thoughts of a life to come. He wrote letters to all his friends, bidding them farewell for this life. I myself was one of those to whom he said good-by, declaring that he had left the world, that he had changed his name, and that all correspondence between him and the outer world must henceforth cease. These were the last lines of a letter which he addressed to me in July, 1886 :

"My health is failing and I have made up my mind to enter into the fourth order or Asrama. Thereby I shall attain that stage in life

when I shall be free from all the cares and anxieties of this world and shall have nothing to do with my present circumstances.

"After leading a public life for more than sixty years, I think there is nothing left for me to desire, except this life, which will enable my Atma [self] to be one with Paramâtma [Supreme Self], as shown by the enlightened sages of old. When this is accomplished a man is free from birth and re-births, and what can I wish more than what will free me from them, and give me means to attain Moksha [spiritual freedom]?

My learned Friend, I shall be a Samnyási

in a few days, and thus there will be a total change of life. I shall no more be able to address you, and I send you this letter to convey my last best wishes for your success in life, and my regards which you so well deserve,”

Every effort was made by his native friends and by the highest officials of the English Government to dissuade him from his purpose. Every argument that could appeal to his common-sense, his sense of duty, aye, even his vanity, was used, but used in vain. He was not so silly as to attempt to copy slavishly the example of the ancient Samnyásis, and to court death in the wilderness. He remained in his retirement, only he adopted a much stricter discipline, and a more rigorous seclusion from the outer world. He was not so childish, or rather so senile, as to imagine that any one in this life was really indispensable. He knew that younger men would do his work as well, if not better than himself. And he felt that, having done his duty to the world, he might be free during the few remaining years to do his duty to himself. I believe the old man is still alive, now in his eighty-fourth year. When I last heard of him, through his son, he was in full possession of his intellectual powers, with a memory unim

paired. He has become, in his old age, a zealous student of Sanskrit, and, to judge from what he has published, his knowledge of the Vedânta philosophy is profound. He is now simply waiting for death, and fitting himself to die, following the words of Manu (vi., 43) :— "Let not the hermit long for death,

Nor cling to this terrestrial state; Their Lord's behests as servants wait, So let him, called, resign his breath." It may be said that the Minister of Bhavnagar remained in office long beyond the time when he had a perfect right to retire. He was seventy-four when he surrendered the Ministry. Still, he is one of very few statesmen who, even at that time, would have thought it necessary to make life for themselves, as a preparation for a room for others, and to reserve a span of better life. His intellect was unimpaired, his body vigorous, and his friends were clamorous for him to remain in power. But he did not allow himself to be persuaded. He was influenced, no doubt, in his choice, by the teaching of the old sages of India, but his own judgment also must have helped him to obey the voice of na

ture. To all who have ears to hear, that voice declares in unmistakable tones that there is a time for everything. There is a time to be young and there is a time to be old. Our modern society is out of gear because that lesson of nature is not obeyed. To die in harness has become the ideal of almost every old man. But what might be the right ideal for a cab-horse is not necessarily the right ideal for a human being. In several branches of the public service a remedy has been applied-not the drastic remedy of the Bactrians and Caspians, but the more gentle pressure of the Indian law-givers. Men are made to withdraw into the forest on a retiring pension, and it has not been found that the army and have suffered under young generals and vigorous admirals. The same system ought to be applied to all other professions, more particularly to our schools and universities. After twenty-five years

navy

of hard work a man ought to be enabled to rest from his labors, if he likes, and the young should be allowed to have their day.-New Review.

How am I to fulfil the promise I have made of writing "A Page of my Life"? My life is so monotonous among these mountains of Graubünden—the snow-landscape around me spreads so uniform beneath the burning sun or roof of frozen cloud, that a month, a week, a day, detached from this calm background, can have but little interest for actors on the wide stage of the world.

Twelve years ago I came to Davos, broken down in health, and with a poor prospect of being able to prolong my days upon this earth. I did not mean to abide here; but having regained a little strength I hoped to pass the winter in a Nile-boat. The cure of lung disease by Alpine air and sun and cold was hardly known in England at that time. When I found my health improve beyond all expectation, the desire to remain where I was, to let well alone, and to avoid that fatiguing journey to Cairo, came over me. Slung in my hammock among the fir trees of the forest, watching the August sunlight slant athwart their branches, the squirrels leap from bough to bough above my head, it seemed to me that life itself would not be worth living at the price of perpetual travelling in search of health. I was thirty-six years of age; and, reviewing the twenty-three years which had elapsed since I went to Hanover as a boy of thirteen, I found that I had never spent more than three months in one place. At all hazards I resolved to put an end to these peregrinations, looked the future calmly in the face, and wrote twenty-two sonnets on The Thought of Death." Then I informed my good and famous physician in London that I meant to disobey his orders and to shut myself up for the next seven months in this snowbound valley. He replied that "if I liked to leave my vile body to the Davos doctors that was my affair; he had warned me." In the following spring I wrote an article on my experience, which was printed in a number of the Fortnightly Review, and which contributed something perhaps to the foundation of the English Colony at Davos Platz.

Since then, Davos has been my principal place of residence. I have worked incessantly at literature-publishing twenty

SYMONDS.

volumes, besides writing a large amount of miscellaneous matter, and three volumes which still remain inedited. The conditions under which these tasks have been performed were not altogether favorable. Every book I needed for study and reference had to be dragged to the height of 5,200 feet above the sea. A renowned Oxford scholar was paying me a visit once, when, looking round my modest shelves, he exclaimed, with the sardonic grin peculiar to him: Nobody can write a book here!" I knew that it was very difficult to write a good book in Davos; that I could not hope to attain perfection or fulness of erudition in the absence from great libraries, in the deprivation of that intellectual stimulus which comes from the clash of mind with mind. But my, desire has always been to make the best of a bad business, and to turn drawbacks, so far as in me lay, into advantages. Therefore I would not allow myself to be discouraged at the outset. I reflected that the long leisure afforded by Davos, my seclusion from the petty affairs of society and business, and the marvellous brain tonic of the mountain air would be in themselves some compensation for the privileges enjoyed by more fortunately situated students. Moreover, I have never been able to take literature very seriously. Life seems so much graver, more important, more permanently interesting than books. Literature is what Aristotle Aristotle called daywyn-an honest, healthful, harmless pastime. Then, too, as Sir Thomas Browne remarked, "it is too late to be ambitious.'' Occupation, that indispensable condition of mental and physical health, was ready to my hand in literary works; and I determined to write for my own satisfaction without scrupulous anxiety regarding the result.

The inhabitants of the valley soon attracted my attention. I resolved to throw myself as far as possible into their friendship and their life. These people of Graubünden are in many ways remarkable and different from the other Swiss. It is not generally known that they first joined the Confederation in the year 1803, having previously, for nearly four centuries, constituted a separate and independent state

highly democratic in the forms of gov

ernment, but aristocratic in feeling and social customs, proud of their ancient nobility, accustomed to rule subject Italian territories and to deal with sovereigns as ambassadors or generals. These peculiarities in the past history of the Canton have left their traces on the present generation. Good breeding, a high average of intelligence, active political instincts, manliness and sense of personal freedom are conspicuous even among the poorest peasants. Nowhere, I take it, upon the face of the earth, have republican institutions and republican virtues developed more favorably. Nowhere is the social atmosphere of a democracy more agreeable at the present moment. What I have learned from my Graubünden comrades, and what I owe to them, cannot be here described in full. But their companionship has become an essential ingredient in my life—a healthy and refreshing relief from solitary studies and incessant quill-driving.

So much about my existence as a man of letters at Davos had to be premised in order that the "Page of My Life" which I have promised, should be made intelligible. And now I really do not know what page to tear out and present here. Chance must decide. My desk-diary for this year (1889) happens to lie open at the date, February 28. That page will do as well as any other.

I

Friends are kind enough to come and stay with us sometimes, even in the win. ter. We had been enjoying visits from one of the British Museum librarians, from an eminent English man of letters and his more than beautiful wife, and also from a Secretary of Legation to one of the German Courts. During the first two months of the year sleighing-parties, toboggan-races, and the other amusements of the season had been going forward. was further occupied with founding a gymnasium for the young men of Davos, which occasioned endless colloquies at night in the dusky rooms of the old Rathaus, followed by homeward walks across the noiseless snow, beneath the sharp and scintillating stars. All this while I had been correcting the proofs of my book on Carlo Gozzi, and composing four laborious essays on that puzzling phenomenon which we call "Style." I was fairly tired and wanted a change of scene. So I proposed to one of my daughters that we should pay a long-contemplated visit to some Swiss

friends living at Ilanz in the Vorder Rheinthal, or, as it is also called, Bündner Oberland.

Behold us starting then for our thirteen hours' sleighing journey, wrapped from head to foot in furs! It is about halfpast six on a cold gray morning, the thermometer standing at 3° F., a sombre canopy of mist threatening snow, and the blue-nosed servants of the watering-place torpidly shivering back to their daily labors like congealed snakes. Davos Platz does not look attractive at this hour of a winter morning, when the chimneys of the big hotels and bake-houses are pouring forth spirals of tawny smoke, which the frozen air repels and forces back to blend with vapors lying low along the stream. Tearing through the main street on such occasions, I always wonder how long what boasts to be Luft-kur-ort,' a or healthresort, depending on the purity of air for its existence, will bear the strain of popularity and rapid increase.

As we break away into the open country these gloomy thoughts are dispelled. For now the sun, rising behind the mountains of Sestig in gold and crimson, scatters the mist and gives the promise of a glorious day. Spires and pinnacles of burnished silver smite the flawless blue of heaven. The vapor round their flanks and forests melts imperceptibly into amber haze; and here and there broad stripes of dazzling sunlight turn the undulating snow-fields round our path to sheets of argent mail thickly studded with diamonds-crystals of the night. Every leafless larch or alder by the stream-bed is encrusted with sparkling frost-jewels, and the torrents, hurrying to the Rhine, chafe and foam against gigantic masses of gray-green ice, lipped with fantastically curving snow-wreaths. We are launched on the intoxication of a day-long sleigh-drive. Hour after hour passes with no change but the change of postilions and horses, occasional halts at wayside inns, and the ever-varying pageant of the frozen landscape unrolled around us. Ravines and gorges, to which the sunlight never pierces, but walks with feet of fire along the cliffs above, turning those bristling pines against the sky-line into burning bushes, and sleeping for miles upon white ridges whence the avalanche descends. Slow climbings up warm slopes between the red trunks of larches, where squirrels flirt upon the russet needles shed through

Ilanz is a little walled town-proud of its right to be called Stadt and not Dorf, in spite of the paucity of its inhabitants. It is almost wholly composed of large houses, built in the seventeenth century by noble families with wealth acquired in for eign service. Their steep gabled roofs, towers, and portals, charged with heraldic emblazonry, cluster together in a labyrinth of alleys. Orchards stretch on every side around the town-walls, which are pierced with old gateways, where the arms of Schmid von Grüneck, Salis, Planta, and Capoul shine out in ancient carvings, richly-gilt and highly-colored. The sleepy little town is picturesque in every detail, and rapidly falling into decay. From being a nest of swashbucklers and captains of adventure, it has become the centre of an agricultural district, where Swiss provincial history is languidly carried on by the descendants of the aristocratic folk who built the brave old mansions. One narrow and tortuous street ruus through the town from main gate to gate. On the further side, among the orchards, stands the house of our Swiss friends, under whose hospitable roof I left my daughter. At the other side is the principal inn, close to the covered wooden bridge across the Rhine; and here I took up my own quarters. The street between offered a variety of dangers during the night-hours. It was innocent of lamps, and traffic had turned it into a glassy sheet of treacherous, discolored ice.

There was a concert and a ball in the hotel that evening. A singing-club for male voices, renowned throughout the Canton under its name of "Ligia Grischa," assembles once a year at Ilanz, gives a musical entertainment, sups in state, dances till dawn, and disperses in the morning to homes among the hills. I always wished to be present at one of this club's meet ings, and had timed my visit to Ilanz accordingly. I ought to say that the old State of Graubünden was composed of three Leagues, the eldest of which was called, par excellence, the Grey League; and the folk who formed it for their freedom in the first years of the fifteenth century had their hold in Ilanz and the neighborhood. They spoke then, and the people still speak, a dialect of rustic Latin, which we call Romansch. In this dialect the Grey

It was a splendid opportunity for seeing the natives of the Bündner Oberland. Not only were the rank and fashion of Ilanz present in full force, but men and women from remote valleys hidden in the folds of the surrounding hills-the hills whose glories roll down the fountains of the Rhine had trooped into the town. The concert-room was crammed to overflowing. Its low roof did but little justice to those masculine and ringing voices, which throb. bed and vibrated and beat against the walls above the densely packed heads of the audience. What a striking sea of faces and of forms! I wished that my good friend, Dr. John Beddoe, the illustrious ethnologist, had been there to note them; for the people reckon, I believe, among the purest aboriginals of Central Europe. They are for the most part dark-complexioned, with very black hair and eyebrows; a low, narrow, rounded forehead, curving upward to a small oval skull; deep-set brilliant eyes, placed close together, blazing sometimes like coals. The face is narrow, like the forehead, with a great length of nose and firmly-formed prominent jaws. Set upon shoulders of athletic breadth and a sinewy throat, this small head, with its packed and prominent features, gives the impression of colossal and plastic strength. In old men and women the type is wonderfully picturesque, when the wrinkles and experience of a lifetime have ploughed their record deep. But, as is usual with Swiss mountaineers, the young women are deficient in comeliness, not to say in grace and beauty and the young men, though more attractive, from their limber muscularity and free, disdainful carriage, do themselves no credit by their dress. They wear the coarsest, ill-made home-spun. It is only when their superb forms are stripped for athletic exercise that you discern in them models fit for Donatello and Michel Angelo-those lovers of long-limbed, ponderous shouldered, firmly - articulated, large-handed specimens of humanity, with powerful necks and small heads.

The faces of these young men make me pause and wonder. They are less like human faces than masks. Sometimes boldly carved, with ardent eyes, lips red as blood, and a transparent olive skin, these faces yield no index to the character within by any changes of expression. The specch