Artists and Arabs; Or, Sketching in Sunshine

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CHAPTER III. THE MOORISH QUARTER—OUR STUDIO.

E said, in the last chapter, that in Algiers there was very little going on for the visitor or idler; but if the traveller have anything of the artist in him, he will be delighted with the old town. If he is wise he will spend the first week in wandering about, and losing himself in the winding streets, going here, there, and everywhere on a picturesque tour of inspection. His artistic tendencies will probably lead him to spend much time in the Moorish cafés, where he may sit down unmolested (if unwelcomed) for hours on a mat, and drink his little saucer of thick, sweet coffee, for which he pays one sou, and smoke in the midst of a group of silent Moors, who may perchance acknowledge his presence by a slight gesture, and offer him their pipes, but who will more frequently affect not to see him, and sit still doing absolutely nothing, with that dignified solemnity peculiar to the East.

He will pass through narrow streets and between mysterious-looking old houses that meet over head and shut out the sky; he will jostle often in these narrow ways, soft plump objects in white gauze, whose eyes and ankles give the only visible signs of humanity; he may turn back to watch the wonderful dexterity with which a young Arab girl balances a load of fruit upon her head down to the market place; and he will, if he is not careful, be finally carried down himself by an avalanche of donkeys, driven by a negro gamin who sits on the tail of the last, threading their way noiselessly and swiftly, and carrying everything before them; * and he will probably take refuge under the ruined arch of some old mosque, whose graceful lines and rich decoration are still visible here and there, and he will in a few hours be enchanted with the place, and the more so for the reason that we have already hinted at, viz.:—that in Algiers he is let alone, that he is free to wander and 'moon' about at will, without custodian or commissionaire, or any of the tribe of 'valets de place.'

He may go into the Grand Divan; or into the streets where the embroiderers are at work, sitting in front of their open shops, amongst heaps of silks, rich stuffs and every variety of material; or where the old merchant traders, whose occupation is nearly gone, sit smoking out their lazy uncommercial lives.

He may go to the old Moorish bath, in a building of curious pattern, which is as well worth seeing as anything in Algiers; and, if an Arabic scholar, he may pick up an acquaintance or two amongst the Moors, and visit their homes when their wives are away for the day, on some mourning expedition to a suburban cemetery. He may explore innumerable crooked, irregular streets, with low doorways and carved lattices, some painted, some gilt; the little narrow windows and the grilles, being as perfectly after the old type as when the Moors held undivided possession of the city.

One old street, now pulled down, we remember well; it was the one always chosen for an evening stroll because it faced the western sea, and caught and reflected from its pavement and from its white walls, the last rosy tints of sunset, long after the cobblers and the tinkers in the lower town had lighted their little lanterns, and the cafés were flaring in the French quarter. It was steep and narrow, so steep, in fact, that steps were made in the pavement to climb it, and at the upper end there was the dome of a mosque shining in the sun. It was like the child's picture of 'Jacob's ladder,' brighter and more resplendent at each step, and ending in a blaze of gold.

We are often reminded of Spain in these old streets; there are massive wooden doors studded with iron bosses or huge nails as we see them at Toledo, and there is sometimes to be seen over them, the emblem of the human hand pointing upwards, which recalls the Gate of Justice at the entrance to the Alhambra at Granada.

The Moors cling to their old traditions, and the belief that they will some day reconquer Spain is still an article of faith. But if ever the Moors are to regain their imaginary lost possessions in Spain, they must surely be made of sterner stuff than the present race, who, judging from appearances, are little likely to do anything great.

There are little shops and dark niches where the Moors sit cross-legged, with great gourds and festoons of dried fruits hanging above and around them; the piles of red morocco slippers, the oddshaped earthenware vessels, and the wonderful medley of form and colour, resembling in variety the bazaars at Constantinople, or carrying us in imagination still further East.

Other sights and sounds we might mention, some not quite so pleasant but peculiarly Eastern; and we should not forget to note the peculiar scent of herbs and stuffs, which, mingled with the aroma of coffee and tobacco, was sometimes almost overpowering in the little Covered streets; and one odour that went up regularly on Sunday mornings in the Moorish quarter that was not incense, and which it took us a long time to discover the origin of—an Arab branding his donkeys with his monogram!

Everything we purchase is odd and quaint, irregular or curious in some way. Every piece of embroidery, every remnant of old carpet, differs from another in pattern as the leaves on the trees. There is no repetition, and herein lies its charm and true value to us. Every fabric differs either in pattern or combination of colours—it is something, as we said, unique, something to treasure, something that will not remind us of the mill. *

If we explore still further we shall come to the Arab quarter, where we also find characteristic things. Here we may purchase for about thirty francs a Kabyle match-lock rifle, or an old sabre with beautifully ornamented hilt; we may, if we please, ransack piles of primitive and rusty implements of all kinds, and pick up curious women's ornaments, beads, coral, and anklets of filagree work; and, if we are fortunate, meet with a complete set or suit of harness and trappings, once the property of some insolvent Arab chief, and of a pattern made familiar to us in the illustrated history of the Cid.

In the midst of the Moorish quarter, up a little narrow street (reached in five or six minutes from the centre of the town) passing under an archway and between white walls that nearly meet overhead, we come to a low dark door, with a heavy handle and latch which opens and shuts with a crashing sound; and if we enter the courtyard and ascend a narrow staircase in one corner, we come suddenly upon the interior view of the first or principal floor, of our Moorish home.

The house, as may be seen from the illustration, has two stories, and there is also an upper terrace from which we overlook the town. The arrangement of the rooms round the courtyard, all opening inwards, is excellent; they are cool in summer, and warm even on the coldest nights, and although we are in a noisy and thickly populated part of the town, we are ignorant of what goes on outside, the massive walls keeping out nearly all sound. The floors and walls are tiled, so that they can be cleansed and cooled by water being thrown over them; the carpets and cushions spread about invite one to the most luxurious repose, tables and chairs are unknown, there is nothing to offend the eye in shape or form, nothing to offend the ear—not even a door to slam.

Above, there is an open terrace, where we sit in the mornings and evenings, and can realise the system of life on the housetops of the East. Here we can cultivate the vine, grow roses and other flowers, build for ourselves extempore arbours, and live literally in the open air.

From this terrace we overlook the flat roofs of the houses of the Moorish part of the city, and if we peep over, down into the streets immediately below us, a curious hum of sounds comes up. Our neighbours are certainly industrious; they embroider, they make slippers, they hammer at metal work, they break earthenware and mend it, and appear to quarrel all day long, within a few feet of us; but as we sit in the room from which our sketch is taken, the sounds become mingled and subdued into a pleasant tinkle which is almost musical, and which we can, if we please, shut out entirely by dropping a curtain across the doorway.

Our attendants are Moorish, and consist of one old woman, whom we see by accident (closely veiled) about once a month, and a bare-legged, bare-footed Arab boy who waits upon us. There are pigeons on the roof, a French poodle that frequents the lower regions, and a guardian of our doorstep who haunts it day and night, whose portrait is given at Chapter V.

Here we work with the greatest freedom and comfort, without interruption or any drawbacks that we can think of. The climate is so equal, warm, and pleasant—even in December and January—that by preference we generally sit on the upper terrace, where we have the perfection of light, and are at the same time sufficiently protected from sun and wind.

At night we sleep almost in the open air, and need scarcely drop the curtains at the arched doorways of our rooms; there are no mosquitoes to trouble us, and there is certainly no fear of intrusion. There is also perfect stillness, for our neighbours are at rest soon after sundown.

Such is a general sketch of our dwelling in Algiers; let us for a moment, by way of contrast, return in imagination to London, and picture to ourselves our friends as they are working at home.

It is considered very desirable, if not essential, to an artist, that his immediate surroundings should be in some sort graceful and harmonious, and it is a lesson worth learning, to see what may be done, with ingenuity and taste, towards converting a single room, in a dingy street, into a fitting abode of the arts.

We know a certain painter well, one whose studio it is always a delight to enter, and whose devotion to Art (both music and painting) for its own sake has always stood in the way of his advancement and pecuniary success. He has converted a room in the neighbourhood of Gower Street into a charming nook where colour, form, and texture are all considered in the simplest details of decoration, where there is nothing inharmonious to eye or ear, but where perhaps the sound of the guitar may be heard a little too often. The walls of his studio are draped, the light falls softly from above, the doorway is arched, the seats are couches or carpets on a raised daïs, a Florentine lamp hangs from the ceiling, a medley of vases, costumes, old armour, &c, are grouped about in picturesque confusion, and our friend, in an easy undress of the last century, works away in the midst.

Not to particularize further, let the reader consider for a moment what one step beyond his own door brings about, on an average winter's day. A straight, ungraceful, colourless costume of the latter half of the nineteenth century which he must assume, a hat of the period, an umbrella raised to keep off sleet and rain, and for landscape a damp, dreary, muddy, blackened street, with a vista of areas and lamp-posts, and, if perchance he be going to the Academy, a walk through the parish of St. Giles!

Perhaps the most depressing prospect in the world, is that from a Gower Street doorstep on a November morning about nine o'clock; but of this enough. We think of our friend as we sit out here on our terrasse—sheltering ourselves on the same day, at the same hour, from the sun's rays—we think of him painting Italian scenes by the light of his gas 'sun-burner,' and wish he would come out to Algiers. 'Surely,' we would say to him, 'it is something gained, if we can, ever so little, harmonize the realities of life with our ideal world—if we can, without remark, dress ourselves more as we dress our models, and so live, that one step from the studio to the street shall not be the abomination of desolation.' *

Let us turn again to Nature and to Light, and transport the reader to a little white house, overlooking a beautiful city, on the North African shore, where summer is perpetual and indoor life the exception; and draw a picture for him which should be fascinating and which certainly is true.

Algiers, Sunrise, December 10.

The mysterious, indefinable charm of the first break of day, is an old and favourite theme in all countries and climates, and one on which perhaps little that is new can be said. In the East it is always striking, but in Algiers it seems to us peculiarly so; for sleeping, or more often lying awake, with the clear crisp night air upon our faces, it comes to our couch in the dreamiest way imaginable—instead of being clothed (as poets express it) with the veil of night, a mantle seems rather to be spread over us in the morning; there is perfect quiet at this hour, and we seem to be almost under a spell not to disturb the stillness—the dawn whispers to us so softly and soothingly that we are powerless to do ought but watch or sleep.

The break of day is perhaps first announced to us by a faint stream of light across the courtyard, or the dim shadow of a marble pillar on the wall. In a few minutes, we hear the distant barking of a dog, a slight rustle in the pigeon-house above, or a solitary cry from a minaret which tells us that the city is awaking. We rouse ourselves and steal out quietly on to the upper terrace to see a sight of sights—one of those things that books tell us, rightly or wrongly, is alone worth coming from England to see.

The canopy of stars, that had encompassed us so closely during the night, as if to shut in the courtyard overhead, seems lifted again, and the stars themselves are disappearing fast in the grey expanse of sky; and as we endeavour to trace them, looking intently seaward, towards the North and East, we can just discern an horizon line and faint shadows of the 'sleeping giants,' that we know to be not far off. Soon—in about the same time that it takes to write these lines—they begin to take form and outline one by one, a tinge of delicate pearly pink is seen at intervals through their shadows, and before any nearer objects have come into view, the whole coast line and the mountains of Kabylia, stretching-far to the eastward, are flushed with rosy light, opposed to a veil of twilight grey which still hangs over the city.

Another minute or two, and our shadows are thrown sharply on a glowing wall, towers and domes come distinctly into view, housetops innumerable range themselves in close array at our feet, and we, who but a few minutes ago, seemed to be standing as it were alone upon the top of a high mountain, are suddenly and closely beleaguered. A city of flat white roofs, towers, and cupolas, relieved here and there by coloured awnings, green shutters, and dark doorways, and by little courtyards blooming with orange and citron trees—intersected with innumerable winding ways (which look like streams forcing their way through a chalk cliff)—has all grown up before our eyes; and beyond it, seaward—a harbour, and a fleet of little vessels with their white sails, are seen shining in the sun.

Then come the hundred sounds of a waking city, mingling and increasing every moment; and the flat roofs (some so close that we can step upon them) are soon alive with those quaint white figures we meet in the streets, passing to and fro, from roof to roof, apparently without restraint or fear. There are numbers of children peeping out from odd corners and loopholes, and women with them, some dressed much less scrupulously than we see them in the market place, and some, to tell the truth, entirely without the white robes aforesaid. A few, a very few, are already winding their way through the streets to the nearest mosque, but the majority are collected in groups in conversation, enjoying the sweet sea breeze, which comes laden with the perfume of orange-trees, and a peculiar delicious scent as of violets.

The pigeons on the roof-tops now plume their gilded wings and soar—not upward but downward, far away into space; they scarcely break the silence in the air, or spread their wings as they speed along.

Oh, what a flight above the azure sea!

'Quis dabat mihi pennas sicut columbæ;

the very action of flying seems repose to them.

It is still barely sunrise on this soft December morning, the day's labour has scarcely begun, the calm is so perfect that existence alone seems a delight, and the Eastern aroma (if we may so express it) that pervades the air might almost lull us to sleep again, but Allah wills it otherwise.

Suddenly—-with terrible impulse and shrill accent impossible to describe—a hurricane of women's voices succeeds the calm. Is it treachery? Is it scandal? Has Hassan proved faithless, or has Fatima fled? Oh, the screeching and yelling that succeeded to the quiet beauty of the morning! Oh, the rushing about of veiled (now all closely veiled) figures on house-tops! Oh, the weeping and wailing, and literal, terrible, gnashing of teeth! 'Tell it not upon the house-tops', (shall we ever forget it being told on the housetops? ) 'let not a whole city know thy misdeeds,' is written in the Koran, 'it is better for the faithful to come to prayers!' Merciful powers, how the tempest raged until the sun was up and the city was alive again, and its sounds helped to drown the clamour.

Let us come down, for our Arab boy now claps his hands in sign, that (on a little low table or tray, six inches from the ground) coffee and pipes are provided for the unbelievers; and like the Calendar in Eastern Story, he proceeds to tell us the cause of the tumult—a trinket taken from one wife and given to another!

Oh, Islam! that a lost bracelet or a jealous wife, should make the earth tremble so!

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CHAPTER IV. 'MODELS.'

ROM the roof-tops of our own and the neighbouring houses we have altogether many opportunities of sketching, and making studies from life. * By degrees, by fits and starts, and by most uncertain means (such as attracting curiosity, making little presents, &c.) we manage to scrape up a distant talking acquaintance with some of the mysterious wayward creatures we have spoken of, and in short, to become almost 'neighbourly.'

But we never get much nearer than talking distance, conversing from one roof to another with a narrow street like a river flowing between us; and only once or twice during our winter sojourn, did we succeed in enticing a veiled houri to venture on our terrace and shake hands with the 'Frank.' If we could manage to hold a young lady in conversation, and exhibit sufficient admiration of her to induce her, ever so slightly, to unveil whilst we made a hasty sketch, it was about all that we could fairly succeed in accomplishing, and 'the game was hardly worth the candle:' it took, perhaps, an hour to ensnare our bird, and in ten minutes or less, she would be again on the wing. Veiled beauties are interesting (sometimes much more interesting for being veiled); but it does not serve our artistic purposes much to see two splendid black eyes and a few white robes.

However models we must have, although the profession is almost unknown in Algiers. At Naples we have only to go down to the seashore, at Rome to the steps of St. Peter's, and we find 'subjects' enough, who will come for the asking; but here, where there is so much distinctive costume and variety of race, French artists seem to make little use of their opportunities.

It takes some days before we can hear of any one who will be willing to sit, for double the usual remuneration. But they come at last, and when it gets abroad that the Franks have money and 'mean business,' we have a number of applicants, some of whom are not very desirable, and none particularly attractive.

We select 'Fatima' first, because she is the youngest and has the best costume, and also because she comes with her father and appears tractable. She is engaged at two francs an hour, which she considers poor pay.

How shall we give the reader an idea of this little creature, when she comes next morning and coils herself up amongst the cushions in the corner of our room, like a young panther in the Jardin des Plantes? Her costume, when she throws off her haïk (and with it a tradition of the Mahommedan faith, that forbids her to show her face to an unbeliever) is a rich loose crimson, jacket embroidered with gold, a thin white bodice, loose silk trowsers reaching to the knee and fastened round the waist by a magnificent sash of various colours; red morroco slippers, a profusion of rings on her little fingers, and bracelets and anklets of gold filagree work. Through her waving black hair are twined strings of coins and the folds of a silk handkerchief, the hair falling at the back in plaits below the waist.

She is not beautiful, she is scarcely interesting in expression, and she is decidedly unsteady. She seems to have no more power of keeping herself in one position or of remaining in one part of the room, or even of being quiet, than a humming top. The whole thing is an unutterable bore to her, for she does not even reap the reward—her father or husband, or male attendant, always taking the money.

She is petite, constitutionally phlegmatic, and as fat as her parents can manage to make her; she has small hands and feet, large rolling eyes—the latter made to appear artificially large by the application of henna or antimony black; her attitudes are not ungraceful, but there is a want of character about her, and an utter abandonment to the situation, peculiar to all her race. In short her movements are more suggestive of a little caged animal that had better be petted and caressed, or kept at a safe distance, according to her humour. She does one thing, she smokes incessantly and makes us cigarettes with a skill and rapidity which are wonderful.

Her age is thirteen, and she has been married six months; * her ideas appear to be limited to three or four; and her pleasures, poor creature, are equally circumscribed. She had scarcely ever left her father's house, and had never spoken to a man until her marriage. No wonder we, in spite of a little Arabic on which we prided ourselves, could not make much way; no wonder that we came very rapidly to the conclusion that the houris of the Arabian Nights, must have been dull creatures, and their 'Entertainments' rather a failure, if there were no diviner fire than this. No wonder that the Moors advocate a plurality of wives, for if one represents an emotion, a harem would scarcely suffice!

We get on but indifferently with our studies with this young lady, and, to tell the truth, not too well in Fatima's good graces. Our opportunities are not great, our command of Arabic is limited, and indeed, we do not feel particularly inspired.

We cannot tell her many love stories, or sing songs set to a 'tom-tom;' we can, indeed, offer 'backshish' in the shape of tobacco and sweetmeats, or some trifling European ornament or trinket; but it is clear that she would prefer a greater amount of familiarity, and more demonstrative tokens of esteem. However, she came several times, and we succeeded in obtaining some valuable studies of colour, and 'bits,' memoranda only; but very useful, from being taken down almost unconsciously, in such a luminous key, and with a variety of reflected light and pure shadow tone, that we find unapproachable in after work.

As for sketches of character, we obtained very few of Mauresques; our subjects were, as a rule, much too restless, and we had one or two 'scenes' before we parted. On one unfortunate occasion our model insisted upon examining our work before leaving, and the scorn and contempt with which it was regarded was anything but flattering.

It nearly caused a breach between us, for, as she observed, it was not only contrary to her creed to have her likeness taken, but it would be perdition to be thus represented amongst the Franks. * We promised to be as careful of this portrait as if it were the original, and, in fact, said anything to be polite and soothing.

On another occasion, we had been working on rather more quietly than usual for half-an-hour, and were really getting a satisfactory study of a new position, when, without apparent cause or warning of any kind, the strange, pale, passionless face, which stared like a wooden marionette, suddenly suffused with crimson, the great eyes filled with tears, the whole frame throbbed convulsively, and the little creature fell into such a passion of crying that we were fain to put by our work and question ourselves whether we had been cruel or unkind. But it was nothing: the cup of boredom had been filled to the brim, all other artifices had failed her to obtain relief from restraint, and so this apparently lethargic little being, who had it seemed, both passion and grief at command, opened the flood-gates upon us, and of course gained her end. There was no more work that day, and she got off with a double allowance of bonbons, and something like a reconciliation. She gave us her little white hand at parting—the fingers and thumbs crowded with rings, and the nails stained black with henna—but the action meant nothing; we dare not press it, it was too soft and frail, and the rings would have cut her fingers, we could only hand it tenderly back again, and bid our 'model' farewell.

We got on better afterwards with a Moorish Jewess who, for a 'consideration,' unearthed her property, * including a tiara of gold and jewels, and a bodice of silver embroidery worked on crimson velvet; we purposely reverse the position and speak of the embroidery first, because the velvet was almost hidden. She came slouching in one morning, closely wrapped in a dirty shawl, her black hair all dishevelled and half covering her handsome face, her feet bare and her general appearance so much more suggestive of one of the 'finest pisantry in the world,' that we began to feel doubtful, and to think with Beau Brummel that this must be 'one of our failures.' But when her mother had arranged the tiara in her hair, when the curtain was drawn aside and the full splendour of the Jewish costume was displayed—when, in short, the dignity and grace of a queen were before us, we felt amply rewarded.

The Jewish dress differs from the Mauresque entirely; it is European in shape, with high waist and flowing robes without sleeves, a square cut bodice, often of the same material as the robe itself, and a profusion of gold ornaments, armlets, necklaces, and rings. A pair of tiny velvet slippers (also embroidered) on tiny feet, complete the costume, which varies in colour, but is generally of crimson or dark velvet.

As a 'model,' although almost her first appearance in that character, this Jewish woman was very valuable, and we had little trouble after the first interview, in making her understand our wishes. But we had to pay more than in England; there were many drawbacks, and of course much waste of time. On some holydays and on all Jewish festivals, she did not make her appearance, and seemed to think nothing of it when some feast that lasted a week, left us stranded with half-done work.

Without being learned in costumes des dames, we believe, we may say, that the shape and cut of some of these dresses, and the patterns of the embroidery (old as they are) might be copied with advantage by Parisian modistes; the more we study these old patterns, the more we cannot cease to regret that the Deae ex machina, the arbiters of fashion in the city where Fashion is Queen, have not managed to infuse into the costume of the time more character and purity of design—conditions not inconsistent with splendour, and affording scope, if need be, for any amount of extravagance.

We are led irresistibly into this digression, if it be a digression, because the statuesque figure before us displays so many lines of grace and beauty that have the additional charm of novelty. We know, for instance, that the pattern of this embroidery is unique, that the artificer of that curiously twined chain of gold has been dead perhaps for ages, that the rings on her fingers and the coins suspended from her hair are many of them real art treasures. *

The result of our studies, as far as regards Moorish women, we must admit to have been after all, rather limited and unsatisfactory. We never once lighted upon a Moorish face that moved us much by its beauty, for the simple reason that it nearly always lacked expression; anything like emotion seemed inharmonious and out of place, and to disturb the uniformity of its lines. Even those dark lustrous eyes, when lighted by passion, had more of the tiger in them, than the tragedy queen.

The perfection of beauty, according to the Moorish ideal, seems to depend principally upon symmetry of feature, and is nothing without roundness of limb and a certain flabbiness of texture. It is an ideal of repose, not to say of dulness and insipidity; a heavy type of beauty of which we obtain some idea in the illustration before us, of a young girl, about thirteen years old, of one of the tribes from the interior. The drawing is by a Frenchman, and pretends to no particular artistic excellence, but it attempts to render (and we think succeeds in rendering) the style of a Mahommedan beauty in bridal array; one who is about to fulfil her destiny, and who appears to have as little animation or intelligence as the Prophet ordained for her, being perfectly fitted (according to the Koran) to fill her place in this world or in the next. *

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Thus decked with her brightest jewels and adorned with a crown of gold, she waits to meet her lord, to be his 'light of the harem,' his 'sun and moon.' What if we, with our refined aesthetic tastes, what if disinterested spectators, vote her altogether the dullest and most uninteresting of beings? what if she seem to us more like some young animal, magnificently harnessed, waiting to be trotted out to the highest bidder? She shakes the coins and beads on her head sometimes, with a slight impatient gesture, and takes chocolate from her little sister, and is petted and pacified just as we should soothe and pacify an impatient steed; there is clearly no other way to treat her, it is the will of Allah that she should be so debased! *

One day we had up a tinker, an old brown grizzled Maltese, who with his implements of trade, his patchwork garments and his dirt, had a tone about him, like a figure from one of the old Dutch masters. He sat down in the corner of our courtyard against a marble pillar, and made himself quite at home; he worked with his feet as well as his hands at his grinding, he chattered, he sang, and altogether made such a clatter that we shall not be likely to forget him.

This gentleman, and the old negro that lived upon our doorstep, were almost the only subjects that we succeeded in inducing to come within doors; our other life studies were made under less favourable circumstances.

From the roof of our own house, it is true, we obtained a variety of sketches, not (as might be supposed from the illustrations and pictures with which we are all familiar) of young ladies attired as scantily as the nymphs at the Theâtre du Chatelet, standing in pensive attitudes on their housetops, but generally of groups of veiled women—old, ugly, haggard, shrill of voice, and sometimes rather fierce of aspect, performing various household duties on the roof-tops, including the beating of carpets and of children, the carrying of water-pots and the saying of prayers.

A chapter on 'Models' would not be complete without some mention of the camels, of which there are numbers to be found in the Arab quarter of the town. Some of them are splendid creatures, and as different from any exotic specimens that we can see in this country as an acclimatised palm-tree from its wild growth.

Some one tells us that these Algerian 'ships of the desert' have not the same sailing qualities, nor the same breadth of beam, as those at Cairo. But (if true) we should have to go to Cairo to study them, so let us be content. We should like to see one or two of our popular artists, who persist in painting camels and desert scenes without ever having been to the East, just sit down here quietly for one day and paint a camel's head; not flinching from the work, but mastering the wonderful texture and shagginess of his thick coat or mane, its massive beauty, and its infinite gradations of colour. Such a sitter no portrait painter ever had in England. Feed him up first, get a boy to keep the flies from him, and he will sit almost immoveably through the day. He will put on a sad expression in the morning, which will not change; he will give no trouble whatever, he will but sit still and croak.

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Do we seem to exaggerate the value of such studies? We cannot exaggerate, if we take into full account, the vigorous quality which we impart into our work. And we cannot, perhaps, better illustrate our argument in favour of drawing from, what we should call, natural models, than by comparing the merits of two of the most popular pictures of our time, viz.:—Frith's 'Derby Day,' and Rosa Bonheur's 'Horse Fair?' The former pleasing the eye by its cleverness and prettiness; the latter impressing the spectator by its power, and its truthful rendering of animal life.

The difference between the two painters is probably, one, more of education than of natural gifts. But whilst the style of the former is grafted on a fashion, the latter is founded on a rock—the result of a close study of nature, chastened by classic feeling, and a remembrance it may be, of the friezes of the Parthenon.

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CHAPTER V. OUR 'LIFE SCHOOL'

F the various studies to be made in Algiers, there are none at the same time so quaint and characteristic, as the Moors in their own homes, seated at their own doors or benches at work, or at the numerous cafés and bazaars; and nothing seems to harmonize so well in these Moorish streets as the groups of natives (both Moors and negroes) with their bright costumes, and 'wares for sale. Colour and contrast of colour, seem to be considered, or felt, everywhere. Thus for instance, no two Orientals will walk down a street side by side, unless the colours of their costume harmonize or blend together (they seem to know it instinctively), and then there is always grey or some quiet contrasting tone for a background, and a sky of deep, deep blue. A negress will generally be found selling oranges or citrons; an Arab boy with a red fez and white turban, carrying purple fruit in a basket of leaves; and so on. The reader will think this fanciful, but it is truer than he imagines; let him come and see.

It was not at all times easy to sketch in the open street on account of the curiosity it excited; a crowd sometimes collecting until it became almost impossible to breathe. The plan was to go as often as possible to the cafés and divans, and by degrees to make friends with the Moors.

There was one café, in a street that we have been to so often, that it is as familiar to us as any in the western world; and where by dint of a little tact and a small outlay of tobacco, we managed to make ourselves quite at home, and were permitted to work away all day, comparatively unmolested. It was a narrow and steep overhanging street, crowded at all times with Moors on one side embroidering, or pretending to sell goods of various kinds; and on the opposite side there was a café, not four feet distant, where a row of about eighteen others sat and smoked, and contemplated their brethren at work. The street was always full of traffic, being an important thoroughfare from the upper to the lower town, and there were perpetually passing up and down, droves of laden donkeys; men with burdens carried on poles between them; vendors of fruit, bread, and live fowls, and crowds of people of every denomination.

In a little corner out of sight, where we were certainly rather closely packed, we used to install ourselves continually and sketch the people passing to and fro. The Moors in the café used to sit beside us all day and watch, and wait; they gave us a grave silent salutation when we took our places, and another when we left, but we never got much further with our unknown neighbours. If we can imagine a coterie in a small political club, where the open discussion of politics is, with one consent, tabooed for fear of a disturbance, and where the most frolicsome of its members play at chess for relaxation, we shall get some notion of the state of absolute decorum which existed in our little café maure.

It was very quaint. The memory of the grave quiet faces of these most polite Moorish gentlemen, looking so smooth and clean in their white bournouses, seated solemnly doing nothing, haunts us to this day. Years elapsed between our first and last visit to our favourite street, yet there they were when we came again, still doing nothing in a row; and opposite to them, the merchants who do no trade, also sitting in their * accustomed places, surrounded with the same old wares.

There was the same old negro in a dark corner making coffee, and handing it to the same customers, sitting in the same places, in the same dream.