses which already encroach on half could discover no facts to warrant the the breadth of the way, and threaten pleasing belief entertained by some, that soon to bury it altogether; embankments genuine unchanged relics of the classic which, in obedience to the laws of grav- colonies once planted along these shores ity, are fast enticing the entire road to are still to be found here, guarded from join them company at the bottom of the foreign admixture by the triple defence ravines below; watercourses that, dis- of precipitous mountain, dense forest, daining restraint, wander fancy-free over and stormy sea. Such vestiges may inthe path, and furnish the unexpected va- deed have lingered long, but they have riety of quagmires in the dryest weather; now entirely disappeared under two thouin short, I fear that for the few miles that sand years of climatic influence, interwe availed ourselves of this master-speci- marriage, and the many wars and changes men of Ottoman industry, it hardly con- that have passed over the region. The veyed either to the hoofs of the horses," Greek ” here does not bear the title of or the minds of their riders, those im-"Hellenos," but " Room," i.e. Byzantine; pressions of unqualified admiration with and it is to Byzantine colonization, setwhich the constructors themselves regard tled here during the first ages of the emthe result of their engineering skill. pire, and afterwards largely re-inforced by the immigrants who fled from the barbarity of the Latin captors of Constantinople to the refuge offered by the Comnenian sceptre, that the inhabitants of these mountains, whether Christian or Mahometan, alike owe their language and their descent.

"Have you any such roads in Europe?" enquires of me, in the tone of conscious triumph, a red-capped, black-coated, shirtcollarless official, who has ridden thus far, honoris causa, at my side. With becoming gravity I reply, that for Europe in general I could not adequately answer, but that in England, to the best of my recollections, we certainly had not.

Such, however, as the road is, our, or rather our horses', enjoyment of it is brief; for our route soon ceases to coincide with its direction, and strikes off by a narrow transverse horse-track, that is generally adopted by summer travellers; for in winter the Khazeklee Pass, as it is called, 8,600 feet above the sea, and up which we have to scramble, is a hopeless waste of deep snow. So turning up a wild wooded gorge we begin the ascent; and from henceforth till we reach the town of Beyboort, in what once was Armenia, after a ride of about eighty

From the sea-shore up to a height of about five thousand feet, these Greek, or Byzantine, villages are tolerably numer ous, and have all much the same character. We clamber up by what would elsewhere be called a mere goat track, but here is dignified by the title of a road, amid the incomparably lovely scenery of these mountain sides, beneath the green lights and green shades of beech, alder, walnut, maple, chestnut, and ash overhead, by fantastic jutting masses of volcanic rock; while deep below the foaming torrent of the Aschyros, or the Kalopotamos, or the Saleros, rushes and raves with ceaseless roar through the black gorge; then sud