“What hope of answer or redress Beyond the veil, beyond the veil! * * * * * And yet we somehow trust that good Will be the final goal of ill, That not a worm is cloven in vain; That not a moth with vain desire Is shriveled in a fruitless fire Or but subserves another’s gain.” * * * * * The Maritza river, at one time called the Orestes river, is formed by the confluence of two unimportant streams. Adrianople is favorably situated, and ranks next to Constantinople in natural advantages. Orestes, son of Agamemnon, built the city and gave his name both to the city and the principal river. Emperor Hadrian changed the name to Hadrianopolis (Hadrian’s city), thence our modernized Adrianople. One almost regrets that the name of the restless Orestes did not continue appropriately to designate the city of so varying fortunes and vivid vicissitudes. Adrianople was the Turkish capital for nearly a hundred years; it was abandoned in 1453 when Constantinople came into Turkish control. The ruins of the palaces of the Sultans yet grace the ancient capital. Adrianople is the faithful Moslem city of forty mosques. The mosque Selim II. is a close rival to Santa Sofia. Greek and Macedonian, Roman and Byzantine, Christian and Moslem, Turk and Bulgarian, influences have in turn dominated the city of three rivers; each re-baptizing it with blood: and the end is not yet. In 1713, Charles XII. of Sweden was a guest in the castle of Tumurtish. Little then did the valiant Madman of the North dream how ignominiously his own meteoric career would close: little did he see himself as fixed in fame, not by his combats and victories, not even by his gallant defeat at Pultowa, but by being the inspiration in the moralizing mind of Dr. Samuel Johnson of the following lines: “He left a name--at which the world grew pale-- To point a moral or adorn a tale.” The Vanity of Human Wishes is indeed exemplified not only in Charles XII. of Sweden, but also in many other favorites of fortune: not one of whom, perhaps, but would add to or alter his own peculiar setting in fame--if perchance he should be able to recognize himself at all in the historic figure masquerading under his name. How seldom does it chance that the world honors a man for what that man feels to be his best title to honor? Would Julius Cæsar, red-hand conqueror of Gaul, know himself as the Shakespearean hero? And Nero, Louis XI., Wallenstein, Henry VIII., Roderick Borgia--would they claim even passing acquaintance with themselves as fame has fixed them? If these men took any of their fighting qualities with them into the Spirit Land, there must have been some flamy duelling when they met their respective biographers.