head aloft again, and reassumed the look of sanctified innocence which so entrances the simple country-folk, than the lily once more tickles her, and puts all her resolution to flight. The boys, too, war with each other, using their lilies as quarterstaves, until they are cuffed into order by the troop in the rear.

This troop is very vivid for colour. It is composed of about a dozen men in scarlet gowns, carrying lamps in their hands. The lamps have long handles, and are therefore admirably fitted for applying to the heads of the turbulent boys in front.

reached the Cathedral Square in time to join those already in the church awaiting the return of the priests and effigies, after their pompous perambulation of the city. Sardinia is very retentive in the matter of its costumes. The men in the country districts wear the same attire that their grandsires to the twentieth generation also wore. With the women it is their jewellery, and sundry more gorgeous personal garments-such as a bodice of gold or silver lace embroidered upon satin -which descend in like manner from mother to daughter. Iglesias is, perhaps, less famous than the "campidano" of Cagliari for the wealth of its ladies. Here, however, were no few dames of a picturesque and valuable kind. Their heads were draped with long silk kerchiefs, generally light-blue in colour, to their waists. The richer wore also a small scarlet skull-cap under the kerchief. The dresses were for the most part of vivid primary colourssilk, satin, or cotton, according to the opulence of the wearer. Gold ornaments were displayed wherever they would perch. Bracelets, brooches, ear-rings, necklets, with innumerable bangles hanging therefrom-ing as the size of the building will admit, these were, of course, the commoner kind of decoration. The poorest of the women, instead of a head attire of silk, wore blue flannel.

Imagine, then, the brilliant scene, viewed from the interior of the church-sufficiently filled already—when the ecclesiastics, with their banners and guilds, and a swaying mob of attendant peasants and others, the heads of the women blue, crimson, yellow, and white, presented themselves at the door, and prepared to march up towards the altar.

Of the guilds with the clergy I will only mention two or three companies. What think you of a troop of little boys in surplices, each carrying a white artificial Annunciata lily, and all marshalled in the train of one little girl, dressed like a bride, before whom a silken banner is carried? The damsel-a pretty, conceited little soul -plays the part of the Virgin, of course. As for the boys, they play many parts, whether designedly or not. The two leaders tickle the ears of the child-bride in front of them with their Annunciata lilies. The others tickle each other in the same way. Thus, all the way up to the altar, there is constant recrimination. The symbolical Virgin turns round with a look of childish anger, while she rubs her ear; and no sooner has she raised her little

After the red men are men in gowns of white and black, carrying staves only. Older girls in white follow these men. Another company of boys, without lilies, in attendance upon a maiden of mature age, seem to symbolise the Virgin at a later period of her life. The Bishop of Iglesias, in crimson silk, canons in violet, and other dignitaries of humbler rank are the nucleus of this very engrossing spectacle. And when as many of the processionists have been crammed into the build

the concluding part of the Corpus Cristi function takes place. What with the heat, the crush, the iniquitous behaviour of her lily-bearing cortège, and her futile attempts to comport herself with suitable dignity and sweetness of demeanour, the little girl whom I have already mentioned is reduced to such a state of distress that, before the end of the ceremony, she falls into tears, and disregards all her responsibilities. But, in fact, the exit from the cathedral is a mere scrimmage, so that her sorrow passes unremarked.

In the evening I strolled through the city again, to see if it continued to merit the stigma for drunkenness which of old it bore. Of beer-drinking there was little; but almost every other house in its narrow ill-smelling streets was arranged with portly wine-barrels and counters. Here in a gloom chastened rather than dispelled by a swinging lamp or two, were parties of peasants dining and card-playing with great gusto. But the cafés were still better attended; and in honour of the day a harpist twanged his melodious wires among the guests and confectionery of the principal of these resorts, while the fair ladies of Iglesias paraded to and fro in the cool between the cathedral and the palazzo of the Mayor. The only other form of dissipation that confronted me

here was a paltry booth in the new square of the city. "The Beautiful American Lady" was advertised as the inmate of the booth, and as a marvel to challenge the world for her charms and strength.

The next morning, at eight o'clock, I took my seat in the diligence for San Antioco. The distance between the two places is about thirty kilometres; the fare, two francs. I mention the fare to show that diligence travelling in Sardinia is cheap. In this instance it was cheaper than usual, because, as my driver said with a sigh, he had a rival. Though he carried the royal mails, he was not to have the monopoly of passengers. A buff vehicle started five minutes before we started; and the sight of the buff coach, picking up travellers who ought to have waited for the mail, was enough to make any honest mailman grind his teeth.

The first ten miles of our journey was through a series of mountain gorges, the cliffs on either side of us showing innumerable galleries in which the miners were at work. The common signs of a mining country were also not wanting: precise banks of refuse from the borings; discoloured brooks; slouching workmen smoking the inevitable pipe; ruined or deserted hovels by the wayside. But here, all these indications of disturbance could not deprive the land of its beauty. The screes, a thousand feet higher than our heads, fell none the less precipitously for the burrows within them. Nor were all the olives and fig-trees, which at one time grew thick upon them, cut down or withered by the tainted atmosphere.

Ere arriving at San Antioco-which is visible across the plain of Sulcis and the intervening arm of the sea long before we reach it-I must really say a bad word for the blue and yellow diligence in which I was so unfortunate as to travel. Pretensions to comfort, it had absolutely none. It was of wood wholly. I believe its springs, if it had any, were wooden. Its cushions were certainly of wood, for it had none but the boards; and its dimensions were so small that a man of long legs and arms, and, therefore, with a high head, found himself perplexed how to stow his obtrusive body. One has, indeed, to travel in such a vehicle as if one were but half in it. By leaning with arms and shoulders out of the window, a certain compromise is effected; but, in time, the attitude gets fatiguing. And if there is any dust, it is but an exchange of one infliction for another.

Before entering San Antioco we skirted the sea where it throbs, lazily and shallow, upon the sandy shore of Sardinia, facing the island town. The plain of Sulcis is to the south of us: a flat area, parched already, with much poor barley on it, and many acres of marsh fast drying under the warming sun, and thereby extending the margin of dark consolidating ooze, which only too well suggests its malarious capabilities. This plain is about twenty miles long, by five or six broad. Two or three starveling villages are all the population it supports. The Saracens ravaged the district so effectually that, for centuries, it has been thus forsaken. Two or three prostrate granite columns - one column erect, but half-buried in the mire-and the solid remains of the old Roman road by the water-side are all the emphatic signs of the early inhabitants of Sulcis in Sardinia. San Antioco, itself, claims to be Sulcis proper; and, indeed, the architectural débris of the place bear out its claim.

The island has but two small towns: San Antioco, on the east coast, and Calasetta, to the north, facing the island of San Pietro. It is rocky throughout, though its highest point is barely nine hundred feet above the sea level. Where there is enough soil for the purpose, vineyards are formed; but the wine of the island is harsh, and not to be compared with the better wines of Sardinia. For the most part, the island hills are covered thick with juniper, lentisk, wild thyme, and cistus. Upon this brushwood the poor children of the town depend for their livelihood. They spend many hours of the day out on the hill-sides, garnering the wiry woodstuff for sale in the town. And sweet, indeed, is the odour of the San Antioco smoke from domestic hearths fed with such savoury fuel.

There is no inn in San Antioco. My reader may as well be informed of this. If I had space, how I could enlarge upon this fascinating theme; to wit, the pleasant hardships one has to suffer in the search and enjoyment of unprofessional hospitality. Here, however, a large lady received me into her house with a certain amount of amiable patronage. She made me much at home, gossiped with me as if I had known her from my infancy, told me about the Vicario's colic, the Lieutenant N's social gallantries, and her own relations' peccadilloes, prattled endlessly, in short; but gave me little to eat;

and in the morning, with an air of ingenuous indifference, asked me to pay her a goodly sum. Then she genially shook me by the hand, wished me a "good journey," a "speedy return," and we parted.

But, in the meantime, I had at least a glimpse of life in San Antioco. There is a fountain by its beach, round which the lasses of the place, in gay attire, love to gather. Some wash clothes in its trough; others go thither with empty pitchers, and return bearing its water. But one and all are sturdy little pedestrians, and inimitable chatterers. By the fountain are Roman marbles of one kind and another; bits of temples and domestic dwellings. And within the latter-day houses of the little town are coins, pottery, scarabæi, and intaglios; spoil which the past daily renders up to the present.

Of all the wonders of the place, nothing is held to be more wonderful than its street of tombs. Tombs they were, really, more than two thousand years ago. The tufa of the hills has fallen into a series of natural grottoes, in which the Carthaginians of the first Sulcis laid their dead. Nowadays the dead are displaced; their treasures of gold and precious stones scattered among the museums, and their bones spread broadcast about the fields; and in their stead entire families occupy their sepulchres. The niches and coigns which held their bodies serve for pots and pans, the mealsack, or the fodder which is to sustain the ass that grinds the corn, also within the inhabited tomb.

There is another of these grottoes under the Church of San Antioco, with extensive ramifications. Here, with lighted candles, we prowled for half an hour, among piles of skulls and other bones set in the corners, and over undisturbed tombs of bricked arches. In this very romantic hole, one sees the vault anciently occupied by San Antioco. It is furnished with a little iron grill; but, within, one sees nothing. For, early in the seventeenth century, the remains of the saint-by whom, or for what canonised, I cannot say were transported to Iglesias for security. Since that time, and up to the year 1851, there was an annual carrying of the body to and fro between Iglesias and San Antioco on the festa of San Antioco. The junketing on these occasions was fabulous, and also the attendance. It was the custom to make the journey in two days. All the priests and people, and the effigies, and the skull

of the saint in a silver casket, halted halfway for the night in a pleasant al fresco camp. On the third day, they returned to Iglesias, and the skull was enshrined on the altar.

In 1851, however, the people of San Antioco began to assert what they, fairly enough, conceived to be their rights. The saint was theirs. Why, then, should it return to Iglesias, whither it had been carried two and a half centuries ago, merely because the pirates, who then ravaged the land, might else have run off with it? Accordingly, they rose in arms, and opposed the procession when it reformed for the return march. The riot had to be suppressed by the Government. A lawsuit supervened, and this eventuated in the final repose of the relics of San Antioco in the church which was his first resting-place. "Tanti miracoli!" (numerous miracles) observed the sacristan of the church, in comment upon the efficacy of the saint. Surely the attempt of Iglesias to retain possession of the body was in no way different to the refusal of a pickpocket to resurrender a watch to the person whom he may have relieved of it.

The evening in San Antioco was tranquil and restful. With my entertainer's sanction, I sat on her doorstep, and watched the ebb and flow of life in the little square, while the glow of sunset glided over white houses, hill tops, and the sea. There had been a killing of tunny fish near the island that morning, and they were cutting up a fish or two in one corner of the square. Now and then a citizen came by, and passed me a civil word or two. A stranger is not common in San Antioco; but no treated me as a novelty. One old gentleman dallied a little, while prating of the good features of his native town. When I asked him if it were healthy, he called the devil to witness that there was no place in the world to equal it. A centenarian was no luxury in the village. He himself had a relation whose years numbered one hundred and ten.

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After this gossip came pleasanter sport. My hostess had a great-niece who was wont, it appeared, to come to her house to amuse herself with broidery work of the old style. She was a fine, dark girl, with merry white teeth, and no shyness. And so, for half an hour, while the light waned to gloom, her nimble fingers went to and fro on the frame between which her work was stretched, and she purled forth speech as continuously as the flow of