Of course the railway did not cost me L3,000 a mile to construct, and many other heavy charges for warlike stores, supplies and transport on our long line of communication, including sea transports of troops from England and elsewhere had to be made; but however it was done the result remains the same. We have freed the vast territories of the Sudan from the most cruel tyranny the world has ever known, and we have hoisted the Egyptian and British flags at Khartum, never, I hope, to be hauled down. I have again to thank you, my Lord Mayor, for the great honor done us on this occasion. I have only one regret which, I feel sure, is shared by all present, and which has been given expression to by Lord Rosebery and Lord Salisbury, and that is, that Lord Cromer, who has supported me during the last two and a half years, is not here to support me to-night and to receive in person the thanks to which he is so justly entitled, and which, I am sure, you would willingly have given. [Loud cheers.] ANDREW LANG PROBLEM NOVELS [Speech of Andrew Lang at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May 6, 1894. This speech on some of the aspects of modern fiction was delivered by Mr. Lang in response to the toast "The Interests of Literature," regularly proposed on these occasions. The President of the Academy, Sir Frederic Leighton, said in introducing Mr. Lang: "Your Royal Highness, My Lords and Gentlemen: Let us drink to the honor of science and of letters. If of the latter it may be affirmed without fear that few things are more often misapprehended than their true relation to art, it is not less certain that no body of men are more than artists responsive to their stimulating force. How closely science, which is knowledge, is interwoven on many sides with art, it is needless here to say. In the name of letters I have to call upon one of the most versatile of their votaries, a man whose nimble intellect plays with luminous ease round many and various subjects; delicate as a poet, acute and picturesque as a critic, a sparkling journalist, no one has pursued with more earnest and more fruitful zeal the graver study of the birth and evolution of natural myths than Mr. Andrew Lang, to whom I turn for response."] YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MR. PRESIDENT, MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN:--He to whom it falls or rather on whom falls the task of replying for English literature may well feel ground to dust by the ponderous honor. Who can be the representative of such a Parnassian constituency of divine poets, philosophers, romancers, historians, from Beowulf to the last new novel? The consciousness is crushing. The momentary representative feels himself to be like Mr. Chevy Slyme "the most littery fellow in the world," who is over-borne like the bride of the Lord of Burleigh-- "By the burden of an honor Unto which she was not born."