And therewith he showed me his white teeth, and turned his high Phrygian cap on one side, as he usually does when his head is fresh shaved; for then he considers himself irresistible, and believes he awakens love in all women, and satisfaction in all men. I knew his weakness, and every time he showed me his freshshaved head, I exclaimed: "How beautiful thou art, Mirza-Schaffy!" This evening, notwithstanding the vehement affair of the slipper, he appeared to be in an unusually tender mood, and for the first time since our acquaintance he allowed himself to be prevailed on to take wine with me-a temptation he had hitherto carefully avoided on every occasion; not so much perhaps out of overgreat scrupulousness, as because he was afraid I might afterwards relate it among the people of the West, and so his reputation as a teacher of wisdom be slightly endangered. But in the throng of emotions, he was unable to resist the entreaty; he drank a glass, and then a second, and after that a third; and the wine loosened his tongue, and he became so affable and confiding as I had never seen him before. "What says Hafiz ?" he cried, with a smirkish look :— "The drink of the wise is wine, All goodness and virtue unfolding, Spirits of highest molding! "In fact," he continued, "the pleasure of wine is a stone of stumbling only to the dull crowd. We, as philosophers, what need have we to trouble ourselves about the Koran? All wise men and poets have praised wine-are we to bring shame on their words?" And to prove to me that his philosophy did not date from yesterday, he favored me with a song, which he asserted he had sent ten years ago to the house of a pious Mullah, who had derided him on account of his love for wine : "No devotion has me To the mosque led to pray; I have erred from the way!" Glass followed glass, and song, song; but all at once, to my astonishment, the eye of the Mirza grew dim; he fell into a reverie, and stared sadly before him. He sat so for a long while, and I did not venture to disturb his silent contemplation. It was only when again he opened his mouth, and sang these words in a plaintive tone: "Oh, me! my heart Love's anguish has riven, To me the pain of parting was given, that I interrupted him with the sympathizing question : "Art thou in love, Mirza-Schaffy?" He looked at me, sorrowfully shaking his head; and then began to sing another song, I think of Hafiz : — - "Art thou treading Love's pathway, the sad and unending, He hummed the song through, and then turned to me and said: "No, I am not in love now, but I was in love once, as never man has been!” THE SPECTER CARAVAN. BY FERDINAND FREILIGRATH. (Translated by James Clarence Mangan.) [FERDINAND FREILIGRATH, noted German lyric poet, was born at Detmold, June 17, 1810. He was destined for a mercantile life, but the success of his first volume of poems induced him to take up literature as a profession. In consequence of the political sentiments expressed in "Mein Glaubensbekenntniss " ("My Creed"), he was forced to leave the country, and went first to Belgium, and then to Switzerland and England. He returned to Germany in 1848, but again fled to London, where he remained until 1868. He eventually settled at Stuttgart, and died at Cannstatt, March 18, 1876. Chief amongst his poems are: "The Revolution," "Ça Ira!" "Political and Social Poems"; besides translations of Burns, of Longfellow's "Hiawatha," and many English poems.] 'Twas midnight in the Desert, where we rested on the ground; There my Beddaweens were sleeping and their steeds were stretched around; In the farness lay the moonlight on the Mountains of the Nile, With my saddle for a pillow did I prop my weary head, And the stillness was unbroken, save at moments by a cry When, behold! moon a sudden sandquake, and between the earth and Rose a mighty Host of Shadows, as from out some dim lagoon; Then our coursers gasped with terror, and a thrill shook every man; And the cry was "Allah Akbar! 'tis the Specter Caravan!" On they came, their hueless faces toward Mecca evermore; On they came, long files of camels, and of women whom they bore, Guides, and merchants, youthful maidens bearing pitchers in their hands, And behind them troops of horsemen following, sumless as the sands! More and more! the phantom pageant overshadowed all the plains; Whence we knew the Night was come when all whom Death had sought and found, Long ago amid the sands whereon their bones yet bleach around, Rise by legions from the darkness of their prisons low and lone, And in dim procession march to kiss the Kaaba's Holy Stone. And yet more, and more forever!-still they swept in pomp along, Till I asked me,- Can the Desert hold so vast a muster throng? Lo! the Dead are here in myriads; the whole World of Hades waits, As with eager wish to press beyond the Babelmandeb Straits! Then I spake: "Our steeds are frantic: To your saddles, every one! "Courage comrades! Even now the moon is waning far a-west, Soon the welcome Dawn will mount the skies, in gold and crimson vest, And in thinnest air will melt away those phantom shapes forlorn, When again upon your brows you feel the odor winds of Morn!" PRINCE BISMARCK'S LETTERS. [OTTO EDOUARD LEOPOLD, PRINCE VON BISMARCK: A famous Prussian statesman and diplomat; born at Schönhausen, Prussia, April 1, 1815. In 1847 he entered the Prussian Landtag. In 1851 he was Prussian ambassador at Frankfort; in 1859 ambassador to Russia; in 1862 ambassador to France. In 1862 he became Prussian minister of foreign affairs. In 1867 he was made chancellor of the North German Confederation, and in 1871 the first chancellor of the German empire. On March 18, 1890, soon after the accession of William II., he resigned from office and thereafter lived in retirement until his death, July 30, 1898. A collection of his letters was published during his lifetime. His memoirs were announced, in August, 1898, for simultaneous publication in the German, English, and French languages.] TO FREIHERR VON SCHLEINITZ. PETERSBURG, May 12, 1859. I HAVE brought away, as the result of my experience, from the eight years of my official life at Frankfort, the conviction that the present arrangements of the Bund form for Prussia an oppressive and, in critical times, a perilous tie, without affording us in exchange the same equivalents which Austria derives from them, while she retains at the same time a much greater freedom of separate action. The two Powers are not measured by the princes and governments of the smaller states with the same measure; the interpretation of the objects and laws of the Bund are modified according to the requirements of the Austrian policy. . . . Invariably we found ourselves confronted by the same compact majority, the same demand on Prussia's compliance. In the Eastern question, Austria's spe cific weight proved itself so superior to ours that even the unison of the wishes and inclinations of the allied governments, with the endeavors of Prussia, could only oppose to her a temporarily resisting dam. Almost without exception, our allies gave us then to understand, or even openly declared, that they were powerless to uphold the Bund with us, if Austria meant to go her own way, although it is indubitable that the laws of the Bund and true German interests were on the side of our peaceful policy; this was, at any rate at that time, the opinion of almost all the allied princes. Would these ever in a similar manner sacrifice their own inclinations and interests to the needs or even to the security of Prussia? Certainly not, since their attachment to Austria rests predominantly on false interests, which dictate to both sides a united front against Prussia, the repression of all progressive development of Prussia's power and influence as a lasting basis of their common policy. The completion of the present formation of the Bund, by placing Austria at its head, is the natural aim of the policy of the German princes and their ministers. This can only be achieved in their sense at the expense of Prussia, and is necessarily directed against her alone, as long as Prussia will not limit herself to the useful task of insuring her allies, who have an equal interest and duty in the matter as herself, against too great a preponderance on the part of Austria, and to bear, with neverfailing complacency and devotion to the wishes of the majority," the disproportion of her duties to her rights in the Bund. This tendency of the policy of the middle States will reappear with the constancy of the magnet after every transitory oscillation, because it represents no arbitrary product of single circumstances or persons, but forms for the smaller States a natural and necessary result of the conditions of the Bund. We have no means of coming to a satisfactory and reliable arrangement with her within the circle of the present Diet treaties. Since the time our allies in the Bund, nine years ago, commenced, under Austria's leadership, to bring to the light of day, from the hitherto disregarded arsenal of the fundamental laws of the Bund, such principles as can promote their system; and since the time the resolutions, which could only have significance in the sense of their originators, so far as they were supported by the agreement of Prussia and Austria, were attempted to be worked with the object of keeping Prussian policy in a state of tutelage, we have had to experience unin |