where I stood, and the day was perfection. After another hour of steep climbing I reached a cornice of snow, but was able to turn off to the right and cross a level plateau of snow, from the other side of which rose up my peak. I now encountered very steep snow-slopes and rocks, and just before the snow rounded off into the dom, forming a summit, it became so hard that my feet could get no hold. I had to resort to step-cutting; about a dozen steps sufficed to land me on the dom; an easy incline then led to the summit, on which I stood at 4.30 P.M. I wished for an aneroid; but from the time I took to ascend, and from other cirucmstances, I should think the height to be over 4,000, and possibly 5,000 feet. Now for the view. I have yet to see the Alpine view that surpasses this in its extreme beauty: the mountain chain of the mainland was in sight for, I suppose, a hundred miles; then came the Vest Fjord, studded with islands. The mountains around me were of the wildest and most fantastic form, not drawn out in a long chain, but grouped together, and embosoming lovely little tarns and lakes. The inner arm of the Stover Fjord, over which I seemed to hang, was of a deep dark blue, except where it became shallow, where it was of a bright pea-green. This latter colour may be accounted for by the fact that the rocks below low-watermark are white, with pure white nullipore and balani; there is no laminaria or sea-weed of any sort in these narrow fjords, except Fucus vesiculosus, and this grows only between tide-marks. Looking away to the north came Ulvöe, with its fringe of islets; then Langöe, with its sea of peaks: these do not appear, however, to be so high or rugged as the peaks of Hindöe, that come next to the sight. Here Mo

sadlen stands up with his lovely crest of snow; far away, in an opposite direction, lies Vest Vaagöe, where I remarked another peak1 that seemed to be of a respectable height. The view was perfection: one drop of bitterness was in my cup, and that was that a neighbouring peak was evidently higher than the one I had climbed. It was connected with my peak by a very sharp rock arête, just below which was a flattish plateau of crevassed névé; it was too far to think of trying it, and it looked very difficult; an attempt upon it would be more likely to succeed if made from the south-east. Having made a sketch and built a cairn of stones, I looked about for the easiest way to descend, and found that a long slope of snow led into a valley connected with the north arm of the Fjord; this I determined to try. I climbed down the steps I had cut, with my face to the snow; then sitting down and steering with my alpen-stock, I made the finest glissade I ever enjoyed. As I neared the bottom it was necessary to go lightly, as a torrent was roaring along under the snow. I soon had to take to the moraine, which was of a most trying character. I now got down to a charming little lake, in which islands of snow floated, and in which the peaks were mirrored to their summits. Skirting along this, and descending by the edge of a stream that led out of it, I came to another lovely tarn, on which were a couple of water-fowl. From this I clambered down through bushes at the side of a waterfall, and arrived on the strand of the fjord all safe. At 6.30 P.M. I was sitting in the boat, and in two hours arrived in Melbo.'

The superior peak that dashed Mr. Green's happiness was Blaamanden, which must now be considered the highest point out of

Hindöe. Vaagekallen is certainly lower even than Higraven.

Of the northern islands of the Lofoden group space fails me to speak much; they are but little known. Langöe was skirted by the German expedition whose story is erzählt von Carl Vogt,' but his notes on this part of the tour are unfortunately very scanty. The northern peninsula would seem to be the finest part of Langöe. I hear of a splendid mountain, Klotind, which fills this tongue of land with its spurs. Andöe, the most northerly of the archipelago, is the tamest of all the interior of it has been surveyed with such minute care, that it is impossible to suppose its mountains can be very rugged. For the sake of anyone desirous of visiting Andöe, I may remark that a little steamer has been started this year in connection with the large boat, which meets the latter at Harstadhavn in Hindöe, skirts the north of that island, calls at Dvergberg and Andenes in Andöe, and after a visit to the north of Senjen, returns the same way to Harstad. The same steamer calls off the coast of Grytö, a mountainous Lofoden, whose vast central peak of Fussen one admires in the distance from the Vaags Fjord.

In ordinary years the snow disappears from the low ground in these islands before May, and the rapid summer brings their scanty harvest soon to perfection. A few years ago, however, the snow lay on the cultivated lands till June, and a famine ensued. These poor people live a precarious life, exposed to the attacks of a singularly peevish climate. A whim of the cod-fish, a hurricane in the April sky, or a cold spring, is sufficient to plunge them into distress and poverty. Yet for all this they are an honest and well-to-do population; for, being thrifty and laborious, they guard with much foresight against the severities of nature. In winter the

aurora scintillates over their solemn mountains, and illuminates the snow and wan gray sea; they sit at their cottage-doors and spin by the gleam of it; in summer the sun never sets, and they have the advantage of endless light to husband their hardly-won crops. Remote as they are, too, they can all read and write: it is strange to find how much intelligent interest they take in the struggles of great peoples whe never heard of Lofoden. It is a fact, too, not over-flattering to our boasted civilisation, that the education of children in the hamlets of this remote cluster of islands in the Polar Sea is higher than that of towns within a small distance of our capital-city; ay, higher even, proportionally, than that of London itself.

I would fain linger over the delicious memories that the name of these wild islands brings with it; would fain take the reader to the pine-covered slopes of Sandtory, the brilliant meadow of little Kjöen, so refreshing in this savage land; to the Tjeldæsund, as I saw it on a certain midnight, when the lustrous sun-light lay in irregular golden bars across the blue spectral mountains, and tinged the snow peaks daintily with rose-red. But space is wanting; and being forced to choose, I will wind up with a faint description of the last sight I had of the islands, on a calm sunny night in summer.

All day we had been winding among the tortuous tributaries of the Ofoten Fjord, and as evening drew on slipped down to Tranö, a station on the mainland side of the Vest Fjord, near the head of that gulf. It had been a cloudless day of excessive heat, and the compara tive coolness of night was refreshing; the light, too, ceased to be garish, but flooded all the air with mellow lustre. From Tranö we saw the Lofodens rising all along the northern sky, a gigantic wall of

irregular jagged peaks, pale blue on an horizon of gold fire. The surface of the fjord was slightly broken into little tossing waves, that, murmuring faintly, were the only audible things that broke the sweet silence; the edge of the ripple shone with the colour of burnished bronze, relieved by the cool neutral gray of the sea-hollows. From Tranö we slipped across the fjord almost due west to the mouth of the Raftsund. The sun lay like a great harvest-moon, shedding its cold yellow light down on us from over Hindöe, till, as we glided gradually more under the shadow of the islands, he disappeared behind the mountains: at 11.30 P.M. we lost him thus, but a long while after a ravine in Hindöe of more than common depth again revealed him, and a portion of his disk shone for a minute like a luminous point or burning star on the side of a peak. About midnight we came abreast abreast of Aarstenen, and before us rose the double peak of Lille Molla, of a black-blue colour, very solemn and grand; Skraaven was behind, and both were swathed lightly in wreaths and fox-tails of rose-tinged mist. There was no lustre on the waters here; the entrance to the sound was unbroken by any wave or ripple, unillumined by any light of sunset or sunrise, but a sombre reflex of the unstained blue heaven above. As we glided, in the same strange utter noiselessness of the hour when evening and morning meet, up the Raftsund itself, inclosed by the vast slopes of

Hindöe and the keen aiguilles of Vaagöe, the glory and beauty of the scene rose to a pitch so high that the spirit was oppressed and overawed by it, and the eyes could scarcely fulfil their function. Ahead of the vessel the narrow vista of glassy water was a blaze of purple and golden colour, arranged in a faultless harmony of tone that was like music or lyrical verse in its direct appeal to the emotions. At each side the fjord reflected each elbow, each ledge, each cataract, and even the flowers and herbs of the base, with a precision so absolute that it was hard to tell where mountain ended and sea began. The centre of the sund, where it spreads into several small arms, was the climax of loveliness; for here the harmonious vista was broadened and deepened, and here rose listind towering into the unclouded heavens, and showing by the rays of golden splendour that lit up its topmost snows that it could see the sun, whose magical fingers, working unseen of us, had woven for the world this tissue of variegated beauty. When I remember the Lofodens, I recall this moment, and think, 0 wonderful white sun, who dost bathe our bodies in healing waves of light, filling our eyes with the loveliness of the colour of life and our ears with the subtle melodies of dumb things that grow and ripen in thy sight, how little men consider the greatness of thy work for us, and what a beauti ful and mystical creation thou art thyself!

THE

HE legend of Alcestis-giving her own life that she may redeem the life of her lord Admetus -is one of those familiar relics of antiquity which refuse to become commonplaces. The narrative is a many-sided one; and there is no side, no aspect, without its own peculiar interest. It is, on the face of it, the parable of Love triumphant over Death; and there are special surroundings which make this victory a supreme one. The vicarious deaths braved on behalf of country by Menoceus and Codrus in Hellenic legend, or by Curtius and the Decii in Roman, are not completely adequate parallels to the self-sacrifice of Alcestis. These famous names belong to the records or to the imagined conceptions of consummate patriotism, strong enough, under the stimulus of a nation's anticipated gratitude or amidst the applause of an army of comrades, to carry out into action those principles which every Greek and Roman in the early days of organised states imbibed from infancy. But the devotion of Alcestis differs from these acts of patriotism very materially. The question of life and death which she faces is relieved by no kind of stimulus or of excitement. The narrative belongs to far-off distances of the heroic age, when the abstraction of patriotism was hardly at work in a definite form at all, and when it would not in any case be expected to be particularly operative upon a woman. Her husband is doomed to die, unless a friend can be found willing to save him by the forfeit of a substituted life. The test of devotion is a perfectly simple and personal one, divested of everything external that animates and elevates, of everything that converts sacrifice into a sort of virtual apotheosis. Nor, if her heart fails her, will she

stand alone in estimating her own. life as the one thing of paramount value to herself; for all the faithful retainers of the popular Tyrannus' have made precisely the same estimate, each in his own case: they had loved

Each man, himself; and held, no otherwise,

That of all evils in the world, the worst Was-being forced to die, whate'er death gain;

and not these alone, but even the parents of Admetus, with whom life had already run full circle and who were now in extreme old age, past all hope of long avoiding Charon and the two-oared skiff,' have declined to save the son they love well, by foregoing the enjoyment of the life they love better. Still one thing more. Admetus has been through all his days a blameless king and a loyal and loving husband; and yet, by the very nature of the compact with destiny, Alcestis will go down into the silence and darkness for one who, however faithfully he loves her, nevertheless loves her less than life. Mr. Morris's version of the story disconnects the husband's will, it must be admitted, from the selfdevotion of the wife; but in several respects, as we shall see, his version stands by itself, and in this particular point it is at variance with the tenor of the legend in its ancient forms.

And thus, Alcestis was beset by all discouraging examples, and buoyed up by no external excitement or applause: for, though the retainers moaned and wailed over their 'loved, lost queen,' yet how could they applaud before her face a deed which would never have fallen to her lot had but one man among them been not a craven? Thus it was with Alcestis when, all alone in its strength, her love rose

6

superior, not to death only, but to an untimely death. And what, in the heroic age, was the full force and meaning of untimely death?' The talk about willingness, for another's sake, to leave life prematurely, has been frequent enough and to spare among poets and poetasters of later ages, ever since the pro quo bis patiar mori' in Horace's famous ode requesting leave to be on with the old love' again. But in the heroic societies words were not so wasted that phrases like these could be bandied about, short of their true meaning; and the conceptions of life and death were such that only an Alcestis here and there could use them with the true meaning attached. There was in those times no question between 'to be' or 'not to be.' To die was seldom thought of as a short and easy way to end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to.

One principal reason was, that life had much less heartache in it. Life-full, hearty, physical lifewas the one tangible, visible, enjoyable blessing; and as for death, it was nought,

οὐδὲν ἔσθ ̓ ὁ κατθανών

it was a blank, without form and idea, without motion or force. The fancy of a poetical religiousness had served only to make the darkness visible; death was at best, after all, darkness, intangibility, forgetfulness, silence. No marriage-hymn is there,' the poet said, 'no lyre, no dance.' And this gloomy and vacant conception of the Hereafter had its counterpart in an intense love of life, an intense enjoyment of its brimming joys.

The plenitude of the heroic life has been fully worked out by Mr. William Morris, and forms a prin

cipal element in his version of the 'Love of Alcestis.' See this picture of Admetus, reposing among his Thessalians, after the labours of a common day:

When midst the dusty, crumpled, dying Now, on the fairest of all autumn eves.

leaves

The black grapes showed, and every press and vat

Was newly scoured, this King Admetus sat
Among his people, wearied in such wise
By hopeful toil as makes a paradise
Of the rich earth; for light and far away
Seemed all the labour of the coming day,
And no man wished for more than then he
had,

Nor with another's mourning was made glad.

There in the pillar'd porch, their supper done,

They watched the fair departing of the sun; The while the soft-eyed, well-girt maiders poured

The joy of life from out the jars long stored Deep in the earth, while little like a king As we call kings, but glad with everything, The wise Thessalian sat and blessed his life,

So free from sickening fear and foolish strife.

It was from the perfect harmony and completeness of a life like this, where folk were not yet too restless to be wise,' where

Grief seemed a play forgot, a pageant vain, A picture painted, who knows where or when,

that Admetus shrank from passing: this was the life that Alcestis dared, when all besides refused, to give up for his sake before her time.

Mr. Morris has done a welcome and serviceable thing in using the wealth of his easy-flowing couplets in such a way as to let fall the true lights upon this ancient Hellenic mode and standard of living, on the ecstatic clinging to the daylight, and on the horror of Hades, the Land of the Unseen. His poem on Alcestis, which we are now briefly noticing, makes an effective background to the dramatic version of