the intended violence, and made the governor responsible for whatever bloodshed might ensue. The Italian, Russian, Hellenic, and Dutch consuls supported this declaration more or less energetically, and the discussion was re-opened. Ismaïl was perplexed. What to do he did not see clearly-reluctant as he was to give the promise demanded. His plan for securing consular complicity had fallen through, and his determination seemed to be failing him. It was the opinion of most, if not all, present, that, if the consuls had been all united in urging the concession, he would have yielded the point; but, at this juncture, the French consul came to his rescue, and declared that his Excellency not only could not be required to make such a promise, but ought not to make it, as it might anticipate and prejudice the intentions of the Porte. The American consul replied that there was no question of what the Porte thought fit to do; the people had confidence in the Sultan, but they required an assurance from the Pasha that he would not, on his own part, persecute them. But the governor had taken the hint, and, declaring that the promise required would compromise him with his government, declined to make it. The English consul came to his support, and gave it as his opinion that no such promise could be asked of his Excellency, as it was already implied in his having agreed to support the petition, the last head of which was a prayer for an amnesty to all concerned. Moreover, he said it could not be supposed that the people had any right to expect such deliberate bad faith from the governor as would be involved in his arresting people who had been guilty of no offence. This supplied the Pasha with a new hint, and he stood on his dignity. Reassured by the support of the two consuls, he took a defiant attitude, and refused any further concession. conference broke up in some excitement. If the consuls had been unanimous, there is little doubt that the Pasha would have given the promise asked, and all agitation would have

The

all events, the unfortunate want of accord of the French and English consuls with their colleagues was the point of departure for the insurrection of 1866..

Not, be it said in passing, that an insurrection in Crete could have been avoided long, the policy of the Porte remaining the same. But it might have been postponed until the events ripening in the East should have settled at once and for ever the antagonism of Moslem and Christian in those countries where the Christian is the rightful inheritor. It is certain that, nothing being changed, and Ismaïl Pasha remaining Governor of Crete, the insurrection would have broken out in 1867; but in that interval many things might have changed, and any necessity for an outbreak might have been obviated.

The three months that intervened be tween the sending of the petition to the Sultan and the receipt of the reply were passed in an alternation of menaces by Ismaïl against the committee and the sending of protests and appeals to the consuls from the committee. These docu-ments called the Christian powers to mediate between the Sultan and his subjects of Crete, and obtain justice for the latter. The committee retired to Prosnero at the threshold of Sphakia. Troops began to arrive, and a fleet, 6,000 Egyptians being amongst them, under the command of Schalim Pasha, Generalissimo of the army of the Viceroy, a man every way the opposite of Ismaïl,generous, frank (for an Oriental), politic, and conciliatory. There is no doubt that the object of his coming was to prepare the way for a transfer of Crete once more from the Sultan to the Egyptian Viceroy, and that the scheme had been arranged between the French, Turkish, and Egyptian Governments, and was to be conducted on the famous modern principle of the plebiscite. Now Ismail, it was said, had a private ambition to be made prince of Crete himself, after it had been erected into a principality similar to Samos. Such an ambition did not consist with the Egyptian plan, and the antagonism of interests led to curious complications.

I SUPPOSE there are very few (some, of course, but not many) districts of the same area so rich, so beautiful, and so interesting, as the eastern part of the little-known county of Somersetshire. Taking Wells for a centre, and describing a circle with a radius of seventeen miles, you enclose Bath, Bristol, Weston-super-Mare, Glastonbury, Sherborne, and Frome.

The country lying between these towns is a district which may certainly bear comparison with most others of the same size in any country. Some exceedingly able and well-written articles, even for that journal, appeared from time to time in the Saturday Review on this very district, which are now buried in its files, and unattainable; and it seems a pity that the author does not republish them. It was partly necessity, and partly the reading of these articles, which made us delay in this beautiful region; and, from what we saw of it, we judged that the high praise given by the Saturday Review was more than deserved.

Bath Minster, St. Mary's Redcliff, Wells, Glastonbury, Frome (one of the most splendidly restored churches in England), and Sherborne ably represent its ecclesiastical interests; while there can be no need to speak of the richness of the low pastures which extend from the point of Bridgewater Bay to Glastonbury; of the wonders and beauties of the Cheddar district. It is a dangerous experiment to begin a journey of pleasure in a region so beautiful, so favoured by nature and art as this. It is like eating your cream before your bread. Yet we did so, and had the good fortune not to be disappointed. Wells is, we acknowledge, absolutely unapproachable as a church; a thing of beauty to be remembered for ever. Yet, leaving Wells, we saw church after church, by

west front of Wells always in one's mind's eye; and we saw, moreover, one pile of building of a different kind, which takes rank in our mind with that most beautiful of all cathedrals. We speak as having seen Peterborough, Winchester, Ely, and others: Cologne, Antwerp, St. Ouen, and others.

Saying good-bye to St. Mary's Redcliff, which is being carefully and, as far as I dare judge, most admirably restored, you run along the shores of the Bristol Channel, and observe how grandly the great outlying islands of limestone rise out of the sea of rich pasture. At Highbridge you leave the main line, and enter upon the Somerset and Dorset railway, which leads right through the richest district of Somersetshire, out into the more barren and poorer sister county of Dorset. The line is nearly level for some fifteen miles, laid mainly on great peat bogs,-covered now, however, with rich pastures. You have only to read your book or your newspaper until the train begins to hum in a curious and hollow manner, and then, looking out of the window at this strange noise, you will find that you are passing through endless piles of peat, cut and stacked for fuel. This humming and roaring noise, which the train makes in passing over the bottomless peat, sometimes continues for a mile together. Nothing further is remarkable about this great hill-surrounded fen until you see, directly in your track, a high hill, with a tower on the top, as round, as regular, and as ugly as any artificial mound; yet which is so lofty that it towers above the beautiful hills around it. You are now at the end of the fen, formerly covered by the sea. This is "Weary All Hill," and the tower is the only relic of the church of St. Michael.

This tower of St. Michael's church

famous churches of St. Michael, visible a long way at sea by sailors; for it stands on one of the most holy islands in the world. This is Ynyswydryn, "The isle of grey water: afterwards

Avalon, "The place of apples," where Arthur was carried after his last battle against Modred to bathe in the mineral waters which still well out of the base of that hill; but for eight hundred years or more men have called it Glastonbury.

The reviewer just spoken of will tell one all that is authentically known about this place, far better than I can. It is a beautiful place enough even now, but a few miles on, on a branch railway, amidst a labyrinth of high limestone hills, is a place more beautiful still. The reviewer said, in effect, that Wells was one of the most beautiful things in the world, and we, taking him at his word, went there, and found that he was perfectly right. But this Wells is not his exclusive property, and we shall take the liberty to say a few words about it on our own account, and in our own style.

After passing Glastonbury, the hills begin to fold in upon you in great sheets of woodland and pasture, till at the Wells head you naturally find the town of Wells; with a most "un-English" fountain in the public street, and clear water running down the gutters. We got into an omnibus at the station, and were whirled away up a pretty oldfashioned street, across a drawbridge over a moat, under a fine gateway, beside a smooth-shaved lawn with a glorious Gothic ruin rising out of flowerbeds; until we pulled up with a jerk in front of a splendid old porch. I was proceeding to say that this was the finest specimen of a mediæval inn I had ever seen, when, from the conversation of the other passengers, I gathered that it was not the inn at all, but the Bishop's palace. I can only say that the good, hard-working, ex-Rector of Battersea has a palace worthy of him. Long may he live to inhabit it.

Getting out of these solemn precincts,

we went to our inn ; and, while smoking a cigar, with a feeling that one was taking a liberty in doing such a very secular thing in so very ecclesiastical a town, my companion came to me and said, "Just come here, and look at this, will you?" And I went and looked at that. And I took off my cap to the west front of Wells Cathedral, and passed a vote of thanks, on the spot, to the Saturday reviewer.

In colouring brown rather than grey: there is no deep, great shadow, as at Coutances, but an infinitely dextrous handling of shadows as deep and as dark as you could wish, but never broad in detail. And yet these accumulated shadows, never broad in any particular place, gave a breadth and a force, through sheer accumulation, which make Coutances seem in one's memory to be a toy, and even the soaring ribs of Bayeux only a feeble effort at imitation. Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle are also dim in one's memory when one has seen Wells.

You can see how it is done. It is done with tier after tier of statuary, standing in very deep-cut niches (like parts of the House of Parliament at Westminster, only so very different). He was an audacious man, this old builder of Wells. He would get force, not by a few easy broad bands of shadow, as may be seen in fifty places; not by declaring himself a hundred feet overhead, as at Bayeux; but by a detailed. mass of shade spread everywhere. And he has done it. If you doubt it, go to Wells and look for yourself. And then you come to this: Who, gentlemen historians, showed him how? If there is a puzzle on the face of the earth, that puzzle consists in accounting for the amazing genius displayed in mediæval architecture. At present one can only take off one's hat to the result, which is scarcely satisfactory; and get modern architects to imitate it for us, which is still less satisfactory and more expensive.

We will quit this subject. It is not good for any one who is trying to be a respectable and honest Philistine to go to Wells. It exasperates him, and does