re dusty and more grey than ever as we gazed
down on its grey-tiled roofs. Even the gardens and palm-trees hardly
relieved it. It was nearly three o'clock before we could tear ourselves
away."

This is very natural and simple, though it is hardly what we should
expect from a cultivated woman after visiting the memorials of Greek art
and history, and the great and beautiful city of the "violet moon." A
greater enthusiasm, a more living sympathy, might surely have been
provoked by the sight of the blue sea where Themistocles repulsed the
navies of Persia, and the glorious hill on whose crest St. Paul spake to
the wondering Athenians, and the monuments of the genius of Praxiteles
and Phidias. Lady Brassey, however, is not at her best when treating of
the places and things which antiquity has hallowed: it is the aspects of
the life of to-day and the picturesque scenes of savage lands that
arrest her attention most firmly, and are reproduced by her most
vividly. She is more at home in the Hawaiian market than among the
ruined temples of Athens.

The reader may not be displeased to take a glance at Nikosia, the chief
town of Cyprus--of that famous island which calls up such stirring
memories of the old chivalrous days when Richard I. and his Crusaders
landed here, and the lion-hearted king became enamoured of Berengaria,
the daughter of the Cypriot prince.

"The town is disappointing inside," she says, "although there are some
fine buildings still left. The old cathedral of St. Sophia, now used as
a mosque, is superb in the richness of its design and tracery, and the
purity of its Gothic architecture. Opposite the cathedral is the Church
of St. Nicholas, now used as a granary. The three Gothic portals are
among the finest I have ever seen. Every house in Nikosia possesses a
luxuriant garden, and the bazaars are festooned with vines; but the
whole place wears, notwithstanding, an air of desolation, ruin, and
dirt. Government House is one of the last of the old Turkish residences.

"From the Turkish prison we passed through a narrow dirty street, with
ruined houses and wasted gardens on either side, out into the open
country again, when a sharp canter over the plain and through a small
village brought us to the place where the new Government House is in
course of erection. This spot is called Snake Hill, from two snakes
having once been discovered and killed here, a fact which shows how idle
are the rumours of the prevalenc