Falsehood—truth? Nay, I think there are illusions that are not falsehoods—that are Truth’s own smiles of pity for us. THE QUEEN’. PLEASURE I am writing to you from a lost corner of the far south-east of Europe. The author of my guide-book, in his preface, observes that a traveller in this part of the world, “unless he has some acquaintance with the local idioms, is liable to find himself a good deal bewildered about the names of places.” On Thursday of last week I booked from Charing Cross, by way of Dover, Paris, and the Orient Express, for Vescova, the capital of Monterosso; and yesterday afternoon—having changed on Sunday, at Belgrade, from land to water, and steamed for close upon forty-eight hours down the Danube—I was put ashore at the town of Bckob, in the Principality of Tchermnogoria. I certainly might well have found myself a good deal bewildered; and if I did not—for I’m afraid I can’t boast of much acquaintance with the local idioms—it was no doubt because this isn’t my first visit to the country. I was here some years ago, and then I learned that Bckob is pronounced as nearly as may be Vscof, and that Tchermnogoria is Monterosso literally translated—tchermnoe (the dictionaries certify) meaning red, and gora, or goria, a hill, a mountain. It is our fashion in England to speak of Monterosso, if we speak of it at all, as I have just done: we say the Principality of Monterosso. But if we were to inquire at the Foreign Office, I imagine they would tell us that our fashion of speaking is not strictly correct. In its own Constitution Monterosso describes itself as a Krolevstvo, and its Sovereign as the Krol; and in all treaties and diplomatic correspondence, Krol and Krolevstvo are recognised by those most authoritative lexicographers, the Powers, as equivalent respectively to King and Kingdom. Anyhow, call it what you will, Monterosso is geographically the smallest, though politically the eldest, of the lower Danubian States. (It is sometimes, by-the-bye, mentioned in the newspapers of Western Europe as one of the Balkan States, which can scarcely be accurate, since, as a glance at the map will show, the nearest spurs of the Balkan Mountains are a good hundred miles distant from its southern frontier.) Its area is under ten thousand square miles, but its reigning family, the Pavelovitches, have contrived to hold their throne, from generation to generation, through thick and thin, ever since Peter the Great set them on it, at the conclusion of his war with the Turks, in 1713.