not so fine a perception of things as he that answered to the same question, 'There are only two original authorities, Bright (J. F., I take it, not W.) and Green.'

To J. BRYCE, Esq., M.P.

December 15, 1889.

I see there is a strong pull for Welsh Disestablishment, apart from English. When I met G. O. Morgan at Syracuse this spring, and told him to go down to the bottom of the theatre and make us a speech for the disestablishment of the Olympieion, I told him that, if Wales were an island, I should be strongly inclined to go with him,

1. Provided some means were found to keep the churches of St. David's, Llandaff, and Brecon safe from raging Welsh Methodists; but that

2. Wales was not an island, but a peninsula with a very broad isthmus.

TO THE REV. W. R. W. STEPHENS.

Oxford, December 29, 1889.

I don't know what Gore and his comrades have been saying; but I have noticed for years that the Church of England uses the word inspiration only twice, and that in a sense applicable to all Christians. I suppose any theist would say that any good thing that one says or does one does by God's prompting; but that does not necessarily imply security against all error. I feel as if I must some time go in for those things rather more than I ever have done. It seems to me that the O. T. history, for instance, falls into the hands of two sets of people. There is one that thinks itself bound to defend everything at all hazards-or, what is worse, to put something out of their own heads instead of what is really in the book. And there is another set who take a nasty pleasure in picking every hole they can; the small German critic, or rather guesser, grown smaller and nastier because he thinks it fine. From neither of them will you ever get truth. Why can't one treat it as one does another book? I read Thucydides and Polybios with the strongest presumption in favour of belief; but I can

see that they are hard on Kleon and Kleomenes severally. Where I do get puzzled is the Fourth Gospel. I cannot reconcile it with the others, yet it has such wonderful signs of truth. One must be satisfied not to know a great many things. I don't know where Diodorus and Livy get everything that they say. Your clever German does. Oh, for the lost books of Philistos!

To MRS. A. J. EVANS.

Tunis, February 11, 1890.

'Place me on Afric's burning coast,

Whose swarthy sons in blood delight,
Who of their scorn to Europe boast,
And paint their very demons white.'

So I learned when I was little, but here I am, not at all on a burning coast, as it is nothing like so hot as Bordighera, Oh dear no. The swarthy sons are about, many of them actual niggers, but if they feel their scorn to Europe, they can't boast of it; the Gal-Welsh see to that. H. H. the Bug himself cannot be called a leading Bug, seeing he is led by the nose of a French resident. He has gone away, and lives as a Carthaginian country gentleman, like those whose houses and lands Agathoklês plundered, and comes in only every Saturday to hold a reception and to take a Saturday Review of things in general. Florence asked if I would like to go. I said, nay, as I would not go to the Paip. I asked what I should say to the Bug, save that they have found an inscription of ΕΥΦΗΜΙΟΣ ΡΩΜΑΙΩΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ, ‘and he, one might add, was just about as much Emperor as you are Bug.'

We went about a little yesterday, and much more to-day. Florence is enraptured with the barbarians. I don't see what they want here in Cyprian's province and Gaiseric's kingdom. Just fancy a Dutch-speaking king at Carthage. But I am much taken with the buildings, of which I shall have something to say. The bazaar and all the native streets are very wonderful. I studied the columns. H. and F. bought stuffs and baubles. Such a cackle of every kind of barbarian. The queerest are the she-jews. The she-Mussulmans veil or rather mask themselves right carefully, with black masks hideous to look upon.

But the she-jews, αὗται δὲ ῥίνας ἔχουσι, καὶ ὄμματα καὶ στόματα, Kai σkén1-they seem to go far beyond a divided skirt. Camels go about, not very big, and 'tis queer to see them kneel down to be loaded in a narrow street. We first saw them, like C. Marius, browsing about the ruins of Carthage. We saw two Bug-palaces to-day in and out of the town. In the former we had the privilege of seeing all his domestic arrangements, which are rather like a steamer. H. H. in the middle and the others with cabins all round a salon also, where they might meet and scratch one another. I am most struck with the so-called minarets, which are here steady sensible Romanesque towers. I fancy they are really of no great age, but styles don't seem to alter here as in Europe. You may not go into the mosques, but one can sometimes get a glimpse inside. One looked very like a Sicilian church. Indeed, everything here seems made up of scraps of columns, as if you built a whole town out of Ravenna basilicas.

To T. HODGKIN, Esq., D.C.L.

Kairouan, February 14, 1890.

I must write off and tell you that I have this morning seen the sponge that Gelimer wished for2 (do they not somewhere show the sword that Balaam wished for to kill the ass?). I am sure it must be the right one, it is so big; only it is so very big, fitter rather for a Bariλe's than for a mere pig. I never saw or heard of such a thing. I like a pretty big sponge, but all I ever had were Tom Thumbs to this. It was in a small gathering at the Vice-Consulate at Susa, not Shushan the Palace, nor yet Pippin's Secusia, but Susa here, née Hadrumetum, which the Gal-Welsh have cut down into Sousse.

Now these have noses, and eyes, and mouths, and legs.'

2 Gelimer, King of the Vandals, having been defeated in battle by Belisarius, A.D. 533, fled to a mountain on the borders of Numidia, where he lived in great hardship for three months, eluding his pursuers. In reply to a letter urging him to surrender himself, he refused, but asked for a loaf (not having tasted bread for many weeks), a lyre to accompany the ode which he had composed on his misfortunes, and a sponge to bathe his inflamed eyes. Procop. ii. 6.

I have been to Carthage once, and mean to go again twice. As becomes a Nether-Dutchman, I have been trying to look at things from the purely Wandal (not vandal) point of view. But 'tis rather hard, Phoenicians, Romans, Saracens will creep in unawares. And the Saracens are there bodily and the Romans have left plenty of scraps; so also the Canaanites in the shape of Baalite inscriptions and their own skeletons. Wandals have no trace, unless there be something in a basilica of Thrasamund of which the books talk. I must try and make it out next week. You have seen so much more of such things than I that I need not enlarge on the general effect of camels and barbarians - specially she-jews. But have you seen what I saw this evening? Mussulman families playing (February 15) their antics. It really is too bad of men who profess to worship the same God as ourselves to go cutting themselves after their manner, if not with knives and lancets, yet with swords and spikes and prickly pears, as if Baal still went on. N.B.— Did Hannibal ever play any of those tricks? They don't leap on the altar that they had made, forwhy they have made none, but they leap just as well without it. About the men in mosques prostrating and roaring I have nothing to say-but really Mahomet never taught them this mumbo jumbo kind of worship. What a funny substitute for Count Roger these Frenchmen

But they keep the barbarians in thorough good order, and Tunis, Susa, and this Kairouan and the coasts thereof seem all as well looked after as anywhere in Europe. I had rather the Rum-Welsh had come than the Gal-, but I don't grudge the Gal-, a great piece of Romania is practically won back. But what a strange feeling it is that we cannot say of the people here, as we do of the Turk, that they are oppressors of native Christians. Forwhy there are none; but how come there to be none? How came the Saracens to destroy more utterly than the Turk?

To J. F. HORner, Esq.

Off Susa. February 16, 1890. 'Tis a great pity that you have not been with us; but I must thank you for sending us to Kairouan at all, as it would not have come into my mind if you had not spoken of it.

I knew the name, πŵs уàρ oũ; but I had no very clear notion where it was, and I certainly had no notion that it was so easy to get at. There is no difficulty whatever, though part of the way of going is droll, and the quarters, though not good, are not so bad as some in Sicily. You will remember that saving our trudge to Trebinje, and a mild sail from Corfu to Butrinto, 'tis my first experience of barbarians. All through the Regency, if they don't show you any particular kindness, they don't show you any particular unkindness. They don't stare or follow at all, still less throw stones, all which things have I tholed1 in divers parts of Christendom, Catholic and Protestant. That is to say, the French keep them in wonderfully good order. I wish it had been the Italians; but it does quite as well as it is; the province of Africa is practically won back for Romania. The mixture of East and West is very wonderful. 'Tis odd to see a camel close under a telegraph post, to see the names of the streets in French and Arabic, and to see the general jumble of nations. The she-jews are the most wonderful to look at, but I dare say you have seen them in Morocco.

We stopped at Cagliari on our voyage, so I had my first glimpse of Sardinia. 'Tis not a very striking city; but it stands well, and I learned one or two things. Going from Cagliari to Tunis and thence to Palermo is going in the footsteps of 'Carolus V. Aug. Orbis Pater et Monarcha,' as I find him called in an inscription at Cagliari. I don't object, for there is alter orbis where "Αγγιλοι καὶ Φρίσσονες [= Σάξονες] καὶ οἱ τῇ νήσῳ ὁμώνυμοι Βρίττονες 2 βασιλέως οὐδὲν φροντίζουσι. Excuse me for beginning with Procopius and ending with Herodotus, but they fit quite as neatly as many of the columns and capitals in the great mosque of Kairouan and elsewhere. That Emperor is not a person with whom one has very much sympathy (saving that he is at least better than Francis of France), but when the King of Sicily and Sardinia goes and takes Tunis, setting out from Cagliari and going back to Palermo, one does melt a little towards him.

... I am much taken with the Saracen things. I see that the Rogers picked out the best forms, chose the pointed arch and 1 Old English for 'endured.'

2 Procopius, Bell. Goth. iv. 20, where in the original we find ßpíτTwIES,