JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO CYPRUS.

One result of the Berlin Congress had been the cession of Cyprus to England, to be, as Lord Beaconsfield described it, a “place of arms” in the Eastern Mediterranean. The accounts of the capabilities, resources, condition, and popular feeling of this island were so conflicting that the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Secretary of State for War (Colonel the Hon. F. E. Stanley, M.P.1) set out in the autumn to inspect it for themselves.

The occasion was one not to be lost by that gentle satirist, Mr Bromley Davenport, M.P., who, more suo, celebrated the expedition in verse :—

“The Chief of the Army and Lord of the Fleet

Have gone out to visit both Cyprus and Crete;

The natives, delighted to see such fine stars,

Christened one of them Neptune, the other one Mars;

They erected an altar to Stanley forthwith,

And put up a bookstall to W. H. Smith.”

On the eve of his departure for the East, Smith received a letter from H.E.H. the Duke of Cambridge referring to the Eoyal Marines in terms which, as expressing the confidential opinion of the Commander-in-Chief, cannot fail of being pleasant reading to the members of that distinguished branch of the service.