emirs or sheiks, or both, are also consulted as
to the selection to be made. If, between
priests and people, no selection of names is
agreed upon within a month after the bishop's
death, the right of nomination will rest with
the Patriarch.

The Fellahs, or labouring peasantry, form
the third and last class of the Maronite laity.
They are a most industrious and thrifty race.
Amoung them there are some who have
earned comparative wealth; but most of
them live from hand to mouth, although there
is very little actual want anywhere in Lebanon.
In every part of Kesrouan the terraced rows
of mulberry trees, vineyards, and barley— all
built up and earthed on the steep sides of
rocks that are almost perpendicular— bear
witness to the untiring labour of the people.
The staple article of produce throughout the
district is silk; and, within the last ten years,
the quantity of mulberry-trees throughout
the mountain has increased a hundred and
fifty per cent. Every year the clearing of fresh
sites adds ten per cent, more to the increase.
The fellahs are generally owners of small
tracts of laud, and to each one almost
invariably belongs the house in which he lives.
But a great number of them act as cultivators
of soil held by the owners of large tracts of
land. They find all the labour and care of
the trees, crops, or vines during the year;
the owner provides only seed for sowing, or
youug plants, if he desire increase in the
number of his trees. At the harvest-time
the produce is divided: half goes to the
owner and half to the tenant of the soil.
Throughout Lebanon, and more particularly
in the Kesrouan, silk is the great object of
cultivation. When, therefore, the cocoons
are ready they are either sold to one of the
large silk-reeling factories on the mountain,
and the sum produced equally divided
between landlord and farmer, or the silk is
spun in the Arab fashion, and division is
made of the raw material itself. On the
whole—and more particularly when their
few wants are taken into consideration—I
should say that the Maronite peasantry in
Lebanon are quite as well off as men of the
same class in any other country.

The Maronites derive their name from Mar
Marroun (Saint Maron), a holy hermit, who
is said to have died in the fifth century, after
converting to Christianity the greater part
of the inhabitants of Syria. About two
hundred years after his death, his followers were
condemned in the General Council of
constantinople, as holding monothelite heresy.
This dictum affirmed that Our Saviour had
but one will and mind, that of his divine
nature, and not that of his nature as man.
Being driven from the cities of the plains,
the Maronites took refuge in Lebanon, and
gradually spread over the district they now
occupy. Many of them appear to have joined
the Church of Rome in the latter part of the
twelfth century; but it was not until three
hundred years later, during the pontificate of
Eugenius the Fourth, that the whole nation
solemnly recognised the Pope's authority.
Since then, they have been proud of their
obedience to the see of Rome, although they
are still keeping up several peculiarities of
their own church. These peculiarities are
destined, however, soon to disappear, for the
numerous European Roman Catholic
Missionaries—most of them Jesuits—in Syria
are now doing their utmost to abolish them.
A French Jesuit priest whom I met during a
mid-day halt in Lebanon told me that two, if
not more, of the Maronite bishops had
determined not to ordain any more married men.

It was nearly midnight before the
conversation between the Patriarch and myself
came to an end. I was much surprised at
finding him very well read upon the current
literature of the day, and still more at the
just notions he seemed to have formed upon
external politics. He spoke his mind about
us Protestants, saying that he could not
understand how so enlightened a nation as
England remained heretic; but, at the same
time, declared that in no other country in
the world did all religions enjoy so much
toleration as with us. He was very
energetic also in his praise of a free press, which
he said was nowhere tp be found save in
England and America. No country, he said,
could really advance in civilisation until it
had a press wherein the voice of the whole
people could be freely heard. Such views
were liberal beyond expectation in an oriental,
who had been educated in the Propaganda
College at Rome, and had lived only in
Lebanon for nearly thirty years.

       THE TOURNAMENT AT THE
                  ALHAMBRA.

IT is difficult now, as I look out of my
window on the broad London street where,
in the pleasant April sunshine, the cabs
stand calmly casting their sharp-drawn
shadows on the striped stones, so that, to my
fancy, each cab seems to have a funeral coach
drawn up beside it—it is difficult, I say,
taking breath in a new sentence, for me to
throw myself back into the sea of past time
with a quick somersault of four mouths, and
realise that burning African day that I tossed
myself off my worn-out horse at the door of
the Granada hotel.

I had started that morning before light,
and had been riding for hours over the
scorched dry mountains down to the city of
the Alhambra. All the day before too, from
four in the morning to twelve at night, I had
been on horseback, driving on like a mounted
wandering Jew up burning hills, between
green banks of vines, whose leaves were
transparent golden green, as the emerald
panes of an old church window in the sun,
scuffling through lanes walled in with sweeping
reeds rising higher than my head, ambling