whose chief use, having secured us as his prey, was to save us from the beggars who infest the place. In a little toy carriage, drawn by tiny ponies, we went up and down streets hewn out of rock, a few yards only in width, in many places a mere succession of steps. St. John's Cathedral has a magnificent interior, formerly the Church of the Order of the Knights of St. John, who were banished from Rhodes by the Turks. Under them Malta was the bulwark of Christianity in the Mediterranean, and in 1555 repulsed, after a great siege, the whole naval Ottoman force. In St. John's there are chapels dedicated to each of the nine countries whose knights represented the Order, including England, and on the floor of the nave there are no less than nine hundred slabs of coloured marble, tombstones of knights. The Governor's Palace, formerly the Grand Master's, is full of relics of the great siege, armour, weapons, and huge stone cannon balls. It has also magnificent Gobelin tapestries, which were carried off by Napoleon when he took Malta, but afterwards restored. The tradition of St. Paul's visit is strong in the Island, and a little distance from Valetta, in a bay which still retains the old name of Melita, there is a statue of the Apostle. As we did not leave till past midnight, I went at a late hour to the great square in front of the Governor's Palace, and found it thronged with people, of all sorts, taking their ease; smoking, drinking coffee, listening to music, and lounging in every sort of attitude, under the soft, warm, starlit sky. Policemen were there, in plain serge dress, with a sort of dog-whip instead of baton. I asked one of them how long people remained there at night? "Long time; some sleep here all night." "And are there
