and scenery. The mountains themselves present an endless diversity, from the Outeniqua and Zitzihama chain, with its verdure-clad feet in the southern ocean, to the more barren and denuded peaks of the Drakenburg. In the western corner on the Cape peninsula is the well-known Table Mountain. As it is the most remarkable so it is the most luxuriant and beautiful of all South African mountains. The high rolling uplands of the Zuurberg and Boschburg are inspiriting enough to the traveller who cares to explore them; the narrow gorges and defiles of the Hex river valley are grand and romantic; the solitudes of the Cold Bokkeveldt have a certain wild charm of their own, as their ragged outlines stand boldly up in the African light; more picturesque perhaps, and rounder in their form, are the wooded ranges of Formosa catching the sea-mists from the ocean on the south; the view, again, from the Drakenburg over the broad valleys of Natal is sublime in its sweeping magnitude-a view that the old voertrekkers (pioneers) caught an early glimpse of when they left the Free State and migrated to the east, and sought to touch the sea and gain a harbour; but there is nothing in them all to equal the prospect from the lofty pinnacles of Table Mountain, which guards, sentinel-like, the metropolis of South Africa. From a height of three thousand five hundred and eighty-two feet the eye can command a goodly sweep when the African sun shines bright and clear, and the white billowy mists of the south-easter have rolled away. In the thunderswept regions of the interior the jagged and serrated outlines of the mountains are of a peculiarly hardlooking character. Denudation has worn down and scarred their faces, and men have stripped their sides of No. 324.-VOL. LIV. the sheltering forests and woods. In Basutoland, the Switzerland of South Africa, the hills are steep and isolated, with flat, rolling plateaux on their summits, affording splendid refuge for the Basuto clans, who hold such strong. holds as Thaba Bosigo against the white man, and no one can grudge these savages their strongholds. Table Mountain has suffered less from denudation, perhaps, than these mountains of the interior. The pine woods and silver - trees protect its sides, and the vineyards of Constantia give it an aspect of cultivated repose which no other South African mountain can boast. The best time to climb Table Mountain is in the spring or autumn. There is little danger connected with the feat if care is taken not to make the ascent when the south-easter threatens to envelop its brow with the well-known "tablecloth." The neighbouring range of Hottentot's Holland, across the waters of False Bay, will tell us when this mist is coming, for at first a dark line is seen far out to sea in the south, which creeps up little by little, wrapping up one summit after another in its fleecy folds. But once on the flat crown of Table Mountain, or the pinnacle of The Devil's Peak, on a clear day the pedestrian is well rewarded. To the north and west the great spaces of the South Atlantic stretch with a far-reaching horizon. its swelling billows quivering and flashing in the sunlight, and reduced by distance to the size, apparently, of the smallest ripple. Here, long before the signal-man on the lower eminence of the Lion's Rump can see it, may be detected a thin line of smoke down in the blue distance where sea and sky seem to meet, floating and drifting to the leeward from some oceangoing steamer that is nearing her bourne at last in Table Bay after her long battle with wind and wave for six thousand miles from the shores of old England. True it is that the sea seems a peaceful lake, and the ship an easy, pleasant-looking craft now F F making fair way in fair weather; but who knows how she has been buffeted and beaten in the far north, or, perhaps, nearer still where the southeast Trades hurl the long angry rollers in on the rocks of St. Helena ? Even now, if we look closely enough, we may see that yonder waves which look like ripples are in reality big ravening monsters-the deep, strong, thick after-rollers of yesterday's storm. We can guess that, as we catch at wayward intervals the dull roar that echoes up along the cliffs, and watch the yeasty fringes curling and eddying round the dark and dangerous rocks that run far out to sea. Below, on the eastern side, lies Capetown, dwarfed down to the dimensions of a toy town, neatly arranged and built on the white sands of Table Bay. Outside a few ships lie at anchor, swinging and straining at their cables as the waves rush in from the offing. Table Bay itself has a fine curve not unlike the Bay of Naples, and stretches far up into the region known as the Cape Flats, a sandy expanse covered with green patches of brushwood. project of cutting a canal between Table Bay and False Bay has been more than once discussed, and if this were done the Cape Peninsula would be converted into an island. engineering feat this canal would be a comparatively insignificant one. The As an in the midst of the blinding mist and spray the ray it throws seaward looks like some dim planet of the heavens glancing down upon us through the rifts of the hurricane. Careful indeed must the mariner be as he shapes his course round the hoarse-sounding Bellows and coasts upwards past Duiker Klip to the welcome light of Green Point and the entrance of Table Bay. Perhaps the grandest storm of all is the one that comes in winter time from the north-west, and, as wind meets current, heaps up terrible and shapeless masses of dark water at the foot of the precipices of Cape Point. Little can be heard but the din of conflicting elements fighting a neverending fight, and dashing their strength upon the hard grey granite rocks. Myriads of sea-fowl wing their way in struggling flights over the crested billows, and shriek as they mingle in the misty clouds that drive upwards to the cliffs. Now and then the stately albatross can be seen amongst the lesser crowds of gulls and molymocks and Cape pigeons, sweeping as if in disdain majestically past the lighthouse, a stranger from the south. To all Englishmen this lonely spot is of deep interest. cliffs command the southern waves, and from Simon's Town, the naval station which nestles in an arm of False Bay, we guard with our ships and tars one of the most important oceanhighways of the world. For Simon's Town has been called, not inaptly, the Gibraltar of the south. Round Cape Point and the rocky bluffs of Agulhas all the commerce of the East has floated, and round them, if an accident were to happen to the Suez Canal, it may all have perforce to float again. WILLIAM GRESWELL. I. MY SUCCESS IN LITERATURE. LITERATURE was my profession. I had written a good deal in my time, but none of my productions had been so successful as we (my wife and I) thought they deserved to be. I did not think very much of my wife's judgment in some things, but in the matter of literature she showed a discernment superior to that of others with larger pretensions and wider experience. She was, like the wife of Carlyle, convinced of her husband's genius and certain of his ultimate recognition; but I had to wait longer for the recognition than Carlyle, and I was more hampered in my affairs than the philosopher of Chelsea. I could not keep house on one hundred and fifty pounds while I wrote the first volume of a great history. I had a large family to provide for, and the family could not postpone its dinner to meet the requirements of genius; so it was the history that had to wait. I always intended to write itthat, or something equally important. There are many forms in which a masterpiece may be written. Sometimes I thought of a tragedy, but that was sure not to pay; and Shakespeare has killed the drama in England-no room for any little stars with that sun shining in the sky. Then I thought of a novel; but novels have become so common, almost vulgar; everybody writes them. Then I thought of epic poetry, or a work on philosophy, or a social satire, or in fact, anything would do, as a mere vehicle for the conveyance of genius. My wife remarked that the form was immaterial; the fact of the substance being there was the important thing; and I felt that she was right. I had no idea, however, that I should become an illustration of Mr. Matthew Arnold's dictum as to the proper function of the age, and that my great work, my successful work, would be one of criticism. I was in no hurry to begin the great task of my life: I waited for the maturity of my powers; but it came at last to be understood by everybody that I should produce something important before long. In the meantime one or two preliminary things which I attempted in the direction of permanent literature did not bring to me the popularity or remuneration which I might have expected. They cost me money, in fact; and my friends rarely referred to them, or seemed to remember them. They always asked, "When is your great work coming out, Rodney?" as if they knew of nothing which was out already. Still I picked up a living somehow or other, though it was more by means of working at odds and ends of literature than by the making of real books. I was known as a useful man who could fill an empty corner, where no signature was wanted, very respectably. I could be relied upon to supply an anecdote, to look up a subject for a hasty article, or to run off across the kingdom at an hour's notice to make a report. I got plenty of work therefore which brought me profit, though it did not add to my fame. It threw me also in the way of a great many distinguished people, and gave me an opportunity of observing, again and again how little the distinction of many of them was deserved, and how a mere chance had lifted them to a position which I and others of the Great Unrecognised could not reach. I used to note down these observations as I made them, and it gave me a grim satisfaction to look out my old diaries from time to time, and see there the records of the follies and inanities of men whom the world applauded. I read them to my wife also on rare occasions, and she would sigh a little as she listened, and wish that the world would not continue so blind to my merits. She was a very good wife to me, but not so economical as Carlyle's, and she did not keep the house as quiet as I should have liked : she was rather weak in her treatment of the children. Perhaps this was the reason that I never wrote a French Revolution.' When our children were some of them grown up (one daughter, in fact, being married) my great work was still not begun, and our pecuniary affairs were as unsatisfactory as ever. We were a little behind in our bills, as usual, and I had been compelled to renew the mortgage on our house (which belonged to my wife) instead of paying it off, as I had intended to do if I had found time for my first volume somewhat sooner. The mortgagee was getting troublesome too; houses were down in the market, many standing empty, and he complained that we were letting ours drop into absolute ruin for want of repair. He should like to put his money on something securer. I explained to him that while I had his interest to pay I could not afford to spend anything on the house, but the explanation did not seem to satisfy him. I suggested to my son-in-law (who was rich) that he should buy the house from us, put it in repair, and let us rent it: but he did not seem to like the notion. Perhaps he felt doubtful about the rent; I should have been so in his place. Something had to be done, however. I was having an idle time. Nobody seemed to want my services anywhere. There were no vacant corners in magazines. Every page was filled up by papers with big signatures at the end of them. Here was an opportunity to begin my masterpiece. Unluckily, my family was, as usual, watching the operations of my pen with hungry eyes; there was no time to wait for a whole volume; it was necessary to think of something immediate, and something turned up. It came in the shape of Lord Selcover, who was going on a hunting expedition into the heart of Africa. He intended to make a big concern of it, and had already engaged an artist to do the sketches of his adventures and discoveries. He offered me the post of literary man of the party, to record events, and help him to prepare a book for publication afterwards. In consideration of the danger of the excursion half my fee was to be paid before I started, so that my family might be provided for in my absence. This seemed an opportunity not to be thrown away. My wife objected to the distance and the danger; but the necessity of a continuation of the daily family dinner was acknowledged to be inevitable, and to the pressure of this most persistent circumstance the interests of my masterpiece had to yield once more. My adventures in Africa were remarkable enough, but it is not my purpose to narrate them here. Other persons have had adventures quite as remarkable, whereas my experience after my return is, so far as I know, my experience alone, no one else having gone through the same. Somebody else will very likely go through it in the future, the progress of probabilities tending in that direction, but nobody has done so yet. When I went out to Africa I was a poor man, with multitudes of acquaintances who all wished me well (I had such a reputation for usefulness and good-nature!); when I came back I found myself comparatively rich, and apparently without a single friend. Lord Selcover has published an account of our adventures in Africa, with a handsome tribute to my personal worth (suppressed in a later edition), but a very insufficient acknowledgment of his obligations to me in the literary department of his book. With regard to that book I wish to point out two things. First, that there is an error on the three hundred and fifth page, in which I am stated to have died of fever at Manzamzavaboo, and there been buried by a faithful native servant (afterwards brought to England, to be feasted and rewarded by my wife-I wish I could meet that native !), for I did not die, and I never was buried, as I am here now to testify. Secondly, I beg the reader to notice the difference of style between the pages preceding this erroneous statement and those following it, the explanation being that Lord Selcover had the use of my notes and journals in preparing his book up to the date of my supposed death. Afterwards I was left at Manzamzavaboo by my companions, sick of a fever, and in the care of a native servant. I was to follow the rest of the party to their next halting place when sufficiently recovered. My recovery was slow, and my servant took fright. He was unaware of the nature of Englishmen, and imagined that we had been abandoned by our friends far from his native kraal. He thought the matter over, and one fine evening (the weather always is favourable on these occasions) he decamped with those things which he had been taught to consider the most valuable of my belongings, my medicines and my manuscripts. When he overtook my friends (who were just thinking of sending to inquire why I did not come on), he told a deplorable tale of my illness and his devotion, of the unkindness of the chief of the village where we were left, of his desperate flight with me through the jungle, of my failing by the way, of his efforts to save me, of my gratitude to him and dying recommendation of him to my friends. He described the exact situation of my grave, and delivered up my notes and journals. I suppose my friends were sorry, but they did not go back to put up a tombstone. My admirable native gave them such an account of the war which had broken out behind them and overwhelmed whole villages with desolation, that they decided to press forward and leave the unhappy country to its fate. I soon guessed what had happened when my native servant disappeared with my belongings, and I heard no more of my friends; but I found myself in a very awkward position, and it took me months to make my way alone out of that savage country to the sea-coast, civilisation, and ships. I did not telegraph to anybody when I reached a telegraph station. I felt inclined to appear unannounced, and to see what had happened. I landed at Plymouth, and the first person I ran against was my old friend Dick Hodgson. He looked at me with perplexity and without recognition at first, then something like surprise and a comical dismay came over his face as he exclaimed, "By Jove, if it isn't Tom Rodney! Then you're not dead after all?" Apparently not," I replied testily, "and I should rather like a welcome from the first friend I meet after months among the savages. Can't you say you're glad to see me?" "Of course I am!" and he put out his hand with cordiality; "but it's a queer experiment coming back from the dead like this, you know. Seen anybody but me?" "Not a creature," I said, disturbed by his manner. "Perhaps something is wrong. You can tell me whether they are all well at home. terribly anxious to hear." I am "Oh, yes, they are all well. Firstrate, in fact; I heard the other day. Nothing wrong; certainly not." "You are an old friend, Hodgson; you will know whether they have been in money difficulties through my prolonged absence." "Not in the least; quite the contrary, I should say." He spoke with a little embarrassment, and I thought |