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indeed, so to all appearance must the whole structure have been. It was now the barn or the stable of some Turkish mansion, and a black Nubian in a white tunic was leaning against it. He eyed us as we passed, as if he were some enchanted figure. Wherever we went there was the same hush. The ripple of a conduit was often the only voice in the street, and yet all around was a sense of unknown ambushed life. My own feelings in making this singular ramble recalled to my mind a passage in a certain sensational novel, hardly known even by name to ninety-nine out of a hundred novel-readers. It is a Latin novel of the ancient Roman Empire. It takes us into the heart of a Roman province, into Thessaly, and it shows us the daily life of forgotten luxurious cities— of the hearth, the theatre, and the banquet-room ; it shows us country cottages, secluded mills, picnics in shady valleys, and even the bye-lanes of those far submerged centuries, with the petals of the dog-roses fluttering on the wayside brambles. Those who have read the book, or have even glanced at it, will know that I mean ' The Golden Ass ' of Apuleius. The hero is the heir of a noble African family, and his one ambition is to be initiated into the mysteries of magic. His mother was a Thessalian, and affairs take him to Thessaly. Now Thessaly at that period was renowned as the special home of witches. The entire country was a kind of gigantic Brocken, and by the time the young man has arrived at GO IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

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