townsmen in cases of illness or other recognized emergency. Over the gate-tower floats the big banner of the town, above the arch is its coat of arms emblazoned in colour and gold, and within the gate are always two halberdiers on guard. This is not affectation or a wilful mediævalism, but because all the Walled Towns know the value of symbolism and use it universally and intelligently. All civic ceremonials, indeed all the common acts of the town officials, are carried out with much show and dignity and magnificence. There are fine robes of office, precise etiquette, elaborate functions; nothing is done casually or haphazard, but with dignity, beauty and a real pride in the nobility of the communal life. Long before the founding of the first Walled Town it was generally known that the depravity, or at least the incompetence, that had become chronic in civic life, was partially due to the false “democracy” which had shorn it of every vestige of dignity, of ceremonial, of difference from the common affairs of business life, and the potency of symbolism was one of the original elements in the great revolution which brought the Walled Towns into existence. Passing now under the great echoing vault of the Bar Gate, we come at once into the town itself. There is first of all a small square or market-place with rather thickly set, stone-built and gabled house, with glimpses between, and through occasional archways, into gardens behind. On one side is the Exchange, a considerable building with an open arcade along its front; it is here that the surplus products of the town are sold--grain and farm produce, cloth, or whatever it may be that is paid through the tax in kind or placed in the hands of the Exchange officials for sale outside the community. The main street leads from the square and curves up a slight grade. Here the houses are well separated, with garden walls between, sometimes pierced by grated openings that give more glimpses of gardens around and behind. As in the old days, these houses are mostly workshops and salesrooms as well as residences, for this is the street of craftsmen of all sorts--workers in metals, wood, leather; potters, embroiderers, tailors; carvers in stone, painters, makers of musical instruments. Every craft and art that is needed by the townspeople is found here, for one of the foundation stones of the Walled Towns is self-sufficiency; that is to say, everything ordinarily needful is produced by the town for the town, the necessities that cannot be furnished because of physical and climatic difficulties being reduced to the smallest number. Coffee and tea, a few spices, tropical fruits, rice, tobacco, cotton, silk and certain wines are beyond the contriving of a Walled Town in the north temperate zone and must be imported; but this is done by town officials, who are paid salaries, and the goods are resold at a standard advance on the wholesale cost. Everything