infantry in the war of 1885 it made sixty-five miles, through slush and snow, in twenty-six hours.

What can I say of Plevna that would not apply equally well to any other small Bulgarian town, Rustchuk, Shumla, Rasgrad, a score of others? It is picturesque, dirty, bright, amusing, povertystricken; it has its fair quota of brand-new, expensive, useless, unpaid-for public buildings, and more than a fair share of hovels, the squalor of which defies description.

But to me the town is sacred. I can find my way with ease through the maze of narrow, crooked streets. I recognise old friends among the houses, familiar landmarks, spots hallowed by a thousand memories, some pleasant, many terrible, by men and .women that are dead, by friendships that are past and forgotten, by joys and hopes on which a quarter of a century has laid a heavy subduing hand, by all the horrors of the most horrible siege of modern times. Every heap of stones is, to me, pregnant with meaning, for it was once a house, struck by a shell and crumbling into a shapeless mass. At night the incessant bark of the scavenger dogs, let loose upon the town when the human population lies a-bed, so strange to the European on his first visit to the Orient, is perfectly familiar: as of yore, I should miss it, I should be unable to sleep if the dogs were silent.

During my first walk, deep in thought, I took, mechanically, a short cut, which brought me to a standstill in a certain quiet corner, right in the centre of the town, where the garden lanes meet, and a little blind alley leads to an old wooden gate. Only the roofs of the houses are visible, for each stands in a dense maze of foliage. Well I remember this wooden gate: it leads to a low white house, which was the headquarters of Osman Pasha during the latter half of the campaign, and afterwards the residence of Czar Alexander the Second. How many thousands of orderlies, messengers, officers have trod that path during those terrible months! From this house the telegraph wire led to each redoubt, to each point in the circle of defences, and from his plain, whitewashed office the grave, bearded man with the keen Arab face conducted the campaign which has made his name famous for all time to come. The house is unaltered. Recently it was for sale, and the Bulgarian Government bought it with the intention of transforming it into a museum. At present the windows are shuttered.

Another friend among the houses I discovered; a small, villalike building, which was at the time an innovation, and a pride of

the town. Here dwelt a Turkish surgeon from Sofia, and the house was a hospital for desperate cases. (Towards the end every house was a hospital, and wounded men crawled into pigstyes and dog-kennels to die.) Here dwelt also the surgeon's daughter, named Djémilé, a pretty, merry-eyed maiden of sixteen, whom I loved, or thought I loved, with passionate intensity.

I stand before the house on a dark stormy night in the early autumn of the year 1904, as I used to stand there many a night lighted by the glare of burning villages and homesteads, streaked by the vivid trail of shells, in the year 1877. A quarter of a century -but, oh! the difference to me! She was killed by a shell splinter in the last sortie, and lies in an unmarked grave on the Vidplain. I have learnt and have suffered, and have come to the conclusion that love is a pastime for fools and weaklings, utterly unworthy to form either the diversion or the serious occupation of an intellectual man in this the twentieth century. I wonder: Would I think so had she lived? The curs are in the next street, and bark an answer which sounds ominously like 'Ay, ay!'

And yet another friend: A mosque, bare and ugly, like a jail, except for the slender minaret. Osman utilised it as a store for ammunition. There used to stand a Circassian sentry, a giant, with a villainous, bearded face, hugging a Winchester repeating carbine in his long, ape-like arms. How many scores of times had I to give him the countersign in response to his challenge! These Circassians, originally irregular cavalry, had been dismounted, and their horses used for the more important transport work; but as infantry they were worthless, and the regular soldiers would not associate with them in redoubts and camps; so they were employed exclusively as guards. Now there stands a short, squat Bulgarian in a dirty white tunic, a Männlicher rifle on his shoulder. The Bulgarians, too, use the mosque as a magazine. And yet another mosque, now a melancholy ruin, from which I used to draw the boots and blankets for my company. And a tiny, discreet café with iron-barred windows-opposite is now the modern town hall-where beautiful girls from the Caucasus sang and danced with Eastern grace. It is still a café chantant, but vulgar creatures from Hungaria and Roumania, with raucous voices and offensive gestures, are the attraction. And in the little public garden, where once gipsies gave voluptuous performances, the band of the 11th Regiment of Infantry played, on the Sunday evening on which I made my re-entry into the town, the prelude to the third

act of Lohengrin, and played it remarkably well too, with splendid dash and a fine volume of sound.

I made the round of the fortification twice, once in company of an officer of the 11th Regiment, once alone—that is, alone with the driver of my rickety vehicle, a gipsy, who spoke no language known to human beings, and seemed astonished and hurt because I did not beat or kick him when he had taken me the wrong way. Memories crowded around me fast and furious. I was in cloudland. I was again a callow, ambitious youngster of seventeen summers, and my companions were brown-skinned, lustrous-eyed Tartar warriors, starving and uncomplaining.

On the day after my arrival I walked alone on the historic high road to the Vidbridge. This was the way of the remnants of Osman's forces to the last sortie which has justly been called 'the Suicide of an Army.' The vine, used towards the end as firewood, after having been protected for five months, has grown again, and the slopes are pretty and peaceful in the autumn sun. When once the railway station, the one innovation, the one jarring note, is left behind, nothing disturbs the illusion that a quarter of a century has been utterly effaced. The high road is as dusty and ill-kept as of yore. I meet but one wayfarer, a long-legged gipsy mounted on a patient ass. When he has passed me and given me a cheerful greeting in Turkish: 'Sabahiniz haïr ola, efendim '— 'Good day to you, sir '-I am alone with the birds and my thoughts.

And here, at length, is the house-famous all over the Balkan Peninsula to which Osman, wounded, was carried in the last sortie, and whence, heart-broken, he gave the order 'Cease fire,' which ended the Plevna campaign. The house is empty and shuttered, and has been so since that dread event. For it is haunted, and at night the townspeople dislike to pass near it. There dwells, so the legend says, the spirit of the Ottoman Empire, in solitude and somnolence, an accursed spirit, say the Bulgarians, a great and blessed and benignant spirit, say the Turks. And one of these days, so say the latter, he will awake and rouse himself, and will restore the ancient glory of the Prophet's empire on earth, and reconquer all the lost provinces, Bulgaria, and Roumania, and Servia, and Greece, and-who knows?-perchance even Hungary, right to the gates of Vienna. It is all written in the book of fate, against which there is no appeal, resistance to which avails not, and it will come to pass in the Lord's own time.

The house is a long, low, one-storied building, with poplars in

front, and dense foliage beside and behind. With the exception of a ruined gipsy hovel on the opposite side of the road, there is no token of human habitation so far as eyes can travel. Behind me, the town, three miles away, is hidden by the vineyards; in front is the sluggish river Vid and the historic bridge; beyond, the gently rising plain, the scene of the last sortie; on the horizon, the hills which were the redoubts and encampments of the investing Russian circle. No human being is visible. A sharp wind comes from the south where the Balkans show faintly on the sky line, sombre, pregnant with meaning; for once they spelt hope and rescue and freedom, when Mehemed Ali was there, the clever German Renegade, with his army of relief, and Baker Pasha, the daring Englishman. But Gourko barred the road; hope came to nought, and freedom was but an idle, vanishing dream.

At present the Balkans spell rain; for clouds arise and obscure them gradually. I used to be weatherwise in this part of the world. In two hours we shall have a heavy downpour. I utilise the respite by an excursion across the bridge to the plain beyond, and sadness is on me with a heavy hand. I know every inch of this ground. Here a whole division marched cheerfully to certain death, and the feet kept step to the lips which murmured the Arabic prayer: 'Bismillah Rahmin Rahamin '-'In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate.'

The rain comes on before I expect it, and I take shelter in a tiny shed in which the labourers keep their tools during harvest time. It rains in torrents, and the wind blows with maddened fury. When the clouds are past and the southern sky becomes blue again, I make my way back to the haunted house. The Vid has meanwhile become a broad, roaring river, proclaiming its own ephemeral importance; and Osman's calvary looks more than ever like a haunted house, with its background of tempest-torn clouds and the roadway transformed into a muddy stream.

An accident brought me to the house in the last battle, while Osman was inside, racked by physical pain and mental anguish. It was towards the close of an overcast winter's day, with slush on the ground and snow in the heavens, and a faint glow was in the western sky. As I gaze and dream and remember, the west lights up in yellow and orange and lustrous green, and the dying day hallows the haunted house of the Vidbridge.

W. V. HERBERT.

827

FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW.

VIII.

I HAD an experience the other day, very disagreeable but most wholesome, which held up for a moment a mirror to my life and character. I suppose that, at least once in his life, everyone has known what it is, in some corridor or stairway, to see a figure advancing towards him, and then to discover with a shock of surprise that he has been advancing to a mirror, and that the stranger is himself. This happened to me some short while ago, and I was by no means favourably impressed by what I saw !

Well, the other day I was conducting an argument with an irascible man. His temper suddenly boiled over, and he said several personal things to me, of which I did not at once recognise the truth; but I have since considered the criticisms, and have decided that they are mainly true, heightened perhaps by a little tinge of temper.

I am sorry my friend said the things, because it is difficult to meet, on cordial terms, a man whom one knows to hold an unfavourable opinion of oneself. But in one way I am glad he said them, because I do not think I could in any other way have discerned the truth. If a friend had said them without anger, he would no doubt have so gilded the pill that it would have seemed rather a precious ornament than a bitter remedy.

I will not here say in detail what my friend accused me of, but it amounted to a charge of egotism; and as egotism is a common fault, and particularly common with lonely and unmarried men, I will make no excuse for propounding a few considerations on the point, and how it may perhaps be cured, or if not cured, at least modified.

I suppose that the egotist is the man who regards the world as a setting for himself, as opposed to the man who realises that he is a small unit in a gigantic system. The characteristic of the egotist is to consider himself of too great importance, while the danger of the non-egotist is not sufficiently to realise his significance. Egotism is the natural temptation of all those whose individuality is strong; the man of intense desires, of acute perceptions, of