up the face of the mountain, starting from near St. James's Church and the Entrance Gates, climbs the far-famed ladder which gives the hill its name. I suppose there is no other such ladder in the world, which I understand is 993 feet in length, 602 feet high, has a slope of thirty-two degrees, having 699 wooden steps and one stone one! each step rising eleven inches. The carriage drive which we were now ascending at a very vigorous speed is a steep zigzag road nine feet in breadth, and hedged in by a rubble wall, about a foot thick and three feet high. With the slight drawback of one or two short, light showers, this drive was most exhilarating. Every moment our view of town and bay became more perfect, and the atmosphere continually lighter and more bracing. Then the ascent was replete with incidents novel to us. Every hundred yards, at least, we encountered bare-footed natives with donkeys-one, two, three, sometimes six or eight-variously laden, but chiefly with gorse from the highlands for firewood. Owing to the narrowness of the way, and the waywardness of the donkeys, some coaxing and applications of "waddy" on the one side and engineering on the other were required at times before we could pass.

Here and everywhere we were struck with the walking capacities of the St. Helenists-very young, middle-aged and very old and withered people tramping up hill and down dale with lithe and elastic step.

On the summit of Ladder Hill are the fort and extensive barracks, built of stone, where once stood the public gibbet, on which history telleth "criminals were hung in chains in full view of the town and harbor." On the ridges above, to the left, is the Observatory established by the East India Com. pany over fifty years ago, and long fallen into disuse. I should have chronicled earlier that our cortège had six LIVING AGE. VOL. VIII. 426

followers on foot, each carriage and horseman having a gamin, who attached himself as page-in-waiting for the day. This institution of boy-hanger-on would doubtless prove a superlative nuisance when the novelty of the thing had worn off; but there is no doubt at all that they provided us with a good deal of recurrent amusement, and gave a pleasing feeling of being in "furrin' parts" to the day's excursion, which was worth the "tips" disbursed in the evening. Up and down hill, whether we travelled fast or slow, over pebbles, couch-grass, broken metal or rock, like shadows they pursued us, and whenever their eyes caught ours they grinned from ear to ear. Gates met with en route they opened, running on before; they put on and took off when required the peculiar "shoe" brakes of our phaetons; held the saddle-horses when wanted, and when we told them gathered ferns and wildflowers.

Our first glimpse of Longwood was across a deep and wide gorge of barren rock. The interest in Longwood is almost entirely dependent upon its connection with the great exile, for not even a very imaginative local guidebook could call the sight highly picturesque, for it is flat, with the dusky "Haystack peak" for a distant background. About three-quarters of a mile from Longwood, and beside Halley's Mount, where the celebrated astronomer had his Observatory during the years he was on the island, studying and classifying the stars of the Southern Hemisphere, is the hamlet of Huts' Gate. The drive from James's Town to Longwood, with stoppages, took us two hours and forty minutes.

All of us were gratified when we found the Longwood hostelry to be a neat cottage, in the middle of a garden, in which were growing bananas, etc., and offering for our accommodation large and comfortably furnished parlor and dining-room. It was amusing

to see how we revelled in a walk on the grass-plot and in the garden, glory ing in being once more on terra firma. All were in the best of tempers, and not unlike schoolboys out for a holiday. When the first effervescence of spirits had passed off we betook ourselves to the parlor and the latest English papers. Then came the summons, which required no repetition, and in a twinkling one of the merriest and best-natured parties I ever saw closed around the dining-room table. We were waited upon by a comely, neatly attired, blackeyed native dansel, and the lunch which she spread for us was voted, without a dissentient voice, a masterpiece of country victualling. The table laughed with an abundant supply of ham and eggs, snow-white bread and freshest butter, jugs of milk, plates of bananas and figs. To appreciate the situation, it must be remembered that we had been three months at sea without tasting fresh butter, eggs or fresh fruit. Refreshed and in amiable mood, we started in a body to see thè sights.

A pleasant walk of a few hundred yards up a well-grassed incline, dotted over with yellow everlastings, brought us to the home of Napoleon's ruined hopes, the nest of this rock-bound cage. Of this famous domicile there is not much to be said. It is not as it was when Bonaparte lived in it. The walls are the same and the rooms look somewhat as they did to him, but the whole interior of the house is of modern work.

manship, though, after the fashion of the original. In a sense, therefore, the visitor to Longwood sees the rooms in which the famous Frenchman lived, and in a sense he sees but a copy of them. Notwithstanding that such are the facts, I felt a real interest in the place, scanning the various chambers with sympathy, and henceforth Napoleon's banishment and the enforced season of calm which succeeded his turbid European life will be realized and under

stood by me as never before. The house is an old-fashioned rambling cottage, with a flight of four or five steps leading up to the front door.

According to a local historian this building was originally a farmhouse, and was at the time Napoleon arrived on the island occupied as a country residence by the Lieutenant-Governor. Being selected for the Emperor, the present front room with the veranda attached was added to the building by Sir G. Cockburn, and formed the billiard-room and salon de réception.

As we entered, a young lady, daughter of the French officer in charge of the property-M. F. D. C. Morilleaureceived us and showed us through the rooms. It may be well to state here, what is not, I think, generally known, that the old house at Longwood with three acres of land about it, and also twenty-three acres in Napoleon's Vale where the famous exile was buried, was purchased by the English Government from the private owners in 1858 at a cost of £5,100, and conveyed to the Emperor of the French and his heirs in perpetuity. Both Longwood and the tomb are looked after by the officer before referred to, who is a civil servant of the French Government. The house was quite destitute of furniture with the exception of small pier-glasses in a couple of the rooms. Mural notices in French and English in the various apartments reveal the purposes to which they were put during the residency of Napoleon. There were reception, drawing and dining-rooms, writing office, bedroom, bath and dressing rooms and a billiard-room which could not contain a full-sized table. None of the apartments are lofty, and the house could never have been remarkably cheerful.

The most interesting portion of the house to the visitor is the salon of the Emperor, as the wall notices name it, because as one has humorously said,

there is something in it.

This room, which measures 21 feet x 15 feet, was used by Napoleon towards the close of his life as a bedroom, and we are informed that "here on the 5th of May, 1821, the Emperor breathed his last." On that day, it is related, "the island was swept by a most tremendous storm, which tore up many trees by the roots." The spot where he died is marked off by a plain wooden railing which encloses a space, 7 feet x 5 feet, in the centre of which is a marble, laurelcrowned bust of the great General from a cast taken after death. Suspended below the bust and in front of the pedestal (alas! that these words will recall Mark Twain's excruciating joke) hangs a wreath of immortelles, from which one of our party with the true relichunter's instinct annexes, unobserved, a white leaf. In the billiard-room is the Visitor's Book, in which, following the multitude of cosmopolitan pilgrims, we inscribed our names and addresses, Looking back to earlier pages of the book, I was interested in reading numerous warm expressions of love for the great warrior which French soldiers, visiting Longwood from time to time, had appended to their signatures. In this room also various knick-knacks made on the island, photos of the house and other curios, are exposed for sale, and of course we each of us took away something as a souvenir. Upstairs in a wing of the house is a row of attics, which had probably been used by the servants. I expended much energy in climbing up the narrow staircase, and was not rewarded for the exhaustive effort.

About a hundred yards from the old house, at the foot of the lawn, is the one-storied mansion built for Napoleon by the British Government, which, although, as we were informed, he used daily to visit it while it was a-building, he never occupied-dying before it was quite finished. It is substantially con

has fifty-six

structed of stone, and rooms of various sizes. New Longwood has an elevation of 1,760 feet above the sea. Being shown into the drawing-room-a spacious and suitably furnished apartment in the right wing -we spent a short time conversing and examining works of art, etc. We were here shown a small carte-de-visite photograph of the late Prince Imperial, bearing the autograph of the ex-Empress Eugénie, presented to M. Morilleau by the Empress on July 12, 1880, when she visited St. Helena on her mournful return from Zululand, the scene of her son's violent death by the assegai of a savage.

Before leaving we gathered in the Longwood grounds a few flowers and leaves to keep as tokens. After hurriedly swallowing a cup of coffee, provided without extra charge by the polite young hostess of the restaurant, we jumped into our phaeton and rattled after our friends, who had gone on some time before. Our way now lay down a steep, zigzag road to the green and secluded retreat about a mile off, where Napoleon most loved to wander, and where on his decease in the fiftysecond year of his age, and the sixth of his exile, his remains were laid to rest. Here they lay for nineteen years, attracting troops of visitors to the island and the tomb, until in 1840 the body was removed to Paris, and re-entombed under the dome of the Invalides. It is a romantic spot-a mountain-sheltered nook clothed with greenery and pines, and looking down into a barren ravine significantly known as "The Devil's Punchbowl." The tomb, so long unoccupied, was still kept, when I saw it, much as it was forty-five years ago, though there is now neither tombstone nor tablet, the ground about it being enclosed by a circular wooden railing, and the spot itself, which is covered with slabs, by an iron palisading some ten feet square. Fringing the

Old Betty Perkins lived in one room in the Borough. She was not largely blessed with this world's goods, but Heaven had endowed her with a cheery soul, and she looked out on life with serene old eyes that saw the bright side of things by preference to the dark, and believed firmly in good times to come somewhen, somewhere.

She lived in a third-floor back, and although her room contained the minimum number of articles possible for a minimum degree of comfort, she kept everything scrupulously clean and neat, and "and that is always something," as she was wont to say.

Nobody ever came to see her, except her immediate neighbors, who resorted to old Betty to pour out their woes into

her sympathizing ears. And how it had come about I do not know, but no district visitor ever visited Betty, or had ever done so in all the old lady's long life and she went on her serene independent way, unhelped by any organization, parochial or otherwise, getting along as best she could.

She was a simple, kindly old soul, and there was no one in the neighborhood who had not a good word for her.

One afternoon Betty sat alone in her little room, resting, at the conclusion of her "bit of cleaning," and watching the kettle preparing to boil for her cup of tea. Her sole companion, a canary, in a small cage by the window, was singing his very best, because a long ray of sunshine had contrived to strag