"Who is Hadji Selim? He who is the most illustrious of all the Khans, the favoured of God. May the Lord God accord him every benefit as a reward for the erection of this mosque. Selim Guerai Khan is, in his existence, comparable to the rose-tree. His son is a

rose. Each in his turn has been crowned with the honours of the seraglio. The rose-tree has flourished anew; its only fresh rose has become the lion of the Padishah of the Crimea-Salamat Guerai Khan. God has fulfilled my wish in this inscription. It is to the Lord God alone that this mosque has been erected.-Salamat Guerai Khan.”

In the cemetery attached to this mosque the traveller never ceases to admire the wonderful art with which the Orientals disguise the gloomy idea of death under fresh and gladsome images. "Who," asks De Hell, "can yield to dismal thoughts as he breathes a perfumed air, listens to the waters of a sparkling fountain, and follows the little paths, edged with violets, that lead to lilac groves, bending their fragrant blossoms over tombs adorned with rich carpets and gorgeous inscriptions?" A great many interesting tombs are to be seen in this cemetery, some of which have the appearance of antiquity. The tombs of the Khans are enclosed in a walled garden adjoining the great court. They are very simple, consisting of domed temples, in which are plain sarcophagi, with pedestals on their heads, on which are placed turbans; the inscriptions on many are full of poetry. Yet is there a meaning in this simplicity to those who can read it, for every monument is constructed to embody a leading idea. For instance, Devlit Guerai Khan had his tomb built without a roof, because he considered "the heavens so beautiful and sublime that even from his grave he would wish to look towards the firmament-the abode of God." Another had his tomb entirely walled up, because, as the inscription runs, "he did not feel himself worthy to be shone on by the least ray of God's sun." On the grave of Taktamush Khan a vine was planted over his head, "that he who in his lifetime had brought forth so little fruit might at least in death be more productive." Selim Guerai Khan had himself buried under the eaves of the roof of the mosque, "that as the rain dripped down upon him, the water from heaven might wash away the foulness of his sins, which were as many as the drops falling from the clouds."

Some isolated pavilions contain the tombs of Khans of most eminent renown. They are much more ornate than the others, and the care with which they are kept up testifies the pious veneration of the Tartars. Carpets, cashmeres, lamps burning continually, and inscriptions in letters. of gold, combine to give grandeur to these monuments. There are besides a vast number of marble monuments, some falling, but all intermingled with shrubs, vines, and flowers: these are the graves of the wives and odalisks, the children and the relatives of the Khans, as also of the officers and retainers of the court.

It appears strange, after the conduct pursued by Russia to the last of the Khans, who was cruelly put to death, and amidst all the barbarities that have marked the conquest of the Crimea - the destruction of Hellenic, Roman, and Genoese buildings, the sweeping away of every remnant of antiquity and former domination, even to erasing the names of places from the map-that they should have allowed the Tartars the

gratification of retaining this great memorial of their ancient dynasty. Their conduct towards Poland forces a suspicion that it has not been spared out of any kind consideration to the feelings of a fallen enemy.

"If it now be asked," writes the distinguished traveller Dr. Clarke, "what the Russians have done for the Crimea, after the depravity, the cruelty, and the murders by which it was obtained, and on that account became so favourite an acquisition in their eyes, the answer is given in a few words. They have laid waste the country; cut down the trees; pulled down the houses; overthrown the sacred edifices of the natives, with all their public buildings; destroyed the public aqueducts; robbed the inhabitants; insulted the Tartars in their acts of public worship; torn up from the tombs the bodies of their ancestors, casting their relics upon dunghills and feeding swine out of their coffins; annihilated all the monuments of antiquity, breaking up alike the sepulchres of saints and pagans, and scattering their ashes in the air. Auferre, rapere, trucidare, falsis nominibus imperium; atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.""

They have even added to their barbaric jealousy of the past by maligning the character of the living. They have with persistent purport and Satanic policy promulgated falsehoods, or distorted facts, in order to alienate the sympathy of the civilised world from the Tartar race. But the veil is rapidly being drawn aside, and undying truth, though for a time concealed, must at last prevail. Upon many points both Turks and Tartars are morally superior to the Russians, who have been their systematic revilers. Nor should we as Christians shut our eyes to the fact, that if these people have not been cheered by the pure light of another and a holier creed, neither have they been plunged into that whirlpool of mental and moral degradation, that deep abyss of infamy, which unhappily, but too surely, exists at the very base of the pedestal on which exalted Russian civilisation has been raised.

The Tartar is especially endowed with many noble qualities; and, did not their religion and the policy of their present masters retard the full development of their great capacities, they might rise, under the fostering influence of education, to the highest state of civilisation, the true elements of which they already possess in an eminent degree. Let us hope that a better future is in store for them, and that the historically-renowned dynasty of the Zingis Khans, the Guerai Khans, and Timur the Tartars, may be resuscitated by the gallant allies fighting in the noble and chivalrous cause of liberty to the oppressed of all nations!

AFTER the interview at which Mr. Heywood proposed to Lord Rookbury to become the nominal assertor of Lilian's claim to the Aspen Court estate, that nobleman, true to his usual indirect and whimsical course of action, went off to Mr. Molesworth, and, speculating upon his own theory of the purchaseability of all mankind, and upon the non-necessity of any peculiar delicacy in dealing with a lawyer, set before Molesworth more of the designs of Heywood than he had a strict right to do, considering the terms of their provisional compact. He told the attorney frankly that he had himself long desired that Aspen Court should form part of the Rookbury property in the county, and, intimating to Molesworth that he was perfectly aware of the real state of the ownership, and of the views of all parties interested, unhesitatingly offered him a very large sum of money to "throw everybody overboard," and facilitate the transfer of the estate to the lord of Rookton Woods. And I am happy to be able to add that Molesworth behaved better than his superior in rank had done upon a similar occasion. For, as may be remembered, when Heywood put to Lord Rookbury a proposition which the latter had a right to deem dishonourable, his lordship went through a sham of indignation, not being, of course, in the least offended. Whereas Mr. Molesworth, receiving a similar proposition, did not stoop to the hypocrisy of pretending to be shocked or insulted, but disposed of the proposal with as unruffled a brow and as pleasant a smile as if the earl, in place of asking him to commit a rascally action, had merely been instigating him to spirit away a witness, mislay a valuable document, offer an unjust defence, or do any other little matter in the regular course of business. It is pleasant to see that inferiors in rank sometimes set examples of merit to those who are above them.

But it was not merely his contempt for hypocrisy that induced Molesworth to listen, without a show of impatience, to Lord Rookbury. He was very desirous of knowing how far a pledge, which had been given in that very room some months before, had been kept, under circumstances which rendered its breach very probable. It was then that Bernard Carlyon had informed the startled lawyer, that the machinery which Molesworth had devised for securing Aspen Court to himself, had been accidentally made known to the younger man. Carlyon had promised

secrecy; but the connexion between himself and Molesworth had been broken off, a fact which with many men is held to be an absolution from old pledges; and besides this, Bernard had become the intimate friend of those to whom a knowledge of the real case would be invaluable. Lord Rookbury had assisted him; what more likely than that Bernard's rest was his reward for surrendering a secret? Carlyon had been much with the Aspen Court family; what more natural than that he should have secured one of its portionless heiresses, on the strength of being able, by the possession of the secret, to make advantageous terms for his bride? Or, between keen-witted lords, oily Jesuits, and fascinating women, he might have given up his information involuntarily; after all, he was but a young man. At least Molesworth determined to know; and this was another reason why he listened with so much toleration to the audacious and unflattering overtures of the earl. When, in his turn, Molesworth became the questioner, with a view of ascertaining how much Lord Rookbury really knew upon the subject, he was a good deal baffled by the keenness of the earl, who stood cross-questioning well, and who had, moreover, an unfair habit of falling back upon his nobility when hardly pressed. But the professional triumphed over the amateur, and the solicitor finally succeeded in discovering, that though Lord Rookbury had confidently asserted his knowledge of the position of affairs, he had asserted that which was untrue, that he had a general impression that the Wilmslows had in some way parted with their rights. This, however, the earl would naturally, Molesworth felt, have learned from his protégé Henry, and it was with much satisfaction that the lawyer, having artfully and completely tested the earl's information, came to the conclusion that Bernard had been true to his word.

As for Lord Rookbury, he felt that he had been baffled this time, and that he had shown his hand rather uselessly. But upon the whole, he did not very much care. The attempt had been made on the spur of the moment, and not as part of his general project, and he parted from Molesworth in a very polite manner, remarking to himself, that the lawyer would, for the sake of his own character, keep the secret that such proposals had been made. And, moreover, the earl felt by no means sure, that though his offer had been in the first instance rejected, it might, upon consideration, be accepted, and therefore he gave orders, when he left town for Rookton Woods that same night, that all letters should instantly be forwarded to him.

This order brought him—not the acceptance of his proposals by Molesworth—but a letter with a foreign postmark, and in the handwriting of a man whom the moment before he believed to be within a few miles of him, and for whom he had designed to send to Aspen Court in the course of the day. It was from Henry Wilmslow. Assuredly the Emperor with the Mild Eyes could not have received less graciously the news that one of his nobles had departed, without leave, from Holy Russia, than did the lord of Rookton learn the flight of the lord of Aspen. And his anger was not diminished when he proceeded to read Wilmslow's narrative of the Clement's Inn scene, from whose account, distorted as it was, and garnished by Henry with a view to making the earl believe that his friend had borne himself in a noble and spirited manner, had cowed the two villanous conspirators, and had marched out with the

honours of war, his lordship learned that Molesworth, for reasons of his own, had sent Wilmslow flying. Not one word of this had the lawyer hinted at, in the interview with the earl the day before, and on the contrary had talked as if he supposed Wilmslow to be at Aspen. This effrontery of Molesworth's exasperated Lord Rookbury far more than the failure of his propositions, and with a fine burst of feudal feeling he declared, with oaths, that a lawyer who had dared to humbug a British nobleman ought to be struck off the rolls, and transported. However, he postponed his vengeance, ordered his horses, and crossed the country to Aspen Court.

Poor Jane received him with her usual meekness, and as a visitor whom it was useless to think of excluding. Bernard, upon his return to town, had called upon the earl to report the result of the medical visit, but, missing Lord Rookbury, had written him a brief account of the scene in the garden, apprising him that Mrs. Wilmslow now knew what blow was impending. As usual, nothing could be kinder or more sympathising than the earl's manner; and Jane, though her nature recoiled from his, could not refuse to see kind intention in the mission that had terminated with so sad a shock to herself. That instinct by which a woman unerringly, detects a kindness, in act or meaning, and that honesty with which she recognises it, poor thing! in her sorrow, or from one whom she hates-it may be with cause-is a faculty which helps her to do justice a good deal oftener than we manage to do it, with all our stately protests that we take all circumstances into consideration, and invariably estimate conduct upon its merits. When the first poignant agony of the revelation of Amy's condition had taken a calmer form, Bernard had explained to Kate the object of the physician's visit, and the motives which had induced himself to join the scheme; and when Kate could, still more gently, repeat the explanation to her mother, Mrs. Wilmslow did not do one moment's injustice to those who had desired to befriend her, even though their plan had brought down the sorrow with such crushing suddenness upon her. Even, as we have seen, when roused into unwonted energy and determination, and when detailing her wrong to Molesworth, the only blame Jane would impute to them was, that they had not trusted in her.

There was now but one business in Aspen Court. Mother, sisters, servants, all had one duty, and but one-the affectionate tending of the beloved one whose end was approaching. Amy's favourite room-that which was described as having been somewhat modernised, and whose windows, unlike those of the rest of the mansion, were of large plateglass squares-had been fitted up for her, and upon this chamber the whole cares of the household were concentrated. Day and night, loving sentinels kept watch and ward, each eager to claim and reluctant to yield her guard. When Lord Rookbury arrived, he was unhesitatingly informed by a servant that he could see Mrs. Wilmslow by coming up to Miss Amy's room, no other way. And having sent up for permission to do so, to Miss Amy's room he was conducted.

The apartment was very cheerful, and from the sofa on which Amy lay, she obtained without effort a full, rich, landscape view, in which foliage and green sward alternately led the eye down to the distant river -all, leaves, and turf, and bright water, gladdened by a glowing sunshine.