shaped nose, with delicate nervous nostrils, and a strange sarcastic smile on his thin, straight lips, scarcely disguised even under the heavy moustache and flowing beard. Almost more striking at first sight was the evident care bestowed on his dress and person. The Greek clergy, even in the highest ranks of the hierarchy, are generally slovenly in their personal appearance. The Bishop of Kalabaka was a marked exception to this rule. Buried for years in an out-of-the-way village where his only associates could be boorish peasants, he had lost none of the refinement which with him was evidently the habit of a life. The silk cassock was in keeping with the delicate white hands and the perfumed beard and hair, while the bold head and erect figure redeemed the outer man from effeminacy. The inner man was more difficult to gauge. His conversation was exceedingly reserved, and he circumvented all leading questions with a truly oriental suppleness. Only here and there an occasional word, a sudden light in the eyes, a silent smile, gave the measure of the bitterness and mocking doubt to which methinks the hard lips would

often fain have given open expression. The dreamy, useless life of the ascetes who had fled from the temptations of the world to the safer solitude of the Meteora rocks, was not likely to meet with much sympathy from a man who was evidently born to brave the dangers of the struggle. Nor did he care to conceal his contempt for the pious drones. When I confessed

to a feeling of regret at the doom which threatened to overtake the once flourishing colony of hermits, he merely shrugged his shoulders: "Vanity of vanities, all is but vanity and even a vanity which has lived for 800 years scarcely deserves a funeral oration." And when I pressed him further-" Do you recollect," he added, "the parable of the talents, and the servant who buried his in the earth? You should have asked the Hegoumenos of the Great Meteora to read it to you?" The point was clear and incisive, and required no further comment.

When, later on, I stretched myself out to sleep between the silken sheets with which the luxurious forethought of mine host had furnished my bed, I fell to wonder how this man of delicate tastes and refined intelligence con

trived to fructify the talent which to him too had been intrusted, amid surroundings so rude and uncongenial to his temper. He seemed in the morning to have divined my thoughts.

Your horse is not yet saddled, and the packanimals are not yet ready; would you like to come round and visit my school?" A large barn adjoining the Bishop's house had been turned into a schoolroom. A youth who had studied at Yanina and Athens acted as a schoolmaster (he had been sent for, I afterwards understood, by the Bishop, who paid his salary out of his own pocket); and as we entered, he was pointing out a lesson of geography on an excellent map of Kiepert, which covered one of the walls of the room. The children, some two dozen or more, were dirty and ragged, peasants' children, who had to work in the fields during six months of the year; yet there were many bright and intelligent faces among them, and they answered the questions which were put to them promptly and correctly. Some of them then read and spelt for their visitor's benefit, and did some simple sums on the board with accuracy and readiness. and readiness. With the children, the

Bishop's pride seemed to unbend, his smile lost its bitterness, and as he patted them on the head, their bright, frank look met his eyes with affectionate fearlessness. As we left the room, I wished him all success for himself and for his school; "You at least," I said, "do not mean to bury your talent in the earth." "Bah!" he answered, with a hard, bitter laugh, “my talent has been buried long ago: I did not bury it myself, but others took care to bury it for me. Yet perhaps, among those children, some whom I have equipped for the battle of life may carry forth their talent into the world and make it fructify tenfold."

From Kalabaka it is a long and hard day's journey to Metzovo. The first part of the route lies up the valley of the Salemvria, between shady groves of plane and maple trees, of which I have never seen more magnificent specimens than in Thessaly. On either side the hills are clothed with timber, while here and there Wallach villages peep out of the dense foliage. But brigandage desolates this fair country. Two villages under which we passed had been within the last ten days sacked and partly burned by

bands of dastardly marauders. On the way we meet numerous bodies of the unfortunate peasantry abandoning their homes and flying for safety to the plains; farther on the Wallachs driving their herds and flocks down to their winter quarters in the lowlands,-picturesque caravans of men, women, and children, and beasts of every kind, their small household goods packed on nimble ponies, with here and there a baby's head peeping out of a heap of wraps and blankets: a different type, too, from the Wallachs whom I had seen about Olympus-smaller, darker, and better featured, far more nearly approaching the Greek type than the so-called Greek populations of the plain. Five hours from Kalabaka, the Salemvria, which is no longer the placid, lazy stream of the plains, divides into three branches. Our route lies up the central valley, past the military post of Kalamash. The ascent becomes steep and rugged; the character of the vegetation changes-we leave the oak, the plane, the maple beneath us, and pass into dense forests of pine and naked beech trees, through which the cold mountain wind whistles and moans. As we rise the view expands; beyond the lower