shaven, and his face is pale and drawn; he appears worn out as he sips slowly from the cup of his flask, but as his senior approaches, he rises, salutes, and listens attentively to his somewhat lengthy instructions. He is an exceptionally slight man, and his general air of fatigue is explained by the fact that he has been observing from the balloon for the past three hours: the dark rings under his eyes show where the constant strain has most told. In spite of this he is again to go up in the kite, not because there is none other capable, but because the advantage of having up aloft a pair of eyes that already know the lie of the country is at the present juncture of greater importance than the fatigue of any man. As the commander concludes, a badly fused shell bursts on the ground close to him, covering him with sand. He does not pause to shake the sand off, but finishes his sentence-"Of course it is a chance, but they may not notice you go up against this cloudy background, and may be tempted to take up that position by seeing the balloon go down. If they do, well," and he looks towards his guns and smiles thoughtfully.

The younger man smiles too, takes one more pull at his flask, feels if both pairs of field-glasses are hanging round his neck, for he carries two, straps a telephone receiver and mouthpiece round his head, and climbs into the clothes-basket which is held by the men. The basket is attached to the rigid kite cable by runners. After testing the gear, another large kite which is harnessed to his prosaic-looking chariot is thrown into the air. Making one or two ineffectual dives, it catches the wind and begins to pull. Slowly at first the observer rises, then faster as the great wings above him catch more of the breeze. Now they feel it, and up he sails like a pantomime stormfiend, to the accompanying moan of the wire vibrating in the wind. In a few

moments he is a stationary spot far up on the slanting wire.

How insignificant in contrast to the great bulk of the balloon does the whole collection of kites appear,-yet-the eye is there.

IV.

The commanding officer goes back to his station by the telephone, and waits. Prrrrrt, grumbles the instrument, and this time it is he himself who takes the receiver. He listens attentively, for it is difficult to hear along an aerial line, and there is much repetition before he finally replies "All right!" to his subordinate up above. A word to a staff officer, who at once gallops off to the guns. Then ensues much activity. Within three minutes the whole line has been dragged round by hand to a position facing the hills on the east, at right angles to its former direction. The gun-layers at once start laying to the range already taken, and buckets are emptied on the ground, but no effort is made to dig shelters, for they will be unnecessary. The exposure and loss caused by the new position is ignored. When all are at their stations ready to open fire, a whistle sounds. The suppressed excitement is catching. That the Commander himself is not unaffected is shown from the manner in which he ostentatiously, and with almost too great deliberation, chooses a cigar from his case and begins chewing the end of it. . . .

"Prrrrrt," rattles the telephone: the Commander drops the chewed cigar and listens. "Are you ready?" gurgles down the wire.

vigil up in the air over, he sets himself to study the enemy's guns, amongst which he seems vaguely to discover some movement. Can they have suspected anything? As he sweeps his glass carelessly across the gray cloud towards its terrestrial object, something-a midget probably-in the upper corner of the object-glass catches his eye. He puts down the glass and rubs the lens with his handkerchief. looks again. The midget is still there. He looks directly at it-it is a collection of midgets. Good God! these are no midgets-it is a covey of war kites high up in the sky! Yes, and there is the silent observer hanging some distance below, who must have seen all!

He

By this time two or three guns have turned out of the lane and are unlimbering.

He rises and tries to shout-it is too late.

"Now they're turning out of the road to come into action-now two guns have left the road-halloa!-are you there?" continues the thin metallic voice down the wire.

"Yes."

"Let them have it."

The Commander, from his lowly position, looks up and nods to a signaller standing up on a mound; the latter drops, his flag. The air is split by the noise of the whole line of guns as they open rapid fire. It is like the report of one piece prolonged into a continuous long note.

Upon the brow of that hill of doom, hiding the sky-line for perhaps 400 yards to the right of the now obscured poplar, appears a crown of magentacolored smoke, out of which a succession of light flashes sparkle.

By those up over there is heard a faint roar in the distance, followed by

Not one return shot has been fired. The smoke is dissipated by the wind as soon as the squall of shell ceases, and the scene of the butchery stands revealed.

Behind the hedge are three guns unharmed except for splintered wood. Their green tint is all mottled with oval patches of shining silver, plated by the nickel of the glancing bullets. Men are lying about singly, nearly all wounded in the head, and nearly all dead. A few who still crouch paralyzed behind the shields seem unhurt. Horses lie tied together by their harness in kicking, screaming bunches. At the gateway is a tangle of capsized gun, limber, man and beast, which entirely blocks the lane.

This is an abattoir better undescribed in detail-a medley of dead and dying men, animals and vehicles jammed into a solid mass. At intervals guns lie upturned or wedged across. The mass still struggles and heaves. Here and there drivers have half-succeeded in

driving their guns up the bank, in a gallant attempt to get out of the shambles, with the result that the horses lie dead on the top, and the guns lie overturned in the hollow. A few unharmed and dazed officers and men still shout orders and shove and push at the guns. There, where an ammunition wagon, hit by a badly fused shell, has exploded, is a cleared space. Branches and twigs are splintered in all directions, and the shrapnel balls have Blackwood's Magazine.

stripped the leaves from the trees and scattered a sparse shower of green over their handiwork.

Though at least one of the shells must have been carelessly fused, for on its back, under the hedge on the brow of the hill, lies the headless body of the young gunner officer, the glasses still in his left hand, a handkerchief in the right, yet, as the small voice had squeaked down the telephone wire 5000 yards away,-it was enough!

"Ole Luk-oie."

It was not until the nineteenth century was well on its way that philologists and musicians began to turn serious attention to the vocal customs of the Russian peasant. As many as 8000 of his songs with their variants have been collected in one province. It is highly improbable that any one of them was the work of a single person, and the date of many remains undetermined. Year in, year out, century after century they have been handed down wholly by oral tradition, many a family jealously preserving certain tunes and words as its own particular property. Those who have made a study of the relics of ancient Greek melodies and music-rhythms are inelined to draw a parallel between these and the Russian tunes. If there be any similarity, it is doubtless a proof, not that the Russian people have borrowed from the Greeks, but rather that both races have had a common origin in the East, in Iran. Not that there is any resemblance between the haunting melodies, the really beautiful rhythms and cadences of a Russian folk-song, as sung by natives, and the so-called 1 "The Peasant Songs of Great Russia." tected and Transcribed from Phonograms by Evguenia Lineff. Published by the Imperial' Academy of Science, Petersburg. London: Nut.

1905. 5s. net.

Col

"Greek" choruses occasionally droned to us in our modern theatres. One peculiar type of song, the horovòd, is universal all over Russia. Horovod means leader of a chorus. It is sung in the fields, in the village square, in the cottages during the intervals of labor. Every Russian villager, man or woman, knows a horovod. It always begins with the chief melody sung by one voice or by a number of voices in unison; subsequently this melody passes into many parts, but periodically it returns to the unison or solo. The secondary parts are a free imitation of it; and once the chief melody, usually sung by a bass voice, or by a contralto if a woman, has been given out, every member of the company develops it according to his or her individual taste and imagination, sometimes going away from the leader, or anon returning to him. Those without any talent merely "move their voices about," as the village critics, the old women, term it, or, to give another very graphic expression, they just "yawn" their parts. These inexperienced singers are often not heard; or, what is worse, they cause confusion by joining now with one and now with another, singing no definite part of their own. As many as seventeen different variations of the

one leading melody may often be heard going on together. The two sexes never mix and sing with each other; there are always male and female horovodi. The songs of Great Russia are possibly those into which least foreign elements have crept. But the Oukrainian province of Little Russia is also rich in national songs, and it is here that the people have the finest voices. Some Russian critics find a Polish influence in the harmonic structure and rhythms of the Little Russian melodies. It should be noted however that the Little Russian songs, whilst in themselves a type apart, would yet seem to form a connecting link between the national songs of Poland and Great Russia. The Kazak population of Oukraïnia is of a different stamp from the dwellers in the North, less phlegmatic and lethargic, and with plenty of romance and passion tingling in their blood. A graphic and accurate picture of them is given by Gogol in his "Taràss Boùlba." They are careless and easy-going, also disposed to be nomadic -for though they rarely quit the province itself, they are fond of moving about and changing their domicile in the steppes. This habit certainly suggests a gipsy element; many judges therefore consider the Oukrainian songs as gipsy rather than properly Slav. The broad, slow-flowing rivers of Russia seem to exercise a strong fascination upon the peasant's imagination. He attaches a legend or a song to any stream in his neighborhood. On the banks of the Volga groups of men or women may often be seen in summer dragging out timber which has floated down from the upper reaches and tributaries, and as they drag and tug at their burden, they sing one refrain after the other, their voices rising and falling in a cadenced crescendo and diminuendo. One of their favorite sayings is that you cannot escape your fate, and the gist of most of their river

songs is that if you are born to labor you must toil on: "Toil on, toil on bravely, one, two, three, and yet once more, and the task is done." Many songs belong to the Volga district and one is dedicated to "Mother Volga" herself. The Russian peasant also believes his rivers to be inhabited by mysterious beings: chief amongst these is the Roussalka, a harmful kind of naiad. The voices of the Roussalkï are heard, in the rustling of the grass by the water's edge; and the splash of the running stream betrays their dancing feet. Women and young girls washing their clothes or bathing are liable to be spirited away by these Roussalkï unless they be careful to hum some potent charm as long as they remain in or near the water. There is no danger of a Roussalka pursuing them far on land, for if she remain absent from the water long enough for her hair to become dry, she dies. Some Roussalki however have much to do with the harvest, sometimes making it plenteous, or else ruining it by rain and wind. The harvesters believe that when the grain is ripening the Roussalki are permitted to leave their watery homes, and scamper through the rye or wheat. They hang on to the stalks and swing to and fro, so that the corn undulates like the sea swayed by the wind.

There are many Roussalki songs. There are again the soldier and recruit songs. When a Russian regiment is on the march, the singing of the soldiers alternates with the playing of the band, in much the same way that our drumand-fife bands alternate with the other players. War correspondents in the Russo-Japanese campaign-notably Mr. Maurice Baring-were struck with the originality of these marching songs. Then there are the "drunken drawly" songs. These belong to the men (Russian women never drink to excess), who are apt to become especially vocal in their cups. For the singing of cer

tain songs there are fixed reasons. Each district has its spring and summer horovòdï, its Christmas carols (holyàdï) and its Easter songs. There are special and generally very melancholy songs attached to wedding functions, notably the bath songs, sung whilst bathing and preparing the bride for the ceremony, and numerous are the wailing songs for the dead. The nightingale is a favorite topic, so is the cuckoo, in Russia ever an emissary of sadness, but in Finland and Poland a harbinger of gladness; and the swallow, the swiftly skimming lastochka, is frequently alluded to, being said to fly straight from Paradise each year, bringing with it the warmth and sunlight of summer. The hawk is always a go-between plighted lovers, and amongst flowers the guelder rose and the lily-of-the-valley, which covers the steppes in early summer, are much mentioned; also the blossom of the wild-pear tree, the flower of deserted lovers. When we remember that these songs are the untutored improvisations of an illiterate people, totally ignorant of book learning, we can but admire their genuine strain of crude poetry, and their sincere appreciation of nature. Besides the horovòdi dealing with themes of everyday life there are the legend-builìnï, or epic ballads. The word is a fair equivalent for our nursery phrase "once upon a time." The theme mostly turns upon some ancient Russian hero (though there are builìnï relating to Napoleon and the Moscow campaign). The singers chant strophe after strophe, modifying and altering the musical phrase according to the sentiment of their subject with surprising feeling and skill. One builina can last as long as two or three hours. Its rhythmic monotony is by no means out of keeping with the broad flat expanse of a characteristic Russian landscape, gray plains dotted with sad brown huts, where no sound comes

from the forests but the sighing of the wind through the branches of the birch trees. Occasionally, however, the singers will suddenly break forth into a lively fantastic strain, getting brisker and brisker. Then, after a dramatic pause, they fall once more into their slow chant. Numerous builìnï are founded upon the Bible, for the Russian peasant is extremely religious and superstitiously devout. His very designation Krestyànin, wearer of a cross, points to the epoch when Christianity was first adopted in his country. One curious semi-biblical song, said to be of very ancient date, is called the Dream of the Virgin Mary. In her dream the Virgin sees her Divine Son, and on the bank of a river she also sees the cross upon which He is one day to suffer crucifixion. He tells her not to mourn for He will take her soul to Himself, and will paint her image in an Ikon which the whole world will worship, and that all who listen to the song of her dream shall attain to the perfection of purity. There is also the builina of Lazarus in which he implores Providence to drag the soul of his pitiless rich brother into a fiery flood of boiling pitch. A grim kind of prayer, but an interesting specimen of simple literal belief. The motive of this intense love of song in the Russian peasant is beyond investigating; but it is at least possible that he sings so often and so readily out of the pre-eminently vocal quality of his language. Russian is rich in open vowels, and one of its chief beauties lies in its equally balanced cadence of hard and soft sounds. The peasant indeed can often sing us what he cannot say. The words of his song do not exist for him without the melody, nor the melody without the words. He gets hopelessly confused if asked not to sing, but to tell one a song. And if any attempt is made to help him, contention and dispute are the only result.