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CHAPTER XIH A VILLA AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS OUR generation, accustomed to rapid travelling, is apt to think of the times when railways were not as if they were divided by some great gulf from our own. My own impression is, that if railways vanished to-morrow we should, as mere travellers, soon become reconciled to the change. In Cyprus I was able to put this impression to -the proof, for the conditions of travelling there are just what they were in England, I do not say merely before the first railway was made, but a generation and a half before the first railway was thought of. The roads for the most part are such that, except for the shortest journey, an ordinary carriage requires from three to five horses, and the distance, reckoned in time, from one place to another is just what it was in England in that seemingly remote period when Reading was as far from London as Edinburgh is now. This was all brought home to me vividly the following morning. Mr. St. John's house was hardly

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