der mats and whelmed in slumber. Or perhaps we came later, fell on a
more private hour, and found Tembinok' retired in the house with the
favourite, an earthenware spittoon, a leaden inkpot, and a commercial
ledger. In the last, lying on his belly, he writes from day to day the
uneventful history of his reign; and when thus employed he betrayed a
touch of fretfulness on interruption with which I was well able to
sympathise. The royal annalist once read me a page or so, translating as
he went; but the passage being genealogical, and the author boggling
extremely in his version, I own I have been sometimes better
entertained. Nor does he confine himself to prose, but touches the lyre
too, in his leisure moments, and passes for the chief bard of his
kingdom, as he is its sole public character, leading architect, and only
merchant. His competence, however, does not reach to music; and his
verses, when they are ready, are taught to a professional musician, who
sets them and instructs the chorus. Asked what his songs were about,
Tembinok' replied, "Sweethearts and trees and the sea. Not all the same
true, all the same lie." For a condensed view of lyrical poetry (except
that he seems to have forgot the stars and flowers) this would be hard
to mend. These multifarious occupations bespeak (in a native and an
absolute prince) unusual activity of mind.

The palace court at noon is a spot to be remembered with awe, the
visitor scrambling there, on the loose stones, through a splendid
nightmare of light and heat; but the sweep of the wind delivers it from
flies and mosquitoes; and with the set of sun it became heavenly. I
remember it best on moonless nights. The air was like a bath of milk.
Countless shining stars were overhead, the lagoon paved with them. Herds
of wives squatted by companies on the gravel, softly chatting. Tembinok'
would doff his jacket, and sit bare and silent, perhaps meditating
songs; the favourite usually by him, silent also. Meanwhile in the midst
of the court, the palace lanterns were being lit and marshalled in rank
upon the ground--six or eight square yards of them; a sight that gave
one strange ideas of the number of "my pamily"; such a sight as may be
seen about dusk in a corner of some great terminus at home. Presently
these fared off into all corners of the precinct, lighting the last
labours of the day, lighting one after another to their rest that
prodigious company of women. A few lingered in the mi