Last year we escaped an epidemic that might have carried off hundreds of thousands, and why? Because we know its ways, and have not allowed it to spread in the country.

The highest duty of the State is to guard the health of the people, and public opinion of recent years is waking up to this fact. An epidemic is no respecter of persons; it may have its origin in the hovel of a pauper, but its baneful influence reaches the lordly palace of the noble, and it engulfs all classes in its deadly embrace. The aristocrat and the plebeian are socially separated by a very wide gulf, but as far as epidemic disease goes, they are coterminous. Social distinctions are no barrier when the angel of death is following in the wake of those plagues that destroy life, before its natural termination in old age and general decay.

To sum up, if old age is to be put off to its furthest limits, the individual who wishes to attain it should live carefully up to middle age, taking plenty of exercise, and so adapting the diet that corpulency, gout, and other diseases due to taking too much and improper food without doing sufficient physical work to consume it, cannot be developed.

Mental and physical occupation are an absolute necessity if the constitution is to be kept in healthy working order, and this applies equally to both sexes.

The human economy will rust out before it will wear out, and there are more killed by idleness than by hard work. Human energy must have some outlet, and if that outlet is not work of some kind, habits are acquired that are not always conducive to long life.

Old age is the proper termination of human life, and, as Cicero says: "The happiest ending is when, with intellect unimpaired, and the other senses uninjured, the same nature which put together the several parts of the machine takes her own work to pieces. As the person who has built a ship or a house likewise takes it down with the greatest ease, so the same nature which glued together the human machine takes it asunder most skilfully."

Death by extreme old age may be considered the desirable end of a long-continued and at times weary journey. The pilgrim begins it in infancy, full of hope and life; continues it through adolescence in its roseate hue; and onward until middle age, with its cares and anxieties, begins to dispel the illusion. Then comes the time of life when vitality begins to decline, and the body to lose its capacity for enjoyment; then comes the desire for rest, the feeling that foreshadows the great change; and if this occurs in extreme age, the sufferer seems to fall asleep, as he might do after severe fatigue. VOL. CCLXXIV. NO. 1946.

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So the long and, in many cases, the weary pilgrimage of life is brought to a close with little apparent derangement of mental powers; the final scene may be short and painless, and the phenomena of dying almost imperceptible. The senses fail as if sleep were about to intervene, the perception becomes gradually more and more obtuse, and by degrees the aged man seems to pass into his final slumber.

In such an end the stock of nerve-power is exhausted-the marvellous and unseen essence, that hidden mystery, that man with all his powers of reasoning, that physiology with all the aid that science has lent it, and the genius of six thousand years, has failed to fathom. In that hour is solved that secret, the mystery of which is only revealed when the Book of Life is closed for ever. Then, we may hope, when Nature draws the veil over the eye that is glazing on this world, at that same moment she is opening to some unseen but spiritual eye a vista, the confines of which are only wrapped by the everlasting and immeasurable bounds of Eternity.

N. E. YORKE-DAVIES.

CHALCIS,

AND WHAT WE SAW THEREIN.

HE circumstances which led to our becoming acquainted with the town of Chalcis, in the island of Euboea, Greece, may be explained in a few lines. At Syra we had transhipped from the Pera-a Moss boat-on to a Greek steamer, running from there to the Piræus and Chalcis, and from thence we hoped to reach, by some means or other, a certain village in the north of the island, with whose hospitable proprietor we were to stay for some time.

On going on board the Greek steamer at Syra, a strange sight presented itself, her decks, fore and aft, being packed with a mass of recumbent humanity, clothed in a variety of picturesque costumes, and with every description of bag and bundle pressed into its service as a pillow. The weird and rather uncanny scene was here and there partially framed in by strips of canvas, serving as awnings, and which at nightfall reflected the light given out by a few sickly oil lamps on to the sleepers below.

Considering the narrow beam of the steamer, her height above the water, and the heavy top weight of peasants, the voyage even with fine weather did not promise to be a very agreeable one, and with the possible adjuncts of a rough sea and high wind formed an imaginary picture the contemplation of which was far from reassuring to a bad sailor.

Leaving Syra at half-past eight for eight, we steamed slowly out of the harbour and narrow channel leading to it, into the open sea, where the boat commenced to roll in a determined manner, responding to the fairly heavy waves that met her in a way which augured badly for her future behaviour. Personally, the rest of the night was passed, partly below in the saloon, which was better furnished than might have been expected, and partly on deck, amidst squalls of rain, sleet, &c., with food for the mind in the form of speculation every now and then as to the vessel's capability of righting herself from the heavy rolls in which she indulged. The miserable deckpassengers, lying on the sloppy decks, were exposed to the full

inclemency of the weather, and those of them who were not provided with shaggy capotes, must soon have been wet to the skin by the driving rain and scud from the sea. Down below, the fetid atmosphere added yet another misery to the situation, and it finally became a choice of being poisoned by bad air in the cabin or drenched to the skin, and possibly rolled overboard in one of the heavy lurches if the resolution was made of keeping on deck. After experiencing the discomforts of both, we are even now, while in full possession of our internal economies, unprepared to state which we would choose as a permanency. However, the night wore on, and the captain and mates were kept busy on the bridge working their lanterns with coloured slides, by means of which they directed the man at the helm to steer either port, starboard, or straight on; in addition to the above duties, they had to keep a very sharp look-out for the loom of the various islandsno easy matter on such a night-for there are few, if any, lighthouses erected on these Greek islands.

Dawn was just breaking as we entered the Gulf of Salamis, and on each side the mists were rolling away from the summits of the mountains of the Morea. Despite the congealing influence the previous night's experience, combined with the bitter cold of the early morning, might be supposed to possess over the imagination, it was difficult to prevent our fancy flying back two thousand years, and once more restoring to their ancient appearance the surroundings which that period had changed but little. On these waters, through which the steamboat of civilisation now moves so serenely, the fierce conflicting prows of Greece and Persia have met, and not the less savagely for the kingly eyes that were gazing upon the conflict from the summit of "sea-girt Salamis." From this spot was it also that Byron drew inspiration when commencing the Third Canto of "The Corsair."

Looking back from the entrance to the Piræus we seem almost to be at the northern extremity of an inland sea. At the entrance to the gulf lies the island of Ægina, and shutting in each side are the aforementioned ranges of mountains, between the other extremities of which is the island that gives its name to the gulf. Viewed through the drizzling rain and benumbed by the cold winds that tore down from the heights, it was but little wonder that our first impressions of Greece differed from those which the world has received from the sunlight verse of the poet we have above referred to.

The steamer remained the whole of that day at the Piræus, discharging cargo, and in the evening resumed her course to Chalcis,

which was approached about 7 A. M. the next morning. The channel of Mpourtzi along which we were threading our way was rich in colouring of every tint and shade; here the water was of a lovely sea-green, graduating towards the shore into a yellowish colour where it lapped the base of the olive-fringed mountains with their brown. sides and snow-capped summits; further off it varied from light blue to the deepest indigo, the intermediate shades being imperceptibly blended with one another. To give life and character to the scene there were the elegant caiques, with their delicate-pointed sails and fragile spars, gliding down amidst numerous other barks under full sail, glad to avail themselves of the morning breeze.

The steamer anchored off the Turkish quarter of Chalcis, and facing the channel of Euboea, over which there was formerly a bridge, connecting the island with the mainland; this strait, which connects Mpourtzi channel with that of Taranti, is very narrow, certainly not more than twenty or twenty-five yards in width, and has, at certain times of the day, a very powerful current flowing through it. related that this particular phenomenon was the cause of much vexation to Aristotle, and that he, in his baffled scientific zeal to find its cause, drowned himself near the spot; other and perhaps more reliable historians affirm that he died of a stomachic complaint at the town close by. A fairer, if not more sublime scene, than that which meets the eye when it roves over Chalcis Bay and the surrounding scenery, it would be hard to obtain. Anybody who has travelled in Greece cannot fail to have noticed the additional charm that the wonderfully thin, clear air of that country gives to the beauty of its scenery, lending to every object a brightness and brilliancy that is unknown in most other climes.

In the picture that lay stretched out before us, this purity of outline and colour was especially noticeable. Mount Candili, one of the highest mountains in Northern Euboea, formed the most prominent point in a chain whose bases skirted the bay in a graceful curve. Their summits, at that season snow-covered, called attention to their own immaculate whiteness as well as to the deep blue of the ether which surrounded them, and which gave to their outline a crispness and clearness not obtained under other conditions. Lower down their sides, and where the warming influence of the sun had made itself felt, the ilex, pine, arbutus, and other small shrubs grew, mingling together in a verdant coat that was only separated from the water beneath by a narrow strip of bare rock, which the action of the water had laid bare, and whose yellow and brown hues were reflected in the element that had exposed them. A pretty little châlet, evi