the cells are darker and damper than elsewhere, and the food is worse than common (the allowance being five farthings a day); but, in addition, the prisoners are carefully maintained in absolute idleness. No books are allow ed, and, of course no writing materials, and no implements for manual labor. No means of easing the tortured mind, nor anything on which to concentrate the morbid activity of the brain; and, in proportion as the body droops and sickens, the spirit becomes wilder and more desperate. Physical suffering is seldom or never insupportable; the annals of war, of martyrdom, of sickness, abound in instances in proof. But moral torment-after years of infliction -is utterly intolerable. This our friends have found to their cost. Shut up in the fortresses and houses of detention first of all, and afterward in the Central Prisons, they go rapidly to decay, and either go calmly to the grave, or become lunatics. They do not go mad as, after being outraged by gendarmes, Miss M, the promising young painter, went mad. She was bereft of reason instantly; her madness was simultaneous with her shame. Upon them insanity steals gradually and slowly; the mind rots in the body "from hour to hour.

In July, 1878 the life of the prisoners at the Kharkoff prison had become so insupportable, that six of them resolved to starve themselves to death. For a whole week they refused to eat; and when the governor-general ordered them to be fed by injection, such scenes ensued as obliged the prison authorities to abandon the idea. To seduce them back to life, officialism made them certain promises; as, for instance, to allow them walking exercise, and to take the sick out of irons. None of these promises were kept; and for five long years the survivors were left to the mercy of such a jailer as I have described. A few months ago a first party of our friends detained in Central Prisons were sent to the Kara mines (to make a total of 154 political prisoners, men and women, at these mines); they knew very well the fate that was reserved to them in Siberia, and still the day they left this hell was considered by all them as a happy day of deliverance. After the Central

Prison, hard labor in Siberia looks as a paradise.

In may seem that the harshness of solitary confinement in such conditions cannot be surpassed. But there is a harder fate in store for political prisoners in Russia. After the Trial of the Sixteen" (November, 1880), Europe learned with satisfaction that out of five condemned to death, three had had their sentences commuted by the Czar. We now know what commutation means. Instead of being sent to Siberia, or to a Central Prison, according to law, they were immured in the fortress of Peter and Paul at St Petersburg, in cells contrived in what has been the ravelin.* These are so dark that candles are burnt in them for twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four. The walls are literally dripping with damp, and "there are pools of water on the floor." "Not only books are disallowed, but everything that might help to occupy the attention. Zoubkovsky made geometrical figures with his bread, to practice geometry; they were immediately taken away, the jailer saying that hard-labor convicts were not permitted to amuse themselves. To render solitary confinement still more insupportable, a gendarme and a soldier are stationed within the cells. The gendarme is continually on the watch, and if the prisoner looks at anything or at any point, he goes to see what has attracted his attention. The horrors of solitary confinement are thus aggravated tenfold. quietest prisoner soon begins to hate the spies set over him, and is moved to frenzy by the mere fact of their presence. It is superfluous to add that the slightest disobedience is punished by blows and black-holes. subjected to this régime fell ill in no time. After less than one year of it, Shiryaeff had taken consumption; Okladsky—a robust and vigorous working man, whose remarkable speech to the court was reproduced by the London papers-had gone mad ; Tikhonoff, a strong man likewise, was down with scurvy, and could not sit up in his bed. By a mere commutation of sentence

The

All who were

*The authentic record of their imprisonment was published in the last number of the Will of the People, and reproduced in the publication Na Rodinye (" At Home").

the three were brought to death's door in a single year. Of the other five condemned to hard labor, and immured in the same fortress, two-Martynovsky and Tsukermann-went mad, and in that state were constantly black-holed, so that Martynovsky at last attempted suicide.

I cannot enter here into more details and give more facts to illustrate the fate of political and common law convicts in Russia. The foregoing give, however, some idea of it. The whole is summed up in a sentence of that record of prison life on which I have already drawn so largely and to such terrible purpose.

In conclusion (writes the author) I must add that the prison now rejoices in another governor. The old one quarrelled with the treasurer on the subject of peculation from the prisoners' allowance, and in the end they were both dismissed. The new governor is not such a ruffian as his predecessor; I understand, however, that with him the prisoners are starving far more than formerly, and that he is in the habit of giving his fists full play on the countenances of his charges.

This remark sums up the whole "Reform of Prisons in Russia. One tyrant may be dismissed, but he will be succeeded by some one as bad, or even worse, than himself. It is not by changing a few men, but only by changing completely from top to bottom the whole system, that any amelioration can be made; and such is also the conclusion of a special committee recently appointed by the Government. But it would be mere self-delusion to conceive improvement possible under such a régime as we now enjoy. At least half a dozen commissions have already gone forth to inquire, and all have come to the conclusion that unless the Government is prepared to meet extraordinary expenses, our prisons must remain what they are. But honest and capable men are far more needed than money, and these the present Government cannot and will not discover. They exist in Russia, and they exist in great numbers; but their services are not required. Mr. Lansdell knew one, and has described him-Colonel Kononovitch, chief of the penal settlement at Kara. He has told us how, without any expense to the Crown, M. Kononovich had repaired the weatherworn, rot

ten buildings, and had made them more or less habitable; and how, with the microscopic means at his disposal, he contrived to improve the food; and all he has told is true. But M. Lansdell's praise, together with like praise contained in a letter intercepted on its way from Siberia, were sufficient reasons for rendering M. Kononovitch suspicious to our Government. He immediately was dismissed, and his successor received the order to reintroduce the iron rule of years past. The political convicts, who enjoyed a relative liberty after the legal term of imprisonment had expired, are in irons once more; not all, however, as two have preferred to commit suicide; and once more affairs are ordered as the Government desires to see them. Another gentleman, of whom Mr. Lansdell speaks, and justly, in high terms-General Pedashenkohas been dismissed too, for refusing to confirm a sentence of death which had been passed by a military tribunal on the convict Schedrin, found guilty of striking an officer for insulting two ladies, his fellow sufferers, Bogomolets and Kovalsky.

It is everywhere the same. To devote one's self to any educational work, or to the convict population, is inevitably to incur dismissal and disgrace. Near St. Petersburg we have a reformatory— a penal settlement for children and growing lads. To the cause of these poor creatures a gentleman named Herd

grandson of the famous Scotchman employed by Alexander I. in the reform of our prisons-had devoted himself body and soul. He had an abundance of energy and charm; his whole heart was in the work; he might have rivalled Pestalozzi. Under his ennobling influence boy-thieves and ruffians, penetrated with all the vices of the streets and the lock-ups, learned to be men in the best sense of the word. To send a boy away from the common labor-grounds or from the classes was the greatest punishment admitted in this penal colony, which soon became a real model colony. But men like Herd are not the men our Government is in need of. He was dismissed his place, and the institution he ruled so wisely has become a genuine Russian prison, complete to the rod and the black-hole.

German, and often into all three, and it is our own fault if we will not read them. Yet the connection between England and Persia has been comparatively insignificant, and until the conquest of India we had more to do with Turkish than with Arabic speaking races. All our relations, friendly and unfriendly, with Turkey have apparent ly encouraged us no whit in investigating the thoughts and songs of the Ottoman people. Our first secretaries or ambassadors at Constantinople write amusing books on the life of the capital, or rather the little of it they are allowed to see; everybody who goes to Turkey can at least point to a magazine article to show that he has not neglected this interesting or unspeakable nation, accordingly as he views it; but no one seems to trouble himself about seeing what the Turks have written of themselves. This is not because they have not written anything, for Turkish literature is of enormous extent. Von Hammer published extracts from over two thousand poets; and the prose works on every department of science and in every branch of knowledge are like the stars in the sky for multitude. Whether this vast literature is good or bad we have not to decide at present; to attempt to do so would be perhaps to beg the question we put to Orientalists as well as mere residents in Turkey, why they have not studied it? Familiarity certainly cannot breed contempt in this instance, where familiarity is the very thing wanting. Whatever the reason may be, the fact remains undisputed, that there is hardly one famous Turkish classic to be found in an English translation, and very few Turkish books of any kind, if we except two or three volumes among the unwieldy and somewhat abortive publications of the well-meaning Oriental Translation Fund. The only scholar who seriously devoted himself to the study of Turkish history and literature was the German, Baron von Hammer, whose voluminous works are the foundation of almost all we know about the past of Turkey, and to whom Sir Enward Creasy was indebted for the materials of the useful work which generally serves as the sole representative of Ottoman knowledge in our libraries. Von Hammer, however, was sadly to seek in

the critical faculty, and he was more German than the Germans in his method and mass-in the excess of the latter at the expense of the former. His works are monumental in every sense, and consequently unsuited to general use. Every one who is obliged to work at any Turkish subject must borrow from him; but no one will willingly take up his many volumes for the recreation of an idle hour. Von Hammer needed an interpreter, and he has found one for history in Sir E. Creasy, and now we believe for poetry in Mr. E. J. W. Gibb. The veteran translator to the Foreign Office is undoubtedly the scholar who could most completely introduce the literature of Turkey to English readers, but Mr. Redhouse has always had his hands too full of purely scholarly work to be able to devote himself to the task of popularizing those classics which his dictionary enables others to translate. His essay on Turkish poetry was, however, a new light to many students, and it is by his example and promptings that Mr. Gibb has been led to do the work which Mr. Redhouse is obliged to put aside.

Mr. Gibb's volume of translations of Ottoman Poems" is the first important contribution to our knowledge of Turkish Belles-Lettres. We have seen here and there an isolated poem done into English, but there has hitherto been no systematic and comprehensive collection such as this, where we find pieces by sixty-five poets arranged in chronological order, from 'Ashik Pasha in 1332, at the very beginning of the Ottoman power, to contemporry writers. So wide and representative an anthology is too valuable a gift to be subjected to a fastidious criticism. Here we may wish for a little more, and there for a little less; but the chief sentiment of all who read this charmingly printed and edited volume-with its interesting if somewhat pugnacious introduction, its essays on Turkish poetic literature and meters, and its biographical and explanatory notes-must be gratitude to the pioneer. Mr. Gibb is the first to bring Ottoman poetry within that comfortable reach which the English reader demands. Others may use his work and improve upon it, but meanwhile he is the first exponent of Ottoman poetry to

a faithless generation who know not Turkish.

Whether he has chosen quite the best manner of presenting a new poetry to an indifferent public is another question. He has followed the example of Mr. C. J. Lyall in retaining the metre of the original. In the case of ancient Arabic poetry the experiment was pre-eminently successful; and it is not to be wondered at that Mr. Lyall's triumphant example should inspire others to follow in his steps. But in the pre-islamic poetry there was a certain rude desert flavor, which had to be retained at all hazards, and which Mr. Lyall was able to preserve in a marvellous degree by a skilful imitation of the original metres. Even here, however, the theory did not always work, and there are perhaps cases where a modern metre would have fitted the subject better. In Turkish poetry the peculiar national flavor (which was the chief incentive to the Arabic experiment) is practically wanting. Turkish poetry is not national. Its flavor is Persian, and is precisely similar to the general flavor of Mohammedan poetry, Arabic or Persian, under the influences of the petty courts which hastened the downfall of the Caliph's empire. There is nothing in the flavor particularly worth preserving; the ideas, similes, and spirit could be reproduced apart from the original metre. Mr. Gibb, however, has thought it better to imitate the movement of the Turkish; and it must be allowed that in so doing he has considerably increased the difficulties of his task, for the arrangement of rhymes in the Kasida and Gazel tries the resources of the English language to the utmost. We cannot say we think it was worth while to add to the troubles of translation, and infallibly introduce an element of uncouthness and strainedness, often approaching downright doggerel, merely for the sake of preserving the original metres. To our mind, a fairly close rendering into an appropriate modern and western measure would have beeen more pleasing and equally satisfactory. It is only fair, however, to add that no two scholars are agreed upon this moot point of translation, and that, having decided to retain the Turkish metres, Mr. Gibb has reproduced them with considerable skill.

The want of national flavor to which we have referred, the absence of anything characteristic and original, has undoubtedly had much to do with the mean reputation which Ottoman poetry has enjoyed in Europe. In poetry, as in everything else, the Turks are not an inventive people. Except in the art of war, they have originated nothing; and the vast bulk of their literature is made up of translations and imitations. It is not for us in the present day to throw stones at them, when our modern versifiers are wasting their skill in copying the forms and style of medieval French poetry, and our painters are trying to imitate the early art of Italy, as it was before the lines and proportions of the bel corpo ignudo were studied or understood. We live in an age of copyists, and it is not fair to blame the Turks for doing what we aim at ourselves. Nor does it follow that. an imitated literature must necessarily be uninteresting. Terence is a copyist, but he is very good reading; and the greater part of Latin poetry is mere imitation of the Greek, yet we are not disposed to put it on the shelf as unworthy of study and admiration. Still no one pretends that the Roman copy is equal to the Hellenic original; and in the same way a certain element of inferiority must inevitably attach to the Turkish reproductions of Persian ideas and poetic forms.

Nothing, however, could be more natural than that the Ottoman writers should follow in the steps of the Persians.

When the little Turkish clan under Ertugrul began to establish itself in the thirteenth century among the decaying remnants of the Seljukian kingdom of Anatolia, it found the whole country immersed in Persian ideas. The Seljuks had lived long in Persia, and were deeply imbued with the ways of thought which characterized the nation they had conquered; and in their case, as before with the Arabs, the conquered had become the teachers of the conquerers. Johnausy and Nizamy had already written their masterpieces before the name of Ottoman was heard, and at the time of their settlement in Asia Minor, Sa'dy and Jelal-ed-din Rumy were attracting the admiration of the eastern world. The latter was a resi