lish rustics before a hurdy-gurdy and white mice) at the strangers as they pass.

"We should have done better to advertise and placard," says Lady Pamela, when they find themselves, by this time with an attendant crowd, in the straggling mountain-lane that leads up from Badenweiler proper to the Kursaal. "The masses must be educated before they can appreciate the Esthetic.-Janet, child, I don't know, all things considered, that I would mind changing dresses with you for the remainder of the day."

Sir Christopher looks, gravely admiring, at Jeanne's plain cotton frock, at her broad-brimmed peasant's hat.

"Miss Dempster's dress is idyllic," he remarks, with his little air of dilettante conviction. Gainsborough would have been glad of her, just as she stands, as a model."

"Washed-out prints, cobbler-made shoes, coral necklace, and all," interrupts Jeanne, quickly fearful of ridicule. "I wonder, in Mr. Gainsborough's absence, how many conquests my idyllic appearance will make at Badenweiler?"

"Herr Wolfgang is to be there," observes Vivian laconically. "He asked leave to meet us with such pretty humility that I had not the heart to say nay. Of one conquest Jeanne is certain."

"Yes, of one conquest Fräulein Jeanne is certain," repeats Sir Christopher, in a tone that brings the color to the girl's cheeks.

Kit Marlowe is free to pay idle compliments, an he lists. There his liberty ends. The precise length of tether that shall be accorded to him for the remainder of the afternoon is speedily measured out by Miss Vivash.

"Gainsborough may have had his own crotchety ideas," so she remarks, as they enter the wicket-gate of the Kurgarten. “I have mine; and I say that the coloring of our group does not harmonize. Our group, as a natural consequence, must divide-do not all the painters declare that, if I am not artistic, I am nothing? Who comes with me? Will you, Sir Christopher?" (This in a sweet little tone of coaxing entreaty. She is not generally sweet to Sir Christopher Marlowe.) "Bygones shall, for once, be bygones, and we will try, really and honestly, if we can not remain half an hour in each other's society without quarreling."

Sir Christopher's afternoon, I repeat, is laid out for him: pleasantly, surely. What better fate could a man desire, under summer sunshine, with music playing, and soft winds blowing, than to be Beauty's escort ?-what better fate-unless it chance that he and Beauty have gone through the like kind of paradisiacal experiences already, and grown sick of them!

As the two move slowly away down the central alley of the garden-every head turning to gaze after the trailing Indian silk, the marvelous parasol, the fair "unconscious" face of Viviana new possibility flashes across Jeanne's mind. Miss Vivash is ambitious, disappointed, has newly lost a wealthy lover-conditions, surely, under which a heart like hers might easily be caught in. the rebound. Why weave romances about German counts or German professors when the solid English acres, the position, the title of Sir Christopher Marlowe may lie at Beauty's very door?

Lady Pamela seems to guess her thoughts.

"A stranger might wonder, might he not, at the position in which our friends, yonder, stand toward each other. I wonder at it myself, sometimes. But you must know, my dear, we are people with a past-Kit Marlowe, Vivian, and I. At your age, naturally, all verbs are conjugated in the present tense, 'J'aime, tu aimes, il aime.' We have reached the passé indéfini—you see I have not quite forgotten my French grammar— we have got to nous avons aimé."

"

Tu l'adores.

Il l'épouse.'

If Kit Marlowe and I were to conjugate the verb 'aimer,' we should do so, depend upon it, according to the most advanced spirit of an enlightened age."

As Lady Pamela speaks, they turn into one of the narrow paths that lead up through coolest emerald shade from the main avenue of the gardens. Five or six minutes' brisk ascent brings them to the summit of the hill—the steepest, surely, of any Kurgarten in Germany-among the ruins of the Schloss. Immediately below is a sheer declivity, clothed in every varied green of juniper, beech, and mountain-ash. Behind and to the left are the Black Forest highlands; crest after crest succeeding each other in long, soft stretches of wavy outline; a very sea of hill, blue, undulating, as old Ocean himself. To the west is open plain, here purple, here golden, as the clouds slowly succeed each other athwart the sinking sun. The chimneys and roofs of Mühlhausen glisten, like points of fire, in the middle distance. In the foreground are a coffee-table, three or four painted chairs, and one of those gigantic revolving spyglasses, with varicolored compartments, through which the German holi

"

day-maker loves, in the intervals between Wagner's music of the future, and the present consumption of cakes and coffee, to gaze on nature.

"Awfully jolly machine!" exclaims Lady Pamela, turning the wheel briskly. Would the Pyramids, St. Peter's, the Venus of Milo, elicit any higher form of approval from her lips? Life seen under difficulties of every shade and complexion. Rose-color! Ah, I knew the meaning of rose-color, myself, at the age of fifteen, and with Uncle Paget's stud still to the fore. Green! Yes, and I have lived for two long years in that atmosphere, grass-green as the monster jealousy could make it. Yellow! Artificial sunshine, champagne, gaslight; pleasures highrouged and spicily flavored; life as it is, nowas it has been, rather, any time during the past six seasons. And next, smoke-color! Rheumatism, district-visiting, the odd trick, a father confessor-the future.-Be thankful, little Jeanne, that you are only seventeen, further off by a dozen years than I from the smoke-colored department; the mixed process of satiety and regret that men term 'sobering down.'

She puts her hand under Jeanne's arm, and they continue their walk; emerging ere long upon the Frühlingsblume Plateau, a terrace immediately above the Kursaal, thronged at this sunset hour with loungers, and where the symphony in spots attracts nearly as much attention as Beethoven's Symphony in B-flat (an epitome, say the Germans, of every phase of happy love!), which the band, at the present moment, plays deliciously.

But Lady Pamela's thoughts and converse still are grave. "Yes," she goes on, leading her companion apart from the crowd, "we have got, all three of us, Herr Wolfgang will soon make an indifferent fourth, to the passé indéfini. Nous avons aimé, poor little Kit Marlowe, I will say, to his credit, very honestly. You think it strange, do you not, that we should all be as good comrades as we are, and nothing more? Janet, I will whisper you a secret that is the secret of half London as well. In days gone by, exactly a twelvemonth ago next November, Sir Christopher Marlowe was over head and ears in love with Miss Vivash (or with the reputation of her Beauty-I have never been quite sure which), and she laughed at him."

There is no mistake about it this time. The color does deepen on Lady Pamela's cheek; her lip trembles.

"Laughed at him, relented, accepted an engagement-ring-we have it still, among our museum of trophies—and threw him over; all within the space of six short November days. Ah! those miserable days-I never thought a man could be so hard hit-just at the beginning of

the hunting season, too, when you would say the human heart could brood over nothing longsave a black frost! I have told you, have I not, how Vivian and I first became allied? Grandpapa Vauxhall had disinterred her during his autumn's yachting, in some little village, westward ho! He announced his discovery, as an astronomer might announce the finding of a new planet, in the clubs, engaged a painter and a poet to give his trouvaille the hall-mark of fashion, and brought her and her mamma to stay with the Ladies Vauxhall in London. Mamma, as a first condition of success, we had to dismiss. It seems undutiful, you think, Jeanne; but what should a Beauty Regnant do with a dowdy little Devonshire parsoness dogging her steps? Mamma, her honest head turned by her daughter's budding greatness, we had to pack up and send home, and Vivian and I, under grandpapa's auspices, set up our joint establishment.

"That establishment was of a most delusive and transitory nature," muses Lady Pamela mournfully. "A nutshell of a house, abutting on the Park, certainly, but so small, cruel tongues averred, that our maids had to lodge under the kitchen table and our page in the coal-scuttle. A nutshell of a house, a miniature brougham, a family coachman (from the livery stables), and a couple of riding-horses, all paid for-perhaps I ought to say all not paid for-by the month. For the yachting and hunting seasons we trusted to the hospitality of our friends, and our childlike faith was rewarded-I don't say without occasional rebuffs; but these we were large-souled enough to overlook. Aspirant Beauties must have no flesh and blood about them, as the man who was pilloried said of tradesmen ; no passions, no resentments! August saw us on board the easiest-laced, most convivial yacht in Cowes. In September we were on the moors. Winter found us at Leamington. At Leamington poor little Kit Marlowe came to grief."

Lady Pamela stops short, a flush on her cheek, a light unwonted in her eyes. All the plainness of her face seems at this moment to be swept away, as if by magic.

"Beauty, Jeanne," she resumes, presently, "has its peculiar temptations (I wonder how often I have heard that phrase?), with which no ugly woman can really sympathize. Beauty may lure on an honest man to the utmost, refuse, accept, refuse him, all in half a week, and then make a jest of him among his friends afterward. The world will shrug its shoulders over his fate. Heartless? My dear fellow, who would credit a professional Beauty with a heart? Coquetry, vanity, greed-qualities which in other women may be vices-are her virtues. Kit Marlowe jilted? Kit Marlowe must accustom himself to

"The old Duke of Beaujolais, I should tell you, was in Leamington just then; padded, decrepit, one foot in a slipper, the other in the grave, needing a couple of servants to support him to his wheel-chair, or lift him from his carriage. And a horrid whisper ran through the length and breadth of Leamington society that his Grace might remarry. 'Twas a whisper only; but it decided Kit Marlowe's fate. What chance for a poor little country-gentleman, with his three or four thousand a year, against the bewildering, pulse-stirring possibility of winning the Duke of Beaujolais's heart?"

Sir Christopher took his punishment stoutly," Lady Pamela finishes. "He did more. He continued, as not one man out of fifty would have done, a friend of the woman who had jilted him. Half a dozen times since, when events have been taking a threatening enough turn for us, Sir Christopher has worked them straight again, and not in the Vauxhall fashion. From first to last, Lord Vauxhall's patronage of Vivian was-an advertisement of Lord Vauxhall's vanity. The town wanted a new beauty,' grandpapa used to say, with his big laugh, and I invented one. I hope I am not to be made sponsor for all my Invention's future career.'

topher has been loyal as a brother through good report and through evil-through evil, especially."

"And is brotherly loyalty a state of feeling sure to last?" asks little Jeanne.

"It will last in this case, child. Sir Christopher is not made of such poor stuff as to pin his heart upon his sleeve a second time. No; Kit Marlowe will remain a bachelor, and I—well, there is some kind of cousinship between us to start with, and I already am nine-and-twenty, and used up.' It will not take many more years before I shall be old and staid enough to keep house for him with propriety. . . . Did any civilized people ever stare like these?"

Four white-capped Freiburg students have stretched themselves across the path, and gravely, as though they were conducting some scientific research, are examining the symphony in spots through four pairs of spectacles.

"One would think they had never seen an ugly woman queerly dressed in their lives before," says Lady Pamela calmly. “Let us hope that the native mind will recover its equilibrium before the ball begins. I mean to dance every dance throughout the programme, if the Teuton will only collect his scattered wits sufficiently to invite me."

(To be continued.)

"THE HE Russian Government has invited the Malakani, a sect of milk-drinkers, to settle in the Kars district." The sect to which this recently issued telegram of Reuter's office* refers, having most of its adherents in certain villages of Eastern and Southern Russia, was introduced to the notice of the British public by Mr. Wallace, who, in 1872, visited several of its congregations, and held colloquies with the elders. The Malakani's Presbyterian organization, their familiarity with the Bible, the eagerness, earnestness, and shrewdness displayed by them in controversy, strongly reminded Mr. Wallace of his Scotch home and elicited his lively sympathy. Nor are their own countrymen less favorably disposed toward them—a fact all the more remarkable, as the Russian law classes the Malakani

among the most pernicious sects, and as their wealth might be supposed to arouse envy. What fixes the eyes of Europeans, as well as of Russians, upon them, is indeed the unqualified praise bestowed upon them by every one; and the sharp contrast universally acknowledged to exist between them and their surroundings. In order to enable the reader to understand this, we must begin by throwing a glance on the other peasants of the East Russian steppes.

Those other peasants are in no respect much above, and in some important points decidedly below, the neighboring Kirghiz nomads. Their villages, very similar to the winter quarters of well-to-do Kirghiz, are as gray and uniform as nomad encampments. The low, lengthy huts, with roofs of half-rotten thatch, are built of mud mixed with chopped straw, and stand in vast ir

same material. Only a few two-storied wooden

houses belonging to corn-dealers and usurers somewhat diversify the long winding rows of mud huts and mud walls. No grass, no tree, not even a kitchen-garden enlivens such a village; and its soil, either buried in snow, or parched, cracked, and covered with a thick layer of dust, or turned by snow and rain into a quagmire, is far drearier than even the sunburned steppe on which the nomad pitches his felt tent. It is difficult to say whether that tent or the hut is more scantily furnished, and as regards every kind of disgusting disorder the hut is unquestionably worse than the tent. Even the domestic economies of the peasant and the nomad are surprisingly similar. The peasant is in perpetual search for fresh land; he cultivates the same field only two years in succession, and then leaves it for a number of years, until, by thus lying fallow, it has recovered sufficient fertility—a system exactly alike in principle to the nomad's wandering in quest of fresh grass-plots. Still more in accordance with nomad usages is the peasant's pasturing. The animals of all the families in the village are intrusted to shepherds and herdsmen hired by the community, who drive them as long as the season permits over the far-stretching village commons. These herds and flocks, the peasants' only means of investment-for they spend nothing on the improvement of their agriculture, and the land itself is partly community-land distributed for cultivation, partly rented—are a very precarious kind of property in these regions, where the cattleplague is endemic, and where the scum of all the nationalities on the steppe-Russians, Malorossians, Germans, Tartars, Kirghiz, Calmucksunite in horse-stealing, passing the booty rapidly from hand to hand until it disappears in some nomad herd often hundreds of miles from where it was taken. Another mighty impediment to the peasants' economical progress is their savagelike improvidence. They no doubt dispose of masses of land which to the European farmer would appear fabulous, and therefore require no manure. These advantages, however, are widely outbalanced by the distance of markets and the uncertainty of prices; by a winter so severe and capricious that little more than five months are left for agricultural labor; by droughts, untimely frosts, sudden blights, rust, mice; in years of good growth, enormously dear labor and wet autumns, an average yield less than a third of that habitual in England; bad years being the rule, and somewhat satisfactory ones the exception, and at least one harvest in ten returning less than the seed. These things are of course well known to the peasant; and yet, after every harvest, he is, as long as the money lasts, in a state of bestial besottedness, accompanied on festive days by coarse feasting on a grand scale.

The total result is that the increase of wealth scarcely keeps pace with the growth of population, and that the aspect of the peasant's life is as stationary as in Asia. The peasant's religion, though called Christian, is far more heathenish in its practices and superstitions than the by no means pure Mohammedanism of the Kirghiz; and, while these nomads mostly receive some kind of instruction from their mollahs, the minds of the peasants remain entirely uncultivated. Their morality is such as under these circumstances may be expected. That every man is a thief, is, according to a proverb current among them, a matter of course; no one would tell the truth where a lie seems more profitable; and the brute passions, though somewhat hidden by a superficial kindliness, assert their rule on every occasion, and sometimes burst out with fearful fury. Thus, not long ago, a troop of peasants from some of the villages we are here speaking of tried to put a stop to horse-stealing by striking terror into the souls of the Kirghiz. Armed and on horseback, and having drunk a whole tunone hundred and forty gallons—of spirits, they sallied forth into the Kirghiz territory and murdered every man, woman, and child they could lay hands on, seizing the babes by the legs and hurling their heads against those of their parents. Such is the civilization in the midst of which the Malakani live, for those very villages from which the expedition just described was recruited are noted abodes of Malakanism; and at a distance of about sixty miles from them is Alexandroff Gaï, where Mr. Wallace, guided by the Russian friends with whom he was traveling, went to hold his principal conference with the Malakan elders.

That town-like village is indeed specially fit to impress the stranger, for here the Malakani have, favored by exceptional circumstances, been able to settle in a quarter of their own, apart from the other inhabitants, and to build up, out of the same materials which the surrounding barbarism employs, a civilized life well adapted to the opportunities and requirements of the steppe on the border of Asia. The streets in the Malakan quarter of Alexandroff Gaï, though straight and of great breadth and considerable length, do not contain many houses; the yards being of unusual vastness even here. The walls, extending from house to house, by which these yards are separated from the streets, as well as the stables, barns, and granaries within the yards, though built of mud-bricks, are even, regular, and in good repair; and the whole homestead, however strange to the European eye, on account of the enormous waste of space, the long, low, earthcolored farm-buildings, the absence of verdure, the unwonted human figures-peasants with long beards, dressed in cotton shirts and wide, baggy

breeches, and horsemen in Kirghiz array, and with Mongol features-differs most markedly from the dilapidation and wild disorder customary in Russian farmyards. As regards the houses, the best of them, similar in shape to those of the dealers in other parts of Alexandroff Gaï, are wooden, brightly painted, two-storied, with an outside staircase leading to the gallery which runs along the upper story; and over that story a garret with a small balcony-altogether a stately-looking building. The second-rate houses, one-storied and of weather-stained wood, and the still poorer huts of mud bricks, are remarkable only by their neatness. The center of the upper story in the best houses is formed by a large, hall-like room with broad benches along the walls and one or two tables. Here prayermeetings are held and guests are received. On either side of the hall is a good-sized room, inhabited, the one by the elder, the other by the younger members of the family. On the groundfloor are the kitchen and the store-rooms. The whole house is neat and orderly; and the poorer houses, though less attractive, are also pleasant and homelike. The dress of the inhabitants is analogous to their abode; that is to say, it differs from that of the other peasants only in neatness and substantiality, not in material or cut. All the clothes-with the exception of the elderly men's cloth caftans, the baggy trousers of black cotton velvet or other thick cotton stuff, and the sheepskin furs-are made of cotton prints or scarlet cottonades, and the men are girt with twisted woolen shawls. Yet, in spite of this attire, and of the hair dressed and cut, and the beards worn just as other peasants have them, the fact that the Malakani are very different from their fellow villagers is apparent at the first sight of most of them, in the honest, beaming eyes, the mild expression of the faces, and the frankness of the address, though that is somewhat subdued by a but too easily explicable shyness.

The Malakani's prosperity is owing to their intelligence, their frugality, to the confidence they enjoy, to the unity within their families, and to their mutual assistance. In Alexandroff Gaï, where, notwithstanding the abundance of land, there is much poverty among the other peasants, every Malakan household is at least above need; and the twelve wealthiest Malakan families hold together two hundred thousand acres of crown land, the individual holdings varying between three and forty thousand acres. Each of these vast tracts is used principally for cattle- or sheepbreeding, and a small part for wheat-growing in the above-described fashion; that is to say, every year some of the pasture is turned into fields, and each field, after having been cultivated for two years, is again turned into pasture. The

cattle, three to five hundred on the largest holdings, and the still more numerous sheep, are placed in the hands of Kirghiz herdsmen, who, having felt tents, horses, and some cattle of their own, encamp the whole year on the steppe, and, living exactly like other Kirghiz, perform their herdsmen's duties on horseback. Their pay is quite sufficient for their small wants; and they, as well as the numerous farm-servants and laborers in the Malakani's employ, are faithful to their masters because they are treated, not as beasts of burden, but as fellow men. "We feed our work-people with beef," said one of the largest Malakan farmers to me, "because what tastes sweet to us also tastes sweet to them."

In

Such farming as that which I have just described is possible only in a very thinly inhabited part, where land may be had from the crown at a yearly rent of about twopence an acre. the somewhat more westerly districts, life is not so easy; but there are other advantages of which the Malakani avail themselves with much energy and skill. My host, in one of the villages which shared in the murdering raid into the Kirghiz territory, devotes his attention to a variety of pursuits. Land in that neighborhood, which, though sixty miles farther westward than Alexandroff Gaï, is nearly sixty miles from the Volga, is proportionably dear (ten shillings an acre yearly rent for the best land), on account of the competition of the German colonies in the vicinity. Yet my host, nothing daunted, extends his farming from year to year, and has now six hundred acres under wheat, recouping himself by the high quality of his produce, part of which he sells for seed. He owns two flour-mills. When cattle are cheap he takes to slaughtering, and sells the hides, tallow, and meat. The village fair is leased to him, and he lets the permanent booths and the places for temporary stalls. His house, similar to the best houses in Alexandroff Gaï, is used by him for receiving travelers, chiefly corndealers, from the ports on the Volga, whom he attracts by assisting them in their purchases, and by the fairness of his terms. Some Malakani have large orchards systematically tended and watered, and producing rich harvests of valuable apples; some are carriers, some are tanners and dealers in leather, some are carpenters, some are house-painters; some of the women make thick, velvety rugs for which they themselves dye the wool; and, whatever the Malakani undertake, every one likes to have intercourse with them, convinced of the soundness of their labor and of their faithfulness in keeping their word—rare satisfactions in Eastern Russia. My own business transactions with two of my Malakan hosts strongly reminded me of some of the best traits of European life. I had furnished my room, in