petitive examinations, are elective. Thus again we find a likeness in American conditions to those in ancient society.

This is why a citizen of New York can more easily comprehend certain aspects of the life in ancient Rome or Athens than a citizen of London or of Paris can, particularly as regards the rapid recurrence of elections which involve many interests. In Europe it is difficult to imagine what the election of magistrates really was in ancient Rome, since to-day the election of public bodies, municipal or parliamentary, in no way corresponds to the ancient forms; it is only consultative or legislative bodies which are now elected; the executive power is but indirectly affected, since it is vested in a bureaucracy whose members may not be changed from one day to another. As a result, public interest, except under very extraordinary circumstances, is only lukewarm. In America, on the other hand, there happens what happened in the ancient world: elections are habitually important, and even the chief executive, whose acts involve such varied and important interests, is often changed.

In many legal details, likewise, I have found ancient Rome reappearing in the United States: for example, in the power possessed by magistrates. In the eyes of Europeans the right of the American judge to issue injunctions seems most blameworthy, and contrary to the spirit of the times. To Europeans, used to the judicial administration of a strictly bureaucratic state in which the bureaucracy is permanent, and, while subject to no control or oversight, cannot act outside the strict limitations of the law, this discretionary power of the American magistrate seems an instrument of intolerable tyranny. A very intelligent European who had lived for a long time in the

United States, but who had nevertheless preserved his European point of view, said to me one day, 'In this country there is a tyranny far exceeding that of any European tyranny; it is the tyranny of the judicial power.'

A historian of the ancient world is better able to comprehend this apparent contradiction. The injunction is nothing more nor less than the edictum of the Roman magistrate, the power which he possessed, in common with the American judge, to issue such orders to the citizens as he deemed necessary for the protection of justice and the rights of the public, -orders which were obligatory upon the citizens, even if not based on any written law.

In those countries in which the elective principle, when applied to public offices, tends to weaken the action of the State, the magistrates should remain unhampered by the limitations of the law, especially in extreme cases. Under such circumstances the magistrate is, to a certain extent, looked upon as the personification of the law and of the State, and in an emergency, when the highest interests of the citizens are involved, he supplements the law where it may be insufficient. Such was the conception of offices and public officials held by the Romans, a conception which has altogether disappeared in the bureaucratic states of Europe, where the official is merely a faithful servant who administers the law according to the letter.

A remnant of the Roman idea is found in America, although in a modified form, where the members of all those committees upon whom the electoral body has conferred power for a limited period have, in the exercise of this power, a liberty of action which to many Europeans would seem almost autocratic. This I believe to be one of the reasons why it is on the one hand very difficult for Europeans to under

WHEN flocks of wild geese light in the Yosemite, Mr. Muir tells us, they have hard work to find their way out again. Whatever direction they take, they are soon stopped by the wall, the height of which they seem to have an insuperable difficulty in gauging. There is something mysterious about it, they must think. The rock looks to be only about so high, but when they should be flying far over its top, northward or southward as the season may be, here they are once more beating against its stony face; and only when, in their bewilderment, they happen to follow the downward course of the river, do they hit upon an exit.

Their case is not peculiar. Dr. Bunnell, in his interesting account of the discovery of the Valley, describes the ludicrous guesses of his companions and himself as to the height of the rock known since that day as El Capitan. One 'official' estimated it at four hundred feet. A bolder spirit guessed eight hundred, while Dr. Bunnell, waxing very courageous, raised the figure to fifteen hundred. The real height is thirty-three hundred feet. The fact seems to be that the eyes of men and geese alike are unaccustomed to such perpendicular altitudes. A mountain three thousand feet high is a thing to which they are more or less used, but a vertical surface of anything like the same elevation stands quite outside of all ordinary experience. El Capitan is nothing but a cliff, and a cliff - well, any goose knows what a cliff is like. Rise about so far, and you are over it.

For myself, I sympathize with the geese. The rock was in sight from my tent-door for eight weeks, and grand as it was at first, and grander still as it became, I could never make it look half a mile high. It was especially alluring to me in the evening twilight. At that hour, the day's tramp over, I loved to lie back in my camp-chair and look and look at its noble outline against the bright western sky. Professor Whitney says that it can be seen from the San Joaquin Valley, fifty or sixty miles away; but I am now farther away than that several times over, and I can see it at this minute with all distinctness

not only the rock itself, but the loose fringe of low trees along its top, with the after-glow shining through them. There would be comparatively little profit in traveling if we could see things only so long as we remain within sight of them.

Comparatively little profit, I say; but in absolute terms a great profit, nevertheless, for any man who is an adept in the art of living, wise enough to value not only his life, but the days of his life. It is something to spend a happy hour, a happy week or month, though that were to be the end of it. And such a two months as I spent in the Yosemite! Let what will happen to me henceforth, so much at least I have enjoyed. Even if I should never think of the place again, though memory should fail me altogether, those eight weeks were mine. While they lasted I lived and was happy. Six o'clock every morning saw me at the breakfast-table, and

half an hour later, with bread in my pocket, I was on the road, head in air, stepping briskly for warmth, and singing with myself over the anticipation of new adventures. I might be heading for Eagle Peak or Nevada Fall, for Glacier Point, or where not. What matter? Here was another day of Sierra sunlight and Sierra air, in which to look and look, and listen and listen, and play with my thoughts and dreams. Who was it that said, "Take care of the days, and life will take care of itself'? Others, men and women, old and young, were setting forth on the same holiday errand; as we met or passed each other we exchanged cheerful greetings; but for my part I was always alone, and, let it sound how it will, I liked my company.

Such a feast of walking as the two months gave me! I shall never have another to compare with it. The Valley itself is four thousand feet above sea-level, and many of my jaunts took me nearly or quite as much higher. If the trails were steep, the exhilaration was so much the greater. At the worst I had only to stop a minute or two now and then to breathe and look about me, upward or downward, or across the way. There might be a bird near by, a solitaire by good luck, or a mountain quail; or two or three fox sparrows might be singing gayly from the chaparral; or as many pigeons might go by me along the mountain-side, speeding like the wind; or, not improbably, a flock of big black swifts would be doubling and turning in crazy, lightning-like zigzags over my head. Who would not pause a minute to confer with strangers of such quality? And if attractions of this more animated kind failed, there would likely enough be broad acres of densely-growing manzanita bushes on either side of the way, every one of the million branches hanging full of tiny bells, graceful in shape as Grecian urns, tinted like the

pinkest and loveliest of seashells, and fragrant with a reminiscence of the sweetest of all blossoms, our darling Plymouth mayflower. Yes indeed, there was always plenty of excuse for a breathing spell.

I began with reasonable moderation, remembering my years. For two or three days I confined my steps to the valley-level; walking to Mirror Lake, whither every one goes, though mostly not on foot, to see the famous reflections in its unruffled surface just before the sunrise; to the foot of Yosemite Fall, or as near it as might be without a drenching; and down the dusty road to Capitan bridge and the Bridal Veil.

For the time I was contented to look up, pitching my walk low but my prospect high, as some old poet said. For that, the cliffs, the falls, and the wonderful pines, cedars, and firs, many of them approaching two hundred feet in height, afforded continual inducement. Sentinel Rock loomed immediately behind my tent, a flat, thin, upright slab, so it looks at a front view, for all the world like some ancient giant's gravestone, three thousand feet in height. It was the first thing I saw every morning as I glanced up through the ventilator in the gable at the head of my bed, and the first thing that I thought of one night when an earthquake rocked me out of my sleep.

Eagle Peak, nearly four thousand feet above the Valley, peeping over the heads of its two younger brothers, was directly opposite as I stood in my door; while I had only to move out of the range of a group of pine trees to see the greatest (at that season) of the four principal falls: the Yosemite, that is to say, with its first stupendous free plunge of fifteen or sixteen hundred feet, a height equal (so my Yankee-bred imagination dealt with the matter) to that of six or seven Bunker Hill monuments standing

And so it proved, some momentary shifting of the wind seeming now and then to lift the enormous column of water from the cliff, and anon let it down again with a resounding crash. This peculiar thundering sound, I was told, would be less frequent later in the season, when the warmer days would melt the mountain snow more rapidly, and the bulk of the water would be so increased that no ordinary wind could lift it. This, also, was shown to be correct, paradoxical as it had sounded,

the more water, the less noise. And after all, when I came to consider the subject, it was only giving a new twist to an old proverb, 'Still waters run deep.'

My first considerable climb was an unpremeditated trip to the top of Nevada Fall. I took the trail at the head of the Valley, close by the Happy Isles, some three miles from camp, with no intention of doing more than try what it might be like; but an upward-leading path is of itself an eloquent persuasion, and, one turn after another, I kept on, the ravishing wildness of the Merced Canyon, and the sight and sound of the Merced River raging among the rocks, getting more and more hold upon me, till all at once the winding path made a short descent, and behold, I was on a bridge over the river; and yonder, all unexpected, only a little distance up the foaming rapids, through the loveliest vista of sombre evergreens and

bright, newly leaved, yellow-green maples, was a fall, far less high than the Yosemite, to be sure, but even more graceful in its proportions (breadth and height being better related), and so wondrously set or framed that no words could begin to intimate its beauty. I looked and looked (but half the time must be attending to the mad rush of the river under my feet), and then started on. If this was Vernal Fall, as to which, in my happy ignorance, I was uncertain, then I must go far enough to see the Nevada.

The trail carried me about and about, past big snowbanks and along the edge of flowery slopes, with ever-changing views of the mighty canyon and the lofty cliffs beyond, till after what may have been an hour's work it brought me out upon a mountain shoulder whence I looked straight away to another fall, higher and wilder by much than the one I had lately seen. Here, then, was the Nevada, to many minds the grandest of the great four, as in truth it must be, taking the months together.

Now there was nothing for it, after a few minutes of hesitation (still considering my years), but I must keep on, down to the river-level again, after all this labor in getting above it, and over another bridge, till a final breathless, sharper and sharper-angled zigzag brought me to the top, where I stood gazing from above at an indescribable, unimaginable sight,—the plunge of the swollen river over a sheer precipice to a huddle of broken rocks six hundred feet below.

I happened to be fresh from a few days at Niagara, and moreover, I was a man who had all his life taken blame to himself as being unwarrantably, almost disgracefully, insensible to the charm of falling water. Nobody would ever stand longer than I to muse upon a brook idling through meadows or