popularly known as " La Mezquita;" just as at Stamboul, even the Turks will sometimes speak of the largest of their mosques as "Santa Sophia" (He Agia Sofia, the Holy Wisdom—not a feminine saint as the Franks usually assume). There are so many naves and transepts crossing and recrossing each other in this astounding edifice that the interior has been called a forest or labyrinth of pillars; and the strangeness of the sight is enhanced by the circumstance that the columns are in no way uniform or of the same length; they are of jasper, porphyry, verd antique, and other precious marbles; and have been adjusted to fit in between the arches and the pavement either by the Procrustean process of sawing off a portion of the shafts when they were too long, or piecing them out with huge, disproportioned capitals.

The carnival was in full swing at Cordova; and in a peregrination of the city I was enabled to witness. one of the prettiest Spanish variants of that festival, in what are called escuelas de ballo, or ambulatory dancing schools. One sat in the courtyard of the Fonda, or in the patio of some friend's house; when suddenly, about eight or nine in the evening, there would come the shining apparition of a bevy of children, boys and girls, in full ballet costume, who proceeded to execute, with fairy like grace and dexterity, a series of national dances, such as the chica, the fandango, the guaracha, the zaronga, the trapola, the seguidilla manchega, and the zapateado. These small performers, who were under the guidance of a wrinkled old gentleman in a cloak,

who played on the guitar while they danced, never asked for any bakshîsh; but if you slipped a dollar in the old gentleman's hand he did not refuse it, and incidentally expressed his hope that you might live a thousand years.

This

It was not, however, until I had left Cordova, and gone further south, to Seville, that I saw the carnival in its full glory. The enchanting city! Over and over again have I been there since 1865; but in Seville, as in Rome, you discover something new and something delightful every time you revisit the town. work, however, does not profess to be in any degree of the nature of a guide-book; and for that reason I will not say anything more about the curiosities of the capital of Andalusia, save just to mention that on Shrove Tuesday, at Vespers, in the cathedral, I witnessed the unique spectacle of the little choristers dancing before the Altar. The urchins are dressed up in slashed doublets and trunk-hose, with ruffs encircling their chubby faces, with short mantles, and with toy rapiers; and at a given stage of the service, they dance a slow and solemn measure, which gradually quickens into quite a joyous fandango, clacking, meanwhile, their castanets. Some English ladies who were with me began to cry while the little fellows with the ruffs were footing it. At what will not tender-hearted women weep? I know one lady who always sobs when she is at a review, and witnesses a musical ride of the Royal Horse Artillery. I intended to have gone on from Seville to Granada and to Malaga, but Fate

said no. The cruel wire brought me, one morning, a despatch the usual brief despatch-running thus: "War between Italy and Austria imminent. Go to Venice." So I retraced my steps, and bidding farewell to that land of Spain I love so well, I made haste to reach Paris, and went down to Calais to meet my wife, who accompanied me to Italy.

Over the Mont Cenis Pass-Venice-A Battle between a Crab and a Rat-The bora at Trieste-Over the Semmering to Vienna-The Kaiser-Turner's Venice-Padua―Milan-H. M. Hyndman-" Viva Verdi!"-The Salas of

ago.

Milan.

You ladies and gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease, and take, it may be, your autumnal holiday on the Continent in August or in September, have little idea of the discomfort, and occasionally the danger, of a journey from France to Italy thirty years We chose the Mont Cenis route--the pass, you will remember, selected by Horace Walpole, who, while crossing it, had the misfortune to see his little lap-dog run away with by a wolf. In these days the tourist is conveyed swiftly, securely, and comfortably in a saloon carriage, with very probably a restaurant-car attached to it, through that extraordinary monument of engineering skill, the Mont Cenis tunnel: the run from Savoy into Piedmont lasting less than five-and-twenty minutes; but in 1865 you had to crawl from Lans-le-bourg to Susa in a diligence drawn by fourteen or sixteen mules.

The road was a very fine one, constructed between 1802 and 1811 by that great benefactor and scourge of the human race, Napoleon I. At the culminating point, some ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, there was a tolerable hotel, where you could

get delicious lake trout and remarkably good cheese but it was the length of time consumed in the lagging diligence, and the horrible jolting and creaking of the machine itself, that reduced you to a condition approaching despair. It was more amusing crossing the mountain in winter time, when the diligence was placed on a sledge. Then came the Fell railway over the mountain, which did its work very well, although you usually emerged from your railway compartment as black as a sweep, from the smoke of the locomotive.

I had already been to Venice, in the early days of All the Year Round; but the City of the Sea was new to my wife; and the place gave her never-ending pleasure. It was during this, my second visit to the Queen of the Adriatic that I witnessed a singular encounter between a crab and a rat: a description of which I gave to my friend, the late Frank Buckland, the naturalist. The battle of which I speak came off in this wise. We were staying at the Hôtel Victoria, a well-conducted establishment, on a canal branching from the Canalazzo. It was a late spring afternoon; the tide was out; and at that time of the day the side canals of Venice do not smell very sweetly. I happened, however, to be looking from my window, when I became aware of a large water-rat, nearly as large, I should say, as my old friend, Marshal Blücher, at Upton Court, who-pardon the misuse of the relative pronoun—was, to all appearance, going out to tea-I mean that he was running swiftly along the stone ledge of the basement of a palace opposite, and was obviously on