and unjustifiable; but, from all that we had seen of Persian mosques and shrines, I doubted if the contents of this mosque were sufficiently interesting to warrant the slightest risk or disturbance. Clearly, too, the moollahs were stronger in this matter than the governor. Already a crowd watched the altercation, and every man in it could be relied on to support the moollahs, while in the crowded bazaar close at hand they had a reserve of force willing and eager to do the work of fanaticism a force which could destroy any other power in Koom. I ordered a retreat; and, lest the servants should not understand my words, beckoned them to quit the doorway. Fortunately I had learned to beckon in the Persian manner. I had noticed that when I held up my hand and waved it toward my face in the European way, our servants did not understand this direction. The hand must be turned downward, and the waving done with the wrist uppermost. This was the sign I made in the courtyard of the mosque at Koom. Our position in recrossing the long courtyard was not very enviable; in Persia the vanquished are always contemptible; but there were no unpleasant manifestations.

That

In Koom we found it impossible to refill our empty wine bottles. Something stronger than the Maine Liquor Law prevails in this sacred city and in that of Meshed, where the brother of Fatima is buried. Intoxicating liquors appear to be absolutely unattainable, and intoxication is accomplished by those who desire that condition with bhang, or opium. which can be purchased anywhere in Koom, cheaper and of better quality and manufacture than elsewhere in Persia, is pottery, for which the town is famous. The water bottles of Koom are seen all over Persia. The clay, when baked, is fine, hard, and nearly white, and the potters have a specialty in the way of decoration. They stud the outside of their bottles with spots of vitrified blue, like turquoises, in patterns varied with yellow spots of the same character. The effect is very pleasing. In the bazaar of Koom we bought three delicious melons, each about a foot in diameter, for a kran, the value of tenpence in English money.

The muezzin was shouting "Allahu akbar," and the call to the daybreak prayer, when our caravan set out for Pasangan, the next station south of Koom. There is difficulty, as we afterward found, in the passage of a ship of three thousand tons' burden through the Suez Canal; but there is much greater

difficulty in passing a takht-i-rawan through the bazaar at Koom at about seven o'clock in the morning. What with the opposing stream of traffic and the anxiety of all to see the English khanoum, the operation was most difficult. After enduring many collisions with loaded camels and mules and donkeys, we escaped from the crowd of black hats and brown hats, green turbans and white turbans, and were once more in the open plain, where the only variety occurred in the fording of water-courses which crossed the path between artificial banks raised for the purpose of irrigation.

We thought we had never beheld a more lovely sunrise than that in the faint light of which we left the chapar-khanah of Pasangan. Above, yet near to the horizon, having a clear space beneath it, there hung a dense dark cloud. In a moment this was infused with rose color; then it became a floating mass of gold, increasing in splendor until the arisen sun passed behind it, and over all was gloom. Through the day we rode across the dusty plain to Sin-sin, a mud-built chapar-khanah and caravanserai, so entirely the color of the plain that it was difficult, when there was no shadow, to see the buildings before we were close to the walls. When the usual operations of sweeping out the bala-khanah and covering the doors and windows with hangings had been performed, the carpets laid, our beds set up and made, the table spread for dinner, I sat, as usual, on the roof, avoiding the smoke holes. Through the clouds rising in one of these holes I could see Kazem tending his stew-pots in an atmosphere dense with smoke, and unendurable to any but those who are accustomed to sit on the ground. Outside, the scene was, as always, charming, as always, of magnificent extent, and as invariably bounded on every side by mountains. In the plain, toward the town of Kashan, a few patches of softest green, the wheat crop of next year, were the only vegetation. Before us, distant two days' march, lay the snowy outline of the highest mountain pass in Central Persia. Cold and clear in the fading sunlight, it seemed very near; and the black, serrated outline of the lower ranges against the silver sky gave that aspect to the landscape which, while it fills the mind with melancholy, is accepted as most beautiful.

528

SIR EDWIN ARNOLD.

ARNOLD, SIR EDWIN, an English journalist and poet; born June 10, 1832. He studied at King's School, Rochester, and at King's College, London, whence he was elected to a scholarship at University College, Oxford, where in 1852 he gained the Newdigate prize for English poetry for his poem on "Belshazzar's Feast," and in the following year was chosen to deliver the address to the Earl of Derby on his installation as Chancellor of the University. Besides contributing largely, in prose and verse, to literary periodicals, he has written a treatise on "Education in India;" "The History of Lord Dalhousie's Administration in India;" "Griselda," a drama; a volume of "Poems Narrative and Lyrical;" "After Death in Arabia" (1891); "Japonica" (1891); "Potiphar's Wife and Other Poems" (1892); "Adzuma, or the Japanese Wife," a play (1893); "Wandering Words," papers which first appeared in the "Daily Telegraph" and other papers and magazines (1894); "The Tenth Muse and Other Poems" (1895.) He has translated "The Euterpe " of Herodotus from the Greek; and from the Sanskrit, the "Hitopadesha," or "Book of Good Counsels," and two Books of the "Mahábhárata," which has been styled "the Iliad of India." The works by which he is best known are the poems "Indian Song of Songs" and "The Light of Asia."

PRINCE SIDDARTHA'S MARRIAGE.

(From "The Light of Asia.")

Now, when our Lord was come to eighteen years,
The King commanded that there should be built
Three stately houses: one of hewn square beams
With cedar lining, warm for winter days;
One of veined marbles, cool for summer heat;
And one of burned bricks, with blue tiles bedecked.
Pleasant at seedtime, when the champaks bud:
Subha, Suramma, Ramma, were their names,
Delicious gardens round about them bloomed,

L

Streams wandered wild and musky thickets stretched,
With many a bright pavilion and fair lawn,
In midst of which Siddartha strayed at will,
Some new delight provided every hour:
And happy hours he knew, for life was rich,
With youthful blood at quickest; yet still came
The shadows of his meditation back,

As the lake's silver dulls with driving clouds.

Which the King marking, called his Ministers:"Bethink ye, sirs! how the old Rishi spake," He said, "and what my dream readers foretold. This boy, more dear to me than mine heart's blood, Shall be of universal dominance,

Trampling the neck of all his enemies,

A King of kings—and this is in my heart; -
Or he shall tread the sad and lowly path
Of self-denial and of pious pains,

Gaining who knows what good, when all is lost
Worth keeping; and to this his wistful eyes
Do still incline amid my palaces.

But ye are sage, and ye will counsel me:

How may his feet be turned to that proud road

Where they should walk, and all fair signs come true Which gave him Earth to rule, if he would rule?”

The eldest answered, "Maharaja! love
Will cure these thin distempers: weave the spell
Of woman's wiles about his idle heart.
What knows this noble boy of beauty yet,
Eyes that make heaven forgot, and lips of balm ?
Find him soft wives and pretty playfellows:
The thoughts ye cannot stay with brazen chains
A girl's hair lightly binds."

And all thought good,
But the King answered, "If we seek him wives,
Love chooseth ofttimes with another eye;
And if we bid range Beauty's garden round,
To pluck what blossom pleases, he will smile
And sweetly shun the joy he knows not of."
Then said another, "Roams the barasingh
Until the fated arrow flies: for him,

As for less lordly spirits, some one charms,
Some face will seem a Paradise, some form
Fairer than pale Dawn when she wakes the world.

VOL. I. 34

rich supper, which they had also brought with them. They feasted noisily, and spent the remainder of the night in drinking and dancing. Two of them were appointed to keep guard, in order to give the company due warning of the approach either of anybody or of the day. Three times they went out, always returning with the news that they saw neither the approach of any human being, nor yet of the break of day.

But when the man-servant suspected the night to be pretty far spent, he jumped from his place of concealment into the room, and clashing the two planks together with as much noise as he could make, shouted like a madman, "The day! the day! the day!"

On these words the whole company rose scared from their seats, and rushed headlong out, leaving behind them not only their tables, and all the silver dishes, but even the very clothes they had taken off for ease in dancing.

In the hurry of flight many were wounded and trodden under foot, while the rest ran into the darkness, the man-servant after them, clapping the planks together and shrieking, "The day! the day! the day!" until they came to a large lake, into which the whole party plunged headlong and disappeared.

From this the man knew them to be water-elves. Then he returned home, gathered the corpses of the elves who had been killed in the flight, killed the wounded ones, and, making a great heap of them all, burned them. When he had finished this task, he cleaned up the house and took possession of all the treasures the elves had left behind them.

On the farmer's return, his servant told him all that had occurred, and showed him the spoils. The farmer praised him for a brave fellow, and congratulated him on having escaped with his life. The man gave him half the treasures of the elves, and ever afterward prospered exceedingly.

This was the last visit the water-elves ever paid to that house.