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Three birds are seated on the heights above the outpost of the Klephts: One looks towards Armyros, the other to the way of Valtos;

And take him and hang him before his door, and take his little son,

And take all his wealth, and take care you do not lose a pin."

And the third, the gentlest, bewails her- In the middle of the night, the messenger self, and cries:

"Passers-by, what has become of Christos Milionis, for we see him not on the hills?"

"Bird," they answer, "they have told us he has crossed Arcania;

left the port and sailed to Achelos. He flew like a bird; he went like an arrow. Michalis Bey, as soon as he saw him, advanced to meet him.

"Be welcome, my lord," he said. seated with us at breakfast."

"Be

He has entered Arta and has taken pris- "I do not come to eat; I do not come to oners the Cadi and two agas. drink. I come to do the Sultan's will."

The Pasha has heard of this, and is griev

ously incensed;

He calls two of his council and he says, 'if you would do yourselves good, If you would have honors, go and kill Christos-this Captain Milionis,

For the Sultan has ordered it; he has sent his firman.'"

The fatal day came-and oh, would it had not been he! Soliman is sent to search for Christos.

He goes, and he meets him in Armyros, and they embrace as old friends should.

All night they drink together, till day draws near, and as the dawn breaks they rise to part. Then Soliman cries to the Captain Milionis: "Christos, the Sultan wants thee and so do his agas." "As long as Christos lives, he will never give himself up to the Turks." And they ran, and aimed their guns at each other: they fired again and again.

And they fell, both together, slain, upon the spot.

Another old song relates to the fate of a wealthy Greek living in peace and security.

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And he threw his rope, and threw it round the neck of Michalis.

And so he took him and hung him before his door.

And then he sought for his little son and carried him off.

And put him in the ship with all the treasure of his father.

Was it any wonder that another song -one of many-declared by the mouth of a famous "Klepht" and his warriors:

Never heed that the passes belong to the Turks.

Never care that they are full of Albanians: Sterghios as long as he lives, will make no note of the pachas;

So long as there is snow on these mountains, we will never submit to the Turks.

Rather will we lodge in the lair of the wolves.

Let slaves live in the cities and on the plains, beside the Infidels:

But the cities of the brave men are in the solitudes of the mountain tops. Rather than live with the Turks we will live with the wild beasts.

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THE ESCAPE OF LIAKOS' WIFE.

"What misfortune has happened to the wife of Liakos?"

"Five Albanians have taken her prisoner and ten others question her.

'O Liakena, wilt thou not be married? Wilt thou not take a Turk for thy spouse?'

'I would rather see my blood redden the earth, than that a Turk should kiss my eyes.'

And Liakos, her spouse, looked on from a hill top.

And he drew to him his black horse and he

whispered to him:

"Canst thou not, my horse, canst thou not save thy mistress?"

"Yes, I can, my master, I can deliver my mistress, and she will feed me the more."

And he flew off, and he saved his mistress, and he brought her back to the door of his master's dwelling.

The story is told as if the horse did it all himself, because the Klepht knew

he could not have done it without the horse!

The next song we take tells of Liakos' death, and every line is redolent with the terrors of the time.

THE DEATH OF LIAKOS.

Liakos! the mountains of Agrapha and their waters and their woods weep for thee,

And thine adopted son weeps for thee, and thy followers weep for thee;

But did I not say to thee once, twice,

thrice, ey, five times, "Submit thyself to the pacha, Liakos, sub

mit thyself to the vizier!" "So long as Liakos lives," said he, "he submits not to viziers!

For vizier, Liakos has his sword; he has his gun for pacha."

But the Turks prepared for him an ambuscade in a blind pass,

And Liakos was thirsty and he went forward sword in hand.

He stooped down to drink to refresh himself and they shot three times,

First, in the back, and second, in the body, and third, and deadliest, in the breast.

Quick! Take my gold pieces and my silTake my sword, too, this famous sword, ver hauberk, That the Turks may not cut it off and and cut off my head, carry it to the Pacha, and set it on his palace,

When mine enemies would see it and rejoice, and my friends would see it and be sad,

And my mother also would see it and the sight would kill her with sorrow."

There are which tell us how the heroines of Souli many snatches of song "fought like men," with a babe on one arm and a gun in the other hand, and an apron full of cartridges. The courage of one Souliote woman turned the fortune of a desperate battle.

But possibly none of the songs tell their grim story with more restrained energy and internal fire than the following:

An awful sound is heard-bullets fall like

rain.

Is it a marriage that they celebrate? Is it a day of rejoicing?

Nay, it is not a marriage that they celebrate, neither is it a festival, It is Despo who defends herself, with her daughters and daughters-in-law. The enemy have surrounded her in the tower of Dimoulas. "Wife of George," they cry, "lay down your arms. You are not now in Souli.

Here you are the slave of the pasha and the prisoner of his troops."

And she answers "Souli may have surrendered, Kiapha may have become Turk,

But Despo has not. Nor will Despo ever have the Turks for masters."

She seized a torch in her hands, called her daughters, and her daughters-in-law, "Never be slaves to the Turks, my girls, but follow your mother." She set fire to the powder-and every thing vanished away.

And all the while these poor people, condemned to live in this horror, with all that was wild and fierce in them

His mouth filled with blood and his lips drawn to the surface and developed,

with the poison of death.

And his tongue murmured words. It murmured and said, "Where are you, my brave boys? my soul, where are you?

Son of

were really a gentle, kindly race, who were devoted to their church, and loved the village dance, and the neighborly gossip. The fiercest of the Klephts

were not only good husbands and fathers, but it was the very rarest thing for one of them to inflict either cruelty or insult on the children or wives of Turks who, in their turn, had wreaked cruel wrongs on the families of the

But Charon would not heed, Charon was determined to take him.

"Well, Charon, as thou art resolved-as thou wilt take me,

Come! let us struggle together on this If thou conquer me, Charon, thou canst stony ground.

take my soul:

If it is I who conquer thee, leave me and go where thou wilt."

And they closed together, and struggled, from morning until noon.

But towards the dining hour, Charon overthrew the shepherd.

Then the involuntary separation of husband and wife is touchingly drawn in the

PARTING SONG.

Klephts. Indeed, the one or two Greek captains who did forget themselves in this fashion, found themselves disgraced and deserted by their "pallikars," as the young men following them were called. While these fierce songs were, as it were, "singing themselves" off the red heat of indignant and struggling freedom (for the authorship of most of them is as unknown as that of "John Brown's body lies mouldering in the ground"), sweet playful cradle songs were rising from mother hearts, and pretty caressing love verses were passing to and fro among the young people. It is true that many even of these domestic subjects bear witness to the national anguish by some pathetic turn of inci- I shall drink it at my morning meal, at dent or feeling. Take, for instance, that of "The Herdsman and Charon." One feels that the allegorical conflict between the simple rustic and Death's ferryman is true to the reality of many I shall go and I shall search for it, and an unexpected conflict and defeat on the wild hillsides.

A slender shepherd runs down the mountain,

His cap on one side and his hair a-curl, -And Charon sees him from the opposite height.

Thy going away is misery: thy farewell is a death:

But thy coming back will be a blessing, all

tenderness and love.

Thou goest, and thou leavest me a jar of bitter poison.

my evening meal,

All the time thou art away, until thou shalt come again.

That stone which thou shalt tread as thou springest into the boat

cover it with my tears."

"I go, and I leave thee my blessing, I leave thee my faith."

The last song we shall give, "The Recognition," may have a peculiar interest, inasmuch as it is believed to be a Cretan song. M. Fauriel, who disHe descends to the valley, and awaits him covered it in the Cretan dialect, thinks there.

"Whence do you come, slim shepherd?"
says he. "And where do you go?"
"I come from my flocks and I go to my
home.

I come to look for my bread, and then I re-
turn."

"And me, shepherd, God has sent me to look for your soul."

"O let me live still, Charon, I pray thee; let me live.

I have a young wife, and to a young wife widowhood is bitter!

-If she go gently, folks say she seeks a husband,

And if she go hardily, they call her insolent.

it is very ancient. In it, the long absent husband returns, steals by night to his house, and at first his trembling wife doubts his identity, and questions him:

"Who are you? What do you call your-
self? What is the name you go by?"
"I am he who brought you apples in my
handkerchief,

Apples and peaches and sweet grapes. I
am he who kissed your red lips."
"But before I open to let you in, describe
something in my courtyard."
"At the gate there is an apple tree. In
the yard there is a vine.

-And I have little children, whom I And the vine gives a white grape, and the

should leave helpless."

grape gives a good wine,

And whoever drinks that wine is refreshed and asks for more." "You deceive me, you trickster, somebody in the neighborhood has told you that.

Before I open and let you in, describe me

something that is in the house." "In the middle of thy chamber there hangs a golden lamp, It shines on you as you undress, as you unfasten your buttons." "You beguile me still, you trickster, somebody in the neighborhood has told you that.

Before I open the door and let you in, tell me something about myself."

"You have a mole upon the cheek, another on the shoulder,

Here we have him, in his latest appearance, not so much "guessing" in his most superior manner "at the riddle of existence" as a much easier and more self-satisfactory thing—criticising those who have had the temerity to guess. But does he on his side need to guess? That surely is too dubious, too purely conjectural, a word to denote any process of a superior mind. It admits too many possibilities, any one of which might be right. It is hardly caustic a critic of views past, passing, the fit term for the mental output of so or about to pass. The man who, as with a wave of the hand or a sweep of

And on your bosom shine the stars and the the pen, dismisses so much from the moon!" region of the credible and reasonable "Run servants, run, and open all the has in a degree ceased to guess.

doors."

And then we know quite well all that happened; for is it not written in our own Scotch song "There's nae luck about the house."

ISABELLA FYVIE MAYO.

From The Speaker. GOLDWIN SMITH AND THE RIDDIE OF EXISTENCE.1

Professor Goldwin Smith is an interesting, as well as a superior, person. He never speaks without giving us the instruction we need. His pen is sharp, his style is caustic with the synthetic judgment. He plays the part of "the bystander" to more things than Canadian politics; he watches the universe from the coign of vantage he so handsomely occupies and so thoroughly enjoys. Knowledge in its onward march passes before him, and he duly registers its speed and its progress. Changes in belief he marks and measures, and records his observations with a pen which bites like an etcher's needle, and produces a picture so vivid as to be the despair of ordinary workers in black and white.

1 Guesses at the Riddle of Existence, and other Essays on Kindred Subjects. By Goldwin Smith, D.C.L. New York: Macmillan & Co.

He has so defined the terms of the problem that the solution must be of one kind, and not simply one from amid the possible multitudes he had dismissed. But though "guess" be the fit term for him to use of another rather than of himself, yet what he has given us has so much of the old alertness that we read it with pleasure if without satisfaction, or the feeling that we have been put somehow well on the way to a more happy reading of the riddle that perplexes us all.

Of these essays, the one that gives its name to the volume is a criticism of Henry Drummond, Benjamin Kidd, and A. J. Balfour. It is done in Goldwin Smith's best manner, which is that of a very caustic exposition of their fundamental positions with the emphasis just slightly changed, or with certain of their terms a little more highly colored, just so as to bring out the innate weakness or the hidden inconsistencies or even gaucheries of their argument or theory. But, on the whole, this refutation by caustic analysis does not carry us very far. He is indeed right when he says: "There can be no hope, apparently, of laying foundations for a rational theology in any direction excepting that of the study of the universe and of manifestations of the humanity as supreme power in that spirit of thorough-going intellectual honesty of

which Huxley, who has just been taken from us, is truly said to have been an illustrious example." We need not discuss the "intellectual honesty" of Huxley, or, for that part, of Huxley's opponents. That is a quality which it is easy to deny to some, easy to ascribe to others, but of which a man should be very jealous as to the reasons why he ascribes it to one man and denies it to another. We should have said that Huxley had rather too much pleasure in polemical dialects simply as polemics to be selected as typical of "intellectual honesty." He had inimitable skill in destructive argument; he had rare pleasure in pursuing the men he regarded as the legitimate prey of his syllogism or his dilemma. We are not quite sure that it would be "intellec tually honest" in a theologian to disinter the exploded speculations of earlier biologists-say, men of the preDarwinian age-in order that he might use them as cudgels for the true believers in evolution; and, for our part, we have never seen why men should dig up the crudities of earlier divines in order to prove that the ideas and beliefs of later ones are absurd, heterodox, or how such a rather useless proceeding should argue "intellectual honesty."

or

But, leaving that very personal matter aside, in what way do the new foundations for rational theology, as Professor Goldwin Smith explains them, differ from those of the old natural theology? What was that older natural theology save "the study of the universe and humanity as manifestations of the supreme power"? It erred in a great number of ways, but mainly because it shared the erroneous ideas of its day as to the universe, its laws, and its mode of working. Nothing at one time afforded greater pleasure to Huxley than to show how the old Argument from Design had perished, though he never on this point fell into the incredible stupidities of Tyndall. But theology did not create the Argument from Design; science created it. It grew up not as a way of proving that God existed, but as a method of ex

plaining how nature had come to be. It was a purely scientific theory long before it became a piece of theological evidence. Theology in that respect stepped into an inheritance created by science; and if it profited by its inheritance, was it to blame, or did the blame lie with the science that bequeathed it? The Argument from Design is known to the Socrates of the "Memorabilia," but it is not known to the Hebrew Prophets or to the writers of the New Testament. And if theology has assimilated evolution, who is to forbid it doing so? Why should it not? Science has been revolutionized by the idea; must not theology, if it is to remain rational, accept the idea that lives in the air, that penetrates all minds and organizes all knowledge? The adoption of evolution by theology ought to argue not its impending death but its continued life, its power, as it were, to know the times and the seasons and to expand with the expansion of the thought. We can quite allow the phantasies of Drummond, the unphilosophical deductions of Kidd, the inconclusive dialectics of Balfour, to go. They play in theology exactly the same part that the "guesses" at discovery-which we with becoming dignity, the subject being changed, call "hypotheses"-play in science. They show that theology, like other branches of knowledge, is more a search after truth than the actual possession of the truth it seeks.

But Professor Goldwin Smith is not contented with touching the riddle of existence, so badly "guessed at" by the men he so soundly drubs; he also proceeds to discuss the relation between the Church and the Old Testament. It is indeed a great question-many patient scholars have worked at it, men of genius have inquired into it; and though Professor Goldwin Smith be as able as he is brilliant, it has not been given even to him to deal with it exhaustively or fairly, or-shall we say? -with complete "intellectual honesty" in an essay of rather less than fifty pages. Many things in this essay surprise us. In a matter of literature we

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