ham's interpretation. The Sonnets are addressed to Lord Pembroke. For heaven's sake don't waste your time in a foolish attempt to discover a young Elizabethan actor who never existed, and to make a phantom puppet the centre of the great cycle of Shakespeare's Sonnets."

"I see that you don't understand the theory," he replied.

"My dear Erskine," I cried, "not understand it! Why, I feel as if I had invented it. Surely my letter shows you that I not merely went into the whole matter, but that I contributed proofs of every kind. The one flaw in the theory is that it presupposes the existence of the person whose existence is the subject of dispute. If we grant that there was in Shakespeare's company a young actor of the name of Willie Hughes, it is not difficult to make him the object of the Sonnets. But as we know that there was no actor of this name in the company of the Globe Theatre, it is idle to pursue the investigation further."

"But that is exactly what we don't know," said Erskine. It is quite true that his name does not occur in the list given in the first folio; but, as Cyril pointed out, that is rather a proof in favor of the existence of Willie Hughes than against it, if we remember his treacherous desertion of Shakespeare for a rival dramatist."

We argued the matter over for hours, but nothing that I could say could make Erskine surrender his faith in Cyril Graham's interpretation. He told me that he intended to devote his life to proving the theory, and that he was determined to do justice to Cyril Graham's memory. I entreated him, laughed at him, begged of him, but it was of no use. Finally we parted, not exactly in anger, but certainly with a shadow between us. He thought me shallow, I thought him foolish. When I called on him again, his servant told me that he had gone to Germany.

Two years afterward, as I was going into my club, the hall-porter handed me a letter with a foreign postmark. It was from Erskine, and written at the Hotel When I had read d'Angleterre, Cannes. it I was filled with horror, though I did not quite believe that he would be so mad as to carry his resolve into execution. The gist of the letter was that he had tried in every way to verify the Willie Hughes

theory, and had failed, and that as Cyril Graham had given his life for this theory, he himself had determined to give his own life also to the same cause. The concluding words of the letter were these: "I still believe in Willie Hughes; and by the time you receive this, I shall have died by my own hand for Willie Hughes's sake for his sake, and for the sake of Cyril Graham, whom I drove to his death by my shallow scepticism and ignorant lack of faith. The truth was once revealed to you, and you rejected it. It comes to you now stained with the blood of two lives,-do not turn away from it."

It was a horrible moment. I felt sick with misery, and yet I could not believe it. To die for one's theological beliefs is the worst use a man can make of his life, but to die for a literary theory! It seemed impossible.

I looked at the date. The letter was a week old. Some unfortunate chance had prevented my going to the club for several days, or I might have got it in time to save him. Perhaps it was not too late. I drove off to my rooms, packed up my things, and started by the night-mail from Charing Cross. The journey was intolerable. I thought I would never arrive.

As soon as I did I drove to the Hotel d'Angleterre. They told me that Erskine had been buried two days before, in the English cemetery. There was something horribly grotesque about the whole tragedy. I said all kinds of wild things, and the people in the hall looked curiously at

me.

Suddenly Lady Erskine, in deep mourning, passed across the vestibule. When she saw me she came up to me, murmured something about her poor son, and burst into tears. I led her into her sittingroom. An elderly gentleman was there waiting for her. It was the English doctor.

We talked a great deal about Erskine, but I said nothing about his motive for committing suicide. It was evident that he had not told his mother anything about the reason that had driven him to so fatal, so mad an act. Finally Lady Erskine rose and said, George left you something as a memento. It was a thing he prized very much. I will get it for you."

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As soon as she had left the room I turned to the doctor and said, "What a dreadful shock it must have been to Lady

Erskine I wonder that she bears it as well as she does."

"Oh, she knew for months past that it was coming," he answered.

"Knew it for months past!" I cried. "But why didn't she stop him? Why didn't she have him watched? He must have been mad."

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The doctor stared at me. "I don't know what you mean, "' he said. Well," I cried, if a mother knows that her son is going to commit suicide-"

"Suicide !" he answered. "Poor Erskine did not commit suicide. He died of consumption. He came here to die. The moment I saw him I knew that there was no hope. One lung was almost gone, and the other was very much affected. Three days before he died he asked me

was there any hope. I told him frankly that there was none, and that he had only a few days to live. He wrote some letters, and was quite resigned, retaining his senses to the last."

At that moment Lady Erskine entered the room with the fatal picture of Willie Hughes in her hand. When George was dying he begged me to give you this," she said. As I took it from her, her tears fell on my hand.

The picture hangs now in my library, where it is very much admired by my artistic friends. They have decided that it is not a Clouet, but an Ouvry. I have never cared to tell them its true history. But sometimes, when I look at it, I think that there is really a great deal to be said for the Willie Hughes theory of Shakespeare's Sonnets.-Blackwood's Magazine.

THE game of chess, we are told, was invented by a wise minister, that he might teach his master that the position of a despotic king was defenceless unless he had his subjects on his side. Few crowned heads answer to the popular ideal of a despot more accurately than the Shah of Persia," the king, the great king, the king of kings, the king of the many-peopled countries, the supporter of the great world; and too often is it taken for granted that his people, and indeed those of all despots, are more or less poor and misgoverned. Now poverty and misgovernment are expressions that, standing alone, cannot convey much meaning. It is necessary that they should be used with reference to some standard of comparison, and many and foolish have been the deductions drawn from illustrating the affairs and circumstances of the East, by a consideration of those of the West.

Now that Nasr-ud-din Shah for the second time in his reign of forty years is about to visit us, chiefly with the object, as we can safely assume, of acquiring such experience as will bear fruit in the improvement of his own subjects, it may be interesting to give a brief account of the condition of parts of Persia which may be deemed fairly characteristic of the rest, to

see in their condition a fair reflection of the government of the Shah, of his intentions, and of their results, and to consider how far he has and deserves to have his subjects on his side.

A general impression exists to the effect that the villages are poor, the people poorer, and the country a vast desert. The existence of this impression is accounted for by the fact that the route on which posts on horseback are maintained by the Shah, as they were long ago by Ahasuerus the king, runs from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian through some of the most uninhabited parts of the country. This is the route most travellers take. În addition to its natural disadvantages, its vicinity suffers from a not unnatural dislike on the part of the people to settling alongside a road which brings them little or no trade or prosperity, and exposes them to the exactions and inquisitive inquiries of travellers, courtiers, and officials. A far better idea of the country can be obtained by moving off in any direction away from the postal tracks, or, better still, by going in a bee-line from one known point to another, taking the rough with the smooth, desert and oasis, hill and plain, as they come, noting down the general characteristics, and striking a working average of

the condition of the country and of its inhabitants. I dare assert that the result of such an experience, plus a good colloquial knowledge of the language, will show that the people as a whole are well-fed, big and brawny, and their houses fairly comfortable, and their lot not more unhappy than that of their fellow-men in corresponding conditions in other countries. Lest I seem to underrate the knowledge and experience of the traveller, dependent on the official post-horses and unable to converse with the natives, let me add there are large tracts and districts, the extent, capacities, and even the positions of which are vaguely known to the Persian government itself. The towns in barren and unproductive localities are mere collections of flat-roofed mud houses, built closely together and surrounded by walls furnished with watchtowers. Where the magic of water turns the thinnest and stoniest soil into gardens, the town or village is surrounded with orchards, hidden in trees and possessed of what passes for fair turf out of the United Kingdom. The men in either case wear blue cotton frocks tied in at the waist, trousers, and felt skull-caps or lamb's-wool hats, according as they are rich or poor. The difference between rich and poor is not in the country districts strongly accentuated, but doubtless that arises from the fact that the rich do not live to any great extent on their estates, but congregate in the capital and in large

towns.

The wages of agricultural labor vary from 5d. a day with food to 9d. without, and reach as much as 13d. a day when the days are long and severe. Now in Essex to-day an agricultural laborer only gets 118. a week, and in Herefordshire 128., while the purchasing power of money in Persia is at least double that of what it is in England, and clothing and lodging are far cheaper. At a village in Grape County (Angurmahal), by Kazveen, where I spent a day, the people complained that the Government demand had been raised and that they were badly off, but an old graybeard, who by common consent was appointed to speak for the community, said they were all able to support large families of daughters, who slept and ate. The women generally do not labor in Persia proper, though the men of the peasant class work hard. In fact, the orthodox Mussulmani woman cannot work as a la

borer. It is contrary to what is proper, and makes her seclusion difficult or impossible. That is right enough. One wishes no women should labor with their hands, but the observance of such social or religious scruples is not compatible with a state of abject and grinding poverty. I suspect that a laborer in Persia gets meat as often as the English farm-laborer gets bacon, which I believe is by no means every day. On quitting the village I ventured to address the House instead of the Speaker, and was promptly rebuked by him, for breach of order and for flippant speech. Said I, "What think you of the first Frank who has visited your village?" Said he, "How should they express opinions on God's works? Did he not make both Frank and Moslem?" These graybeards are very dignified and do not understand pleasantry. In the company of one I described myself for the moment and from his point of view as one of the Kafirs, that is, one who does not believe in Islam, but he said, "The followers of His Highness Jesus, on whom be peace, are no Kafirs. Call not thyself that which I would not hear thee called."

Touching the houses of the people and their household properties, I once spent a night in the house of a trooper of the Shah. His pay was 107. a year, with rations when on duty. He gave me an excellent dinner in an upper chamber, which was carpeted, and in the niches of the false windows of which rose-leaves were piled up for fragrance. I do not mean that the carpet was other than the cheapest, or that the atmosphere was all of rose-leaves, but an English groom gets 127. a year, more or less, and I doubt if he indulges in carpets and flowers. A few cooking utensils, a brass tray or two, skins in which curds are made and kept, a loom, a sheet of leather which serves for the floor (table) cloth-these are the articles that furnish the ordinary dwelling. If the householder be a very poor man, he will eat his meat off big flaps of unleavened bread, and will eat too that which serves him for a tablecloth and is also the bread which we find on our table-cloths. You break off a bit of bread and " dip your hand in the dish” wherein are curds at any rate, and possibly on feast days kid or fowl.

A soldier, who had travelled a little and was a most intelligent man, calculated at my request that for 37. 10s. a year a culti

vator could live and bring up a family. It seems extraordinary little, and I merely quote his estimate. That my readers may judge of his capacity as well as I can, I will repeat parts of my conversation with him. "Is it true," said he, "that all Yangiduuya (America) belongs to the Ooroos (Russian) ?" "Not at all," said I. "Much belongs to the Inglees, little to the Russ." "Who is the Shah of Hindustan ?" "Our Queen." "Yet the brother of the King of India lives at Bagdad." He referred to the late Nawab Ikbal-ud-Dowla, who actually sat for a few days on the royal cushion of Oudh. "He is not the King of India's brother," I rejoined ; "there never was a King of all India. " "You mean it is very big," said he. "I do indeed." "How big?" "Twice as long, and twice as broad as Iran (Persia), with twenty-five times its population at the least, with a dozen cities greater than Teheran or Tabriz and half a hundred larger than Ispahan." Now I had these facts ready, as travellers' stock in trade, and they are pretty correct, but the old soldier, when he heard them, discerned in me what Oscar Wilde calls "the makings of a really magnificent liar" and ceased from all parley on the spot.

These conversations, which lightened my journey, as I hope they may this article, were held between Kazveen by the Elburz, and Hamadan (Ecbatana), but there was a man from Bushire in the south who was present, and he too interviewed me at length, and marvelled greatly at the things I told him of England, how much the cheapest meat cost, how dear was house rent, and the like. He said with reason what must be the wealth of a people whose poor can pay such prices! I did not tell him that too many cannot pay them, and suffer from actual want of food near the dwellings of the rich beyond all count, and in the heart of the richest city in the world. At this time I travelled informa pauperis, with all my worldly goods in a saddle-bag. I expected to see most of the poor, and they are ever most ready to be friendly and sympathetic with the poor. I had a horse of course, but that means little in Persia, where you can buy one for 5l. or 107., and keep him after a fashion for a year for a sum less than is represent ed by a fortnight's livery in London.

The Persia of the nomad tribes differs entirely from the Persia of the towns.

The women of the former wear petticoats and no trousers or veil, and are remarkably strong and active. The men are very bad Mussulmans, and they speak for the most part Turki, and not Persian. They are truthful, brave, hospitable, and irreligious. The Persian of the town is religious, but lacks some of the other virtues named. I offered a nomad one day a small sum in return for his hospitality, but he declined to receive it, saying: "We do not sell the produce of our flocks; you are welcome as our guest. I could understand Turki a little, but could not speak it, and I asked my companion, a Persian, who knew that language as well as his own, to say that it was just so with us, and that I understood his feeling in the matter. I could follow what he did actually say, and repeat it. He said to my host, "The Farangi (Frank) sahib says it is just like that in the country of London. No one there pays for anything!"

The Persians have advanced in geography since the days described by Morier, in the inimitable pages of Hajji Baba, and I think it is generally known that London is the capital of England and not England of London, but it is still in Persia considered inexplicable that the Queen of England allows a kind of chronic civil war between two parties in the State.

The dignity of the old and the respect they exact and receive from their juniors are very striking features of village life in Persia. Another ever-present feature is the reverential and religious demeanor of the people. I have seen a silent crowd sitting on the ground under a tree, while a village elder read a chapter from the Koran. We shall never, I think, see a scene of this character in England, but it may be permissible to hope that one day its beautiful country churches may at least be open daily from sunrise to sunset for such as wish to pray, or such as the sight of means may induce to prayer.

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The Persians are for the most part Shias, Mahomedans, who differ in doctrine from the Sunnis in very unimportant matters, but decline to acknowledge the three Caliphs who immediately followed Prophet. They are notoriously fanatical, and a traveller who does not conform to the outward observances of Islam would have some difficulty in getting on in unfrequented districts, at any rate during Ramazan. In this month of fasting the

old, the young, and the traveller have a dispensation, but, while in Wales we see the bond fide traveller clause abused, if it is an abuse, wholesale, in Persia those privileged to drink and eat in the long hot days will hardly avail themselves of it, and the old die in large numbers, the victims of their own austerity. Nor when dead do they rest, unless haply rich enough to be transported at once to be buried near the blessed Imams at Nejef or Kerbela. Years after death are their bones exhumed, when sufficient funds have been collected for the purpose. I have come upon a caravan of corpses of all ages, slung on mules and indifferently packed, so that in a narrow mountain pass the odor of the decayed and decaying dead was insufferable. Hence, say the Turks, come the plague and other diseases across their frontier. They are not sorry to find that Shias, even when dead, are noxious and pestilential, As if the decaying dead With the spirit of life were animated. Only twice did I, inadvertently of course, offend in the slightest degree the religious feelings of the people; once by trespassing on the precincts of what I did not recognize as a mosque, and once by remarking, in a crowd of hungry Shias in a caravanserai, that I was glad I had not to fast till sunset, as I was too hungry to wait. On both occasions explanation and an early departure sufficed to restore peace. The Shias, unlike the Sunnis, do not allow Europeans to enter their mosques. Here let me observe that the European who travels in Persia under the impression that he is taken for a native is a very credulous person. There are places, and I will try to describe some of them, too far out of the world for their inhabitants to know who or what the stranger is, but that he is not one of themselves they know immediately. In the large cities Europeans who have deluded themselves into the belief that they have passed for Persians or Armenians, would be surprised to see the secret reports made upon them by the Persian authorities, if, as I have been told, such reports describe them by name and appearance, with the remark that as the gentleman gives himself out to be something else, they think it polite, while watching him and his proceedings, to affect to ignore his real name and character. There may be English

men able, like Sir Richard Burton and one or two others, to support undetected the character of a Moslem, but if there are, they have not revealed themselves.

These few words must suffice on the religious aspect of the people-a subject on which volumes have been, and now might be, written.

I have said that the dignity of the whitebeards was most marked, and from my note-book I will give a little scene that may serve to illustrate the observation. About forty miles from the town of Kazveen, in the Karaghan mountains, is situated the lovely village of Rudak, in a fold in the rolling hill-side, amid the grassy downs. Hence across the plain of Kazveen you can see the great mountains of the Elburz, whose snowy peaks, shutting out the Caspian beyond, sparkle like diamonds in the morning sun. A babbling brook with a pebbly bottom runs alongside a pathway fringed with turf, in which are dandelions, clover, blue bells, and wild thyme. In the shade of walnut, plane, and mulberry trees the traveller forgets for awhile the fierce sun, the toils and hardships of the way, and, looking over the low walls into orchard and vineyard, realizes how the walled garden became the earthly prototype of a paradise where rest and shade are lasting, and not brief incidents in a weary journey along a hot and stony road.

Beyond this village, and above it at a height of 8,000 feet, more or less, above the sea, dwelt a poor and aged khan, who came with his followers to see me eat my breakfast. While I bathed under an icy cascade, he had had soup made for me. Onions and vinegar I recognized in it, but what the chief ingredient was, or of what compound the stock was composed, I never discovered. He begged me to halt while a kid was converted into roast. I declined with thanks, and asked how he was in health. This is as conventional an expression with them as with us, but he returned a serious answer and said: "I am old, I am ill, I have many enemies. I was the khan of my tribe, but my younger brother has ousted me. He had been disinherited by his father many years before for disobedience, but he spoke as if his misfortunes had been of yesterday, and I could understand that they had been ever present in his mind. He asked me for my boots, as one who would confer a