The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-09-04
ON THE ISLAND OF MALTA
SOCIAL LIFE THERE IN THE
 FOOTSTEPS OF
St. Paul, the Apostlc-Old Sanctuary
 of the Knights of St. John.
Especial Correspondence of the Journal
 and Courier.)
La villetta, Malta, Aug. 5th, 1901.

Especial Correspondence of the Journa
 and Courier)
 La villetta, Malta, Aug. 5th, 1901.
 The brightness, ease and careless ele
 gance of life on this seagirt rock is
 boundless surprise to the stranger. o
 course society" is headed by Englisl
 officers and their families mostly well
 born and many of them wealthy; ant
 they indemnify themselves for tenn
 porary exile by duplicating every home
 luxury on the tiny island and revivine
 the hilarious customs of the Knight; Iof old. Paris is hardly more brillian
 than the Strada Reale on a pleasan
 evening, with military bands playing
 flags of all nations futtering in tht ' soft breeze, every building illuminated
 and gaily dressed ladies setting in theil
 balconies chatting with throngs o1
 promenaders. Shops are filled witt
 costly goods, from London, Paris, Vien-
 na, Berlin; handsome equipages dast
 past, or stand waiting before the splen-
 did facades of the auberges of the
 Knights; up-to-date hotels display theil
 sign boards on every hand, and crowds z of travellers, arriving from the east and
 from the west at this halfway rendez- { yous, create constant stir at the hos
 tilries and add to the life and motion
 so characteristic of Malta. Wherever \ you look, the landscape is brilliant x with scarleL coats or multi of the Brit ish army. Ten thousand English sol
 dierS are stationed at Vellette and oth-
 CT we'll garrioned Notifications are
 scattered all over this island and its < smaller dependencies. Being the head
 quarters of the Mediterranean fleet, a < dozen black painted men, -of-war are all
 ways anchored in the harbor, their {. decks crowded with British tars; while ' every hillside is dotted with troops at drill
 The houses of Malta appear to be as
 comfortable to live in as they are
 quaint of exterior. All are low, but
 very large on the ground, with inn
 Inense rooms, deep porches, projecting galleries and queer little painted
 oriloes. The universal building mate rial IS Maltese stone, almost snow white, soft as chalk when quarried, but z becoming hard as marble when expos
 ed to the air and susceptible of as fine a polish. The crowds that preambu- late these streets are as remarkable for mixture of races as their cotumes for variety and richness of coloring. Dusky Italians and duskier Maltese stately Arabs and geticulating Frenchmen and Spaniards, the human f1otsam and jet sam of every land, meet and mingle at Malta. Though so long a British pos session, Italian is yet the language of the islands-that is, among the upper classes, who call themselves Mal-tah- BaI. which the English, after their in variable habit of murdering names, have corrupted to Mawlteeze. The pop ulation, exclusive of the military, is reckoned at 160,000; and the peasantry, who compose the bulk of it, speak a strange tongue, or rather mixture of tongues, derived from many sources. Arabic predominateas in it, however, sesorg3-, that the Maltese can com municate with their Barbery neighbors as easily as the Spaniards with the Portugese. Education is admirably provided for in Malta by a well-patron- ized college at Valletta, where degrees are conferred in divinity, law and medi- cine more than a hundred private edu- cational institutions, and upwards of seventy public schools, all under the < Board school system of England. There is also a free library, with many thousands of volumes; museum, con- servatory of music, and several of those useful associations known in the Latin world as 'Lyceumsy" for which we have no equivalent fin America. Among many charitable enterprises, one of the most worthy is the Home for Incurables founded a couple of centuries ago by an Italian lady, who | endowed 1t later with all her posses | sfons including a gallery of paintings | and the family plate. It used to be re- served exclusively for women, but in recent years it's three hundred beds have been open to hopeless invalids of both sexes and all nationalities. There are other hospitals, civil and military; orphan and founding asylums, and a Monte de Pledad, Mountain of Pity" or colossal pawn-shop, conducted by the government, like that in the City of Mexico. The busy postoffice occupies the handsome house in which Napoleon lived during his short residence in Mall ta The finest and largest of the old Knights palaces "Auberge de Castile," now forms the joint mess of the Royal Atillery and King Edwards Engineers, and the quarters of the former; and the balls they give in the great ban uueting hall are swell" enough for the height of a London season. In zruesome contrast is the nearby Os- suario Literary "bone house"D, kind # tomb, or chapel whose walls-above, below, on every side, are festooned with human bones. The crypt beneath is full ,f bones to the brim--tons of them col ected from the ancient cemetery of the of St. John, which had to ,e removed when the city spread out ,n its hillside.
 There are so many interesting things Q see on this tiny island that one hard V knows where to begin. One of the .reat showplaces of the world, you rnow. is the Church of the Knights of t. John, built by Grand Master Jeau Le Cassiere, in the year 1902. For a fme it was the richest ecclesiastical difice in Europe, until Napoleons sol- Hers swept away most of it's treasures; { nit though so denuded, it is yet re- narkable for splendid adornments, pie $ ures. statuary, monuments-to say l lothing of it's historic associations. ] ,here seemed to be a rivalry among s,e successive Grand Masters of the { )rder to see which should most enrich T heir sanctuary, and every Knight was ( .~a,,d bxy law to make it a present on !