Kitabı oku: «The Mediterranean: Its Storied Cities and Venerable Ruins», sayfa 16

The Suez Canal is, in short, the work of one great man, and its existence is due to the undaunted courage, the indomitable energy, to the intensity of conviction, and to the magnetic personality of M. de Lesseps, which influenced everyone with whom he came in contact, from Viceroy down to the humblest fellah. This great project was carried out, too, not by a professional engineer, but by a mere consular clerk, and was executed in spite of the most determined opposition of politicians and capitalists, and in the teeth of the mockery and ridicule of practical engineers, who affected to sneer at the scheme as the chimerical dream of a vainglorious Frenchman.

The Canal, looked at from a purely picturesque standpoint, does not present such striking features as other great monuments of engineering skill – the Forth Bridge, the Mont Cenis Tunnel, or the great railway which scales the highest peaks of the Rocky Mountains. This “huge ditch,” as it has been contemptuously called, “has not indeed been carried over high mountains, nor cut through rock-bound tunnels, nor have its waters been confined by Titanic masses of masonry.” In fact, technically speaking, the name canal as applied to this channel is a misnomer. It has nothing in common with other canals – no locks, gates, reservoirs, nor pumping engines. It is really an artificial strait, or a prolongation of an arm of the sea. We can freely concede this, yet to those of imaginative temperament there are elements of romance about this great enterprise. It is the creation of a nineteenth-century wizard who, with his enchanter’s wand – the spade – has transformed the shape of the globe, and summoned the sea to flow uninterruptedly from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Then, too, the most matter-of-fact traveller who traverses it can hardly fail to be impressed with the genius loci. Every mile of the Canal passes through a region enriched by the memories of events which had their birth in the remotest ages of antiquity. Across this plain four thousand years ago Abraham wandered from far-away Ur of the Chaldees. Beyond the placid waters of Lake Menzaleh lie the ruins of Zoan, where Moses performed his miracles. On the right lies the plain of Pelusium, across which Rameses II. led his great expedition for the conquest of Syria; and across this sandy highway the hosts of Persian, Greek, and Roman conquerors successively swept to take possession of the riches of Egypt. In passing through the Canal at night – the electric light seeming as a pillar of fire to the steamer, as it swiftly, but silently, ploughs its course through the desert – the strange impressiveness of the scene is intensified. “The Canal links together in sweeping contrast the great Past and the greater Present, pointing to a future which we are as little able to divine, as were the Pharaohs or Ptolemies of old to forecast the wonders of the twentieth century.”

XII
MALTA

“England’s Eye in the Mediterranean” – Vast systems of fortifications – Sentinels and martial music – The Strada Reale of Valletta – Church of St. John – St. Elmo – The Military Hospital, the “very glory of Malta” – Citta Vecchia – Saint Paul and his voyages.

There is a difference of opinion among voyagers as to whether it is best to approach Malta by night or by day; whether there is a greater charm in tracing the outline of “England’s Eye in the Mediterranean” by the long, undulating lines of light along its embattled front, and then, as the sun rises, to permit the details to unfold themselves, or to see the entire mass of buildings and sea walls and fortifications take shape according to the rapidity with which the ship nears the finest of all the British havens in the Middle Sea. Much might be said for both views, and if by “Malta” is meant its metropolis, then the visitor would miss a good deal who did not see the most picturesque portion of the island in both of these aspects. And by far the majority of those who touch at Valletta, on their way to or from some other place, regard this city as “the colony” in miniature. Many, indeed, are barely aware that it has a name apart from that of the island on which it is built; still fewer that the “Villa” of La Valletta is only one of four fortified towns all run into one, and that over the surface of this thickly populated clump are scattered scores of villages, while their entire coasts are circled by a ring of forts built wherever the cliffs are not steep enough to serve as barriers against an invader. On the other hand, while there is no spot in the Maltese group half so romantic, or any “casal” a tithe as magnificent as Valletta and its suburbs, it is a little unfortunate for the scenic reputation of the chief island-fortress that so few visitors see any other part of it than the country in the immediate vicinity of its principal town. For, if none of the islands are blessed with striking scenery, that of Malta proper is perhaps the least attractive.

Though less than sixty miles from Sicily, these placid isles oft though they have been shaken by earthquakes, do not seem to have ever been troubled by the volcanic outbursts of Etna. Composed of a soft, creamy rock, dating from the latest geological period, the elephants and hippopotami disinterred from their caves show that, at a time when the Mediterranean stretched north and south over broad areas which are now dry land, these islands were still under water, and that at a date comparatively recent, before the Straits of Gibraltar had been opened, and when the contracted Mediterranean was only a couple of lakes Malta was little more than a peninsula of Africa. Indeed, so modern is the group as we know it, that within the human era Comino seems to have been united with the islands on each side of it. For, as the deep wheel-ruts on the opposite shores of the two nearer islands, even at some distance in the water, demonstrate, the intervening straits have either been recently formed, or were at one period so shallow as to be fordable.

But if it be open to doubt whether night or day is the best time to make our first acquaintance with Malta, there can be none as to the season of the year when it may be most advantageously visited; for if the tourist comes to Malta in spring, he will find the country bright with flowers, and green with fields of wheat and barley, and cumin and “sulla” clover, or cotton, and even with plots of sugar-cane, tobacco, and the fresh foliage of vineyards enclosed by hedges of prickly pears ready to burst into gorgeous blossom. Patches of the famous Maltese potatoes flourish cheek by jowl with noble crops of beans and melons. Figs and pomegranates, peaches, pears, apricots, and medlars are in blossom; and if the curious pedestrian peers over the orchard walls, he may sight oranges and lemons gay with the flowers of which the fragrance is scenting the evening air. But in autumn, when the birds of passage arrive for the winter, the land has been burnt into barrenness by the summer sun of the scorching sirocco. The soil, thin, but amazingly fertile, and admirably suited by its spongy texture to retain the moisture, looks white and parched as it basks in the hot sunshine; and even the gardens, enclosed by high stone walls to shelter them from the torrid winds from Africa, or the wild “gregale” from the north, or the Levanter which sweeps damp and depressing towards the Straits of Gibraltar, fail to relieve the dusty, chalk-like aspect of the landscape. Hills there are – they are called the “Bengemma mountains” by the proud Maltese – but they are mere hillocks to the scoffer from more Alpine regions, for at Ta-l’aghlia, the highest elevation in Malta, 750 feet is the total tale told by the barometer, while it is seldom that the sea cliffs reach half that height. The valleys in the undulating surface are in proportion, and even they and the little glens worn by the watercourses are bald, owing to the absence of wood; for what timber grew in ancient times has long ago been hewn down, and the modern Maltee has so inveterate a prejudice against green leaves which are not saleable that he is said to have quietly uprooted the trees which a paternal Government planted for the supposed benefit of unappreciative children. Hence, with the exception of a bosky grove around some ancient palace of the knights, or a few carob trees, so low that the goats in lack of humble fodder can, as in Morocco, climb into them for a meal, the rural districts of Malta lack the light and shade which forests afford, just as its arid scenery is unrelieved either by lake, or river, or by any brook worthy of the name. However, as the blue sea, running into inlet and bay, or ending the vista of some narrow street, or driving the spray before the “tempestuous” wind, called “Euroklydon,” is seldom out of sight, the sparkle of inland water is less missed than it would be were the country larger.

But Malta proper is only one of the Maltese group. As the geography books have it, there are three main islands, Malta, Gozo, and between them the little one of Comino, which with Cominetto, a still smaller islet close by, seems to have been the crest of a land of old, submerged beneath the sea. The voyager is barely out of sight of Sicily before the faint outlines of these isles are detected, like sharply defined clouds against a serenely blue sky. Yet, undeniably, the first view of Malta is disappointing; for with Etna fresh in the memory of the visitor from one direction, and the great Rock of Gibraltar vivid in the recollection of those arriving from the other end of the Mediterranean, there is little in any of the three islands to strike the imagination. For most of the picturesqueness of Malta is due to the works of man, and all of its romance to the great names and mighty events with which its historic shores are associated. But there are also around the coasts of this major member of the Maltese clump the tiny Filfla, with its venerable church; the Pietro Negro, or Black Rock; Gzeier sanctified by the wreck of St. Paul; and Scoglio Marfo, on which a few fishermen encamp, or which grow grass enough for some rabbits or a frugal goat or two; and, great in fame though small in size, the Hagra tal General, or Fungus Rock, on which still flourishes that curious parasitic plant, the Fungus Melitensis of the old botanists, the Cynomorium coccineum of latter-day systematists. The visitor who has the curiosity to land on the rock in April or May will find it in full flower, and perhaps, considering its ancient reputation, may be rather disappointed with the appearance of a weed which at one time enjoyed such a reputation as a stauncher of blood and a sovereign remedy for a host of other diseases that the Knights of Malta stored it carefully as a gift for friendly monarchs and to the hospitals of the island. It is less valued in our times, though until very recently the keeper of the rock on which it flourishes most abundantly was a permanent official in the colonial service. The place indeed is seldom profaned nowadays by human feet; for the box drawn in a pulley by two cables, which was the means of crossing the hundred and fifty feet of sea between the rocks and the shore of Dueira, was broken down some years ago, and has not since been renewed. But, apart from these scientific associations of this outlier of Gozo, the second largest island of the Maltese group is worthy of being more frequently examined than it is, albeit the lighthouse of Ta Giurdan is familiar enough to every yachtsman in the “Magnum Mare.” For it is the first bit of Malta seen from the west, and the last memory of it which the home-coming exile sights as he returns with a lighter heart from the East. Yet except for its classical memories (it was the fable isle of Calypso, the Gaulos of the Greeks, the Gaulum of the Romans, and the Ghaudex of the Arabs, a name still in use among the natives), the tourist in search of the picturesque will not find a great deal to gratify him in Gozo, with its bay-indented shore, rugged in places, but except in the southern and western coast rarely attaining a height of three hundred feet above the sea. Still, its pleasing diversity of hill and dale, its occasional groves of trees, and the flourishing gardens from which Valletta market is supplied with a great portion of its vegetables, lend an appearance of rural beauty to Gozo seldom seen or altogether lacking in the rest of the group. Gozo appears to have suffered less from foreign invasions than Malta or even Comino. Its goat cheese still preserves something of the reputation that comestible obtained in days when the world had a limited acquaintance with dairy produce, and the “Maltese jacks,” potent donkeys (the very antipodes of their tiny kindred on the Barbary coast) are mostly exported from this spot. But, like the peculiar dogs and cats of the group, they are now getting scarce.

The appearance of the Gozitans also is somewhat different from that of their countrymen elsewhere, and they speak the Maltese tongue with a closer approach to the Arabic than do the inhabitants of the other islands, whose speech has become intermingled with that of every Mediterranean race, from the Tyrians to the Italians, though the basis of it is unquestionably Phœnician, and is gradually getting dashed with the less sonorous language of their latest rulers. Indeed, the lamps in daily use are identical in shape with the earthenware ones disinterred from the most ancient of Carthaginian tombs, and until lately a peculiar jargon, allied to Hebrew, and known as “Braik,” was spoken at Casal Garbo, an inland village not far from the bay off which lies the General’s Rock. But the Gozo folk nowadays trade neither in tin nor in purple, their gaily-painted boats crossing the Straits of Freghi with no more romantic cargoes than cabbages and cucumbers for His Majesty’s ships; and the swarthy damsels who sit at the half-doors of the white houses are intent on nothing so much as the making of the famous Maltese lace. Except, however, in the strength, industry, and thrift of the Gozitans, there is little in this island to remind the visitor of their Phœnician forefathers, and in a few years, owing to the steady intercourse which daily steam communication has brought about between them and their less sophisticated countrymen, the “Giant’s Tower” (the ruins of a temple of Astarte) at Casal Xghara will be about the only remnant of these pre-historic settlers. But Casal Nadur, with its robust men and handsome women, the Tierka Zerka or Azure Window, a natural arch on the seashore, and Rabato, the little capital in the center of the island, which, in honor of the Jubilee year, changed its name for that of Victoria, are all worthy of a walk farther afield than Migiarro, or the “carting place,” off which the Valletta steamer anchors. From the ruined walls of the citadel the visitor can survey Gozo with its conical hills, flattened at the top owing to the wearing away of the upper limestone by the action of the weather and sinking of the underlying greensand, the whole recalling a volcano-dotted region. Then, if he cares to tarry so long, the sightseer may from this pleasant center tramp or drive to the Bay of Ramla, in a rock overhanging which is another “Grotto of Calypso,” or to the Bay of Marsa-il-Forno, or to the Bay of Xlendi, through a well-watered ravine filled with fruit-trees, a walk which offers an opportunity of seeing the best cliff scenery in the island; or, finally, to the Cala Dueira, hard by which is the General’s Rock, which (as we already know) forms one of the chief lions of Gozo. Comino with its caves will not detain the most eager of sightseers very long, and its scanty industries, incapable of supporting more than forty people, are not calculated to arouse much enthusiasm.

The shortest route to Valletta from Migiarro is to Marfa; but most people will prefer to land at once at Valletta. Here the change from the quiet islands to the busy metropolis of the group is marked. Everything betokens the capital of a dependency which, if not itself wealthy, is held by a wealthy nation, and a fortress upon which money has been lavished by a succession of military masters without any regard to the commercial aspects of the outlay. For if Malta has been and must always continue to be a trading center, it has for ages never ceased to be primarily a place of arms, a stronghold to the defensive strength of which every other interest must give way. All the public buildings are on a scale of substantiality which, to the voyager hitherto familiar only with Gibraltar, is rather striking. Even the residences of the officials are finer than one would expect in a “colony” (though there are no colonists, and no room for them) with a population less than 170,000, and a revenue rarely exceeding £250,000 per annum. Dens, vile beyond belief, there are no doubt in Valletta. But these are for the most part in narrow bye-lanes, which have few attractions for the ordinary visitor, or in the Manderaggio, a quasi-subterranean district, mostly below sea-level, where the houses are often without windows and conveniences even more important; so that there is an unconscious grimness in the prophetic humor which has dubbed this quarter of Valletta (two-and-a-half acres in area, peopled by 2,544 persons) “the place of cattle.” Yet though the ninety-five square miles of the Maltese islands are about the most densely populated portions of the earth, the soil is so fertile, and the sources of employment, especially since the construction of the Suez Canal, so plentiful, that extreme penury is almost unknown, while the rural population seem in the happy mean of being neither rich nor poor.

But the tourist who for the first time surveys Valletta from the deck of a steamer as she anchors in the Quarantine Harbor, or still better from the Grand Harbor on the other side of the peninsula on which the capital is built, sees little of this. Scarcely is the vessel at rest before she is surrounded by a swarm of the peculiar high-prowed “dghaisas,” or Maltese boats, the owners of which, standing while rowing, are clamorous to pull the passenger ashore; for Malta, like its sister fortress at the mouth of the Mediterranean, does not encourage wharves and piers, alongside of which large craft may anchor and troublesome crews swarm when they are not desired. Crowds of itinerant dealers, wily people with all the supple eagerness of the Oriental, and all the lack of conscience which is the convenient heritage of the trader of the Middle Sea, establish themselves on deck, ready to part with the laces, and filigrees, and corals, and shells, and apocryphal coins of the Knights of St. John, for any ransom not less than twice their value. But in Malta, as elsewhere in the Mediterranean ports, there are always two prices, the price for which the resident obtains anything, and the price which the stranger is asked to pay. To these tariffs a new one has of late years been added, and this is that paradisaical figure, that fond legend of a golden age invoked only when the buyer is very eager, or very verdant, or very rich, “the price that Lady Brassey paid.” However, even when the sojourner fancies that he has made a fair bargain (and the appraisements fall suddenly as the last bell begins to ring), the pedler is well in pocket, so well, indeed, that it has been calculated every steamer leaves behind it something like two hundred pounds in cash.

But if the rubbish sold in Valletta can be bought quite as good and rather more cheaply in London, Valletta itself must be seen in situ. The entrance to either of the harbors enables one to obtain but a slight idea of the place. It seems all forts and flat-roofed buildings piled one above the other in unattractive terraces. There are guns everywhere, and, right and left, those strongholds which are the final purposes of cannon. As the steamer creeps shrieking into “Port Marsa-Musciet” (the “Port” is superfluous, since the Arabic “Marsa” means the same thing) or Quarantine Harbor, it passes Dragut Point, with Fort Tigne on the right and Fort St. Elmo on the left, in addition to Fort Manoel and the Lazaretto on an island straight ahead. Had our destination been the Grand Harbor on the other side of Valletta, Fort Ricasoli and Fort St. Angelo would have been equally in evidence, built on two of the various projections which intersect the left side of that haven. But the forts are, as it were, only the ganglia of the vast systems of fortifications which circle every creek and bay and headland of Valletta and its offshoots. Ages of toil, millions of money, and the best talent of three centuries of engineers have been lavished on the bewildering mass of curtains and horn-works, and ravelins and demilunes, and ditches and palisades, and drawbridges and bastions, and earthworks, which meet the eye in profusion enough to have delighted the soul of Uncle Toby. Sentinels and martial music are the most familiar of sights and sounds, and after soldiers and barracks, sailors and war-ships, the most frequent reminders that Malta, like Gibraltar, is a great military and naval station. But it is also in possession of some civil rights unknown to the latter. Among these is a legislature with limited power and boundless chatter, and, what is of more importance to the visitor, the citizens can go in and out of Valletta at all hours of the day and night, no raised drawbridge or stolid portcullis barring their movements in times of peace. The stranger lands without being questioned as to his nationality, and in Malta the Briton is bereft of the Civis-Romanus-sum sort of feeling he imbibes in Gibraltar; for here the alien can circulate as freely as the lords of the soil. But the man who wishes to explore Valletta must be capable of climbing; for from the landing place to the chief hotel in the main street the ascent is continuous, and for the first part of the way is by a flight of stairs. Indeed, these steps are so often called into requisition that one can sympathize with the farewell anathema of Bryon as he limped up one of these frequent obstacles to locomotion,

 
“Adieu! ye cursed streets of stairs!
(How surely he who mounts you swears).”
 

The reason of this peculiar construction is that Valletta is built on the ridge of Mount Scebarras, so that the ascent from the harbor to the principal streets running along the crest of the hill is necessarily steep. The result is, however, a more picturesque town than would have been the case had the architect who laid out the town when Jean de La Valette, Grand Master of the Knights, resolved in 1566 to transfer the capital here from the center of the island, been able to find funds to form a plateau by leveling down the summit of the mound. Hence Valletta is composed of streets running longitudinally and others crossing the former at right angles. Most of these are eked out by steps; one, the Strada Santa Lucia, is made up of flights of them, and none are level from end to end. The backbone of the town and the finest of its highways is the Strada Reale, or Royal Street, which in former days was known as the Strada San Georgio, and during the brief French occupation as “the Street of the Rights of Man.” Seven main streets run parallel with it, while eleven at right angles extend in straight lines across the promontory from harbor to harbor. The Strada Reale, with the Strada Mercanti alongside of it are, however, the most typical bits of the capital, and the visitor who conscientiously tramps through either, with a peep here and there up or down the less important transverse “strade,” obtains a fair idea of the city of La Valette, whose statue stands with that of L’Isle Adam over the Porta Reale at the farther end of the street bearing that name. Here the first barrier to an invasion from the landward side is met with in the shape of a deep ditch hewn through the solid rock, right across the peninsula from the one harbor to the other, cutting off if necessary the suburb of Floriana from the town proper, though Floriana, with its rampart gardens, parade ground, and barracks, is again protected on the inland aspect by other of the great fortifications which circle the seashore everywhere.

However, the drawbridge is down at present, and a long stream of people, civil and military, are crossing and recrossing it, to and from the Strada Reale. For this street is the chief artery through which is ever circulating the placid current of Valletteese life. Soldiers in the varied uniforms of the regiments represented in the garrison are marching backwards and forwards, to or from parade, or to keep watch on the ramparts, or are taking their pleasure afoot, or in the neat little covered “carrozzellas” or cabs of the country, in which, unlike those of Gibraltar of a similar build, a drive can be taken at the cost of the coin which, according to Sydney Smith, was struck to enable a certain thrifty race to be generous. Sailors from the war-ships in the Grand Harbor, and merchant seamen on a run ashore, are utilizing what time they can spare from the grog shops in the lower town to see the sights of the place. Cabmen and carmen driving cars without sides, and always rushing at the topmost speed of their little horses, scatter unwary pedestrians. Native women, with that curious “faldetta,” or one-sided hood to their black cloaks which is a characteristic of Malta as the mantilla is of Spain, pass side by side with English ladies in the latest of London fashions, or sturdy peasant women, returning from market, get sadly in the way of the British nursemaid dividing her attention in unequal proportions between her infantile charges and the guard marching for “sentry-go” to the ramparts. Flocks of goats, their huge udders almost touching the ground, are strolling about to be milked at the doors of customers. Maltese laborers, brown little men, bare-footed, broad-shouldered, and muscular, in the almost national dress of a Glengarry cap, cotton trousers, and flannel shirt, with scarlet sash, coat over one arm, and little earrings, jostle the smart officers making for the Union Club, or the noisy “globe-trotter” just landed from the steamer which came to anchor an hour ago. A few snaky-eyed Hindoos in gaily embroidered caps invite you to inspect their stock of ornamental wares, but except for an Arab or two from Tunis, or a few hulking Turks from Tripoli with pilot jackets over their barracans, the Strada Reale of Valletta has little of that human picturesqueness imparted to the Water-port Street of Gibraltar by the motley swarms of Spaniards, and Sicilians, and negroes, and Moors, and English who fill it at all periods between morning gun-fire to the hour when the stranger is ousted from within the gates. Malta being a most religiously Roman Catholic country, priests and robe-girded Carmelites are everywhere plentiful, and all day long the worshipers entering and leaving the numerous churches, with the eternal “jingle-jingle” of their bells, remind one of Rabelais’s description of England in his day. At every turning the visitor is accosted by whining beggars whose pertinacity is only equaled by that of the boot-blacks and cabmen, who seem to fancy that the final purpose of man in Malta is to ride in carrozzellas with shining shoes. In Gibraltar we find a relief to the eye in the great rock towering overhead, the tree-embosomed cottages nestling on its slopes, or the occasional clumps of palms in the hollows. These are wanting to the chief strada of Valletta. In architectural beauty the two streets cannot, however, be compared. The Water-port is lined with houses, few of which are handsome and most of which are mean, while the scarcity of space tends to crowd the narrow “ramps” as thickly as any lane in Valletta. It is seldom that the shops are better than those of a petty English town, and altogether the civil part of the rock fortresses has not lost the impress of having been reared by a people with but little of the world’s wealth to spare, and kept alive by a population who have not a great deal to spend.

The main street of Valletta on the other hand is lined by good, and in most cases by handsome, houses, frequently with little covered stone balconies which lend a peculiar character to the buildings. The yellow limestone is also pleasant to look upon, while the many palaces which the comfort-loving knights erected for their shelter, impart to Valletta the appearance of a “a city built by gentlemen for gentlemen.” Here on the right is the pretty Opera House (open, in common with the private theaters, on Sunday and Saturday alike), and on the other side of the road the Auberge of the Language of Provence, now occupied by the Union Club. A little farther on, in an open space shaded with trees, is the Church of St. John, on which the knights lavished their riches, and still, notwithstanding the pillage of the French troops in 1798, rich in vessels of gold and silver, crosses, pixes, jewels, monuments chivalric emblazonments, paintings, carven stone and other ecclesiastical embellishments, though like the wealthy order of military monks, whose pride it was, the Church of St. John is ostentatiously plain on the outside. The Auberge d’Auvergne, now the Courts of Justice, is on the other side of the street, and hard by, a building which was formerly the Treasury of the Knights, the storehouse into which was gathered the contributions of the Commanderies throughout Europe. The Public Library fronted by some trees a little way back from the road is interesting from its containing the books of the Bailiff Louis de Tencin, the Grand Master de Rohan (who erected it), and of many of the more lettered knights, besides a good collection of the island antiquities. Close to it is the palace of the Grand Master, now the residence of the Governor, or in part utilized as Government offices. The courtyards, planted with oranges, euphorbias, hibiscus, and other greenery, and the walls covered with Bougainvillia, have a delightfully cool appearance to the pedestrian who enters from the hot street; while the broad marble staircase, the corridors lined with portraits and men-at-arms, and pictures representing the warlike exploits of the knightly galleys, the armory full of ancient weapons, and majolica vases from the Pharmacy, and the numerous relics of the former rulers of the island, are worthy of a long study by those interested in art or antiquity. The Council Chamber also merits a visit, for there may be seen the priceless hangings of Brussels tapestry. And last of all, the idlest of tourists is not likely to neglect the Hall of St. Michael and St. George, the frescoes celebrating the famous deeds of the Order of St. John, and the quaint clock in the interior court, which, according to Maltese legend, was brought from Rhodes when that island was abandoned after a resistance only less glorious than a victory. For, as Charles V. exclaimed when he heard of the surrender which led to Malta becoming the home of the knights, “there has been nothing in the world so well lost as Rhodes.” The main guard, with its pompous Latin inscription recording how “Magnæ et invictæ Britanniæ Melitensium Amor et Europæ vox Has insulas confirmant An mdcccxiv,” is exactly opposite the palace. But when the visitor sees the wealth of art which the knights were forced to leave behind them, he is apt to be puzzled how the Maltese, who contributed not one baiocco to buy it, or to build these palaces or fortifications, could either through “Amor,” or that necessity which knows no law, make them over us to us, or how “Magna et invicta Britannia” could accept without compensation the property of the military monks, whose Order, bereft of wealth and influence, still exists and claims with the acquiescence of at least one court to rank among the sovereign Powers of Christendom. The knights are, however, still the greatest personalities in Malta. We come upon them, their eight-pointed cross and their works at every step. Their ghosts still walk the highways. The names of the Grand Masters are immortalized in the cities they founded and in the forts they reared. Their portraits in the rude art of the Berlin lithographer hang on even the walls of the hotels. Their ecclesiastical side is in evidence by the churches which they reared, by the hagiological names which they gave to many of the streets, by the saintly figures with which, in spite of three-fourths of a century of Protestant rulers, still stand at the corners, and by the necessity which we have only recently found to come to an understanding with the Pope as to the limits of the canon law in this most faithful portion of his spiritual dominions.