disliked about England, and drove me to unfavourable criticism, I would mention in the first place the rigid society manners, utterly foreign to me, which I found it hard to conform to and consequently detested. The straitjacket of etiquette and society manners oppresses the English themselves more than they care to acknowledge; how, then, must it affect the Continental and the wanderer fresh from the Steppes of Asia? The second reason which made the idea of a longer stay in London quite impossible for me was the dislike, nay, the absolute horror I had of the incessant hurrying, rushing, bustling crowds in the thoroughfares; the desperate efforts to gain honour and riches, and the niggardly grudging of every minute of time. Standing at the corner of Lombard Street or Cheapside, or mixing with the crowds madly hurrying along Ludgate Hill, I felt like a man suddenly transported to pandemonium. To see how these masses push and press past one another, how the omnibus drivers swing round the corners, regardless of danger to human life, for the mere chance of gaining a few coppers more, and to realise how this same struggle for existence goes on in all stages of society, in all phases of life, relentless, merciless, was enough to make me think with longing of the indolent life of Eastern lands; and, without admitting the Nirvana theory, all this fuss and flurry seemed out of place and far too materialistic. My nature altogether revolted against it. Of course this view was quite erroneous. For what has made England great was, and is, this very same prominent individuality, this restless striving and struggling, this utter absence of all fear, hesitation, and sentimentality where the realisation of a preconceived idea is concerned. But unfortunately at that time I was still under the ban of Asiaticism; and although the slowness, indolence, and blind fanaticism of the Asiatics had annoyed me, equally disagreeable to me was the exactly opposite tendency here manifested. I wanted to find the "golden middle way," and unconsciously I was drawn towards my own home, where on the borderland between these two worlds I hoped to find what I sought. And now, after the lapse of so many years, recalling to mind some personal reminiscences of London society, I seem to recognise in the political, scientific, and artistic world of those days so many traits of a truly humane and noble nature, mixed with the most bizarre and eccentric features which have been overlooked by observers.