it looks down like an acropolis, being itself visible from almost every part of Malta. The cathedral, with its lofty dome and flanking towers, forms the most conspicuous object upon the skyline when looking towards the interior from any part of the coast. The country, as we drove out to Citta-Vecchia, interested us exceedingly, from its very peculiar aspect and character. As the surface of the island is all ups and downs, terraces are universal. Every separate field has its retaining wall at the lower side of it, to hinder the scanty soil from being washed away bodily during the heavy rains. Looking up the sloping side of a hill from beneath, one sees nothing but these retaining walls, rising one above another, the flat narrow fields behind them being, from such a point of view, entirely concealed. Thus seen, one would say the hill face was nothing else but a heap of stones, and totally destitute of vegetation. Looking down the same hill from the height above, everything is changed. The walls, like sunk fences, disappear, and nothing is visible but the rich and verdant fields. That which was an Arabia Petrea, as seen from below, became an Arabia Felix, as seen from above. The island is the most populous territory, in proportion to its size, in Europe, and contains upwards of 100,000 inhabitants. The people are evidently very industrious, for not an inch of ground is uncultivated; but they are as evidently very poor. If it were not for the work and wages multitudes of them receive from the government, and from the English residents in Valetta, they could hardly exist. Their dwellings resemble diminutive square towers of a single story in height. Each house has a solitary door, and many of them have no windows. When they have, the windows are unglazed, and shut in simply with a wooden board. These houses of the natives have all flat roofs, which give a decidedly Oriental look to the landscape. The language of the people plainly bespeaks their Moorish origin. It has a much closer affinity with Arabic than with Italian. The great want of the landscape is wood; with the exception of a few locust and olive trees, none else are to be

seen.

There are fig and orange trees in abundance, it is true, but they seldom show their heads above the garden walls in which they are carefully cultivated; a real timber tree, such as one sees at the end of every cottage in England, is unknown in Malta.

At Citta-Vecchia we visited the catacombs, the history of which is somewhat obscure. The entrance to them is beneath the church of St. Paul. They are full of tombs, and also of places which indicate that the excavations must at one time or other have been inhabited. There are stone recesses like bedchambers for both grown people and children; places for cooking food and for grinding corn; and there is also a rude chapel hollowed out of the solid rock, with its altar, and a large rude pillar in the centre supporting the roof-the pillar also being part of the live rock. Under the same church there is another excavation, called the grotto of St. Paul, in which, as the priest who showed us through the place gravely told us, the apostle had lived for three months per penitenza. To this grotto, in memory of his having lived so long in it, the apostle, it seems, communicated the miraculous property of never growing any larger, however much of the rock might be dug out of it. And, added the priest, after relating the circumstance-"there is the mattock lying ready for use; you can prove the truth of the story for yourselves!" Had the priest been an Irishman, this appeal might have been safely understood as simply a bit of fun. Coming, however, from the lips of the low-browed, stupid, sullen priest of Malta, it was probably a sincere superstition.

Citta-Vecchia has a very deserted look. Though several of the streets are handsome and well built, there was hardly a human being to be seen in them. The only persons we did see were priests and beggars. The cathedral is a large and handsome edifice, with a ceiling elaborately gilt and decorated. From this ancient city we drove to Paul's Bay, a distance of six or seven miles. Mr. Smith's admirable work on The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul, which we had along with us, gave fresh interest to the scene, and enabled us to study it with intelligence and ease. Look

ing seaward from the head of the bay, Koura Point appeared in the distance on the right or land side, crested with the foam of the waves that were dashing over it. No one who reads Mr. Smith's work can doubt that it was the roar of the breakers on this point, as the gale was driving on the ship of Alexandria through the darkness of the night, that made "the shipmen deem that they drew near to some country." Opposite to that point, the soundings exactly correspond to those recorded in the sacred narrative. On the left, the island of Salmonetta shuts in the bay on the seaward side, while the narrow passage between it and the mainland of Malta indicates the place “where two seas met," and in the neighbourhood of which, when the day dawned, the mariners resolved to beach the ship. After carefully examining the whole question on the spot, it was impossible not to acquiesce in the statement of Mr. Smith, that, "if we attend minutely to the narrative, it will be seen that the number of conditions required to be fulfilled, in order to make any locality agree with it, are so numerous, as to render it morally impossible to suppose that the argument which we find here can be the effect of chance."*

The pic-nic party we had been invited to join were all over at the island of Salmonetta when we were making this study of the bay. In walking round the head of the bay, we overtook a number of the men of the 71st, toiling along under the hot sun, loaded with enormous crates and baskets. "These are the eatables, I suppose," said one of our party as we passed. "Yes, sir," slyly answered one of the soldiers; "and this is our share of them."

In returning to Valetta in the evening, we visited the church of Musta, one of the many villages scattered at short intervals over the island. We had already, in the course of the day, been struck by the contrast between the grandeur of even the ordinary parish churches and the meanness of the dwellings of the people.

*The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul, page 126.

Of this contrast the church of Musta afforded a striking example. Standing in the midst of a paltry village, it is such a church as might cope with some of the finest ecclesiastical structures in Naples or Paris. Save St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, there is nothing to compare with it in London. The façade is most imposing; the pillars of enormous girth and height. The entablature is flanked by two noble towers, and the whole building is surmounted by a dome of vast proportions. The church was still unfinished, though they had been working at it for thirty years. After toiling laboriously at their own occupations for six days of the week, the poor people of the parish devote the seventh, the Lord's-day, to the building of the church; the day that should be specially given to the rearing of the living temple is spent on the material edifice. Such is the religion of the Church of Rome: and nowhere is that church more thoroughly dominant in all its self-glorifying and peopleenslaving arts than in the island of Malta. It was late in the

evening when we returned to the yacht.

Next day was the Sabbath. On the same day of the previous week we had been at Gibraltar, where I had enjoyed the privilege of preaching the gospel to fellow-countrymen, and of holding fellowship at the same time with esteemed brethren of my own church. It was a most gratifying circumstance to have arrived in Malta in time to enjoy the same privilege here. After service in the yacht, I went ashore, accompanied by most of our party, and preached in the church of my friend, the Rev. George Wisely. It was a place of worship formerly occupied by that zealous and excellent body of Christians, the Wesleyan Methodists, and subsequently acquired by the Free Church of Scotland. A new Free Church was, at the time of our visit, in course of erection in the same street-the Strada Forni-and was then nearly finished. It is a handsome Gothic structure, the only specimen of that style of architecture in Malta, and has since been opened for public worship. The building in which I preached was quite overcrowded, about one

half of the audience being made up of soldiers and the other of civilians. Every passage was thronged. The Free Church minister and his assistant were in the habit of conducting, between them, four separate services every Lord's-day. The first, at seven A.M., was held in the Palace Chapel, and was devoted to the 71st regiment. The second, at eleven A.M., in their own ordinary place of worship, and was designed for the Scotch civilians, and for such detachments of the artillery and of the regiments of the line as might belong to the Presbyterian Church. The third, at three P.M., in the suburb of Vittorioso, on the farther side of the great harbour, for the Scotch soldiers in garrison there. The fourth, at six P.M., again in the ordinary place of worship, and for the same classes as before. It will be seen from this statement that the Free Church has, in Malta, a large and most important sphere of usefulness which she does well to occupy.

The following day was consumed in making the tour of Valetta itself, the modern capital of the island, and a truly beautiful city, founded three centuries ago by La Valette, whose name it bears, the illustrious Grand-Master of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem; it stands to this day a monument of his fine taste, sound practical wisdom, and strategic skill. It is beautifully and most systematically planned, and occupies a truly commanding position, whether for commerce or war. It stands on a ridge or tongue of land about a mile and a half in length, and less than half a mile in breadth, with a magnificent natural harbour running along its whole length on either side-the main harbour on the one side, and the quarantine harbour on the other. Its numerous batteries command every approach from the sea. On the land side, the ridge on which the town is built drops down in steep walls of rock, every foot of which is covered with elaborate fortifications. To protect Valetta detached forts and castles are planted at intervals all round the outer margin of the two great harbours, which all but encircle it; while those of St. Elmo and St. Angelo, placed at the