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The new-comer was some little time in settling himself, tying his warm "comforter" and_buttoning his coat he had no great-coat; and at first, from his broad accent and general provincial air, we took him to be some young shopman, bound to see life" in Exeter or Plymouth. But when he turned round, having taken out a cigar, civilly to inquire "if smoking were disagreeable," he showed a face and manner decidedly above the country shop-keeper, and then he and the coachman fell in conversation.

"Going to London, sir?"

"Yes, for the twenty-third time; and I hope the last. Shall be back in about two months, for good. Didn't mean to have gone up again, but I hear the cholera is very bad there. I want to take a few weeks at the cholera hospitals." (So our friend was evidently a medical student.)

He spoke, as heretofore, in the broad westcountry accent, but with the most gentlemanly courtesy did he help the old body out, baggage and all, and set her on a cross road leading to some retired cottages.

"Thank 'ee kindly, sir. I'm giving 'ee a peck of trouble."

"Not a bit; for I know you're rather weak on one of your legs."

"On both, sir, on both. Eh! Mr. Thomas, is that you? You that was a going up to London to the cholera?

"So I am; and you're going to your niece's wedding. Give her my best wishes, and I hope she'll save me a bit o' the cake."

“Eh, Mr. Thomas," said the poor lame old woman, looking at him almost with tears in her eyes, never mind about my niece; it's you I'm The coachman looked sideways at the fine strap-thinking of now. And 'ee's really going up to ping young fellow. "I heard you was a goin', sir, London, and the Lord knows if ee'll ever come back Beant'ee afraid?"

"Not I. I've been in it before, and never got any harm. Besides, it's a great matter to me before I settle down here, to pick up all I can."

again."

"Oh, we'll hope for the best."

"Eh, yes!" clasping her hands, and looking after him as he re-mounted. "May the Lord "It's reached here, sir. They say cholera's very preserve 'ee, and send 'ee safe home again, with a bad at Zeal Monachorum." pocket full o' love, a pocket full o' love," repeated

"So I understand. Let's hear all you know the old creature, as she still stood lingering, while about it." the coachman cracked his whip. "Thank'ee, thank'ee. Good-by!" called out the young fellow, as we dashed on, But he was unusually silent for the next half-mile.

And then ensued minute details, probably exaggerated enough, of the state of things in the small Devon village; which, if it were like westcountry villages in general as to its sanitary arrangements, would no doubt be decimated before the cholera was cleared out of it. The alarm was spreading fast; scarcely a hamlet or even roadside public-house did we pass, but some one asked for news about the "poor folks at Zeal." That insane terror of "cholera morbus," which in its first visitations everybody had, lingers still in full force in Devon and Cornwall. One poor woman, after listening with white face to many ghastly particulars, turned round to her neighbour with a pathetically resigned air :-"Eh, we're in the Lord's hands!" True; but if she had used her own hands to clean her dirty floor, and sweep away the dung-heap that the pigs were routing in close under her cottage window, it would have been at least as pious, and not less beneficial.

The question, "Which of the London hospitals are you going to?" opened a conversation in which it was almost comical to see how the provincial youth changed into the educated, gentlemanly young man, adding London breadth and polish and intelligence to his honest country ways—a rearing which has always produced the finest men, both in his profession and every other. His very tone altered, and from a dialect became the merest soupçon of an accent-rather an advantage than not to most speakers. His round, youthful, sunburnt face, when you really looked into it, had a manly decision and energy which fully accounted for the twenty-three journeys, and this last one, up to London. Frank as he was, there was not an atom of forwardness in him, or of self-consciousness. Though listening to him, one could not but have a suspicion that a young fellow, coming out of the wilds of Cornwall to work as he had worked for nine years in that tempting metropolitan isolation, that dangerous independence which is the making of strong souls, and the ruin of weak ones-must be, necessarily, rather a fine young fellow in his way. Yes; it was a hard grind," he said; "but I passed all right: and now I am going to start as a general practitioner. I did not intend to go up to Some miles further on, an old woman poked her London again, but settle down here this autumn." head out from the inside of the coach, hallooing (Was he thinking of "settling" in any particular vociferously. way?) "However, I must take a turn at that cholera "Hold hard!" shouted the medical student. work; and, since I am up, I think I shall go in for "Shall I jump down and let 'ee out?" my M.D.-it's a great help to a man even in the

Our medical friend was of course appealed to on every hand. Every one seemed to know him and all his affairs, after the true pattern of provincial publicity. Most of the women greeted him with, "And so 'ee be off to London, sir? The Lord send 'ee safe back again!

"Oh yes! no fear," he would answer, with a laugh; though afterwards he was sometimes silent for a minute or two.

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country. I may be plucked-very likely I shall; youths, who looked as if they already repented of still I can but try for it." the bunch of ribbons on their caps, and began to doubt if after all it would be so very pleasant, to stand still and be shot at. Poor boys! And now the coast-journey was over. We were in the midst of fertile smiling Devon. Left far behind us, perhaps for ever, was King Arthur's Land.

And, whatever he thought of himself, his interlocutor could not help thinking that many men have a worse chance of success. May he have won it! We were now going through the rich Devonshire country, nooky villages, crossed by streams and glens and ancient bridges, churches and parsonagehouses, which were a picture to behold; while in the distance, a long winding horizon line, blue and fair, lay the Dartmoor hills. A lovely landscape, rich with life, and all that was pleasant in life!--and to think of this young fellow going forth from it to what? Yet he was only doing his duty, and as he said himself, in answer to the old woman's pathetic benediction-"We'll hope for the best."

He was evidently a social personage, for he let fall many a fact about concerts, and dinners, and dances, hereabout, which he was now leaving behind, and he was eager to send a message to some school-fellow whom the coachman knew, but whom he himself had not seen for many years. And, as luck would have it, a few minutes later this identical person came driving past, highly respectable, in a pretty chaise, being now a well-to-do married man.

Our last sight of our medical friend was at the little branch railway, which will one day, ere long, stretch over to the north Cornish coast, and connect Bude itself-dear innocent place with the Great Metropolis. "Mr. Thomas" had settled his small luggage in a second-no, to his credit be it told, I believe a third-class carriage-and was walking up and down the platform, blue with cold, but with a firm stride and a cheery countenance.

"Chilly work, rather," he said; "six hours on the top of a coach. But one soon gets warm; good morning."

He lifted his hat and passed on, politely nonintrusive: and we never saw him more.

But that young doctor will long stand to us as a type of his countrymen, carrying out in these common-place modern days exactly the same spirit which looked so romantically beautiful in Arthur and his knights,-whom we behold, in shapes gigantic, through the dim mists of old. Yet their creed was no more than this-which he was prac tically acting out--tenderness to parents; chivalry "Are you often in these parts now?" to women-all women, young or old; indifference "Sometimes. I'm off to London now; when I to personal care and luxury; steadfast following of come back I'll look you up."

"Hollo! don't you know me?" cried our young doctor, quite excited. And greetings were exchanged between the coach and the phaeton, friendly but brief.

duty for duty's sake, apart from all picturesque

"All right, don't forget. And how are you all pomp or conceited self-consciousness. And, above at home? Mother alive,

eh!"

"Yes, mother's alive,

and father too, and all of 'em; all well and

jolly."

"Delighted to hear it. sys

I'll expect you when you

come back from London. Good-by."

"Good-by, and glad to see you, old fellow!" So the two school-fellows parted, the doctor aying meditatively: "No, I shouldn't have known him. It's queer, meeting in this way; I haven't seen that fellow for thirteen years."

This was the last incident of the journey, except the picking up of a serjeant and three recraits, slouching, stolid, chubby-faced Devon

all, courage to defend the weak and resist the strong, as a good knight should.

As the train moved on we could not help repeating to ourselves, with a better understanding of it now, the bold ballad about Trelawny, convinced that in any case of dire oppression there might still be found "thirty thousand Cornishmen" who would "know the reason why." Also, that there was not such a vital difference, as might at first appear, between King Arthur of Tintagel and his good Fknights all, and the modern medical student, quitting his merry life here to go up to London to the cholera hospitals.

NOTE. THE JEWS OF SAFED.

THERE was published by me in Good Words for December, 1865 (page 915), and afterwards republished in my "Eastward," the following statement:

"One terrible story was to the effect that the punishment of death had been inflicted on a Spanish Jewess the day before we reached Safed, for a crime in which one of the Rabbis who tried and condemned her was himself notoriously implicated. We begged the Consul to make further inquiries on the subject. This he did, assuring us that all he heard was confirmed by an intelligent Jew, who, though he hated the proceeding, feared to speak. Such is the reign of terror."

This was narrated as a fact to me and my friends by the Austrian Consular Agent, Mr. Miklasiewicz, in his own house. Sir Moses Montefiore-whose name is associated with all that is true and lovely and of good report-addressed a courteous letter to me contradicting the report as being, from his knowledge of Jewish law and customs, manifestly false. Since then Sir Moses has for the sixth time visited Palestine, and when there he received at Jerusalem two deputies, with whom he had corresponded for thirty years, from the Safed congregation, who recounted to him the true facts of the case, concluding their statement by saying, "There has been no trial, no punishment of death, nor was the Rabbi in the slightest degree implicated. Indeed, no Jewish authority in the Holy Land, nor in any part of the world, has ever passed sentence of death since the close of the great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem." Sir Moses has embodied the whole evidence received from Safed in pp. 40-42 of a published Report on his mission to the Holy Land.

The following statement on the same subject has also been received by me from the English Consul, Mr. Rogers:"Copy of a Letter to the Rev. the Chief Rabbi of Safed.

"DAMASCUS, August 4, 1866.

"SIR,-I have received your letter dated July 23, in which you inform me that Sir Moses Montefiore has required from you an explanation regarding some charges brought against the Rabbis of Palestine in general, and against those of Safed and Tiberias in particular, in an article written by the Rev. Dr. Macleod in last December's number of the periodical entitled Good Words, and which you now ask me to refute.

"The first point in the quotation you select from the article alluded to, is, that a Jewess had been condemned to death by the Rabbis of Safed. You inform me that the woman referred to was suspected of adultery with a Moslem, and that she was banished to Damascus.

"I know nothing of this case, but I certify that a few days ago you brought to my Consular Office a Jewess who stated her name to be Romanos, and that you declared her to be the woman referred to in the article by Dr. Macleod. She also stated that she had been accused of adultery and that you had banished her from Safed, and that she is now married and living in Damascus.

"As the name of the woman is not given by Dr. Macleod, I cannot certify that this is the person alluded to; though I may add that I think it very probable that she is the person of whom some ill-disposed Jew of Safed informed the Austrian Consular Agent, stating that she had been put to death by your orders. And furthermore I may state, that during a residence of more than eighteen years in this country I never heard of any one having been put to death by order of the Rabbis. The Turkish Government, in giving to the spiritual heads of the various religious communities a certain limited jurisdiction over their respective followers, did not vest in them the power of taking the life of a fellow-creature; and I do not believe that the jurisdiction granted has ever been so construed. "The second point complained of, is, that a Jew came from Austria with his son:-that he died in Tiberias, and that the Rabbis sought to appropriate his money; and with that view shut up the dead father with the living son in a cave during sultry weather, to induce the latter to give up the money.

"That abuses frequently occur in the appropriation by the Rabbis of the property belonging to those Jews who die in either of the four Holy Cities, I cannot deny. The anecdote related by Dr. Macleod of what occurred to me when I was Cancelliere in her Majesty's Consulate at Jerusalem, is a proof that I have had some experience on the subject. On that occasion the Secretary of the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem called out to the Sheikh of Siloam to prevent the burial of a British Jew, because the money and property were sealed up under the Consular seals; and the Sheikh came with many peasants and drove us away under a shower of stones with which they pelted us, and obliged us to leave the corpse until a reinforcement was obtained from the city. This case was fully reported at the time of its occurrence by Mr. Consul Finn, and the offending parties punished, though those who instigated the movement went scotfree. Still I think that the case of the young man having been locked up with the corpse may probably have been related to Dr. Macleod in a very exaggerated form.

"In conclusion I would observe, that I think that the ends of justice would be fully satisfied in these cases by your inquiring strictly from the original informant, and if the cases be untrue, the informant should be made either to retract his statements or to state the ground of his assertions.—I am, &c. &c. &c., "E. T. ROGERS."

With these statements before him, the Editor of Good Words and the Author of "Eastward" has no hesitation in stating his conviction, even without the cross-questioning of witnesses, and without the Consul being heard in his own defence, that the first story is false. The Consul must have been misinformed or imposed upon with reference to the death of the woman, which is the main point in dispute. The writer has much pleasure in giving publicity to refutations of the charge made against the Rabbis. He will watch with anxiety lest the Consul should in any way suffer for stating what the writer firmly believes was his honest conviction regarding the character and conduct of the Rabbis. But he ventures to express the hope that, for the sake of the poor Jews in Palestine, and in order to elevate them physically, morally, and socially, a commission, or committee, of a few sagacious Jews from Europe and America should calmly and patiently investigate the real condition of their brethren in the Holy Cities, and obtain full evidence regarding it-not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles-and not from the Rabbis only, but from the people and in such a form as would ensure protection to life and property to those whose evidence might be against "the powers that be" within the Synagogue. In saying this he does not for one moment insinuate that the Jews in Palestine are in any degree worse than Christians, or Scotch Presbyterians, would be if placed in the same peculiar circumstances; but he humbly thinks that these circumstances have a tendency from their very nature to foster tyranny on the part of the rulers, and a slavish spirit on the part of the ruled, with greed, sloth, deceit, and selfishness on the part of all. He believes also that those who minister charity so liberally and who are more liberal and charitable than the rich Jews in Europe and America?-to their poor brethren in Palestine, may make this almsgiving a greater instrument than it has hitherto been for effecting needful economic and social reforms. No man living has done so much for his brethren in Palestine as Sir Moses Montefiore, and no man has more unselfish longings for their good; but it is quite possible that many evils may exist which even he may not suspect or dream of, and that just because of the very purity of his own intentions, the nobleness of his own nature, and his character as "an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile." EDITOR OF "GOOD WORDS."

GUILD COURT.

A London Story.

BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, Author of "David Elginbrod," "Alec Forbes," &c.