little time and thought; probably she the beginning of August, he arrived at would write during the day, and he would N-, a pretty little Hampshire village, get it at night. On his return in the and after making a few inquiries, found evening he did feel a pang when he the house, - a little cottage villa on the found nothing awaiting him. Hope, outskirts of the village. As he walked up however, again "told a flattering tale; "the shady road leading to the house, hat in hand, enjoying the refreshing breeze, for the heat of the day was over, his quick eyes perceived the two ladies in the gar den. The old lady, now convalescent, was seated in a low American chair on the lawn. It was five o'clock, and they were taking tea, which was spread on the grass. Angelina sat at her aunt's feet. It was a long time since he had seen her with this sans-souci air-it reminded him of ten

and a long waving lock of her brown hair had escaped from the neat coiffe in which she always wore it. Years seemed to have been lifted from her shoulders since he last saw her, but the pretty apple-blossom in her cheeks, which improved her so wonderfully, quickly faded when she recog nized their visitor.

he must not be impatient: a dozen trivial things might have taken up her time, for hers were hands that always found work to do. Doubtless her answer would reach him on the following day. But alas! the next day brought the same result, and the next, and the next, and he had just begun to admit to himself that the letter was a failure, when another ray of hope unexpectedly lightened his dark prospects. He gained from a conversation he over-years ago. She wore a thin, white dress, heard between his mother and sisters that Angelina had left her home to nurse a sick aunt in the country; a maiden aunt, who lived alone. She had gone the day after that on which he had made her the offer, and had not received his letter, therefore, before she went. Dying hope now sprung up almost as strong as ever. Perhaps the letter had never been forwarded, or not until now; perhaps it had been mislaid; perhaps the aunt had been so ill that Angelina could not even find time to write him a line. He resolutely turned a deaf ear to the voice of his heart, which began, "Love would have found time." Perhaps fifty things; but oh, heart! close thy doors against the cold, dreadful feeling of despair, the certainty that his appeal was vain. So the next week stole away, and the next, and the next, and his sorrow, now a month old, was growing heavier every day.

After first greetings, he muttered something about being in the neighborhood, and thinking he might be allowed the privilege of calling. He then devoted himself to the aunt, who straightway fell in love with him, and thinking with wonderful acuteness that he had come to see Lina, deter mined that he should have an opportunity of doing so. She therefore presently requested Angelina to take him into the house and give him some tea: she would prefer remaining out a little longer, if they would kindly excuse her. The opportu nity had come, but it was of no use; he begged, he entreated, to no avail. She no longer loved him," and nothing could induce her to marry him now.

Half in madness, half in anger, and all in love, he asked her did she mean to remain as she was, with no one to love her when she grew old, and perhaps had to work until she could do so no longer?

One morning, just as the fifth week had commenced, he found on his study table" a little modest-looking note in her pretty, careful hand. She began by apologizing for the delay which was caused by the let ter having been mislaid, and only now forwarded to her, and she then thanked him for the honor he had done her; but she really meant what she had said: and though she regretted it, she could never marry him. They were unsuited to each other and so forth.

He felt for the moment, as he pressed his hand to his head, as if his mind were leaving him. This calmness of hers was so crushing. But he had one last card to play; he would see her once more, and all that mortal man could do to make her change this terrible decree he would do, and with a flushed cheek and an unnatural light in his eye, he hurried from the house.

On the following day, a lovely day in

She smiled a saddish little smile, and said, "Most likely it would be so, but that would be better than marrying any one you did not love, and who only married you from a feeling of pity; and now she never wished to hear anything more about mar rying. It was like her youth-to her a thing of the past."

He gazed at her for a moment - the brown hair parted evenly over the white brow, the soft, steady grey eyes, the sweet sad mouth - and afraid to trust himself a moment longer, he seized his hat and rushed like a madman from the house. Indeed, he was just then little better than

mad. Now his hope was really dead; at | shall be insisted upon. As the name is an last he knew it.

For a long time people wondered much what was the matter with Edwin. Some the sentimental, mostly ladies — guessed pretty near the truth; others the practi cal, mostly his bosom friends-thought bad investments, or dyspepsia. The only one who ever really knew the exact state of the case was the friend of whom mention has been made before in these pages. They met in town, already deserted, the last week in August. His friend at once saw something had gone wrong, and after some light commonplaces he gave Edwin a comforting slap on the shoulder and an encouraging word or so. "Something wrong, old man? Don't be down-hearted; not much, I hope. Not got into the hands of the Jews, have you?"

"No, Frank, thanks; not that kind of trouble; that isn't my way, as you know. Something worse than even that. I shall lose the holiday on which, as I told you, I had set my heart. I am not going away next month."

unfamiliar one to the general public, and yet possesses no little interest, the present may perhaps be a fitting opportunity for briefly stating the relation in which Jánnina stands to the present Greek kingdom; that is, what its history has been, and how far it can fairly lay claim to a union with Greece. The part of Epirus to which it belongs was included in the new frontier recommended at the Berlin Congress. But the Turks have lately shown themselves restive on this point.

And first as to its position, Jánnina, or, as it was formerly called, Joánnina, stands in a valley of Epirus (or southern Albania), one thousand feet above the sea, surrounded by lofty mountains, and on the western shore of a fine lake. A line drawn almost straight inland from the Albanian coast opposite to Corfu would reach Jánnina after traversing several other valleys running parallel to the coast, the distance being about fifty miles. On the east rises Mount Mitzikéli, celebrated for its abrupt steepness and rugged majesty. Behind this, in the north-east, is seen the Pindus range, covered with snow. On the west, "the valley is guarded by the lower ridge of Mount Olytzika, the first of a series of heights sloping down gradually to the Adriatic. Many writers have celebrated the natural beauties of Jánnina, including Lord Broughton, Sir Henry Holland, Rev. T. S. Hughes, Col. Leake, Lady Strangford, and others. Let one description, by a traveller approaching from the south, suffice:

"Not going to be married just yet, after all? Perhaps you will come, then, to But something stopped him. "How selfish I am. You don't mean to say she wouldn't have you?"

"That's just it. Now don't say 'there are as good fish in the sea as ever were caught; won't do here, Frank. I don't mind telling you - you're a good fellow, and won't talk about me to any of them; but I've loved her all my life, and it is an awful blow. Good-bye."

Knowing our vicinity to Joánnina, we were now impatient to obtain the first view of that Ten years after, when Edwin was bald city, which is long concealed from the eye by and grey, and Angelina's brown hair itself the low eminences traversing the plain. At thickly streaked with silver, they met length, when little more than two miles disagain. The first three of those_ten_years tant, the whole view opened suddenly before she had spent with her aunt. For the re-us; a magnificent scene, and one that is still maining seven she had been the wife of a almost single in my recollection. A large lake hard-working country doctor. They met spreads its waters along the base of a lofty amongst the pictures at Burlington House. and precipitous mountain which forms the first She was leading by the hand a bright-ridge of Pindus on this side, and which, as I haired child of about six summers. And he was alone. Oh, so alone!

From Macmillan's Magazine.
JANNINA-GREEK OR TURKISH?

RECENT telegrams from Athens have more than once announced the fact that deputations of Epirotes have assembled in front of King George's palace, demanding that the cession of Jánnina to Greece

had afterwards reason to believe, attains an
elevation of more than twenty-five hundred
feet above the level of the plain. Opposed to
the highest summit of this mountain, and to a
small island which lies at its base, a peninsula
stretches forward to the lake from its western
shore, terminated by a perpendicular face of
rock. This peninsula forms the fortress of
Joánnina; a lofty wall is its barrier on the
land side; the waters which lie around its
outer cliffs reflect from their surface the irreg-

* Compare Byron, Childe Harold, ii. 52.
"Unseen is Jánina, though not remote,
Veiled by the screen of hills."

may

By a later writer it is called "at once the fortress and the granary of Epirus." t

ular yet splendid outline of a Turkish seraglio, | 879. But the first actual mention of the and the domes and minarets of two Turkish city is made by Anna Comnena, who remosques, environed by ancient cypresses. The cords its occupation in 1082 by Bohemond, eye, receding backwards from the fortress of son of the famous Robert Guiscard, who the peninsula, reposes upon the whole extent of the city as it stretches along the western refortified the citadel, then in a state of borders of the lake. Repose, indeed, it dilapidation (enopalès), and defeated under not unfitly be called, since both the reality and its walls the imperial forces, led by Alexius fancy combine in giving to the scenery the Comnenus, uncle of the historian. From character of a vast and beautiful picture spread the time of this Norman inroad Jánnina out before the sight.* disappears from history till the capture of Constantinople by the Franks (1204), and the consequent foundation of the "despotate" of Epirus, or of the West, by Michael Angelos, a natural son of Constantine Angelos, who having married a daughter of the governor of Durazzo, quickly subdued and united under his sway Epirus, Acarnania, and Etolia, with the strong cities of Jánnina, Arta, and Naupactus. Finlay, in the volume of his history which treats of medieval Greece, has given some account of the character of this rule, and of the general condition of Epirus at the time. The Greeks, whom he describes as wealthy and prosperous, both as merchants and as large proprietors of land, were confined generally to the towns, and formed the most solid element of the population as they do to this day. The Wallachians in the north-east, and the Albanian mountaineers, still half-barbarians, were kept in submission by an army of mercenaries. The despots all assumed the title of Ange los Komnenos Ducas, but very little is heard about them except their wars and alliances with the Byzantine emperors and the Latin princes. Thomas, the last in direct line, was murdered in 1318, and a succession of similar assassinations left the throne in charge of Anne, daughter of Andronicus Palæologus, who held it for her son Nicephorus II. Epirus was invaded and conquered in 1337 by the emperor Andronicus III. But he was not long in The fact is that the foundation of the was overrun by Stephen Dushan, king of possession, for in 1350 the whole country city is nowhere recorded, though from Servia, who made himself master of Epirus various references in the Byzantine histo- and great part of Thessaly. In fact, to rians, it seems probable that the site was quote the words of Finlay, "The history occupied in the early days of that empire. of Epirus after its conquest by Stephen We hear of a bishop suffragan of Jánnina becomes mixed up with the wars of the in 673, and another is mentioned as taking Servians, Albanians, Franks, and Greeks part in the Council of Constantinople in in the neighboring provinces until the whole fell into the hands of the Turkst

So much then for the natural aspect of Jánnina; let us now glance at its history. The absence of any sign of its existence in classical antiquity has been accounted for by the supposition that the lake, the upper part of which even now is, usually, little more than a marsh, was two thousand years ago no lake at all. But though no ancient city could be identified with the spot, tradition long connected it with Dodona, the seat of the famous oracle of Zeus, dating back, even in Homer's estimation, to the hoarest antiquity, and the very cradle of Greek civilization. Even so experienced an observer as Col. Leake came to the conclusion, after long examination of the spot, that here Dodona had stood, and that Mount Mitzikéli was to be identified with the Mount Tamoros of antiquity. Now, however, this notion must be finally given up, the researches of M. Karapanos having two years ago laid bare the actual site of Dodona, at Dramisus, in the adjoining valley of Tcharacovista, some six miles south-west of Jánnina. Jánnina, then, cannot be associated directly either with old Greek history or legend; but it may be noted that if the new frontier of the Greek kingdom excludes Jánnina, it will also exclude the actual site of Dodona, there being no possible raison d'être for a line drawn between the two places.

Holland's Travels in the Ionian Isles, p. 94 (1815). See various references to Byzantine historians in tItinéraire de l'Orient. Grèce et Turquie d'Eu-Hughes's Travels in Albania, vol. ii., p. 11. rope, par Emile Isambert (Hachette's Guide-Joanne), 1873.

It is a curious fact that Col. Leake accurately describes these very ruins of Dramisus without the least suspicion of their identity with Dodona. His plan of the site corresponds minutely, so far as it goes, with that of M. Karapanos. See Northern Greece, vol. i., p. 266.

Finlay's History of Greece (new edition, 1877), vol. iv., pp. 121, sqq. The chief authority for the his tory of Jannina at this time is an anonymous MS. history found by Pougueville (French consul at Jánnina about 1790) in the famous monastery of Meteora in Thessaly. This and another of later date are given in an appendix to vol iv of Leake's Northern Greece.

under Amurath II., in 1431, not, however, | learning should have found sustenance in until they had been twice gallantly re- Greece at a time when the whole country pulsed. The Ottomans in Jannina were was in the lowest state of degradation says at first not much more than two hundred, much for the soil whence it sprung, and but they soon multiplied. Still, thanks to may well explain the present anxiety of privileges secured at their conquest, the the Greeks that men who have deserved citizens managed to avoid for nearly two so well of their country as the citizens of centuries the continual wars which raged Jánnina have should be allowed to share in this part of the world between Venetians in the freedom from foreign domination and Turks. In 1612, however, a rash in- which the kingdom of Greece enjoys. surrection got up by a wandering fanatic, Dionysius, known as the Dog-sophist, gave the conquerors an excuse for strong measures to stifle it, and Jánnina was put on the same footing as that of other conquered

towns.

It will not be necessary here to touch, except briefly, upon the remarkable career of Ali, pasha of Jánnina, whose fame it was doubtless that attracted so many European travellers to that city at the end of the last and the beginning of the present

Meanwhile, with the increase of the Ot-century. An Albanian by descent, but toman population, numerous conversions, born in the service of the Porte, he worked and especially the enforced enrolment of his way up till he had not only acquired Greek children among the Janissaries of possession of the pashalik of south Albathe Porte, led to the strengthening of the nia, with Jánnina for his capital, but had Mussulman element at the expense of the also extended it till it included the greater Christian. And in 1635 this movement part of Thessaly, and all western Greece. was still further advanced by an incident He has been described as a rebel against which, though in itself creditable to the the Turk, a tyrant towards the Greek, a Epirotes, was otherwise interpreted by cruel oppressor of Christian and Moslem their superiors. The Christians of Epirus alike, though it is probable that, as showhad retained the privilege of drawing rev- ing how the Turkish power could be reenues from certain lands, on condition of sisted, he did some service to the Greek serving when called upon in the ranks of cause. "His ability was displayed," says the Ottoman cavalry. The holders of Finlay, "in subduing the Albanians, cheatthese lands were called Spahis. In 1634 ing the Ottoman government, and ruling the sultan Amurath V. was engaged in a the Greeks. . . . Under his government fight with the Persians, and when the latter Joánnina became the literary capital of the were getting the better of the Ottoman Greek nation colleges, libraries, and troops a sudden charge on the part of the schools flourished and enjoyed indepenEpirote Spahis changed the threatened dent endowments." Not, we may be sure, rout into a brilliant victory. This circum- that he was personally interested, or gave stance led the sultan to reflect on the direct help in such matters, but he allowed dangers of such valor if directed against the wealthy Greeks to devote themselves himself, and a decree was issued with- and their money to what they felt to be the drawing the privileges of Spahis from all good cause, and we cannot doubt that their but Mussulmans, which meant to these exertions conferred a real and lasting benunfortunate people ruin or conversion. efit on their nation. Let us hear the variWe can hardly wonder that under such ous witnesses as to the condition of Jáncircumstances, they chose the latter course. nina in his time and before it. Lord Byron, In 1675 Jánnina was visited by the first in a note to the second canto of “Childe European travellers, Spon and Wheler, Harold," commenting on a statement that who describe it as a larger_town_than "Athens is still (i.e., in 1810) the most polArta, and inhabited by rich Greek mer-ished city of Greece," says: chants. Sir Henry Holland, in 1812, mentions that one particular school had been founded one hundred and thirty years before. We may conclude, therefore, that about the time which we have now reached sprang up that enlightened interest in Greek culture which has ever since distinguished Jánnina.* That any germ of

This view is held by M. Paparrigopoulo, the native historian of Hellenic civilization, who after describing the renascence of public instruction in the seventeenth century as largely due to the generosity of the

Perhaps this may be said of Greece, but not of the Greeks; for Joánnina in Epirus is universally allowed, amongst themselves, to be

Greek communities at Venice and elsewhere, says, "Jánina especially became a veritable nursery of didascali, who in their turn were placed successively at the head of other schools in the Peloponnese, continental Greece, Thessaly, Macedonia, Chios, etc. Such were Eugène Boulgaris, Nicephorus Theotoki, John Dimitriades, Athanasius Psallida, Lambros Photiadis, Constantine Economos, George Gennadios, and others, whose names at this period sounded from one end to the other of the Hellenic East."

superior in the wealth, refinement, learning, | history, mathematics, and natural sciand dialect of its inhabitants.*