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eschewed the horseshoe. I have had two trots about Susa, late Hadrumetum, which has a good deal to show, but nothing to remind one of Agathoklês or Hannibal. Kairouan is, of course, the wonderful thing of all. But the way to it is something to be endured. You go thirty-six miles in an open horse-tram with curtains, very much crowded, kaì тoûľ vñ' àvdpŵv ßapßápwv, as to-day by a very broad Arab, broader than the philosopher whose name was changed to Пárov because of his breadth1. . . . Moreover, I saw a curious application of the law of distress. A shepherd let his sheep stray on the line, which is finable. As a shepherd in that wild country-for from Susa to Kairouan is wild and open and nearly uninhabited-might be hard to catch, the driver got down and carried off one of his sheep. Moreover he whipped the shepherd, which we don't do. All Kairouan seems built of Roman columns. It seems so strange that bits of arcading and vaulting, such as in France and England are not to be seen, such as in Italy and Dalmatia you notice as something special to mark, here out among the Saracens become almost a drug-you see something of the kind in almost every hole you look into. The great mosque and its cloisters or cortili (like Parenzo and Salerno) are, of course, the great development of all. As I have not seen Cordova-you I feel sure have I have never seen anything like the forest of columns stretching every way. 'Tis much broader than it is long if you count its length from the great door to the Keblah: mostly fine classical columns, some Byzantine, like St. Vital, which could not have been very old when the Saracens came. And how many camels must have been set to bring them? For as there was no Roman town at Kairouan as there was at Tunis and Susa, they must have been brought from somewhere else. We went up to the top of the great minaret for the view. I was surprised, though I ought not to have been, as I know the picture of the Giralda at Seville, to find that, here at least, minarets are for the most part not slender things, but substantial towers of quasi-Romanesque. Many, I fancy, are late, but

1 Said to have been originally named Aristokles after his grandfather, but afterwards called Plato, from #λaτús (platus = broad), on account of the breadth of his chest.

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not all; but none that I have seen have mid-walls. great deal of vaulting, cross and barrel, in the smaller things, but not in the great Mosque. I did not care for its roofs; it wanted King Roger' to cover it with dripping honeycomb. And it also wants William the Bad 2 to mosaic the walls. It was a fine thing to be King of Sicily, with Saracens to build your places and Greeks to adorn them. But I was talking of the big minaret-a broad tower like my Saracen in the tram at Kairouan. There we heard the Muezzin a-crying to prayer, and I could make out 'Mahomet el Resoul' he spoke very clearly. Then our guide Assim, official interpreter, gave us a little 'summa theologiae,' how Christ was a great prophet, but Mahomet the greatest of prophets and the last. On Friday evening we were taken to see fanatics. Haply you have seen them. It must be some heathen thing lingering on; for I learned in my book when I was little,

'The Turk, to various errors bred,

Yet learns the living God to dread.'

And I am sure all this leaping, and drumming, and Baalite cutting of themselves, is fit only for Mumbo jumbo. . . .

I fancy your brother would like Lux Mundi. I have not seen it, but I must when I get back; but fancy Gore and Aubrey Moore not being orthodox for some.

Well! this is a long story; it takes two stamps. You may give them to some bairn that gathers them.

I should like you to be here very much--I mean on land, as you would not like to be just here on the sea.

TO PROFESSOR DAWKINS.

Syracuse, March 18, 1890.

I was in a boat under the cliffs of Achradina to-day, and a horrible thought came into my head. You geologists say that our limestone here is built on a volcanic basement, and I have always thought and said that one could see the volcanic base

1 Norman King of Sicily, 1130-1154.

Son of King Roger, King of Sicily, 1154-1166, covered the walls of the Cappella Palatina (Royal Chapel) at Palermo with mosaic.

ment underneath. I have even likened it to the great wall of Civitas Senonum 1, with its masonry of two dates. But to-day it came into my head, Is the volcanic look anything more than the effect of the waves? I should like to know for certain, as I don't want to say anything absurd. Have you not a geological friend at Messina who would tell me? Could you ask him to let me know? Or does Admiral Smyth say anything?

To A. J. EVANS, ESQ.

Taormina, March 30, 1890.

You have never said that you share Margaret's dislike to a big sheet, so I venture on one.

I am kept here longer than I like; but I have been looking at things here again, and revising all that I had written about Tauromenion. I have altered a good deal in order to bring in your view that the μía ȧxpónoλis that Dionysios took was, not the Castle hill, as I thought at first and as Holm thinks, but the hill of the theatre, and that the two akropoleis are the hill of the theatre and the Castle hill, not the Castle hill and Mola. I have looked at it several times, from all points, and I think it must be so. The theatre hill must have been fortified as an akropolis, specially when the town was large, as the piece of surely Sikel wall below St. Pancras (March 31) proves to my mind. Holm wants to get rid of the μía ȧкpóños by reading rŷs for μas. But that kind of trick won't do. Construe your book, if you can-you generally can, if you understand the facts; if you can't, say you can't; but don't make a thing of your own instead.

Yesterday we went to Naxos, and, by the help of your plan, found Sayce's wall. 'Tis very odd; but I was close by it last year. You won't remember my saying to you, 'I think they have pulled down Sayce's wall, and set up the pieces on the top of a new wall.' Well, that is literally true to some extent. A good many pieces are set up on the new wall between the orchard and the fiumara, and those I saw last year. Only it did not come into my head to look in the orchard for the real wall

1 Sens in France.

a few yards off. 'Tis a mighty piece, but less strictly polygonal than I expected to find it. 'Tis much finer than what I take to be a bit of Sikel wall here

close to a Greek bit. Did Theoklês

build it, or did he find it ready made?

I am most grateful to you for all the things that you have taught me on the margin of my proofs and elsewhere. Most of your remarks have been worked into the text.

To W. STILLMAN, ESQ.

Marsala, April 18, 1890.

'Tis you, I fancy, that I have to thank for a copy of the Contemporary Review, which found me at Taormina, with you on 'Crete,' and Dicey on 'Referendum.' You don't seem so philhellenic as you were in times past; but your facts are very valuable, specially as touching your own stay in Crete in past times. I have no very burning desire for the annexation of Crete to the Greek kingdom, and, if I were a Cretan, I would refuse it (Castelvetrano, April 20) unless it was accompanied by a strong dose of Home Rule. Nor do I object to your notion of a European power taking the island in hand for a time, if it be fully understood that it is only for a time. I don't want Crete to be at once eaten up by people from Athens. But I am sorry you don't so fully insist as I should like on the absolute necessity of getting rid of the Turk in every shape, root and branch, bag and baggage. He can't reform, and he would not if he could. But I am glad you don't look for anything from the Grand Turk personally, whom it is the fashion to worship.

To MRS. A. J. EVANS.

Somerleaze, July 10, 1890. So you are back again. I want one of you to explain to me the idée, the tendency, or whatever it is, of your journey. I don't exactly see what you went for, unless to play about in a wood in Bavaria, and to be able to say that you have gone through the archduchy1 under a false name! I looked for greater

1 Austria.

things than these when you set out. But Arthur may have had some mysterious numismatic and gemmistic ends which are too high for me. And I don't forget that he was in Sicily and you in Liguria earlier in the year. Still the net result seems chiefly to be that you have seen certain free mammals, to wit black squirrels, whereas I saw none in Sicily, and one yellow rodent in Africa, even at Carthage, between the Kôthôn and the merchant.

Now as I am going to ask a thing of you, I shall begin by correcting you on certain points, to put you into a good humour. First, I am sure Arthur will tell you, as well as I, not to talk of the 'dual Empire.' Dual Monarchy, if you please. The Empire (so-called) is one part of the Monarchy. Secondly, don't call the child of a roe a kid; roe being a deer, its child is surely a fawn*. In Greys' park I saw some does standing up valiantly for their fawns when Pinder's little dog looked at them.

And now for my petition. I meant to write July 7, St. Thomas himself and not his eve. That reminded me, and I began to sing as followeth :

(July 11.)

I cumber you, good Margaret, much;
But there is not another such,

So light of foot and swift of eye,
The books upon the shelves to spy;

And eke within the cupboard deep,
In all the darkest holes to peep.

There, let it be a fragment, like certain of Pindar-I have got a rime or two more in my head; but the lines don't fit on so well.

* Yet is he Cervus Capreolus, marking, one might suppose, goatish

tendencies.

TO DR. TURNER.

Somerleaze, September 1, 1890.

I have by me a letter of yours of October 19 last year, which I believe I have carried about into Sicily, Africa, and various parts of the world. Is it possible that I have never written to you since? There are many things in your part of the world that I want to know something more about. You or somebody has been good enough to send me Politik almost daily. But

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