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of their language, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish are taught there, and beyond these things the student at a medresseh learns little else, except perhaps to waste time, and many of them are well advanced in years before they obtain their diplomas. It was amusing to us to watch the students lounging about their shady courtyard, some asleep, some nearly so, and one and all taking study, as the Moslems take everything, with exceeding leisure.

The imaret was even quainter than the college; outside two boys with huge wooden hammers were busily engaged in grinding corn in a round marble basin; within we found ourselves in a vast gloomy kitchen with blackened rafters and oldfashioned utensils; in one corner stood the large cauldrons in which the soup is cooked, in another were the appliances for baking that soft bread in which the Turks rejoice. At the appointed hour many poor from Brusa assembled here with their tin bowls for the reception of the dole, and if you are not afraid of coming in close contact with these miserable specimens of humanity, you will see much that is interesting both in custom and costume.

This compact nest of buildings around the tomb of Sultan Murad, and known collectively as the Muradieh, forms a sufficient study in itself for many days, and to my mind surpasses, both in beauty and quaintness, the far-famed green mosque of Brusa, with its walls clothed with rich enamelled faïence, even though the imam there will show you two wax candles, on two fine bronze sticks, standing on either side of the mihrab, which he will tell you have never been extinguished since they were lit by the founder of this mosque, the Sultan Mahomed I.; and certainly in its commanding position on the slopes of Olympus, the mosque and tomb of Mahomed I. forms one of the chief features of Brusa, whereas Murad buried himself and his buildings in a retired valley and made his minarets less pretentious.

Many mornings may be passed in the study of these mosques and their historical fore, but perhaps the lovely old citadel will conjure up even more pleasing remembrances. This was the citadel in which Prusa, the king of Bithynia, had his palace, the legendary founder of the town; here, too, he received Hannibal as his guest, and the view from the plateau within the old Roman walls is perfectly exquisite. Here in the days of the Byzantine occupation stood the Greek church

of the prophet Elias, and here after the Ottoman Turks became masters of the town were buried the bodies of the founders of the race, namely, the sultans Osman and Orchan; but in the great earthquake these tombs were destroyed, a fire having previously burnt the symbols of investiture of the first sultan, which were kept here, and which were sent to him by the sultan of Iconium as a definite recognition of independence when the Ottoman Turk showed that he was the proper person to lead Islam on to victory. Two miserable green erections have of late years been put up to cover the spot where the tombs of these first sultans once stood, and Abdul Hamid, the present occupant of the throne, has decorated these tombs with the order of Osmanieh, and furthermore he sent Brussels carpets to cover the floor, and French chandeliers to hang from the ceilings, and second-rate drawing-room curtains to pull over the windows, enough to raise the shades of those valiant heroes whose battle-axes won for Turkey her position amongst nations.

When the caravans from central Asia passed through Brusa instead of Smyrna, the bazaars were more important than they are now, but still they are delightfully Oriental and a pleasant contrast to those of Constantinople, where the foreigner is the butt and prey of the eager vendors. Without the molestation from irrepressible touts you may wander down the numerous branches and alleys which deviate from the main thoroughfare which forms the commercial centre of Brusa. In one of these you watch the spoonmakers seated cross-legged at their counter, which is seat, frontage, and workshop all in one, busily occupied in producing spoons in boxwood, horn, and tortoise-shell, the slender handles of which are very prettily engraved and usually tipped with a bit of coral to avert the evil eye. Then in another alley much time may be spent in watching the engravers of talismans and seals, and of course if you have been interested in the silk-factories the piles of Brusa gauze and rich objects in silk will call for some attention; also the carpenters, who are busy in the preparation of quaint chairs, and cradles for Turks yet unborn.

But those who are brave, and in search of genuine oddities, will not be content with the sparbazaar, as it is called, where the curiosity-vendors of Brusa congregate, and try to tempt the ignorant visitor with such objects of Birmingham manufacture

as have not met with a prompt sale at Constantinople; but they will penetrate far, far into the labyrinthine recesses of the place, until they have reached a bazaar with a very ugly name indeed, a locality known to all Turks, but to few strangers, as the "Louse Bazaar," where old clothes, old arms, old rags, old everything, lie piled in hopeless confusion, and suggest, without any doubt, the presence of those irritating animals after which the bazaar is named. In the centre is its white mosque, quite plain and unadorned, and only to be distinguished from a whitewashed cottage by its minaret; here the old-clothes vendors can run to pray at the appointed seasons. This mosque is shaded by three plane-trees, beneath which is a fountain, at which the old-clothes vendors can perform very necessary ablutions, and slake their thirst. The Louse Bazaar has likewise its tea-vendor, its biscuitvendor, and all the makings of a small though uncleanly society, and in this paradise the European bric-a-brac hunter may pick up, if he is patient and does not object to sitting near questionable rags, and drinking tea from a cup of questionable cleanliness, all sorts of stray curiosities which have found their way to Brusa from the centre of Asia Minor, and have not yet been sifted and appropriated by the Jews of the more respectable haunts of curiosity-hunters.

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An act was passed in the last days of the late Parliamentary session to expedite the fulfilment of that task which has been assigned to the Crofter Commission in Scotland. The tribunal has wrought with exemplary diligence and with signal courage, tempered by a wise discrimination. Nevertheless, a large amount of business waits to be overtaken. The plan adopted to further its performance is to enlarge the staff, and to split responsibility. Hitherto, a commissioner could not act alone. Henceforth, each of the three may do so, if aided by two assessors. A great increase of speed, it is easy to see, will thus be attained. Should the auxiliaries be well qualified, the result may prove as satisfactory as those which have been arrived at. They differ very widely; it is sometimes difficult to understand by what principle they have been governed; but there has been a notable absence of any disposition to impugn them, and where criticism has been ventured on, it has turned out inept and futile.

Before the holidays, two big clusters of fresh decisions were issued. They affect the island of Lewis and the west of Sutherlandshire. As happened formerly, the additional cases from the latter county are distinguished by the smallness of those Mount Olympus is often enveloped in rent-reductions which have been decreed. clouds, and when this happens down pours The awards embrace three hundred and the rain at Brusa, and the rushing streams thirty small tenancies in the parish of are turned into veritable cataracts by the Assynt. The earlier judgments affected increased vigor added to them. This a pacific population in its southern part. occurred to our cost at the termination of The diminution of rental that has been our sojourn there. Before us was spread ordered there amounts only to six per a vast sheet of water caused by the floods, cent., a smaller change than that enjoined and these floods must be passed through in any other instance. Moreover, only if we wished to catch the steamer at Mo-half the applicants will be thus benefited. dania. I am confident that if we had had A fourth of them remain as they were, any other driver than the one who brought while another fourth have been adjudged us, we should never have got through the to pay more than they were paying. The surging waters which boiled and foamed arrears were insignificant as respects around our carriage, and made Nilofer's number and amount. In a majority of quaint high bridge stand out alone like instances they were confined to a year's an islet in the centre of a lake. More payment, though in some they ran to two. than once our Jehu stopped hopelessly, Twenty-two and a half per cent. of them fearing, he said, lest he should lose the has been cancelled. Further north, nonroad track and we should be swept away; payment has been systematically practised but eventually we got through our difficul- for a considerable period. With rent-reties, and growled in concert at the folly of pudiation there was conjoined occasional the new pasha who has allowed the excel outbreaks of disturbance, the sole example lent drainage works of his predecessor to of such disorder on the estate. It would go into disrepair, and thus brought back seem, however, that some of the occupiers again to the plain of Brusa the pestilential were pinched with greater severity than floods. elsewhere. Their plight was not nearly so galling as that of their countrymen in

J. THEODORE BENT.

the islands, but they were straitened be- | of it, he fed the starving folk at his own yond others of the Sutherland tenantry. charges, the outlay going beyond £30,000. Hence the reductions made in the remain- A sum of more than 100,000 went in reing hundred and ninety-two cases bring claiming land. Equal to a fourth of that up the average over all to thirteen per amount was spent in road-making. Large cent. In particular instances, as in that subsidies were given to the maintenance of Chashmore, which has acquired an of steamboat communication and an imunenviable notoriety, it reaches to twenty- proved mail service. Well-nigh £12,000 three. Still, the general result comes far was devoted to school-buildings and the below any previous determination; in all, augmentation of teachers' salaries. The about seventy persons have had their rents crofters are also, for the most part, fisherraised, and an equal number have been men, and a good deal was done, though left as they were, the proportions so not so much as wisely might have been, to dealt with being almost equal in both ends facilitate their labors in that capacity, alike of the district; and it seems indisputable as respects catch, cure, and marketing. there existed every desire to pursue a Moreover, with the view of providing kindly, considerate style of management, other employments, brick-works were esso that if those who had just cause for tablished, and a great sum was sunk upon complaint had taken the right way to give chemical experiments intended to utilize it expression, relief would have been spon- the peat with which the island abounds. taneously afforded them. This is so even An utterly inadequate return was derived as regards requests that have been pre- from all this unstinted expenditure, though ferred for an enlargement of holdings, the its outlay was regulated by advice deemed first that have been submitted to the informed and trustworthy. Its gross commissioners. They have deferred pro- amount, beyond the purchase-price, and nouncing upon them; but they will be independent of the capital spent on Storspared any difficulty in complying with noway Castle and grounds, mounts to over the stringent conditions that are laid down £260,000. Sad to say, much of it was as regards such cases in the act they have wasted. The result has been naught. to administer; for the estate-managers The mass of the people are no whit better have been beforehand with them, and off than they were half-a-century ago. have given thought to the subject with a They are as distressed now as they were desire to carry out feasible improvements ordinarily then, and, it must be added, as of that sort. Thus, the chances are that impracticable. They have more interinstead of pronouncing any positive fiat, course with the outer world, but it has had the commissioners will merely have to little effect in changing their condition. interpose their sanction so as to validate Capable of arduous and persevering toil, a voluntary arrangement. It deserves if it be of a sort that pleases them and also to be noted that, as in the cases from gives promise of a reward both sure and the east part of the county previously de- proximate, they are, for the most part, cided, the tenants whose rent has been indolent and unenterprising. Their sur raised have already been informed the roundings are undoubtedly far from favoraugmentation will not be exacted. able. The island contains about four hundred thousand acres, of which little more than the fortieth part is arable. The soil is poor everywhere, except on alluvial holms; the climate rigorous; the population very redundant. In the year 1851 it was under eighteen thousand, and was thought too numerous then; thirty years later it had grown to more than twenty-six thousand, that is, more than the whole of Sutherlandshire contains, though Sutherland is three times larger. Maculloch, in his book on the western Highlands, writes of them as "being of pure Danish origin, although speaking unmixed Gaelic." He adds: "It would not be easy to mistake them for Highlanders: fat and fair, with ruddy complexious and blue eyes, their manners are mild and pleasing." Some change has passed on them, though they

The Lewis cases stand forth in sharpest contrast with those from Sutherland. The story they disclose is exceedingly distressing. It tells of good purposes foiled, of generous munificence lavished without beneficent result, of large enterprises designed to mate a business character with patriotism and philanthropy that have en countered frustration and produced only disappointment. The late Sir James Matheson expended a great fortune upon the island. He bought it at a cost of £190,000. In a short time he disbursed much more than an equal sum in the relief of poignant distress, and in the promotion of such improvements as would lift its inhabitants above the worst hazards of a recurrence. During the famine years, which ensued soon after his acquisition

continue picturesquely peculiar, and unite acuteness with simplicity. Their soil remains niggardly unfertile. In Sir John Sinclair's first "Statistical Account," published in 1797, it is described as "of little utility to beasts, of none to man, all covered with heath." The statement in 1834 was: "There is a green line round the seashore; but throughout the interior it is black as ink. bare of everything, almost of heath itself."

The crofting population number twentytwo thousand five hundred, their land being divided into twenty-nine hundred tenancies, the average rental of which was £2 175. per croft. The applications to have fair rents fixed which have been disposed of number six hundred and seven. The changes ordered have been most sweeping. The reductions, which in some instances run up to more than fifty per cent., average thirty-six; while arrears, often extending back four or five years in wholesale series, have been cancelled at the average rate of eighty per cent. What the effect will be, it is impossible to divine. The agricultural rent of the island seven years ago was nominally more than £12,000 a year. Of this, fully one-third was derived from a few sheep-farmers who hired pasturage for big flocks. It has declined all over of late, though the sums obtained from other sources may have risen. This compensation, in so far as it came from the tenants of deer-forests, has recently fallen off. With the decline of the rental, there has ensued no decrease of local taxation. The movement tends rather to aggravate what was a burden of almost intolerable weight. The poor-rates and education rates are higher in the Lewis than anywhere else. Taken along with other taxes, they approximate to Ios. in the 1, and have been known in some parishes to exceed that huge sum. Half the amount on rentals exceeding £4 is paid by the life-proprietrix; while she is responsible for the whole levy on sums below that figure. As it is, financial difficulties that threaten to culminate in bankruptcy beset the local authorities, and no outlet from the quagmire wherein they are entangled, of a sort that will receive the sanction of existing law, can be suggested by the most ingenious. Something ought to be devised for the relief of pressing embarrassments; while, beyond the problem of meeting the troubles of the hour, how permanently to better the condition of the island is an enigma the magnitude and gravity of which have no parallel in the Highlands. The crofters must get

more land if they are to remain in any numbers where they are, and the hapless cottars, who at present make shift with none, must be raised to a like level; but it would be undesirable to suppress the system of middle-sized farms, which is no innovation; and if they are to be retained or multiplied, the cultivatable soil is not large enough to make room for all. Some, therefore, must go, unless industry and trade can be marvellously developed; yet if they are to go willingly, no stronger inducements can be held out than those Sir James Matheson proffered with little avail. Forty years since he was willing to forgive all debts, to buy their cattle from the crofters if they could find no other purchaser, to provide a passage to Canada, and, if a sufficient number volunteered, to send with them pastors and teachers. The Scottish secretary and his advisers are not likely to do more. They may have better success, though it is to be feared the Lewis men are too conservative and too gregarious to depart readily from the ways of their fathers and their fellows. The main reliance must be placed on an increase of knowledge to furnish a clue that will guide through the mazes of this labyrinth.

From All The Year Round. STUDENT

THE GERMAN EMPEROR'S
DAYS.

THE " fire-eating" speeches, the restless energy, rapid movements, and distant journeys of the new emperor William have only shown as yet his outside character, but very little of his private manners or of his settled policy. He is still an unknown quantity in the calculations of Europe; we cannot reckon on the unknown, or trust in the untried. Hence, perhaps, arise the fears with which he sometimes is regarded. But in his char acter I see no causes for misgivings, and I have watched him from a boy. During his school career he was a model of the studious German youth. He took his place as a common pupil in the public school at Cassel, and played and studied with the other scholars. At the final examination he was, indeed, only tenth on the list; but then he was two years younger than his mates, and was rightly considered to have done so well that his tutor was immediately knighted. There is no cramming system in Germany; he passed without aid or favor.

Yet Prince William never showed any irritation at all this annoyance, which could certainly have been punished. He remained placid and indifferent to their personal insults, and in the end he outwearied his tormentors, and, by his continued gentleness, he actually won their hearts and turned them into admirers.

By the professors, however, the prince was treated with an almost servile adulation, and he won their esteem and love. He had them all in turn to dinner at his rooms in a villa which overhung the Rhine, with the honeysuckle, clematis, and Virginia creepers reaching over and down the garden walls almost to the water's edge.

At the University of Bonn I have sat on | deed, on one occasion, I actually found the same benches with him, and seen him, myself unwittingly thus jumping on the with his little note-book, writing down, head of the present emperor, and was like a hard-worked reporter, nearly all the thrown on my back in the water by his professor uttered in his lectures on the rising up between my feet. But the Engreat German authors, or on the genius of glish boys took a special delight in pesour own Shakespeare. The prince was tering the prince, not only in the baths, anxious also to study subjects not just but in boating, on the promenade, and then in the curriculum, and for these the about the university and town. It is said professors attended at his rooms. Day that William does not like the English; by day I have seen him riding out in the and, indeed, it is not surprising. afternoon for exercise, dressed in his stiff military cap, and long boots, and simple blue jacket, as hussar, and nodding courteously to all who greeted him. Day by day I have been with him in the swimming-baths in the Rhine, and seen him plunging off the spring board with his cousin, the Prince of Meiningen, who accompanied him as adjutant. They would. both spring fearlessly, head-foremost, from the highest point of the board, and plunge, and dive, and swim with great dexterity, sometimes swimming under the water the whole length of the bath, sometimes watching others plunge or dive for things thrown in. I remember them joining in the half-pitying laugh which arose when an American (an ex-president's son) who had brought an umbrella to the baths, and was whirling it round and round, let it slip into the Rhine. Many were glad of the mishap, and dived in glee to seek this new Nibelungen treasure. Even Prince William and his friends made some attempts; but all in vain. I fortunately had come fresh to the baths, and diving, groped for the umbrella along the ground, for the dun waters of the Rhine exclude the light, till, exhausted, I had to emerge without the "gamp.” I had dived, perhaps, with an air of confidence, and I now perceived a grin of ridicule and disappointment in the bathers when my hands were seen without the "find." But in rising, still groping with my feet, I caught the leviathan between my toes, and I remember the cheer of princes and all as I held it aloft in the water and opened it out to the sun.

The queen sent him out from England a splendid boat, costing nearly two hundred pounds; but he used it very little, and it generally lay moored by the bank beneath his garden, idly rocking in the ripple of the Rhine.

But he took part heartily in all the amusements common among German students, namely, beer-drinking, duelling, torch-light processions, carriage-driving, bathing, and in winter, sledging. I do not think he ever fought a real duel; but he mingled freely with the duellers, and in Kneipen (drinking bouts), and torch-light serenades, sipping and sitting with the sippers of light German beer till late into the night.

In 1878, the sixtieth anniversary of the University of Bonn occurred. The anniversary of everything, the birthday of everybody, is made the occasion of a feast or holiday in Germany. A drinking-bout, Meiningen usually sprang immediately a torch light serenade, or a driving round after the prince, whom he had to protect the town, are their usual manifestations. from a crowd of irrepressible bathers, And at Bonn this day was celebrated with mostly English schoolboys, who kept hov a royal pomp, in which the present emering round the baths like long, bare-peror took part. At dusk a thousand stulegged, shivering cranes, waiting, half dents met outside the town, and fell into maliciously, for an opportunity to spring upon him in the stream. I have seen groups of these English fellows purposely plunge pell-mell after the princes, sometimes lighting on their heads in the water, and splashing them with the spray. In

marching order four abreast. In front of the procession rode five heralds, girt with sword and helmet, and dressed in gorgeous array; top boots, white trousers, velvet coats, large velvet caps with tall white feathers. These opened a way through

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