of her territory annexed by her great Northern foe; within half a century she has lost half of her population and most of her European dominions, and to-day her most vital material interests are threatened by two great European Powers. A writer in Tuesday's Standard has described her bankrupt Treasury, and the poverty-stricken families of her unpaid soldiers and officials. Yet Turkey continues, and it may be that, taking into consideration the mutual jealousies of European Powers, she will continue to endure as a tolerated State for some years to come, especially when we remember her theocratic character, which binds her people together in a bond stronger than that of mere politics, and her brave and powerful army. We cannot tell, but one thing we do know, and that is that the Turkish Power will end as it begun, in a torrent of blood and an avalanche of ruin. The Ottoman horde will be consistent throughout its history, and will, in vulgar language, “die game."

But, on the other hand, her substantial power is assuredly threatened now in a most formidable way by Germany and Russia, both of which Powers are playing a wary and in some respects dangerous game in the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan,-dangerous certainly for Turkey, possibly for one another. The visitor to Constantinople since the Greco-Turkish War has found the city almost in the hands of the Germans. He has seen the troops officered by Germans, the hotels crowded with German traders and seekers after Government concessions, and he has heard English and French laments that the enterprising Teuton was carrying everything before him. It goes without saying that this all-pervading German influence was related as effect to cause to the undisguised support which the German Emperor, supported, it is to be feared, by the mass of the German people,

gave to the Sultan not only in the war with Greece but in the case of the crimes against the Armenians. Both series of facts are also related to the policy of colonial extension in Asia Minor which is one of the numerous idées mères of the Kaiser, and perhaps his most important and persistent. The rationale of the project is of course evident. It is the question of the necessity of German territorial expansion consequent on the enormous increase of German population. Is the surplus population to remain German in speech, feeling, and social structure, or is it to be absorbed in the great organisin

of the United States? Bismarck

tried, as far as he could, to discourage expatration while yet forbidding any Colonial policy. But facts were too strong for him, and the tendency to an increase of population has been far more evident since his day. The Kaiser, therefore, seeing this population question looming up as a very serious problem, looked about him, and came to the conclusion that the derelict yet inherently fruitful and important regions in Asiatic Turkey were eminently fitted for German colonization. Once these regions were the very centre of civilization; may they perhaps become so again? Many German colonists have already produced veritable oases in the deserts of Syria in the shape of charming German villages, which call forth the praise of every traveller. The immense extension of these settlements under an organized system, which in time might grow into a German Colonial Empire with access to the Black and Mediterranean Seas, and holding a position midway between Europe and Asia, appealed naturally to the nimble mind of the Emperor. Two things were necessary for the success of the policy, -a good understanding with Turkey, and a series of railway concessions which would connect German settlements under the patronage of the Ger

man Government and through the aid of German capital. The policy has not been without its dubious features; but it has been well conceived, and has been carried out with much success.

But Russia had marked the decaying Turkish Empire for her own, and was not disposed to see her claims set aside by her jealous Teutonic neighbor. An indecisive policy during the Armenian and Greek crises had reduced Russian influence, which up to some five or six years ago had been all-powerful at the Porte; so that, while Germany appeared as an avowed friend, Russia resumed her old character of an enemy of Turkey. But it was impossible for Russia as the supposed historic heir of the Turkish dominions to accept any inferior position in Constantinople diplomacy, so we see Russian claims revived, not in an extreme form, but in the shape of a series of demands parallel to those of Germany for railway concessions. But while in the case of Germany these railway projects are genuine commercial enterprises, in the case of Russia they are rather political. The Russian lines will probably be of value to the Russian Empire as a great political organism,--the leading motive of the whole Russian railway system both in Europe and Asia. The German lines, on the other hand, will be of distinct commercial value in addition to their use as a symbol of the projected extension of German dominion. In either case railway concessions are intended as a peaceful and gradual means of transferring the ownership of Asia Minor from Turkey to Germany and Russia. The Sick Man is to be deprived of his inheritance piecemeal and by indirect rather than by direct

means.

The Spectator.

Is this gradual and mechanical process of stripping Turkey likely to be successful? In other words, can the Turkish dominion be ended by the peaceful methods of mercantilism and revolution of means of transit? We doubt whether the Ottoman Power can be ended by a process of euthanasia. It came into the world as a conquering and bloody horde, and its character has not changed and never will. Under the European dress of the pashas of to-day beat the fierce lusts and passions inherent in the race; the Sultan is a naturally astute barbarian, who is indeed severely criticised by discontented and "reforming" Turks, but who, after all, typifies the fundamental ideas of his subjects; and, above all, the Turkish system, bound up with a mechanical revelation from heaven, cannot be reformed. Pare away thin slices as much as you will, introduce as far as you may all the superficial elements of Western civilization, you cannot ultimately avert a great clash of opposing forces when the full-blooded, virile Slav throws himself on the decaying Ottoman. What line Germany will take when that day of doom arrives it is not easy to say. Will she stand by her barbarous protégé, and so risk a European war, or will she, while safeguarding her new interests in Asia Minor, make terms with Russia? It is only very indirectly our business, but we may hope that Germany will not play such a part in the Near East as to perpetuate the greatest political scandal in the world. Germany, Austria and Russia once made a "deal" about Poland. Whatever history may say of that, it could scarcely condemn a "deal" about Turkey by the same three Powers.

The new weekly, the "Londoner"-an excellent twopennyworth-contains an article by Mr. F. H. Cowen on the impression produced by his own compositions on himself. Charmed with the notion, Mr. Punch has written to several eminent literary persons, asking them to describe the impressions produced by their own compositions on themselves.

The principal impression produced upon me by the perusal of my own works is a splitting headache, especially acute in the case of my poems. I have a strong suspicion, amounting at times to a conviction, that I generally have meaning if only it can be found. In my more recent works, however, this feeling is less marked.

A subsidiary impression is amazement at the number of people who read my works and profess to understand them.

G-rge M-r-d-th.

On reading my patriotic poems, my feelings are tremendous. I am as a lion going forth to battle; my hair crimps (a most curious sensation) and I stretch my limbs-a phenomenon which, I am told, occurs also in many of my readers, with the further accompaniment of a yawn. On the whole, I am immensely struck with my own genius, and I know not which to admire the more, the discrimination of Lord Salisbury who saw in me a fitting successor to Tennyson and Wordsworth, or my own merits, which enable me to wear so worthily the laurels which once decked their brows.

In spite of the odiousness of comparisons, I cannot but institute one between myself and a certain ephemeral poet whom some have the audacity to

Punch.

call the National Laureate; and when I contrast the vulgar diction of his jingling rhymes with the pure and classic language in which my prose is couched, 1 can only reflect with grief and indignation on the difference btween his circulation and my own.

Alfr-d A-st-n.

A glow of satisfaction thrills me as I gaze upon the bookshelves which contain my works. There is really some very good stuff amongst them. I don't profess to know what I meant when I wrote some of them, e.g., the "Jungle Book;" but plain tales of "Ortheris, Mulvaney & Co.," were played out, and one had to strike out a different line somehow. I confess, when I read "The Day's Work," I have an uncomfortable misgiving that I am running to seed, which, however, is instantly dispelled when I hear the barrel-organ outside my door discoursing the classic and familiar strains of that undoubted work of genius, "The Absent-Minded Beggar."

R-dy-rd K-pl-ng.

"Robert Elsmere" convinces me that I am a great novelist; my new edition of the Brontës that I am a still greater critic. Surely nothing gives one so pleasing a sense of superiority as to patronize a feebler sister, such as the authoress of "Jane Eyre."

Mrs. H-mphry W-rd.

When I read some of the awful rot that I have undoubtedly written, I find myself wondering if I am quite responsible for my literary actions. Can it be that I am as mad as my last creation, "The Worshipper of the Image?"

R-ch-rd Le G-1l-nne.

"Konrad Lenz, born 1513, died 1590, pupil of Christopher Amberger, noted for the warm golden tone of his coloring, painted Historical, Legendary and Mythological subjects, chiefly upon wooden panels of small size. His works are rare."

Some such notice as this is printed in the catalogue of a certain gallery, whose name I cannot for the moment disclose.

This remarkable artist was in the habit of saying, "Painting would be the finest of all arts, if only pictures never had to be finished."

For he painted beautifully-and he loved to paint, only he never wished to do so, unless he felt like it, and that happened sometimes only once a week, and very often, not at all.

It seemed out of the question for him to finish an order promptly. Had he solemnly agreed to deliver a picture at a certain time, say at Christmas, ten chances to one he would begin to rub in its groundwork only at Easter of the following year. Nor was he in the least distressed over this peculiarity, which was clearly and entirely owing

*Translated for The Living Age by Florence

Este.

to the capriciousness of the planet under which he was born. And when reproached for not keeping his word, he would say, with careless good humor, "I have learned how to paint, let others now learn how to wait."

painter was

This feather-brained about twenty-four years of age when he received an important commission. He was requested to paint, upon as many separate panels, The Fourteen Helpers in Time of Trouble, with scenes in the background taken from their different lives and martyrdoms.

But an imperative condition of the order was that the entire collection of pictures was to be finished and delivered upon St. Leonard's Day, 1538. And on that day he was to receive in honorable payment the sum of one hundred golden guldens.

His patron, the Baron von Haltenberg, in a recent voyage from Genoa to Naples had fallen into the hands of a band of pirates from Tunis.

During his captivity he had prayerfully appealed for aid to The Fourteen Helpers in Time of Trouble, promising each one of them a fine picture dedicated to his honor and hung in the Chapel of the Castle von Haltenberg on St. Leonard's Day, in case he, the unhappy prisoner, should be released,