A Dead City in the Baltic.

Dr. Hasket Derby of Boston, gave the second and last lecture under the auspices of the Catholic Club, in the Fogg Art Museum, last evening, speaking on, A Visit to a Dead City in the Baltic."

On the low island of Gotland in the Baltic, 130 miles southeast of Stockholm, said Dr. Derby, lies the city of Wisby. During the 12th and 13th centuries Wisby was a great distributing centre through which passed the trade from the East. The wealth of the city grew mightily until in the 14th century a rich merchant of the town who had become discontented, fied to the king of Denmark, Waldemar, and excited him to plunder Wisby.

In 1361 the town was attacked and after a ransom had been demanded and given, a faithless plunder followed. Thereafter, the importance of the city decreased. In 1525, it was plundered again by a jealous neighboring city and the discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope caused the loss of its trade with the East.

Wisby stands now an old ruined town, surrounded by the fragments of what was once a magnificent wall, two miles long and thirty feet high, in the cracks of which the poor have built their hovels. Sixteen churches once stood in the town, of which twelve remain as ruins.

The Church of St. Nicholas, which stood on a hill in the town, once served as a landmark for incoming vessels by day, and there is a legend that at night two great carbuncles set in the walls of the church flamed forth like beacons. The most interesting ruins are those of the Church of the Holy Ghost, a peculiar eight-sided building of two stories.

The walls are cut by three gates and surmounted by forty towers fifty or sixty feet high. Just outside them once stood a church and houses for lepers.