himself, kick his imaginary wife—the Vizier's daughter-and one feels tempted to wait and see the amusement of his industrious neighbour. "He is no dreamer, that tailor, it is certain. As he sits cross-legged in his little shop, built like an oven in the wall, no machine works quicker than his nimble fingers with needle and gold thread; and if he gossips now and then, it is only to take breath. And, lo! there is the shop of poor Bedreddin Hassan, the brother-in-law of Noureddin Ali and the bridegroom of the Queen of Beauty, who, by the force of mysterious circumstances, became an alien and a pastrycook. He is handsome, prince-like, and melancholy, as we imagine him; but a pleasant smell of hot cheese-cakes reaches the nose-those very cheese-cakes by which he is restored to his dignities and his bride.

"A step farther, and we meet Morgiana bound to the apothecary's -a well-knit, superb woman, half negress, half Moor. What a dignified gait she has! what a self-possession! what a look of resoluteness in her handsome black eye! She is wrapt from head to foot in a bright blue cotton shawl, having a single strip of crimson silk embroidery inserted across the shoulders; and in this simple dress she has something of Greek statuesqueness. A profusion of silver chains, bracelets, and anklets, adorns her fine limbs, thus testifying to the liberality of the master she serves so thoroughly.

Surely the leader of those mischievous young urchins must be Aladdin! There are half-a-score of them playing around a fountain, all as ragged, as impish, and as dirty as can be; they cover you with dust, they splash you with water, they drive you against the wall—yet there is something in their frolicsomeness that forbids anger.

"It is a comfort to think that the sinister old man watching them over the way may be the African magician, whose wonderful lamp will lead to Aladdin's wealth untold, and himself to destruction."—A Winter with the Swallows.

We pass from the gay French town, always upwards, through the Jewish quarter, which lies as a kind of neutral ground between the two worlds, "and from thence" says Fromentin

"One can glance into the hidden life of old Algiers, to be reached by that maze of strange steep alleys, which are like so many mysterious staircases leading to silence.

"Streets like defiles, dark and often vaulted; houses without windows; doors which you must stoop to enter; shops like cupboards,

where the merchandise is heaped pell-mell, as though the vendor feared to expose it; industries without use; mosques hidden away out of sight; baths which are entered mysteriously; a confused, compact mass of masonry, built like a sepulchre, where life seems stifled and laughter would be out of place-such is the strange city where dwell, or rather perish, a people who, though never so powerful as some assert, were at least rich, active, and enterprising. But it is a sepulchre, and nothing more. The Arab thinks that he lives in his white city. He but buries himself there, shrouded in an inaction which exhausts him, overwhelmed by the very silence in which he delights, enveloped in reticence, and dying of languor.

"His town is a significant emblem of himself. He is immovable. With all possible inducements to innovation, he has retained his customs, his superstitions, his dress, and his religion. Pressed on all sides by an invading European colony, strangled, one might say, by military and police regulations, but voluntarily shut out from the movement of events, an enemy to all progress, indifferent even to the destiny which may be awaiting himself, without commerce and almost without industry, he subsists in virtue of his immobility on the very verge of ruin."-Une Année dans le Sahel.

The picture so drawn is a melancholy one, but it is certainly true that both the Arab himself and his city do produce a peculiarly sad impression upon the mind.

The personal dignity of the Arab, his solemnity of manner, his courageous piety, his poverty, his very impassiveness, touch us with a feeling of admiration for him, of compunction at his changed estate. We come to look upon him, almost in spite of ourselves, as a dethroned and outraged prince. We seem inclined, momentarily, to forget that his good days were days of barbarism, of lawlessness, of all manner of cruelty and wanton oppression—that the evil days upon which he has fallen are days of civilization and good government-we can only remember that strangers, whose race and religion he hates, are masters of his land, that he is conquered and despoiled.

And this feeling is peculiarly present with us, as we climb

the steep and narrow alleys of the old Moorish city, where behind whitewashed walls and grated loop-holes, the Arab lives his hidden life. We see a veiled figure standing before a low, brass-studded door. We linger as we pass, hoping for some revelation of the inner life of the house's occupants; but the jealous door opens but a few inches, discloses but a momentary glimpse of marble-pillared courtyard, and falls back again of its own weight; and only the blank whitewashed wall stares into our faces.

All

"The private life of the Arab is lost in impenetrable mystery. is shadowy in these singular dwellings, where the master of the house plays the rôle of jailer, and behind whose barred windows and closed doors, lie the two secrets of this strange country-women and native wealth. Of the one as of the other, we know actually nothing. Money can scarcely be said to circulate; women are scarcely ever seen; a muslin curtain before a lattice that the wind raises-a curiously formed flower-vase filled with blossom that bespeaks a woman's handthese vaguest hints are all we have of the beauties of whose mysterious charms we dream."-Une Année dans le Sahel.

It is excessively difficult to find one's way about the Arab town. It is built so very irregularly, with so many twists and turnings and blind alleys, that a straight course. is an absolute impossibility.

"Suppose for a moment that a new Dedalus had been charged to build a city on the model of his famous labyrinth-the result of his work would have produced the old town of Algiers.”—L'Algérie. Berbrugger.

The architect of the Moorish city, whoever he may have been, certainly had sympathy with dame Nature in this, that he did not love straight lines; but though in making one's way about it, one is almost sure to be after a few moments irretrievably lost, as in a maze, one simple rule

holds good go up, and in time you will surely find yourself at the Kasba; go down, and you will as certainly regain the quay. Meanwhile, wander up and down and in and out of the strange, quaint, crooked, silent alleys-you

will scarcely go amiss, for at each turn you will come upon some new object of beauty or interest, though it may only be an Arab woman carrying her pitcher Rebecca-like to the well, or a doorway quaintly carved and moulded.

A little "bit," which is recommended to invalids or those

to whom mounting is a fatigue, is to be found by passing from the Place du Gouvernement through one of the arcades, where Moorish goods are exposed for sale, crossing the Place Malakoff, and taking the small street which ascends left of the cathedral. On the left, you will pass one or two handsome old entries worth observing, and turning immediately to the left by a narrow passage, will reach the Impasse of St. Vincent de Paul, one of the prettiest and most characteristic streets of old Algiers. The tall houses projecting story above story, almost but not quite touching, fit into one another like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle; the low doorways are delicately carved and moulded, and the doors themselves, of cedar-wood, enriched and ornamented with ancient brass-work.

This passage leads directly upon the broad flight of stone steps at the top of which, on Place Randon, is the synagogue. Cross the Jewish quarter, pass in front of the synagogue, and follow the windings of the narrow and steep little street to the right of it called Rue Staouëli.

At No. 20 of this street is a picturesque Arab café well worthy of a visit. Turn left into Rue Sidi-Abdullah. You are now in the heart of the old Arab town, and find a dozen objects on this side and that, to attract your interest and attention, but it will be well, perhaps, if, resisting manifold temptations to wander, the traveller who is taking his first walk through old Algiers, should turn out of the Rue SidiAbdullah, down beneath a narrow gateway named above rière Impasse Rue Kleber. This, after one or two twists and turns, will bring him through a curious Moorish bazaar into the Rue Kleber, and is, perhaps, altogether the most striking route that he can follow.