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the steepest of these paths we soon come in sight of the palace. It is a small building, in the French rococo style, planted on a broad marble terrace set with vases and statues, and surrounded by flower-beds, clipped hedges, and trellised walks. At the foot of the terrace the great "Neptune Fountain" rises from the centre of a marbled space, and, beyond this, curving flights of steps behind the sculptural basin of the "Nixies' Fount" lead up to the Monopteros temple enshrining Hautmann's Venus.

We reach this point of vantage at the right moment, for at once the fountains begin to play. Prodigious jets of water spring on high, sparkling, dancing, scattering diamonds in the sunlight.

There is a fantastic

charm in the contrast between these artificial splendors and the austere setting of lonely crags and dusky pines. But the park beyond the palace and gardens has been laid out with due respect to nature, and groups of graceful silver birches ingeniously soften the sternness of the forest walls behind. Only, the pity of it all! the enormous lime-tree, by the "Nixies' Fount"-from which the place derives its name once shaded a rustic lodge suited to the landscape, but the king, after altering and enlarging it, finally swept it away and chose another site for the present Gallic villa. But he respected the tree, and high up its ancient trunk is a wooden platform, formerly supporting the cage-like arbor in which the poor monarch loved to take his breakfast and play at being a bird. No one can mount to this retreat, the winding stair having been removed.

As for the interior of the little palace, it combines the wildest luxury with the most execrable taste. The entrance-hall is lined and pillared with costly marbles, and, as in the room above, one feels that the king must have aimed at expending the greatest possible amount of money on a very limited space. Such a jumble precious things and jarring colors, of royal splendor and vulgar display!

of

Rare tapestries lose their effect on over-gilded walls; lapis-lazuli is horrible cheek by jowl with cabbagy malachite and staring Florentine mosaic. One small boudoir hung in mauve satin and silver, and another in pale pink and gold, would have been delightful without the bad pastels of the Grand Monarque and his loves which deface their walls. Only, in one of the too-dazzling rooms there were marvellously embroidered curtains of soft-hued satin on which our eyes rested with joy. I forget where they hung-perhaps in that ghastly glass hall, a small copy of the Versailles "Salle des Miroirs," quite fitted to unsettle the sanest mind. The king loved it so much that he often used it as a bedchamber, sleeping on a couch in a glass-lined alcove, and surrounded by endless reflections of his own image.

The dining-hall, with its "Arabian Nights" table sinking through the floor at touch of a spring, illustrates poor Ludwig's craving for solitude, just as his writing-table, canopied with ermine, ruby velvet, and ostrich plumes, testifies to his crazy conception of royal state; but his bedroom is maddest of all. It is upholstered throughout with rich Lyons velvet of the most violent, crudest blue. Even the raised platform supporting the profusely carved and curtained bed is carpeted with the same material, while the harvest of an African farm is represented by the great clusters of ostrich plumes surmounting the canopy. The daintily carved doors and walls are overladen with gold leaf, and the delicate porcelains scattered about the room are killed by their aggressive surroundings. Perhaps King Ludwig was color-blind, and he was certainly victimized by unscrupulous purveyors. of Mirrors, for instance, is an ivory chandelier that cost £12,500 sterling, but which, lacking the polish of age, might as well have been carved from unstained wood. But we must not forget to note a very lovable trait of the poor king's character. He prized

In the Hall

the affection of his subjects, and gladly accepted their gifts. So, among the treasures of his china shelves, one sees little swans of common clay, and all sorts of humble peasant pottery.

Meanwhile, as most of the foolish splendors were left unpaid, a fee of three marks is exacted from every visitor to Linderhof. The prince regent never uses the palace, but stays at the steward's farm when he comes to shoot the preserves, or for big-game expeditions, in a still simpler hunting lodge on the mountain behind.

The Tannhäuser grotto in the park is another reckless freak. It is an artificial cavern closed by a huge boulder that turns on a pivot at the stroke of three o'clock. Reaching the entrance a little too soon, we were startled by a strange shivering clang among the beeches overhead. It had the weirdest effect, but only signified that the machinery was set in movement. Then followed a sound of rushing water; the underground bath was being filled! The rock-door si lently opened to us, and passing through the narrow opening, we entered a gloomy corridor studded with imitation stalactites, and presently came to a lofty vaulted cave containing a good-sized piece of water fed by a cascade. Floating on the lake was the swan-shaped boat with redvelvet draperies in which the king often passed solitary nights gazing at the great pictures of Tannhäuser in the Venusberg decorating one side of the cavern. This so-called Blue Grotto is abundantly illuminated by powerful colored lamps of a purplish magenta hue. So even the light is false, and what with its tin palms, tin stalactites, and imitation ice cave, the whole is a painful sham. For even the living water seems unreal in the sickly light. The damp chill of this ghastly place pierced to one's marrow; we gladly returned to the warm outer air and wandered among the flowers, down trellised paths and beneath towering beeches. But yet another

atrocity had to be seen; the Eastern kiosk copied from the Alhambra. This, too, is a blaze of magenta light, adorned with false jewels, false gold, and sham Moorish pottery of painted wood.

No wonder that the treasury was drained, or that the wearied government should have checked the ruinous waste by depriving their king of his power. His tragic death some time later seemed almost a foregone conclusion. We journeyed to Starnberg one day, visited the castle of Berg, where his last months were spent under medical care, and saw the memorial cross on the shore near Leoni. Whether he really committed suicide, or whether, resenting incessant surveillance, he turned on his physician in a fit of fury, will never be known. At any rate, both perished in the lake, and the bodies were found closely locked together. Had the doctor tried to rescue his drowning patient, or was he the victim of a murderous assault? Popular feeling suggests another solution of the mystery. The lower classes adored the king, for he heard their petitions, cared for their needs, and freely admitted them to his presence. Accordingly, they refuse to believe him dead. He has been hidden away somewhere, they think, and will come to his own again one day.

Schloss Berg is a modest mansion belonging to the queen dowager. Its simple interior is of early Victorian ugliness as to wallpapers and chintzes. Of course, the usual abominable blue prevails in the poor king's apartments, and his walls are hung with countless drawings and engravings of Wagnerian scenes. The garden is beautiful; the park a woodland paradise, and the outlook over the lake restful enough, one might have thought, to bring peace to a mind diseased. Was it to gain peace that Ludwig plunged into the tranquil depths?

LINDA VILLARI.

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HOW WEARY IS OUR HEART.

Of kings and courts; of kingly courtly

ways

In which the life of man is bought and sold;

I heard the sighing of the reeds

Night after night, day after day, And I forgot old age, and dying, And youth that loves, and love's decay.

How weary is our heart these many days! I heard the sighing of the reeds

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That in the dear, affronted name of Peace Bind down a people to be racked and slain, The emulous armies waxing without cease, All-puissant all in vain;

The pacts and leagues to murder by delays,

At noontide and at evening, And some old dream I had forgotten I seemed to be remembering.

I hear the sighing of the reeds:
Is it in vain, is it in vain
That some old peace I had forgotten
Is crying to come back again?
New Review.

ARTHUR SYMONS.

"There's a grey fog over Dublin of the curses;

It blinds my eyes, mavrone, and stops

my breath;

And I travel slow that once could run the swiftest;

And I fear ere I meet Mauryeen I'll meet Death.

And the dumb throngs that on the deaf "There's a grey fog over Dublin of the

thrones gaze;

The common, loveless lust of territory; The lips that only babble of their mart, While to the night the shrieking hamlets

blaze;

The bought allegiance, and the purchased

praise,

False honor, and shameful glory;-
Of all the evil whereof this is part,
How weary is our heart,

How weary is our heart these many days!
Daily Chronicle. WILLIAM WATSON.

BY THE POOL AT THE THIRD ROSSES.

I heard the sighing of the reeds

In the grey pool in the green land, The sea-wind in the long reeds sighing Between the green hill and the sand.

I heard the sighing of the reeds

Day after day, night after night; I heard the whirring wild ducks flying, I saw the sea-gulls' wheeling flight.

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From The Nineteenth Century.
THE MODERN BABEL.

The author of the 11th chapter of the Book of Genesis felt profoundly low great a lever of civilization a common language among men must be. He represents Jehovah as foreseeing that with this bond of union "nothing will be withholden from them which they purpose to do." Hence human speech, he tells us, was confounded; the too rapid growth of human power was indefinitely stayed by the separation of language into divers tongues. Those who still believe in a Special Providence regulating the temporal affairs of men may fairly point to the same interference operating at the present day. Whenever a number of neighboring nations or races, separated by their speech, have been brought into that large and constant contact which is implied by a common civilization, they have endeavored to overcome this great obstacle; they have striven towards a common language, or a common graphic system; and yet when the goal of unity, at least so far as common intercourse, had been well-nigh attained, hostile causes interfere. With the confounding of speech all the labor of approximation by mutual understanding of a common language is undone, and we begin again from the Tower of Babel.

There is no clearer proof than this to an historian that human progress is not a continuous advance, but something spasmodic, which often recedes from unclaimed ground, which often resigns conquered territory. There was a time, not many centuries ago, when any man who chose to learn Latin in addition to his mother tongue could converse easily with any other educated man in Europe. There never was a better practical solution of a great difficulty. By keeping up as the medium of communication a dead language, if we may so term a language freely spoken, but no longer the mother tongue of any European people, all difficulties of international jealousy, which are now the greatest obstacle to a solution, were evaded. Latin was by common consent regarded as the purest, the most grammatical, the

most logical idiom which a man could learn; there were to be found in it not only all the learned works of the day, but also great ancient masterpieces, not since equalled as standards of literary taste. This language had its alphabet perpetuated in its daughters; it was devoid of that exuberance of flexions and of particles which makes other great languages so difficult to learn. It was the language which had been spoken by the world's conquerors, and was therefore the language of law, of religion, of philosophy. By acquiring this one passport to European thought, the mediæval youth had attained what years of study and an accumulation of linguistic lore will not now provide. For, ever since the Renaissance, or certainly the Reformation, the Aufklärung in other directions has been the growth of confusion in this. A struggle seems. to have arisen among the modern Romance languages, which of them should be the successor to Latin. After a sudden and early growth of Italian which must at one time have seemed to men the natural heir-Provençal was only the common language of artificial Love French succeeded in occupying the civilized courts and the polite society of Europe. If the old French monarchy and aristocracy had not been swept away by the terrible Revolution; if France had not ruined her primacy in courtliness, and had not for a time become the dread and the horror of all Europe, it is quite possible that French might have become the exclusive international medium. But the mercantile preponderance of England and the national antagonism of Germany raised up rivals to her supremacy. And since the assertion of nationality was identified with the speaking of a special language, all hope of any agreement has disappeared. When I was young, it was fairly assumed that a working knowledge of English, French, and German would open to the student all the stores of European learning. Nothing can now be further from the truth. Not only are there scientific and literary works of international importance-I exclude mere poetry and small talk

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