first I have seen in India, and they with mignonette and heliotrope give colour and perfume to the rooms. The young Maharajah will be of age in two years, when he will assume the authority now exercised by the Resident. The famine struck this state with terrible severity; about one-seventh of the people died. The city contains a population of 142,000. In the fort is the cell where Sir David Baird was chained to a native prisoner. There are handsome public and botanical gardens, and an experimental farm near the city. The manager of the latter, Mr. Harman, contends, from the experience he has had of the climate and soil, that if the land were deeply ploughed, and the cattle manure, instead of being used as fuel, applied direct to it, it would generally yield crops without artificial irrigation. Three crops may be taken in a year where there is 'well'irrigation: first, maize, a three months' crop, used green as fodder; second, sweet potatoes; and third, cholum or large millet. Captain Kensington, R.E., mentioned heavy crops grown by him experimentally, under native management, on good deep red soil, but not deep cultivation. The maximum produce on manured land was 2,650 lbs. of grain, and on land without manure, but with two years' fallow, 2,380 lbs. per acre. Potatoes from 98 lbs. of seed per acre gave a return of 9,800 lbs., on land watered from wells and manured. Two crops of potatoes can be grown in a year, and a crop of three months' maize between. Of eight hundred square miles surveyed by Captain Kensington, sixty are under 'wet' cultivation, sixty are submerged by tanks for irrigation, two hundred and thirty are 'dry' cultivation, and four hundred and fifty are waste but part cultivable. The gross produce per acre of the 'dry' land is reckoned worth 408., and is charged 28. for Government rent; that of the wet' land is worth 1208., and is charged 68. for rent, the revenue taken by Government being in each case one-twentieth of the gross produce. This seemingly fair principle leaves 388. an acre in the hands of the one farmer, and 1148. to the other!

Descending 1,300 feet very gradually in about 100 miles to Jollarpet, we pass from a stony country into the rich plain which for ages has received the washings of the higher land. The palm is now again common, and the general appearance of the country is much richer than Mysore. As we proceed, the Penar valley is narrowed by projecting rocky hills till we pass from it into that of the Palar, where it widens into far reaches of fertile land, mostly under rice in all stages of growth-some just planted, some pushing through the glistening water, some coming into ear, and some under the sickle. The fields are small, and as these various processes are going on in the warm sunlight, the people are all out, and look picturesque in their diverscoloured garments-some planting, some reaping, others on the threshing floor with the oxen treading out the corn, and here and there a shepherd and his boy leading and following their flock. The ground nut, which yields oil, and is largely exported, is being dug

out and gathered, a numerous party working at this in line, under the superintendence of the cultivator. Women and children are all busy. Though the famine was very severe in some parts of this district, there is no sign of want of labour either of man or beast.

At Vellore, eighty miles from Madras, we lived in the fort, a strong place in former times, surrounded by a ditch, the walls built of large granite blocks, but now commanded by high hills within range of modern artillery. Within its walls are a fine Hindu temple and a Mohammedan mosque, the former now used as a military post, the latter as a post-office. George the Fourth sent out a frigate to bring home the temple in pieces, to be set up at the Brighton Pavilion as a specimen of Hindu architecture. But war had meantime broken out, in which the frigate was employed for the transport of troops, and before it was concluded the king was gathered to his fathers, and the Sailor King did not persevere with the project.

I visited the gaol, which is under the management of Major M'Leod. There are 1,540 prisoners inside and 500 outside under guard. The number increased one-fourth during the famine, dacoity (robbery by bands of more than five) being the principal crime. There is a central office, the roof of which overlooks the entire premises, on which a sentinel is always posted. From this centre eight separate compartments radiåte, each with sleeping range in centre and working sheds on each outer wall. The prisoners are divided equally amongst these, all are kept employed, the task being moderate, but each prisoner being capable of earning good marks entitling him, with good conduct, to more or less remission of sentence. Some make men's slippers and shoes, some do carpentry work, most weave handsome Indian carpets, the best of which are sent home to London for sale. The prisoners' clothing and that of the police are woven in the gaol. The prisoners have a bath every day when work is done; their condition and health are excellent, the death-rate last year being only one per cent. Newcomers are manacled for the first three months. Incorrigible idlers are forced to carry weights round a circle at a good pace. The food is given in equal portions at ten, and in the afternoon. On three days of the week each prisoner gets five ounces of mutton in addition to the daily meal of grain seasoned with salt and curry-powder, and a due proportion of vegetables. The average cost of food is 6l. 68. a year. Every arrangement seemed good, and everything was most fresh, cleanly, and orderly, and in the highest degree creditable to the management. In the evening we came on to Madras, where, as at all the principal stations, the Commission took lengthened evidence on famine management.

JAMES CAIRD.

(To be concluded.)

A CAGLIOSTRO OF THE SECOND

CENTURY.

IN the Acts of the Apostles we meet with a class of persons whose features have in our own times become again familiar to us-quacks and conjurors professing to be in communication with the spiritual world, and regarded with curiosity and interest by serious men high in rank and authority. Sergius Paulus was craving for any light which could be given to him, and in default of better teaching had listened to Elymas the Sorcerer. Simon Magus, if we may credit Catholic tradition, was in favour at the Imperial Court of Rome, where he matched his power against St. Peter's, and was defeated only because God was stronger than the devil. The curious arts' of these people were regarded both by Christian and heathen as a real mastery of a supernatural secret; and in the hunger for information about the great mystery with which the whole society was possessed, they rose, many of them, into positions of extraordinary influence and consequence. Asia Minor seems to have been their chief breeding ground, where Eastern magic came in contact with Greek civilisation, and imposture was able to disguise itself in the phrases of philosophy.

Apollonius of Tyana was the most remarkable of these adventurers. His life, unfortunately, has been written by believers in his pretensions; and we have no knowledge of what he looked like to hardheaded men of the world. The Apollonius of Philostratus is a heathen saviour, who claimed a commission from heaven to teach a pure and reformed religion, and in attestation of his authority went about healing the sick, raising dead men to life, casting out devils, and prophesying future events which came afterwards to pass. The interesting fact about Apollonius is the extensive recognition which he obtained, and the ease with which his impostures found acceptance in the existing condition of the popular mind. Out of the legends of him little can be gathered, save the barest outline of his history. He was born four years before the Christian era in Tyana, a city of Cappadocia. His parents sent him to be educated at Tarsus in Cilicia, a place of considerable wealth and repute, and he must have been about beginning his studies there when St. Paul as a little boy was first running about the streets. The life in Tarsus being too luxurious for Apollonius's aspirations, he became a water-drinker and a vege

tarian, and betook himself as a recluse to the temple of Esculapius at Ægæ. Esculapius, as the god of healing, and therefore the most practically useful, had become the most popular of the heathen divinities. He alone of them was supposed to remain beneficently active, and even to appear at times in visible form in sick-rooms and by sick-beds. Apollonius's devotion to Esculapius means that he studied medicine. On the death of his father he divided his property among the poor, and after five years of retirement he travelled as far as India in search of knowledge. He discoursed with learned Brahmins there, and came home with enlightened ideas, and with some skill in the arts of the Indian jugglers. With these two possessions he began his career as a teacher in the Roman Empire. He preached his new religion, and he worked miracles to induce people to believe in him. He was at Rome in Nero's time, when Simon Magus and St. Peter were there. Perhaps tradition has confused him with Simon Magus. In the convulsions which followed Nero's murder, being then an old man, he attached himself to Vespasian in Egypt. Vespasian, who was not without his superstitions, and himself had been once persuaded to work a miracle, is said to have looked kindly on him and patronised him, and Apollonius blossomed out into glory as the spiritual adviser of the Vespasian dynasty. The cruelties of Domitian estranged him. He was accused of conspiring with Nerva, and of having sacrificed a child to bribe the gods in Nerva's interest. He was even charged with having pretended to be a god himself. He was arraigned, convicted, and was about to suffer, when he vanished out of the hands of the Roman police, to reappear at Ephesus, where he soon after died.

Clearly enough, we are off the ground of history in much of this. If Apollonius died at Ephesus in Nerva's time, he was a hundred years old at least, and must have been a contemporary with St. John there, who is supposed to have been writing his Gospel in the same city about that very time.

However that may be, it is certain that after his death a temple was raised to Apollonius at the place of his birth, and Tyana became a privileged city. Similar honours were assigned elsewhere to him as an evidence of the facility and completeness with which he had gained credit for his pretended divine commission. The truth about him is probably that he was a physician, and had obtained some real knowledge of the methods of curing diseases. In India, besides philosophy and juggling, he may have learnt to practise what is now called animal magnetism; and finding that he had a real power on the nervous system of hysterical patients, the nature of which he did not understand, he may have himself believed it to be supernatural. With these arts he succeeded in persuading his countrymen that he was some great one,' 'a great power of God;' and both in life and death, in an age when the traditionary religion was grown incredible, and the human race was craving for a new revelation, Apollonius of Tyana, among many others,

was looked upon through a large part of the Roman Empire as an emanation of the Divine nature. Such periods are the opportunities of false prophets. Mankind when they grow enthusiastic mistake their hopes and imaginations for evidence of truth, and run like sheep after every new pretender who professes to hold the key of the mystery which they are so passionately anxious to penetrate.

Our present business, however, is not with the prophet of Tyana. Apollonius left a school of esoteric disciples behind him, with one of whom we are fortunately able to form a closer acquaintance. Apollonius we see through a mist of illusion. Alexander of Abonotichus we are able to look at with the eyes of the cleverest man who was alive on this planet in the second century. With the help of Lucian's portrait of Alexander we can discern, perhaps, the true lineaments of Apollonius himself. We can see, at any rate, what these workers of miracles really were, as well as the nature of the element in which they made their conquests, at the side of, and in open rivalry with, the teachers of Christianity.

A word first about Lucian himself. At the Christian era, and immediately after it, the Asiatic provinces of the Empire were singularly productive of eminent men. The same intercourse of Eastern and Western civilisation which produced the magicians was generating in all directions an active intellectual fermentation. The 'disciples' were called Christians first at Antioch.' It was in Asia Minor that St. Paul first established a Gentile Church. There sprang up the multitude of heresies out of conflict with which the Christian creeds shaped themselves. And by the side of those who were constructing a positive faith, were found others who were watching the phenomena round them with an anxious but severe scepticism, unable themselves to find truth in the agitating speculations which were distracting everybody that came near them, but with a clear eye to distinguish knaves and impostors, and a resolution as honourable as St. Paul's to fight with and expose falsehood wherever they encountered it. Among these the most admirable was the satirist, artist, man of letters, the much spoken-of and little studied Lucian, the most gifted and perhaps the purest-hearted thinker outside the Church who was produced under the Roman Empire. He was born at Samosata on the Euphrates about the year 120. He was intended for a sculptor, but his quick discursive intellect led him into a wider field, and he spent his life as a critic of the spiritual phenomena of his age. To Christianity he paid little attention. To him it appeared but as one of the many phases of belief which were showing themselves among the ignorant and uneducated. But it was harmless, and he did not quarrel with it. He was one of a small circle of observers who looked on such things with the eyes of a man of science. Cool-headed, and with an honest hatred of lies, he ridiculed the impious theology of the established pagan religion; with the same instinct he attacked the charlatans who came, like Apollonius, pretending to