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A CITY OF DREAMS 105 Still, in spite of their incompleteness, perhaps even because of it, moments like these are charming, and colour life for years with memories of their short abandonment. But in familiar scenes the abandon-ment is short only. In scenes that are strange and remote, it is prolonged from month to month,; and as it is less violent, one is able, without any con-scious folly, to let it penetrate and change, for the time, one's whole character. Thus at Nicosia a quiet, sustained excitement tingled through my entire days, and gave me nights of childhood. I made no effort to put practical thoughts away from me. On the contrary, during a certain part of the mornings I used to read some treatises on Political Economy ; but my practical thoughts—thoughts about rent, and value, wages, profits, and poverty—all these moved against an unpractical background. Life, in fact, lay upon dreams like rose-leaves ; and I daily wandered for hours about the enchanted town, and gathered the materials out of which the dreams were made. And of what did these materials consist ? What were the sights and experiences which my daily wanderings yielded me ? There were only a few of them that would bear detailed description, or make any figure in a tourist's guide-book. One of them— the cathedral—I have described already. Next to that in importance, beyond all doubt, was the bazaar. To this I was introduced by Mrs. Falkland the day after my return from Pentedactylon. I had

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