without any means of communication, struck us so forcibly that we broke into peals of laughter, which puzzled him more than all that had gone before. After that we never questioned his directions, but followed implicitly, even when our own judgment would have suggested some easier course.

From this point, which is the crux of the mountain, it was a comparatively simple, though steep, rough, and fatiguing scramble of nearly 2,000 feet (which took us about an hour) to the top. You cross several small snow-fields, and climb for a long way up the margin of one which lies so steeply inclined in a deep gully that it would be unsafe to venture on it without a rope and ice-axes. It was amusing to contrast Ruman's extreme caution on the snow slopes, where neither his bare feet nor the slippers which he sometimes put on could take any hold, with the airy way in which he danced about on difficult rocks. No chamois could have been more at home. Of chamois, by the way, we saw two large herds, one numbering ten and the other seventeen, upon the rocks not far above us, and could have had excellent shots more than once. They are seldom or never disturbed here; when a hunt is organised, it is usually on the easier ground of the Schlagendorfer Spitze to the east. The scenery of this upper region of the mountain is intensely savage, and so is the near view from the summit, which we gained about 1 P.M. Around on every side there tower up countless spires and pinnacles of naked rock, capping a maze of narrow ridges with apparently inaccessible sides, all of them nearly as lofty as the point you stand on, and all of the same grim, rainblackened granite. Such wildness, such desolation, I do not remember to have ever seen in the Alps. There the soft mantle of snow lapping the base of the rocks, and spreading out into broad basins, relieves the beholder with a sense of billowy smoothness. Even a steep snow slope or ice-wall, terrible as it may be to the mind which knows its perils, has a grace of contour, a furry tenderness of surface, a pearly play of light and colour where the sun strikes its crystals, a loveliness of hue in its blue and violet shadows, which make the eye dwell on it with pleasure and content. But here you feel only a fierce monotony of desolation; rugged slopes, harsh outlines, cruel teeth of rock rising all around to threaten you out of a dark grey wilderness. It was a relief to cut off with one's hand this grim foreground, and look beyond it over the rich valleys of Northern Hungary, villages and corn-fields, and swelling wood-clothed hills, or northwards across the deeper forests of Galicia, away to the great plain that stretches unbroken to the Baltic and the Ural Mountains.

The descent was accomplished with no more incidents than an ugly slip or two; the passage of the cliff and ledge proved easier than we had expected, and in less than two hours from the top we were disporting ourselves in the bright waters of the Botzdorf lake. Here we parted with Ruman, whose volubility, though paralysed for the moment by our incomprehensible conduct in jumping into the icy lake, revived more than

ever when we took leave. To judge from the gesticulation which supplied a sort of running commentary, he was exhorting us to return and go up sundry other peaks in his company, indicating those which we should find the toughest. However, what his purport was will never be known now. He went on his way rejoicing down to Stola, which lies seven miles off immediately below the Botzdorf lake, while we turned our faces, Schmecks-ward, across the weary waste of stones and Krummholz. Stopping frequently to enjoy the sunset, we did not get near home till night was falling, and once more lost our way in the woods, wandering about quite close to the houses for nearly an hour till we descried a light. The whole expedition requires, according to the Schmecks authorities, sixteen hours. But this is the calculation of Germans, who, though they are sure, are also undeniably slow. A nimble walker, wishing to save time, might quite well get to the top and back in eleven hours, while a Slovak sprite like Ruman might accomplish it in nine.

Looking over the proofs of these pages, they seem to me to give in some respects too highly coloured, in others an inadequate, picture of the attractions of Zips. Let no one go thither who is not prepared to rough it. Schmecks (though clean) is not luxurious; and outside Schmecks even passable accommodation is not to be had. At Schmecks itself, the excursions, except a very few short and easy ones, are only fit for an active pedestrian; so that a lady or a lazy man might find it monotonous, especially as he will have nobody to talk to unless he talks either German or Hungarian. Then, as to the professional alpinist, he will hardly be consoled by the excellence of the rock-climbing for the absence of his favourite snow and ice. On the other hand, I have omitted many excursions which deserve description, as, for instance, the famous Ice Cave at Dobschau, some twenty-three miles from Schmecks; Kesmark, a quaint little Saxon city, with the ruins of the noble old castle of the Counts Tököly ; the descent of the rapids of the Dimojee, not to speak of smaller and less notable expeditions. And I have but faintly conveyed a sense of the delicious freshness and wildness of the scenery, with its savage peaks rising out of its sombre forests; still less, perhaps, of the charm which the simple, free and easy Hungarian life, the frank and hearty manners of the people have for any one who can find himself in sympathy with them. After a week or two among the Magyars, one can enter into the spirit of the national adage-an adage which a late respected missionary, a staid Scotchman, sent to Pesth by the Society for the Conversion of the Jews, is said to have been fond of repeating :

"Extra Hungariam non est vita,
Vel si quidem est, non est ita."

JAMES BRYCE.

613

Susanna: an Introduction.

CHAPTER I.

EMPTY HOUSES.

EFORE the game of

chess begins to be played, the heroes and heroines of the coming catastrophe are to be seen in orderly array. There is nothing to tell in which direction the fortunes of the board will drift. The kings sit enthroned by their spirited partners; the little guards of honour are drawn up in serried lines, prepared, if necessary, to fall for their colours; the bishops are in their places, giving the sanction of the Church to the dignities of State. The

impetuous knights are reining in those fiery steeds that are presently to curvet, in wayward leaps, all over the field; the castles, with flying flags, flank the courts at either end. And so in story telling, when the performance begins, the characters are to be seen, quietly drawn up in their places, and calmly resting before the battle. There are, as we all know, four castles to every game of chess. If I look at my chequered plain I see on one side a grey fortress standing in its wide domain, guarding the lands that lie between the hilly lake country and the Scottish borders. At the other end of my story, where the red court is assembled, a shabby little stronghold is standing in a walled garden, not far from Paris. As for the other two castles, they are both empty ones. They belong to Colonel John Dymond of Wimpole Street, and of Crowbeck Place in Lancashire.