Pass . v A Book NATIONAL LIFE AND THOUGHT J> NATIONAL LIFE AND THOUGHT OF THE VARIOUS NATIONS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD H Series of H?>oresses EIRIKR MAGNUSSON, M.A. ; Prof. J. E. THOROLD ROGERS J. THEODORE BENT; F. II. GROOME ; Mrs. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM; Prof. PULSZKY; W. R. MORFILL, M.A. ; AND OTHERS. NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY MDCCCXCI, ilr. 9 O'GC y<* PREFACE. The Lectures contained in this Volume were delivered on Sunday afternoon, at South Place Institute, during the Session 1889-90, and were designed to give information, in a popular form, with regard to the national development and modes of political action among the different nations throughout the world, by means of sympathetic and trustworthy accounts of their history, national aspiration, and modes of government, it being thought that a general dissemination of such knowledge would not only improve our Institutions, but, by stimulating our interest in foreign countries, tend to promote international amity. The Committee take this opportunity of expressing their obligations to the different Lecturers for the willingness with which they have made it possible to carry on this work, and trust that the general public, to whom this Volume is now offered, will appreciate the information therein contained as highly as did the audiences to whom the Lectures were originally addressed. WM. SHEOWRiNG, ) Hon. Secretaries, CONRAD W. THIES j Institute Committee. South Place Institute. CONTENTS. i. The Armenians, Armenia, and the Armenian Question By M. Sevasly . . . . . II. Austria. By Dr. S. Schidrowitz in. Hungary. By Professor Augustus Pulszky iv. Germany — Politics. By Sidney Whitman v. German Culture. By Sidney Whitman . vi. Russia. By W. R. Morfill, M.A. vii. Poland. By Adam Gielgud . viii. Italy. By J. Stephen Jeans . ix. Spain. By Mrs. Cunninghame Graham x. Norway. By II. L. Br.^kstad xi. Sweden. By Eirikr Magnusson, M.A. xn. Denmark and Iceland. By Eirikr Magnusson, M.A. xiii. Lessons from the Dutch Republic. By Professor J. E Thorold Rogers ..... xiv. Belgium. By Alfred Wathelet xv. Switzerland. By Howard Hodgkin, M.A, xvi. Modern Life and Thought amongst the Greeks, By J. Theodore Bent xvii. Ottoman Empire. By H. Anthony Salmone Appendix — "Why does not the Sick Man die?" xviii. Egypt. By J. C. M'Coan .... xix. Servia and Montenegro. By J. C. Cotton Minchin xx. Jews in their Relation to other Races. By Rev. S Singer ...... xxi. The Gypsies. By F. H. Groome i 19 33 53 69 §7 "3 135 157 181 201 217 237 251 267 323 343 363 379 THE ARMENIANS, ARMENIA, AND THE ARMENIAN QUESTION. M. SEVASLY. WHEN Mr. Wm. Sheowring, the Honorary Secretary of the South Place Institute, requested me to lecture on the Armenians and on the Armenian Question, he invited my attention to a statement that appeared in the Diplomatic Fly Sheet, in which the Armenians are classed by C. D. Collett as a religious community, and not as a nation. To refute the assertion will constitute the subject-matter of the first part of this paper. The Armenians are a nation, and one of the oldest nations in the world. Descended from the great Aryan race, they are as ancient as the Jews, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Greeks. The antiquity of the Armenian nation is attested by ancient writers. Thus we find that Alexander Poly- histor, a Greek writer (75 B.C.), affirming that the Armenians were known as a nation twenty centuries before Christ ; and in support of this assertion, he says that the Armenians made an expedition against that powerful maritime people, the Phoenicians, whom they defeated, and that among the prisoners captured was the nephew of Abraham the patriarch. Again we find the name of Armenia and Ararat designated in the Bible, in Herodotus, in Strabo, and others. Moreover, cuneiform inscriptions on the celebrated Rock of Van also attest the antiquity of the Armenian people. According to Armenian chronology, the foundation of the first Armenian kingdom dates so far back as 2540 B.C. As with the history of other ancient countries, that of Armenia begins with legend : " Haig, a local chief, who lived in the country of Ararat, migrated with his sons and daughters to Senaar in Mesopotamia. While they lived in those regions the Tower of Babel was erected, and the Babylonian Empire was ruled by Belus. Haig, unwilling to submit to the authority of Belus, returned with his family of 2 National Life and Thought. about three hundred persons to the fatherland, where he incor- porated himself with the earliest settlers. Belus marched against him with his warriors all clad in iron armour, and supplied with powerful spears and bows and arrows. Yet destiny was about to found a great nation and a vast empire. The small band of Haig proved victorious, and Belus fell by an arrow from the bow of Haig. Victory and the spoils of war inflaming their breasts, the Haigs (or Armenians) went on conquering, until a territory stretching from the Caspian Sea to the east of Cilicia on the Mediterranean, on the west ; and from the borders of the Pontus on the north to the confines of Assyria at the south, formed one vast and powerful Haiasdan or Armenia. The name of Armenia1 was derived from Aram, the sixth successor of Haig, who became so renowned by his exploits that from his time the surrounding nations designated the country as Aramia, after his name, which, in course of time, has been cor- rupted into the modern nomenclature of "Armenia." The height of glory was only attained during the reign of Tigranes. " It is but a few days' journey from the country of the Cabiri or Sebastia, present Sivas, into Armenia," says Lucullus, "where Tigranes, King of kings, is seated surrounded with that power which has wrested Asia from the Parthians, which carries Grecian Colonies into Media, subdues Syria and Palestine." Again, Cicero, alluding to the same King Tigranes the Great, tells us that he made the Republic of Rome tremble before the prowess of his arms. Unfortunately, the country became the prey of neighbouring nations. Persians, Greeks, Romans, Tartars, each and all over- ran the country. All by turns have contended for mastery. Three dynasties maintained power in Armenia proper. 1 There is a controversy on the origin of the word "Armenia." Some also attribute it to Arameen, which signifies High Land in Armenian. But it is most likely that the country has been called after Aram, one of our greatest kings, and who achieved fame among his neighbours. Semiramis the great Assyrian queen waged war against Ara, the son of Aram, the brave and hand- some Armenian chief, in consequence of his stern determination to resist the offers of the" mighty Assyrian sovereign. (Read Sarchedon, by G. T. Whyte- Melville. Ward, Lock, & Co., Salisbury Square, E.C.) 2 The first dynasty begins with Haig, 2540 B.C., and ends on or about 150 B.C. The second, or Arsacidian dynasty, under which Armenia reached the height of its glory, from 150 B.C. to 428 A.D.. The third, or Pagradounian dynasty, closes in the year 1080 A. n. The Armenians, Armenia, and the Armenian Question. 3 In the early part of the eleventh century, after the fall of the Pagradounian Dynasty, flying before the Mongolian invader, thousands of Armenians left the seat, of their sires to take refuge in the inaccessible fastnesses of the Taurus, and transformed Cilicia into an Armenian Kingdom under the Rupenian Dynasty, whose last King, Leo VI.,1 after a heroic struggle with Egyptian invaders, was captured in 1375, from which dates the extinction of the Armenians as an independent nation. The Cilician Kingdom lasted three centuries ; and this really is marvellous, for the Armenians had to contend not only with Moslem foes, but with the Byzantine Greeks, whom they defeated and worsted on more than one occasion. While in Cilicia the Armenians rendered eminent service to the cause of Christendom and civilisation by helping the Crusaders in their wars against the Saracens. The claim of the Armenian people as a Christian people upon the support of Christian Europe may be said to date from the time of the Crusades. The Armenians have been the first people who have abandoned their former religion, which was that of the Magi, to embrace Christianity. In fact, the introduction of Christianity among them was coeval with Jesus Christ, or soon after. " Thaddeus, one of the seventy, was sent to Edessa, then the capital of Armenia (for the capital of Armenia has often changed), to instruct the King Abkar in the new faith, which he did. He baptized him and the citizens of that metropolis. The seeds of Christianity were consequently sown ; but it was not until some three centuries later, when appeared Gregory of Caesarea, that a revival of the faith Avas created by him. Hence the appellation given to him by the Armenians of " Gregory the Illuminator." It is, in truth, this form of national Christian Church that has so far kept the Armenians together.1 There are about 200,000 Armenians belonging to the Romish Church, and 60,000 to the Protestant, out of 6,000,000 of Armenians.2 But the spirit of nationality is deeply rooted in them all.3 1 Leo died at Paris on the 29th November 1393. His remains are interred at St. Denis, which has become a place of pilgrimage for the Armenians. There the Armenians of Paris resort every Easter, and appropriate speeches are delivered on the tomb of the last Armenian king. 2 V Armenie, by J. Broussali {Revue Francaise, June 1886). 3 The Spiritual Supreme Head of the Gregorian Armenians is the 4 National Life and Thought. The Armenians have all the good qualities to make them the champions of civilisation and progress in Asia Minor. There is, indeed, no other Asiatic race so capable of appreciating the civilisation of Europe, or so worthy of European support and sympathy. And as to their qualities and virtues, they can appeal to an areopagus of historians, poets, statesmen, travellers. Gibbon's Roman Empire bears testimony to the mercantile genius, religious fervency, and valour and prowess of the Armenians in the third and fourth centuries. " It is difficult," says Byron, " to trace in the annals of a nation less crime than in the Armenian, whose virtues are those of peace, and whose vices the outcome of oppression." An exampled oppression — " The helpless nation," says Gibbon, "has seldom been permitted to enjoy the tranquillity of servitude. From the earliest period to the present hour Armenia has been the theatre of war. Under the rod of oppression the zeal of the Armenians is fervent and intrepid ; they have often preferred the crown of martyrdom to the white turban of Mahomet." Lamartine styles the Armenians the Swiss, while Dulaurier gives them the appellation of the Dutch of the East. Lord Carnarvon, in a speech in the House of Lords, equalled them to the Greeks in intellectual power. Mr. James Bryce, in his Transcaucasia and Ararat, tells that "when there meets you a keener or more restless glance, you may be sure that it comes from an Armenian eye." They have given statesmen and men of action to famous nations. Nubar Pacha, the brilliant Egyptian Minister ; Melikoff, the Russian General who captured Kars, are there to bear one out. Some 30,000 Armenians at Zeythoun, in Cilicia, the repre- sentatives of those who formed the Cilician Kingdom, have, to a score of years ago, maintained their independence. Catholicos of Echtmiadzin, whose seat is in Russian Armenia, near Erivan. The patriarch of Constantinople exercises spiritual and some sort of temporal power over the Gregorian Armenians of Turkey. He is assisted by a civil and ecclesiastical council, and is responsible to an "assembly of representatives," in virtue of a Charter granted by the Porte in 1862, in amplification of the privileges and rights conferred by Sultan Mahommed II., on the first Armenian Patriarchate he instituted in Constantinople after the capture of that capital. The powers of the said body end where those of the state begin. It has a voice in the management and control of the educational and ecclesiastical affairs of the community ; but it cannot remedy any of the evils under which the Armenians are now groaning. The Armenians, Armenia, and the Armenian Question. 5 Armenian literature is rich and varied, and history, philosophy, and poetry are amply represented. Armenia is now partitioned among three Powers : Russia, Turkey, and Persia. Her limits cannot be easily defined, and have undergone many a change in the course of her historical vicissitudes. Armenia in older days extended from the Caucasus to Mesopotamia, and to Western Asia Minor, and occupied an area of about 150,000 square miles. The country is of a moun- tainous character. Its plains are high, but fertile, yielding corn of the finest quality, and in abundance ; as also tobacco, flax, rice, and cotton ; its pasture lands sustain breeds of horses ; its valleys produce the grape, the apple, and other fruits ; trees such as the poplar, oak, olive, carob, and fig thrive. Armenia is the source of several important rivers, such as the Euphrates, which springs from the mountains of Erzeroum (Garin), and flows into the Persian Gulf, after joining the Tigris below Bagdad; the Tigris, the second river of Armenia, falls into the Persian Gulf; the Araxes, after the Armenian King Aramays (the Gihon of the ancients), which runs into the Caspian Sea ; and the Tchorouk, or the Phison of the Scriptures, which takes its source near the B-aibourt mountains, and flows into the Black Sea. Where the territories of Persia, Turkey, and Russia meet in North-east Armenia, Ararat (the Massis of the Armenians, after Amassia, the grand-nephew of Hai'g, and upon which tradition says that the Ark of Noah rested), with its summit covered in perpetual snow, rises above the plain at its base, to the height of 14,320 feet. Again, the Taurus and Ante-Taurus chain cover an extensive area, from Armenia proper to the South-western Armenia (Cilicia). These mountain chains contain mines of rock-salt, nitre, naphtha, sulphur, iron, and copper, as also lead, silver, and even gold, zinc, and other metals. The traces, however, of the gold- mines have now been lost, although these were known to exist in olden times. The zoological kingdom of the country is also extremely rich. On the Erzeroum plateau more than 170 kinds of wild birds are known to exist. The crane and stork are the favourite birds of the Armenians, and frequently form the subject of their folk- poesy. Wild animals abound, and the bear, lynx, wolf, hyena, leopard, tiger, buffalo, bull, wild ass and wild sheep, and others cover that immense country. The domestic animals, the sheep, of which more than a million are exported ; the horses and camel, 6 Natio7ial Life and Thought. while the rivers and the lakes Van, Ourmiah, and Sevan (three principal lakes of Armenia, situate in Turkish, Persian, and Russian Armenia respectively) abound in multifarious fishes of various colours. The climate of Armenia is essentially cold. Though in the same parallel of latitude as Greece, Italy, and Spain, and parts of Asia-Minor, nevertheless the severity of her winter is even greater than that of the north of France and that of Germany. The country was rich in the distant past in large and important cities, such as Ani, the ruins of which attest its ancient splendour and magnificence, Armavir on the Araxes, Vagharshabad, and Digranakuerd. Van, Erzeroum, were then, as they now are, important centres. The Armenian Question. — Armenia is, as above stated, divided among Russia, Persia, and Turkey. In the beginning of the seventeenth century she was partitioned between Persia and Turkey. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the province of Karabag, a fertile and mountainous country, peopled by 200,000 Armenians and 100,000 Tartars and Persians, and governed by Armenian chiefs, under the nominal domination of Persia, was conquered by Russia, and thus ever since the beginning of this century Armenia is ruled by three Powers. Russia subsequently, in 1828 and in 1829, extended her conquests in Persian and Turkish Armenia. The Treaty of Turkmen-Tcha'i of 5th March 1828 delimitated the Russo-Persian frontiers, while the Berlin Treaty of 1878 fixed those of Turkey and Russia in Asia Minor. The Armenian grievances, or the Armenian Question, became one of immediate international concern ever since the insertion of a special Clause in the Berlin Treaty of 1878 in favour of the Armenians occupying the provinces of Van, Erzeroum, Diarbekir, Kharpoot, and Dersim, in Turkish Armenia, and numbering about two millions. The Clause referred to, which is but a modified form of Article 16 of the Treaty of San Stefano, runs thus : "The Sublime Pcrte undertakes to carry out, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local require- ments in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds. It will periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the Powers, who will superintend their application." This Clause, coupled with Article 62 of the same instrument, place the civil and religious liberties of the Armenian people under the express The Armenians, Armenia, and the Armenian Question. 7 guarantee of the International Law, and under the supervision and control of the Powers, parties to the Treaty. Article 62 enacts that "The Sublime Porte having expressed its intention of main- taining the principle of religious liberty, and giving it the widest scope, the contracting parties take note of this spontaneous declaration. In no part of the Ottoman Empire shall difference of religion be alleged against any person as a ground for exclusion from or incapacity for the discharge of civil and political rights, and admission to public functions. All persons shall be admitted without distinction to give evidence before the tribunals. The freedom and exercise of all forms of worship are assured to all." The raison d'etre of Article 61 of the Berlin Treaty may be explained in a few matter-of-fact sentences thus classified : — - I. The absence of Civil and Political Equality. II. The non-admission or non-appreciation of Armenian evi- dence in the Turkish Courts of Justice (in cases where the Armenian is the wronged party and the Moslem the delinquent). III. The systematic pillage and destruction of Armenian villages ; the sacking of convents ; the perpetration of all kinds of crimes and oppressive acts by new-imported Circassians, and especially by the Kurds — not unfrequently also by the police and by the local officials. IV. The venality of justice. V. The systematic efforts to crush and ruin the peasant classes (1) by heavy and arbitrary taxes, and (2) by dispossessing them of their holdings. These grievances exist down to the present day as they did when the Berlin Treaty was signed. It would occupy too much space to explain in detail the evils complained of, and bring out minutely the consequences resulting therefrom. I shall prin- cipally deal with Grievance II. The positive prescriptions of Imperial Hatts and Imperial Firmans issued from time to time by reigning sovereigns of Turkey, ever since the reign of Sultan Abdul-Medjid, to their Christian subjects promising them liberty of conscience, and equality before the law, equality of taxation, and assurances of reform, are mere idle words, Whatever the letter of the law may say, the testimony of the Christian is not received, or if received, not appreciated, with what result it will be easy to understand. The attention of the civilised world has been lately absorbed by the prevalence of slave trade in the Dark Continent, and international conferences and a congress held to devise the 8 National Life and Thought. most efficacious means for the suppression of that immoral traffic. Now in Armenia — and, I may add, in Turkey in general — slavery exists and is rampant in one of its worst forms, and is connived at and supported by the Moslem judges. The polygamous Kurdish or Turkish Beys and Aghas, whose hitherto regular supply of Circassian girls from the Caucasus has been cut off from them since the annexation of the province by Russia, have recourse now to a bold system of rape. They swoop down upon an Armenian village, with their armed acolytes, and carry off to their harems, by main force, as many good-looking girls and women as they can lay hands on. This is permitted to them; and the modus operandi by which the abduction of Armenian girls is rendered legal by the Moslem judges may be summed up as follows : — When the relatives present themselves in court to claim the abducted victim, the ravishers are ready with a brace of Moslem witnesses (a hundred could be produced if wanted), who declare on oath that the kidnapped woman pronounced in their presence the regular formula of the Moslem faith : " There is no God but God, and Mahomed is His Prophet," Christian evidence to the contrary being invariably rejected. The judge thereupon dismisses the case, on the ground that the stolen and ravished girl has by that profession abjured her former faith and embraced Mohammedanism. And the verdict of these upright judges is not to be set aside. The victims protest ; but their protestations avail them nothing. They invoke in vain the positive prescriptions of the Imperial Hatts, and the distinct stipulations of solemn treaties, promising liberty of conscience and equality before the law. The Turkish Solon is not to be moved. His invariable reply is, that the Koran — source of all human and Divine legislation — is the supreme law of the land, and it would be blasphemy to admit or suppose that any subsequent enact- ments could in any way have modified its sacred teachings. Hundreds of Armenian girls are thus lost to their homes and imprisoned in Turkish harems ; they are never set free, and if one ever succeeds in escaping, the chances are ten to one that sooner or later she will be murdered.1 Again, in consequence of the non-appreciation of Christian 1 A custom prevails in Turkey whereby a Moslem is exempted from mili- tary service if he elopes with a Christian girl and keeps her in his harem for a time long enough to warrant the presumption that she embraced Moham- medanism. The Armenians, Armenia, and the Armenian Question, g evidence, Mahometans commit all sorts of crimes and misdeeds on the Christian population, who cannot obtain justice, through their evidence being ignored and contemned, and Mahometans seldom coming forward to give evidence against a coreligionist. Moreover, through the non-admission of Christian testimony, Mahometans, Turks or Kurds, or Circassians, find the most efficacious means to dispossess the Armenians from the lands they inherited ab antiquo. Kurds or Circassians settle or encamp in the vicinity of Armenian villages, and cultivate the lands belong- ing to Armenians. Should a dispute arise, a number of Moslem witnesses are produced in Court, who testify to the lands having been owned by the Kurds from time immemorial. Armenian evidence to the contrary is seldom accepted. And thus, under the segis of the law, the Armenians are gradually dispossessed of lands they inherited from their forefathers for the benefit of predatory and wild tribes. The Kurds were known in the time of Xenophon, who pelted his army with stones in the famous retreat. They have not crystallised into a " nation " ever since. They possess no literature and no learning, and most have no fixed abode. They usually have recourse to Armenian or Persian alphabets whenever they wish to express their thoughts in writing. In olden times they inhabited the country south of the province of Van, in the Hekkeari district, in close proximity to the present Nestorians. The policy of the Sublime Porte, especially since the Crimean War, has been to gradually replace the historic, peaceful, and laborious Armenian by the predatory Kurdish element, with a view, on the one hand, to radically stamping out the "Armenian Question ; " and, on the other, in the event of a war with Russia, to utilise the Kurds in arresting the Muscovite legions from a fur- ther advance in Asia Minor. As soldiers the Kurds are useless, and they amply proved it during the last Turko-Russian War. They are not a brave people, nor have they any high or manly qualities. Their robberies, their crimes, and their misdeeds are dastardly affairs. They seldom attack armed travellers, except in very superior numbers. They assault more commonly peaceful caravans, or defenceless villages. Feuds and quarrels are frequent among them. Mutual confidence is almost unknown. All the villages from Erzeroum to Bitlis, and from Van to Salmaste, in Persia, are more or less exposed to Kurdish raids and plunder. Thus it will be seen that the Kurds a are, on the one hand, the 1 Through the continual usurpation of the lands the Kurds have elevated io National Life and Thought. usurpers of the lands of the Armenians, with the connivance of the Turkish Government ; and, on the other, they are brigands, and high-robbers and raiders, well armed and equipped with modern rifles, and left unrestrained to commit all sorts of excesses on defenceless populations. " The Kurds," says Mr. C. Wilkinson, who visited Armenia and Asia Minor about a hundred years ago, and whose evidence testifies that Armenia is to-day what she then was ; " the Kurds," 1 says the traveller, "are constantly on the watch for an opportunity of plundering the caravans. If a good guard is not kept in the tents, they come privately and pull out bales of goods with hooks, without being perceived; and if the bales are fastened together with cords, they are seldom without a good razor to cut them. As caravans generally set out before daybreak, the rogues mix with the drivers, and turn out of the way a few miles laden with goods, which they easily carry off in the dark ; and they seldom choose the worst, for they know the bales of silks as well as the owners. These people own no masters, and the Turks never punish them, even when they are taken up for murder and robbery." And Mr. Wilkinson's assertions are true to the present day. The case of the notorious Kurdish chief, Moussa Bey, is an illus- tration of what has been said above as to the futility of Turkish promises to mete out justice to Christians where they are wronged by a Mahometan ; it shows that, notwithstanding all the pompous Imperial enactments, Christian evidence is still either not admitted or not appreciated. It shows, moreover, the tacit, if not overt, encouragement given by the " Authorities " in Turkey to the Kurds to pillage, burn, and slaughter the Armenians. Who is Moussa Bey, whose name has now become almost a " household " word in Europe ? This is what an impartial writer, during the troubled times of the Turko-Russian war, said of Moussa Bey, on whom the Turks have bestowed the palm of martyrdom:—" Mr. C. B. Norman, Correspondent of The Times at the seat of war in Armenia in 1877, in his Avork entitled ' Armenia and the Campaign of 1877,' says : .' In the neighbourhood of Moosh, one Moussa Bey, a son of Mirza Bey, a Kurd from Wear themselves, in some districts, in Bitlis in particular, to the position of feudal chiefs, and make the Armenians pay them tribute. Should the Armenian refuse to pay, the Kurd ravages and pillages his village.— Dr. Grigor, Artzruni, editor of the Mschag (Tiflis). 1 " A Tour through Asia Minor and the Greek Islands." By C. Wilkinson. London: Printed by Darton & Harvey, Gracechurch Street. 1806. The Armenians, Armenia, and the Armenian Question, n Van, has been ravaging the country at the head of a small body of cavalry. The villages of Moolah Akjam, Hadogan, and Kharkin, having been first pillaged, were set on fire. At Ardork he extracted ^60, and at Ingrakam ^40 from the head men of the village, under pretence of sparing them from destruction, and straightway set the places on fire. He then proceeded to a Mussulman village called Norashen, and, hearing that an Armenian merchant of Bitlis was passing through, robbed him of all his goods, to the value of 30,000 piastres, and then ordered his men to murder him. At Khartz this monster entered the house of the Armenian priest, who had lately brought his bride to his father's home. Binding the old man and his son together with cords, this inhuman scoundrel ravished the poor girl before their eyes, and then gave orders for the murder of the three. I can write no more. A bare recital of the horrors committed by these demons is sufficient to call for their condign punishment. The subject is too painful to need any colouring, were my feeble pen enabled to give it.' " Moussa Bey was, these crimes notwithstanding, appointed a Mudir, or a petty governor, in one of the districts of Moosh. He subsequently, three years ago, perpetrated other crimes of an equally atrocious nature, setting fire to and destroying barns, extracting money from inoffensive peasants, killing some and wounding others, not sparing American missionaries. While, in the spring of 1889, he committed a series of outrages, which the readers will find recorded in the Blue Book, No. i, of 1889 (Turkey). They may be summed up thus : He carried off women, massacred villagers, seized a notable, and flung him on faggots, and burned him alive in presence of his followers. An outcry was raised. The cry of the suffering Armenians, of outraged women, of desperate humanity, the cry of desolation and ruin reached the ears of Europe. Public opinion was agitated, and the Turks saw that something had to be done. Moussa was " invited " to proceed to Constantinople, not as a criminal, but as an honoured guest. He is first conducted to Bitlis in triumph, escorted by the head of the Moslem religious com- munity, and a train of functionaries, soldiers, zaptielers, softas, and cavaliers. On leaving Erzeroum, Moussa is escorted for some miles by the governor of the province and a strong body of cavalry. At Constantinople the ceremony is still more formal ; and as soon as the steamer conveying the truculent brigand is signalled, two generals proceed on board to receive him. In the 12 National Life and Thought. Turkish metropolis he is comfortably quartered, surrounded with servants and attendants, and frequently entertained and feasted by friends in authority. More than forty witnesses and complainants travelled all the way from Armenia to Constantinople to give evidence, and to substantiate the charges preferred against him. The trial of three of the principal counts was concluded on 2nd December last, and the hearing of the other adjourned sine die. Moussa was acquitted by a majority of Mussulmen judges, notwithstanding most direct and conclusive evidence. Those who saw the trial described it as a virtual farce all through. The Public Prosecutor, who represents the State and the Law, and whose duty it is to protect the suffering people, bullied the witnesses, and overtly acted as a counsel for Moussa Bey. "Suffice it to say," writes Sir William White, Her Britannic Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople to the Marquis of Salisbury {vide Blue Book, Turkey No. i, 1890, page 100), " that the position taken up by the Public Prosecutor savoured rather of that of a lawyer for the defence than of a prosecutor on behalf of the Government, and it is generally considered unprecedented in the judicial annals of this country." Thus ended one of the most scandalous trials on record. The case of Moussa Bey is but an instance, a specimen, and serves to illustrate how justice is prostituted in Turkey, even in her very metropolis, at the very gates of Europe. After the scandalous proceedings in connection with this now celebrated trial, the following report from Van, which gives a graphic description of the present condition of the country, explains itself: " Every Armenian village is compelled, notwith- standing its extreme poverty, to provide food almost daily for the army of tax-gathering officials, who on their part treat the in- habitants with absolute inhumanity. The peasant, reduced now to the last extremity, must either sell his oxen and plough, his house and fields, and clear out ; or go to distant provinces in quest of work, with no prospect of returning ; or emigrate : or start out and beg from door to door. Thanks to this policy, many of the southern and eastern districts of Vasbouragan (Province of Van) are nearly depopulated of their Christian element, whose place has been taken by Kurds, Turks, Yezidis, &c. Even the educational expenses of the Turks are provided out of the taxes paid by the Armenians. As for the Kurd, he is under no restraint of law, under no burden of taxes, and has no regular military service to undergo. A chartered outlaw, he devastates, plunders, The Armenians, Armenia, and the Armenian Question. 13 burns, and kills ; and no man calls him to account. Robberies and outrages are committed without number; but the Govern- ment neither sees nor hears, for its own officials are too often the perpetrators. Forced marriages, forced conversions to Moham- medanism are common, always and everywhere. In a word, civil rights, justice, order, and tranquillity have, as it were, bidden their last farewell, and departed from the land of the Armenian subjects of Turkey. " Corruption reigns supreme among the officials without dis- tinction, from the highest to the lowest. It has become a law. Every official, even the Governor himself, obtains his office from the Central Government by bribery, and by this alone; and throughout all the official world plunder is the great business of life. In all the courts of law, cases are kept pending until the litigants have been sucked dry; and as often as not an unjust judgment is given in favour of the suitor who has lumped down the biggest bribe. But woe to the non-suited should he venture to question the judge's decision ! Imprisonment for life, or, at the least, perpetual exile, is apt to be his answer. It is absolutely forbidden to draw up public memorials. The Press is gagged, till there is nothing left for it to print but flatteries of the persons by whom the gags have been applied. Numerous houses are every- where searched on the flimsiest and most impudent pretences. Private detractors and calumniators are rewarded with honours and offices. Young men are exiled for indefinite periods ; and their defenceless and helpless families are left to shift as they may. The prisons are filled with Armenians (many of whom clergymen) who have been flung there without rhyme or reason." No account of the present condition of Armenia would be complete without a comprehensive statement on the numerous irregularities committed and the vexatious measures adopted by the fiscal officials in connection with the collection and assess- ment of taxes. The Armenian Christian subjects of the Sultan are exempted from military service in consideration of a poll-tax, named bedelaskerie (military exemption tax), the amount of which is not properly and equitably assessed. Thus the aforesaid tax, which applies only to persons fit for service, is demanded from the relatives of people who are dead, who have emigrated, or who are infirm. In many cases the tax is levied on newly-born persons and on old men. Again, with respect to the fixed taxes levied upon property (emlak) and upon professions (temettu), the local officials carry on unjust assessments, without regard to the value 14 National Life and Thought. of the property, to its resources, or to the capabilities and earnings of the person assessed for the " professions " tax. Moreover, the assessing officials, contrary to imperial orders, undervalue the properties owned by Mahometans. Thus the property tax fails more heavily upon Christians than upon Mahometans. Cases can be quoted where lands belonging to Armenians have been registered for taxation at ten times their real actual value. The temettu tax (tax on professions), which should by law be levied on artisans and shopkeepers, is arbitrarily extended to farmers, and even to women who exercise no such profession. The tax- gatherers in collecting taxes infringe the existing laws of the empire by seizing and selling the most necessary household goods, trade implements, wearing apparel, and bedding of the debtor. They invariably, when the taxpayer is not able to satisfy the State, seize objects indispensable for the proper working of any immov- able property, such as animals attached to cultivation, agricultural implements, seed corn, etc. The proprietor, entirely stripped of all movable capital, has nothing remaining but the bare land, denuded of those accessories without which it can yield nothing. Tithe farming, which does not exist in theory since the promulga- tion of the Hatts Houmayoun of 1856, is still in full force in the Armenian provinces. It may be remembered that one of the principal causes which led to the Herzegovinian insurrection was due to the excesses of the tithe farmers in the Nevesinje district. The tithe farmers in the Armenian provinces are generally the beys or local functionaries, who, in order to avoid an overt breach of the law, rent the tithes through their sons, relatives, or servants. The tithes of a given province are farmed out to the highest bidder. The farmers, in collusion with the governor of the province, never hesitate to bid an elevated price. They calculate the price they are willing to pay on the basis of more than forty per cent, minimum profit for themselves. They have nothing to fear in the way of incurring losses; for where the value of tithe is affected by a sudden fall in the produce markets, the farmers (multezims) are allowed carte blanche to recoup themselves by vexatious exactions, or by over-estimating the quantity of the produce. The tithe farmers compel the peasants to pay in specie, although the tithe is due in kind. Should the cultivator display reluctance to pay the tithe in money in lieu of in kind, the multezim refuses to assess his crops, thus exposing the agricul- turist to severe losses, for until the tithe is assessed he is not allowed to remove his produce, which stands out in the open air, The Armenians, Armenia, and the Armenian Question. 15 exposed to rain, hail, etc. The unfortunate peasant in despair appeals to the tithe farmer, who assesses the crops after payment of double the amount he demanded before. Even the produce of gardens attached to dwellings, and used for home consumption, is subjected to taxation, contrary to the existing laws of the Empire. Where the tithe is paid in kind, the producer is bound to. deliver it. The peasants wait day after day at the doors of the Government stores, in order that their crops may be measured and stored. It is, moreover, a subject of complaint that the multezims do not assess the crops at harvest time, often on account of the farming out of the tithes being delayed until that season, although the law prescribes that they should be farmed out in spring. The crops are consequently left out in the fields and threshing-floors, where they not unfrequently decay and perish. But the multezims compel the peasants to pay for the damaged produce as if it were sound. Should the peasants refuse to pay, they are subjected to all kinds of vexation. They are dragged into the law courts, ill-treated, and imprisoned. The officials, in secret league with the tithe farmers, only serve the interests of the latter, and the poor agriculturist has to sacrifice all he possesses. The villager is bound to provide the multezim and his agents food and lodgings without remuneration for such time as they may choose to remain in the village. Not un- frequently the multezim beats the villager and sullies the honour of his wife and daughter. The tithe farmers commit multifarious other abuses, in the way of levying fresh taxes, assessing produce exempt from taxation, etc. The complaints are more grievous in districts where there are beys, agas, or Kurdish chiefs who have friends in authority to cover their systematic misdeeds. Under the aforesaid circumstances the peasant, unable to satisfy the State, has recourse to usurious loans, and he thus becomes the bondsman or serf of the usurer, who in time dispossesses him of all his goods, movable and immovable. He finally has to emigrate and seek a mode of living in distant climes. Such are the unredressed Armenian grievances twelve years after the passing of Article 61 of the Berlin Treaty. To remedy existing evils, it is not necessary to create an independent or autonomous Armenia, nor do the Armenians aim either at inde- pendence or at a distinct political existence. All they ask for are civil liberties and the establishment of institutions calculated to guarantee their personal safety, the security of their property, the honour of their wives and daughters, their rights, in fact, as men and 1 6 National Life and Thought. civilised beings. The fulfilment of Article 61 of the Berlin Treaty, as explained by the Collective Note addressed to the Porte in 1880 by the great Powers, will afford satisfaction, and will avert a crisis which is assuming menacing proportions. To check the incessant plunder and raids of the Kurds and Circassians, a gendarmerie recruited among the natives and commanded by native officers should be instituted. To eradicate corruption and venality, the present administration of Armenia, which is essentially Turkish, should be entrusted to the aborigines of the land, who constitute the vital forces of the country. The provinces of Van, Erzeroum, Diarbekir, Bitlis, Karpout, and Dersim, to be grouped in one province, with an Armenian governor at its head, sitting at Erzeroum, whose duties it will be to enforce the laws of the empire, and under whose command the established gendarmerie is to be placed for the maintenance of security and order. The desiderata of the Armenians may be therefore defined thus : An Armenian administration in Armenia. Cast a glance on the map and see where Armenia lies, and what a commanding position she holds, and what grave conse- quences would result through a Russian occupation of that country through its being allowed to seethe with discontent and disaffection. Indeed, a Russian occupation of Turkish Armenia means the practical supremacy of the whole of Western Asia. In the words of the author of Greater Britain, " Russia could reach Constantinople through Asia Minor, not so directly, but more surely and more safely than through Europe."1 Military authorities testify to the Armenia plateau of Erzeroum being the key of Western Asia. Erzeroum, moreover, the capital of Turkish Armenia, is the point where converge the roads from the Caucasus and of those leading into Syria, Anatolia, and the Persian Gulf. If the Muscovite legions were allowed to become masters of such a commanding position, they would intercept the whole overland trade to India and Persia ; they may become a Mediterranean Power — with Alexandretta as their commercial port — and menace England in Cyprus and Egypt. The commercial interests of England in those regions would be placed in jeopardy by a further Russian advance ; for, to quote Lord Salisbury's own words, "the existing European trade which now passes from Trebizonde to Persia would be liable to be arrested at the pleasure of the Russian Government, by the arbitrary barriers of 1 Present Position of European Politics (p. 161), by Sir Charles Dilke. The Armenians, Armenia, and the Armenian Question. \j their commercial system." Lord Salisbury's views are shared by Sir Charles Dilke, who adds: "There is one loss by a Russian occupation of the remainder of the Turkish dominions which no British Government would willingly face. It is the loss of trade. In Asiatic provinces acquired by Russia at the end of the last war, where there was formerly a considerable British trade, there is now none ; it- has been killed by protection duties." I have alluded to the natural wealth of the country, to its valuable mineral resources, which remain unexplored and dormant through want of security and safety. What an immense opening for the industrial and enterprising classes of England if they would devote their attention to my unhappy country instead of spending millions for the exploration of the Dark Continent, under guise of suppressing slave trade ! I have endeavoured to bring out the past, the brilliant past, of the Armenians, their services to civilisation and Christendom, their rights, and how these rights are trampled under foot, and how the distinct stipulations of treaties have remained a dead letter. I have endeavoured, moreover, to show of what interest it is to England — an interest commercial, strategical, and political — to bring about the solution of the long-pending Armenian Question. I now make a solemn appeal, on behalf of outraged humanity, to the people of this country, and ask them to use their legitimate influence for the amelioration of the condition of a suffering nation, groaning under a most odious tyranny. I may here remind England's responsibilities. Subsequent to the last Turko-Russian War, Russia reserved to herself, in the 16th Article of the Treaty of San Stefano, the sole Protectorate of the Armenians. England refused to admit such a stipulation ; and a Convention was signed between England and Russia, on May 30, 1878, wherein it was agreed that the Protectorate should be jointly shared by the two contracting states. On the 4th June of the same year England signed with Turkey the so-called Cyprus Convention, which increased her responsibilities, for under that instrument she actually guaranteed the introduction of reforms in Armenia. In fact, by the Cyprus Convention, England is co- responsible with Turkey for the effective amelioration of Armenia, and she shares with that country the right of exercising a consti- tutional prerogative in Asia Minor. It is now high time that something should be done by this nation, which has been rightly styled the protector of the weak and oppressed, in the interests of humanity and justice, to say 1 8 National Life and Thought. nothing of interests already dwelt upon other than of pure senti- ment ; and it would thereby be echoing and confirming the words of a great orator, John Bright, who, in a speech delivered' in Birmingham prior to the Turko-Russian hostilities, said of the people of Great Britain that the lover of freedom always looks to them; the oppressed everywhere turn their eyes to ask for sympathy, and wish for help from them ; they feel that they make this upon them — a free people. They do not deny that claim, but they freely acknowledge it. Armenians have a claim upon England, Scotland, and Ireland, and they are confident of the result. II. A USTRIA. DR. S. SCHIDROWITZ. A FEW weeks ago I was reading in the newspapers a notice to the effect that the ballet girls of Vienna are the handsomest and the best performers in any theatre in Europe. This is almost the only favourable notice about Austria which I have seen in an English newspaper for many a year ; and I certainly would not have ventured to mention it, if it had not struck me as a very peculiar thing that such a small matter should be almost the only one mentioned in a great London paper. But it is so. Austria, though a very great country in Europe, is very little known in England, much less known than many countries in Africa and Asia, and perhaps the cause of it is this. One of the greatest and most illustrious British statesmen said publicly a few years ago, " Show me a spot on earth where Austria has done any good." Of course, such a statement from the lips of one of the greatest Englishmen does perhaps prejudice peoples' minds ; and editors, who know how to take their cue, do not occupy themselves or their readers very much with a country of which such a great statesman made such a disparaging remark. Another very great Englishman, an historian, in all his writings has hardly a good word to say about Austria, but always to the contrary ; in fact, he does not acknowledge Austria at all. He says there is an archduchy of Austria, and there is a house of Hapsburg, but he really does not" know Austria. Therefore the people who read his books cannot know anything about Austria either. It is a very remarkable circumstance that with some people history only commences very recently. With some, let us say, only in 1830 with the Reform Bill; with others perhaps only in 1867, or at some other period. If politics alone constituted the life, the principal mainsprings of the life of a people, then perhaps that great illustrious statesman and the historian might in some degree be right in saying that Austria, in comparison with a great many 20 National Life and Thought. other nations of the world, would play a very small, perhaps a very poor, role amongst them ; but the political life, the political phases of a people, do not constitute the main interest of ninety-nine out of a hundred of the people of a nation. Election for Parliament only occurs on an average about once in every four or five years. Then, of course, the free citizen can vote, can do as he wishes in political matters, and so forth. But the ordinary pleasures and enjoyments of life, these are shared alike by every one, by the poorest as well as the richest, not once during five years, but every day, in the morning, at noon, and in the evening ; and in these enjoyments of life, in the civil enjoyments of life, in the enjoyments of all liberties, the people of Austria are certainly not behind any other people, and indeed in many respects perhaps they enjoy the pleasures of life much more than other nations. The rich in Austria are not so rich as the English rich, as " Milor," for instance, who is supposed on the Continent to be a kind of angelic being who discovers gold ; but, on the other hand, the poor in Austria are not so poor, not so destitute, not so badly off as they are here. I have never in my life seen in an Austrian newspaper a notice headed " Died of Starvation." The Austrian papers have no occasion to mention, as is unfortunately too often the case in other countries, that such and such a man or woman had been found dead of starvation. Furthermore, I have never seen or read in an Austrian paper (and more particularly as regards Vienna) of drunken women fighting in the streets. I have never seen in Austria drunkenness to the extent that one sees in other countries. I have never seen the disgraceful scenes that are to be witnessed daily in countries where, according to the newspapers, a much higher degree of civilisation exists than in poor benighted Austria. The Austrians, and especially the Viennese, have always had the reputation of being an easy-going, pleasure-loving people, so much so, that Schiller, one of the greatest of German poets, spoke of Vienna as the "lotus-eating town." The common belief in Germany and other countries was, that the people of Vienna did not care about anything but pleasure and enjoying life as much as they could. But this is a very great error. I have remarked before how it was stated of Austria, " Show me a place on earth where she has done any good." It may be true, that in the history of Austria, during, say, the last fifty or sixty years, nothing very great, or stirring, or interesting as compared with other nations has happened, but history does not commence either in 1830 or in 1848. But Vienna and Austria were Austria. 21 for hundreds and hundreds of years the bulwark, the shield of Chris- tian Europe, of Christianity, against the inroads of the Mussulmans ; and to say that Austria has never done any good to the world, can certainly not be quite correct, when we consider that for many hun- dred years the people of Austria have had to shield and to protect, I may say, Europe from the attacks and inroads of the most savage enemies of civilisation which Europe and Christianity ever knew. The very name of Austria should show you the origin and scope of the history of that country. Austria means the Eastern country or Eastern Marches, a country which was specially created for the very purpose of protecting Germany and Western Europe against the inroads of the people who at the time of the exodus from Asia in the sixth century commenced to overrun that part of Europe. The Eastern Marches, which were created by the Emperor Charlemagne, were meant to be a barrier against Vandal- ism. And as at that time Christianity had only commenced to be propagated, and had no very deep hold in the country, the work which Charlemagne had laid for this people was certainly a very important and a very difficult one. And now let us see how this people who, according to the present common saying, did nothing but enjoy themselves in going to the theatre. Let us see how they proceeded. On the Danube there had been erected for a great many years a fortified castle ; but, as had happened in other countries, as had happened in England, the Roman legions, valorous though they were, could not stand against the native element, and they had to leave. On the very spot where Vienna to-day stands Celtic tribes were living. Therefore a thousand years ago Great Britain and Austria had a common nation — the Celts. Celtic tribes were living where Vienna now stands, in the same way that Celtic people inhabit the North of Scotland and Ireland. These tribes were also subject to the attacks of the nations which advanced from the south in the fifth and sixth centuries. But Vienna always managed to keep her own. We have authenticated statements how at that time, and especially later on in the eleventh century, the people of Vienna always defended themselves most valiantly against the inroads and the attacks of these people, but the real object and the real purpose for which Austria had been created commenced only in the twelfth century. Well, the people of Hungary came up, and at that time the German Emperor made the family of the Babenbergers Dukes of Austria, and . with the Babenbergers commenced the real origin of Austria and of 22 National Life and Thought. Vienna. You will see at once what spirit these Babenbergers were of, when I tell you the very first thing the greatest of the Baben- bergers did — his name was Heinrich — was to lay the foundation of the noblest church in Europe — the Stephen's Kirche. He knew that if he wished to make Vienna a town of the future, one which would last and not be ruined by barbarous invaders, he would have to invoke the help of the Church, and he did that by laying the foundation stone of the Stephen's Kirche. It is certainly one of the finest domes in Europe, if not in the world. It took over two hundred years to finish this most wonderful church dome, and now this very dome is considered by all Austria, and especi- ally by the Viennese, as the very centre of their life. Seven hundred years had passed, when a very great danger threatened the whole of Europe. It was at the time when the Turks under Sultan " Solyman the Magnificent " were in the height of their fame. Sultan Solyman had the idea that the Turkish Empire and the Mohammedan religion should become not only the principal, but the only power and the only religion in the world. He marshalled a very great army. At that time two hundred and fifty thousand men meant a much larger army than is to-day represented by two millions. He advanced right up to the walls of Vienna, and there again the inhabitants of that " pleasure-loving " capital for months and months were besieged, and eventually succeeded by their own efforts in beating back the greatest warrior of the time, and drove him back to Turkey, thus saving not only Austria, but Germany, and perhaps the whole of Europe, from the domination of the Turks, a domination which had lasted many centuries in Asia. This was in 1529. In 1683 tne same thing happened again. Again a Turkish Emperor, advised, I must say, by the Most Christian King of France, Louis XIV., sent his Generals with an army still larger than the previous one, and again laid siege to Vienna. Not one finger was raised for several months to succour the besieged Viennese. Once more the citizens of that pleasure-loving town succeeded almost alone to hold the Turks at bay, until afterwards the Duke of Lothringen and the King of Poland came to their rescue. Thus, again, it was Vienna which saved the whole country from the domination of the Turks, and who is it who does not know what the domination of the Turks in a Christian country means ? I have mentioned these few examples only to show that the great reproach " that there is not a spot on earth where Austria has done good " is not quite correct. Austria. 23 In early times, at all events, in 1529 and 1683, Austria and the capital of Austria had certainly done Europe and the world a service which hardly any other town or any other nation has done for the continent of Europe. And' yet it is unfortunately true that in some respects, especially as far as politics are concerned, Austria (I may not say is) has been very much backward in comparison with other nations. But other countries, other nations, have also had such periods — I will not say which countries. I will merely say that the development of political liberty, of all political rights, general suffrage and so forth, have also in other countries not always been the same, only that in Austria unfortunately the period of darkness has been much longer, and for the following reasons. The House of Hapsburg had, in the sixteenth century particularly, a great many enemies, who not only fought against certain princes, but against the house, against the dynasty itself. Now, unfortun- ately, the reigning family at that time called in the help of a power which five hundred years ago had done very much to keep the people in spiritual bondage. They called in the help of the Jesuits, and to that order to the greatest extent is due the dark- ness which reigned during two hundred years and more in Austria. The University of Vienna, which was founded in 1365, was at one time the greatest, or one of the greatest, of Universities, and quite on a level with the great Universities of Paris and Bologna. But since the sixteenth century, and especially since the Thirty Years' War, which did so much misfortune and harm to the centre of Europe, the University of Vienna, as well as all the lower educa- tional establishments in Vienna and Austria, came under the sway of this order, and with them there was only one principle — blind obedience and no progress. The Vienna University at that time,, instead of cultivating science ^nd art, as it has done for more than two hundred years, became nothing else than a mere machine for turning out employes of the State, and this course it was which brought Austria so low, and which induced everybody else in Europe to speak of Austria as the China of Europe, the most backward State in Europe. This state of affairs lasted very long. Politics were entirely unknown. There was nothing but blind obedience to the commands of superiors. Freethought, investi- gation, all that was ruthlessly repressed by those who conducted the education of the country from the highest university to the lowest school in the Empire. But this state of affairs does not 24 National Life and Thought. exist now, and that is the great error which people at the present time appear to be labouring under. The history of old Austria closed entirely and completely so far as politics, culture, education, etc., is concerned, with the year 1848. There is no more comparison between Austria, prior to 1848 and the Austria of to-day, than there could be a comparison say between England under one of the Tudors, or even to come nearer to the present time, say during the reign of one of the Georges and the England of to-day. Indeed, I may say that the difference is even greater, because in England, after all, it was more a question of degree. In England certain liberties always did exist, but in Austria it was not so. Everything there had to commence. The history of Austria since 1848 is therefore the history of Modern Austria, and this history is certainly much more cheering and much more pleasant to speak about. You doubtless all know that Austria, unlike most of the other European nations, cannot be considered a nation in itself, i.e. there is no Austrian, as you can say there is the Frenchman, the Italian, the Englishman. Austria is a political idea, and consists of a number of different peoples, a number of smaller or larger nations, which are collected together under the sceptre of the Imperial Family of the Hapsburgs, and they form the Austrian Empire. But it is a very great error, on the other hand, to suppose that because there is no such thing as an Austria in itself, that therefore the Austrian Monarchy as such cannot form a political union just as firm as, let us say, France or Great Britain. You all know that in this kingdom of Great Britain the people are not all of the same nation ; they are not all of the same sect. We here have different component parts, but not to such a great degree as in Austria. There the foundation was formed on the creation of the archduchy of Austria, and they were Germans. Germans still form to a great degree the majority of the population of Austria, that is, when comparing each of its other nations separately. Austria and Germany have therefore always been in close accord, not only because the Hapsburgs were Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, of German Nation, as it was called, but because the majority of the people in Austria are Germans, and because German culture, German science, were the same in both countries. You are doubtless aware that in consequence of political events the Austrian Empire, which was created in 1806, was divided in 1867 into two parts — Austria Proper and Hungary. Of Hungary A ustria. 2 5 I will not speak, only of Austria Proper, of the Austrian part of the Empire which is called Cis-Leithanian part of the Empire. Vienna, as you all know, is the capital of Austria, and a very pleasant and agreeable town Vienna is. As I said before, the reproach always was that the Viennese cared for nothing but their pleasures. But the inhabitants of Vienna showed in 1848 that they have within themselves the same fire, the same power to gain their liberties, as have been shown by other nations, say in 1688 in England, or in 1789 in France. One might say the whole system of Absolutism in Austria was overthrown by the Viennese them- selves. In imitation of the Revolution in Paris, the citizens of Vienna rose in their wrath and said, " We will not longer be slaves." The saying itself would have helped very little, but they added the act to their word. Prince Metternich, the leading minister, and the mainspring of Absolutism, had to run away, and all owing solely to the deeds of a few thousand Viennese citizens, aided by the students of the University, Vienna has not been much written about by Englishmen ; but when they do write about Vienna, one finds the most marvellous errors stated. I have read this very day, for instance, a statement that nobody who has been in Vienna has ever been invited to dinner by a Viennese. Further, that the Viennese are the most immoral people. Indeed, it would be impossible for me to go into the details of the statements which the writer makes. But I can assure you that the people of Vienna are no more immoral than the people of most other towns. For one thing, they are not hypocrites, nor are they hypercritical. They show themselves just as they are, and do not say, "We are the most virtuous people, all the rest are immoral, etc." As an example, I will tell you what happened to myself the other evening. I had a gentleman friend visiting me from Vienna. We went to one of the leading theatres of London. We sat in the stalls, and just in front of us also in the stalls were seated a gentleman and two ladies. I do not know that I could, if I attempted, describe the dress, or rather the undress, worn by those ladies. My friend from Vienna, however, remarked to me, "What, are we really sitting in a theatre in virtuous London where they do not even permit a song or dancing in the Music Halls?" Well, my friend was actually ashamed. Yes, he really blushed. He, the hardened sinner from "immoral " Vienna, actually got red in the face. Now, the English writer says the Viennese are immoral people, and here I have given you an example how the most "immoral" people may be shocked 26 National Life and Thought. when they come to London. It is, I will not say all, nonsense, but it is exaggeration to say that the people of Vienna are immoral. They have to work hard to make a living, and they do work hard ; but when their work is done, they enjoy themselves thoroughly, they do not hide themselves away, they come into the open air and enjoy themselves to their heart's content. I wish you could see on a pleasant summer Sunday afternoon two or three hundred thousand of these "immoral" people enjoying themselves, like happy children, in the Prater. Vienna has the great advantage of possessing the finest surroundings of any large town in Europe. A half-hour's walk from the town on either side brings you to the country, where you could imagine yourself say in the Isle of Wight or in Devonshire, and on the opposite direction the scenery resembles that of the Highlands of Scotland. Thither the inhabitants go picnicing on Sundays and holidays. All the inhabitants enjoy themselves almost within sight of each other. How on earth, then, that high degree of immorality of which that English author speaks can take place, I, for one, cannot very well understand. The Viennese are a good-natured people, and I have here a few books which were edited by that most unfortunate of men, the late Crown Prince of Austria. It has been said that the House of Hapsburg are the most cruel and despotic of tyrants, and so forth. But let me state what are the real facts. The Emperor of Austria lives in a house which there is no word in the English language to describe. It is like a passage, anybody and every- body can go through that house ; in fact, it is the main communica- tion between the inner town and the largest of the suburbs. Omnibuses and cabs, etc., pass through it. Twice a week the Emperor of Austria gives public audience to any one and every one. Those who have any petition to make, or any grievance to state, have only to send in their name in writing, and they are at once admitted. There are no policemen or guards to prevent any one going into the Emperor's house who wishes to have an audience with him. Now this Emperor had a son whose lamentable death you have doubtless all heard of. This son edited a book, in which you will see there are three sketches of typical Viennese — a Viennese cabman, a washerwoman, and a boy. If you will look carefully at these, you will appreciate more than you could from a hundred lectures what the inhabitants of Vienna are really like. Do that man's characteristics and type of feature give you the idea of a most awful person full of vice, etc. Austria. 27 Well, now, as I said before, the present Austro-Hungarian Monarchy consists of two parts. It would be very dry and uninteresting were I to tell you how many inhabitants each of these provinces has, and to no purpose. Allow me only to make a few remarks. The inhabitants of Austria number 39,100,000. You will see, therefore, that the Austro-Hungarian Empire is not " une quantite negiigeable" i.e., not to be thrown entirely aside. It has more inhabitants than Great Britain and Ireland. The Austrian people are good natured, but they can give as good an account of themselves as any other people, more especially have they done so in the past when allied to English soldiers, which fortunately they almost always have been. There has been only a single case, in 17 16, where Austrian and English soldiers were not standing shoulder to shoulder. And in the Austrian army and administration several of the very highest posts are filled by Englishmen, or let us say, by " subjects of Great Britain, because they happen to be Irishmen.'' The present Prime Minister of Austria, Count Taafe, is just as much an Irishman as, or much more I should say, than even Parnell himself. He comes from a very old Irish stock, and amongst the titles which he still writes after his name is one connected with the Castle of Bally " some- thing.'' The Emperor's first aide-de-camp, O'Donnell, is also an Irishman. Lacey, one of the greatest Austrian generals, the same ; and if I am not mistaken, several members of the Austrian Parliament are descendants of old Irish families. One of the best speeches, I think, I ever heard in the Austrian Parliament was by one named Skene, who was also of Irish descent. Therefore you will see that Austria and Great Britain have many sympathies in common, and I am sure nobody should say very much bad of Austria on that account. I am afraid, what I have now to say will not be very amusing for most of my kind hearers. But the object of these lectures consists also in giving some information concerning the political institutions of different foreign countries ; and, unfortunately, I know that politics are very seldom amusing, except for those to whom they are a stepping-stone to celebrity or wealth. Austria, or rather that part of Austria with which I have to deal to-day, namely, the Cis-Leithanian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is a constitutional country. Its constitution, or to speak more correctly, its constitutions, for there are several of them in existence, are all quite new, of very recent date. Until 1848 Austria was governed by the Emperor as Autocrat, or as Despot (in the old 28 National Life and Thought. Greek sense of this word). Though there had been diets in existence since the sixteenth century, they were mere shadows without the slightest influence or power. They languished as machines, without a will of their own, simply for the purpose of registering the decrees of the Emperor. Some of the Emperors governed despotically in the modern meaning of this term, while during the reign of some quite a patriarchal system of govern- ment was the order of the day. Poor Emperor Joseph, the son of Marie Theresa, nourished quite Liberal ideas, but the clerical and feudal opposition from the highest in the land was too strong even for him, and he died broken-hearted. Francis the Second was rather good-natured, and not at all cruel as long as nobody dared to oppose his absolute system of government, but even the least attempt to propagate Liberal ideas was crushed with terrible rigour. The people's duty was simply to obey and not to think for themselves. Public affairs were entirely "forbidden fruit" for the subjects; they might discuss the theatre, the opera, or the ballet; they might have given dinners to celebrate and to praise all the public virtues of a Barnum of that time ; or the Press might have banqueted the great Pears of the period, and the greatest men in the land would have been proud to assist on those occasions, but politics were entirely tabooed. Notoriety hunters and self-advertising quacks among all the professions had it then all to themselves. But I am treading on delicate ground, and I will come back to poor benighted Austria before 1848, where such occurrences might have taken place. The February revolution in Paris in 1848, the dethronement of Louis Philippe, excited the people of Vienna in the highest degree. Almost over night they also made a revolution, drove from power and country the all-mighty Metternich, and demanded a constitution, liberty of conscience, liberty of the Press, a Parliament, and all the rest of the institutions which existed in constitutional countries. The Emperor Ferdinand, a very weak, half-witted man, granted everything. But it would take too much time to give you a history of the development of political life in Austria. You all know, perhaps, that the reaction carried on with a high hand from 1852 until i860, when, after the Italian war, the Emperor again began to have recourse to constitutional means in a somewhat modest way. Only after the German war in 1866 the present constitutional and dualistic system of government commenced in the Empire of the Hapsburgs, in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. A ustria. 29 Austria Proper (Cis-Leithanian) and Hungary form two separate parts of the Empire, united through the person of the Emperor, who is also King of Hungary, and further united by certain Parliamentary institutions, which both parts of the Empire have in common. Though each part of the Empire has a Parliament of its own, yet certain common affairs, viz. the army and navy, foreign and consular affairs, certain money matters, etc., are discussed and settled by the so-called " Delegations." These delegations are, so to say, committees of the two Parliaments, to whom the above-mentioned matters are referred. Each delegation meets and discusses separately the matters laid before it by the Cabinet; they communicate with each other in writing; and only when a matter cannot be agreed upon after three " opinions in writing " have been exchanged by the delegations/then both dele- gations meet together, and the question is discussed as well as voted upon by both delegations, who ad hoc constitute then one Parliamentary body. The Hungarian as well as the Austrian Parliament possess all the well-known privileges, and do the same work as most other representatives of the people. There are two Houses of Parliament in Austria — the House of Lords and the House of Commons ; Cabinet Ministers have a right to sit and speak in both Houses, even if not members of the House. The ministers are responsible to Parliament. Both Houses have legislative powers, Bills can be brought in either by the Cabinet or by members. The multifarious business of the House of Commons in reference to matters of administration, etc., are dealt with in Austria by competent Government officers, and not by elected members of the House of Commons. The right of questioning the Government is much more limited than in England. In theory all this sounds very well, but in practice Austria cannot very well be called as yet a real Parliamentary country ; for, after all, in some departments, say, for instance, concerning foreign affairs and certain military questions, the Emperor, and not Parliament, is the supreme power, not dejure, but de facto. Austria possesses also besides its Parliament seventeen diets — Landtage. These small Parliaments legislate upon all matters which concern the interest of the province alone, and which do not touch general interests of the whole Cis-Leithanian part of the Empire. They are a kind of enlarged county councils, or, if you like to call them so, a species of Home Rule Parliaments for the different parts of the realm. Concerning the religion of the Austrians, it may be interesting 30 National Life and Thought. to know that out of the thirty-nine million population there are twenty-nine millions Roman Catholics. Next to them come Protestants, numbering 3,572,961. Orthodox Greeks (which means the same as the Russians are), 2,900,000 ; but, strange to say, in Austria alone are to be found Catholics who call themselves Greek Catholics, and among these there has always been the greatest trouble going on between Russia and Austria. This was one of the greatest and most serious difficulties between Austria and Russia. People think that politics are the worst diffi- culties between them. But the great question is whether the Greek Catholics should preponderate to Vienna or to St. Petersburg. The great majority of the people of Austria live an agricultural life, and until 1848 the number of manufactures was indeed very insignificant compared, let us say, with England. But since 1848 very great progress has been made. Two-fifths of the population of the Empire are now employed in manufactures. And now let me come to a point which is much more important, and that is education. After all, soldiering, wars, and such things do not occur, fortunately, very often, and especially do not interest many here. But the questions of education, how many children go to school in the country, that is perhaps for Englishmen the most important, the most interest- ing question. In Austria education is compulsory; that is to say, every child which is over six years old is compelled to go to school. But if I were speaking in Austria, people would laugh if I said a child is compelled to go to school. What, compel a child to go to school ! Why, it is his great good fortune that he is allowed to go. On the contrary, it would be compelled not to go to school. Therefore it is not considered at all compulsory, but it is considered highly beneficent for the people that it is so. In Austria every child goes to school from the sixth to the thirteenth year of their age. From thirteen to fifteen they have Sunday schools in the afternoon for two hours. There are in Austria three million children of the age of six years who ought to go to school. Now, how many of these do not go to school ? Only seventy. I should think you will agree with me, that is not a very bad record for such a benighted country as Austria. In Hungary, on the other hand, which is far superior to Austria as far as politics are concerned, it is quite different. In Hungary there are 1,312,371 children who ought to go to school, and there are actually attending school 1,304,000, so that actually 8000 do Austria. 31 not go to school out of one million, so that the percentage is worse in that politically better developed country than in Austria. Now the question is this : Is it better for a nation that the children should go to school, or that every man over twenty-one years of age should once in five years be able to vote for a Member of Parliament ? Permit me to say that the Austrians have the same right to vote for Members of Parliament, for there is also a Parliament for Austria. The number of Grammar Schools in Austria Proper is 131, and the number of teachers 2601. There are 11 Universities. In Vienna the University has 272 professors, teachers, and so forth, and 5606 students, not a very bad record for such a benighted town. Then, besides, there are special schools, technical, high schools, etc. In Vienna there is a High School for Agriculture alone. It has 31 professors and 340 students. There is also a School of Forestry, with 20 professors. So, you will see, the question of education is not lost there. But the greatest claim of the Austrians, and of the Viennese especially, is that they are a music-loving people. You are, I daresay, all aware that Vienna claims to be, and that she has been and is, the seat of Music. I need only mention a few names to show that this claim of Vienna is not ill founded. Every one has heard the names of Mozart, of Schubert, and of Haydn. The operas of Mozart, the songs of Schubert, and the music of Haydn are certainly more or less known wherever civilised human beings meet ; and, I am sure, no one will deny that they give more enjoy- ment than the reading of all the Blue Books that have ever been published by Parliament. I, for one, take the liberty of saying that the country which has produced such men has given to the world more enjoyment and more of the blessings of real peace than any other. The next proudest claim of Vienna to celebrity is her Medical Schools. It is well known in English professional circles that for twenty-five years and more that the Medical faculty in the University of Vienna was far above all others. The greatest English physicians have all been in Vienna and attended lectures there, which is not such a bad position for a country of which it has been said, "Show me a spot on earth where she has done any good." Furthermore, the Austrians are the happy possessors of more good watering places than any other country in the world, such as Carlsbad, Gastein, etc. Even in this minor capacity Austria may be truly said to have been of much service to the sick and the aged, 32 National Life and Thought. and therefore permit me to conclude my remarks by saying that, after all, Austria is not such a " poor benighted " country as it is alleged to be, and that a great many benefits have been conferred on the human race, not only by Austria, but by that " most immoral " city, Vienna itself. III. HUNGAR Y. PROFESSOR AUGUSTUS PULSZKY. ABOUT a century ago, when the sympathies of the people of Western Europe were first aroused in favour of wronged and struggling Poland, French writers often complimented the Poles on being " the French of the North," and this allusion to the similarity of character was invariably accepted as a flattering expression of appreciation. At the same period, and for many years afterwards, the denomination of " the England of the East " was sometimes claimed with fond complacency by Hungarians for their own country, desiring to impress foreigners with the marked difference between the people of Hungary and their unfortunate Northern neighbours. Of course, nobody dreamt of seriously comparing the culture, the development, the power, and the prosperity of the two nations, one of which, after centuries of freedom and enterprise, had risen to become the proud mistress of the seas, while the other had served as the bulwark of civilised Christendom against the attacks of Mohammedan Turkey, and bore resemblance rather to a shattered outlying bastion of a half-abandoned fortress than to the fields of the culture of the West. Still, as is generally the case with expressions that grow into stock phrases, there had been and there lingered yet a grain of truth in the analogy between Hungary and England. A certain similarity marked the origin of both — nor is it difficult to establish a parallel between the history, the institutions, nay, even between the very life and modes of thought of the world- renowned and splendid realm of liberty in the Western Isles, and of the comparatively obscure kingdom which had just but succeeded in maintaining its existence amidst the storms that had ravaged Eastern Europe, and which, after all, was the only state on the Continent that at the end of the last century had managed to uphold unimpaired its uninterrupted traditions of legal freedom. And to this very day, although the position and 34 'National Life and Thought. the destinies of the two nations are as unequal as ever, a certain distant family likeness may still be detected between them. None of the other countries, except England and Hungary, are able to appeal to the unbroken continuity of ten centuries of constitutional development ; none other have preserved a flexible constitution, capable of alteration by the regular methods of legislation, and not based upon any rigid written Charter; in none but these two did that mixed form of government contin- ually prevail in which the distribution of the powers of the monarchy, and of the aristocratical and democratical elements, may have actually considerably changed in the course of time, without either of these having ever been entirely suppressed, or the balance of power irretrievably destroyed, even at the most critical juncture. The secret of this resemblance of institutions and of the concomitant ideas and feelings is easily discovered in certain common features of the history of the two commonwealths. From the days of Queen Elizabeth, when England definitely adopted Protestant supremacy, the cause of national independence was always intimately allied to that of liberty. The political existence of the English nation, religious and civil freedom, were alike imperilled by the Spanish Armada. During the following century the more insidious but equally dangerous endeavours of Louis XIV. of France, though menacing more directly consti- tutional government, were none the less indirectly aimed against religious independence, and against the assertion of a separate national policy. Again, in the wars provoked by the aggressions of the French Revolution and the ambition of Napoleon, the defence of the existing constitution and the consolidation of the British Empire were indissolubly connected. The same holds good as to Hungary. From the day following the dire calamity of the lost battle of Mohacs, where the separate and independent development of the kingdom, together with King Louis II. himself, fell a victim to the victorious sword of Sultan Suleyman, throughout all the civil wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies, throughout the political atrophy of the eighteenth, throughout the constitutional struggles in the nineteenth, the revolution of 1848-49 and the passive resistance offered to the attempts of Aus- trian centralization afterwards, down to the period of the definite arrangement with the dynasty and the so-called Cis-Leithanian hereditary kingdoms and provinces of the Emperor of Austria, the efforts for the re-establishment and support of a national state Hungary. 25 were at all times necessarily connected with the defence of constitutional freedom, with the vindication of religious tolerance and of the legal recognition of the different Churches, with the maintenance of the political rights of the people, with the gradual development of the liberty of the subject, and with the economical emancipation of the lower orders. The national aspirations, the full outcome of the traditions of the past, were never for one moment dissociated from the endeavours to realise any part of what constitutes moral and material progress. Elements which in other continental countries were continually clashing with each other, and, when fully revealed, showed themselves to be discordant and antagonistic beyond remedy, were in Hungary indissolubly fused into one single sentiment, leavened by law-abiding respect for formal rights, by reverence for institutions which formerly had been the expression of the national mind, and prompted in no lesser degree by yearnings for spiritual liberty and by the instinctive desire of acquiring prosperity. In connection with this prevailing feeling, the idea of attaining and ensuring the complete national polity of Hungary became endowed with a magnetic power that attracted into its sphere, and united in it all the motives, all the forces of the people, which otherwise might have impelled its different sections and classes in divergent directions. Indeed, this all-pervading, deep-rooted feeling of the supremacy of the national interest is the keynote of the life and thought of the Hungarian people, and furnishes a clue to the explanation of the differences that strike the observer when comparing its charac- teristics with those of the inhabitants of the surrounding countries. For a citizen of the British Empire, which embraces the fairest portions of the globe, spreads over all the latitudes of the earth, and rules over countless races of mankind ; for a member of a commonwealth the population and wealth of which have long ago overflowed the boundaries of a merely national existence ; for an Englishman sure, as he may well be, of the language he speaks and thinks in, and of the civilisation in which he has been nurtured, and to the pale of which he belongs, of both his language and civilisation having struck root and flourishing in the most different parts of the world, and serving the needs and guiding the destinies of new nations which have grown equal to and are perhaps overshadowing the old ; for the scion of a people that can afford to be, nay, to a certain extent needs must be cosmopolitan, — it is scarcely possible to realise the intensity of the spirit of nationality, where all that makes life worth living, in a higher 36 National Life and Thought. sense, where all bonds of community extending beyond immediate private ties and aims, where every nobler and more generous impulse that stirs the blood or fires the imagination is concentrated to a single object, and where, according to popular estimation, the virtue of patriotism, which elsewhere, too, ranks high, but is deemed to be equalled, and perhaps even overbalanced, by rival qualities, is accounted as paramount and incomparable to any other, because including and absorbing the attributes of all excellence proper to human nature. The consolidation of the German Empire, the unification of Italy, are examples of the magnitude of the immanent power set free by statesmen who were endowed with foresight and ability sufficient to arouse the long dormant sense of nationality. Still, the most striking illustration of the potency of the spell exercised by the consciousness of common and single national destinies is not afforded by the cases of these great agglomerations, to the perfecting of which innumer- able other causes have contributed in no lesser degree, but rather by the persistent and unconquerable energy by virtue of which a people, comparatively weak in numbers, without racial affinity with its surroundings, isolated in its language, lacking natural means of communication, wealthy neither in intellectual traditions nor in acquired capital, continually menaced, on several occasions overrun, by enemies more numerous, more powerful, sometimes more cultivated than itself, has succeeded in holding its own during a thousand years, and in securing for the organism of its commonwealth the recognition of an adequate and firm position amongst the acknowledged civilised States of Europe. The deep hold which the spirit of nationality has obtained over the citizens of Hungary, and the matchless importance it has acquired as regards all the interests of the community, the struc- ture and the agency of the social fabric, comparable only with the supremacy of the questions of faith in England during the seventeenth century, is all the more interesting by the contrast it affords to the spectacle presented by the circumstances which led to the establishment of the national States of Germany and Italy. Nationality based upon a community of descent, language, thought, literature, and religious interest, was pre-existent in these latter cases ; the aspiration towards unity, the violent irresistible craving for framing a single organisation out of provinces that had never been knit together, in the past, by an adequate tie, were only awakened after centuries of separate existence, were the realisation of an idea that had a long antecedent history. In Hungary. 37 Hungary, as with the nations of Western Europe, it was the reverse process that took place. The Kingdom of Hungary had been established for countless generations, national and foreign dynasties had repeatedly alternated on its throne, before the full requirements and consequences of a truly national life were in their entirety apprehended, demanded, and enforced. Moreover, to this very day it is not the exclusiveness of pride in purity of race, it is not a supercilious contempt for aliens, or the separateness and aloofness engendered by religious prejudice, or intolerance of unaccustomed ways and expressions of thought, that form the backbone of national sentiment in Hungary. There is no place in the world where people belonging to more varied and distinct stocks live and mingle together, where on an area of equal extent more languages, so entirely unconnected, are spoken, where the allegiance of faith is divided amongst religions so numerous, and where true tolerance, in the sense of a ready admission of equal, or, at least, of proportionately assigned rights has, to such a degree, become absolutely necessary in the common relations of life. Speaking in round numbers, six and a-half millions of Magyars, two and a-half of Roumenes, two and one- third of Croato-Serbs, nearly two millions of Germans, only a few thousands fewer of Slovacks, three hundred and fifty thousand Ruthenes, and about a hundred thousand of diverse motley minor nationalities, such as Wends, Italians, Armenians, and Gipsies, live peaceably, side by side, in a population close to sixteen millions, all of them interspersed in the different sections of the territory of Hungary; while the list of religions and creeds includes seven millions eight hundred and fifty thousand Roman, one million and a-half Greek, and three thousand Armenian- Catholics, over two million Calvinists, one million one hundred and thirty thousand Lutheran Protestants, fifty-five thousand Unitarians, two millions four hundred and forty thousand members of the Oriental Greek Churches, and six hundred and forty thousand Jews. Nor do the lines dividing different races- and tongues coincide with those separating the religious denomin- ations. Every nationality counts members belonging to different Church-establishments ; almost every creed includes adherents of several distinct nationalities ; besides, persons belonging to each are found in every class of society. All are equally citizens of Hungary ; still, the dominant sentiment of the country is, and cannot but be, the Magyar, not in virtue of any privilege in law, but simply because it is the Magyar element that has formed and 38 National Life and Thought. upheld the Hungarian nation, because it has been the nucleus around which the other parts of the population have rallied, because the Magyars have known how to identify with their own the common interests of the rest, compared with which the separate aims of each were partly rendered compatible by a generous policy, and partly felt to be insignificant ; because, to sum up the manifold reasons in a single expression, the Magyar State, culture, and law have unceasingly served as the sole possible condition of the development and liberty of every fraction of the people. The causes that have concurred in producing these results may easily be seen written large in the course of history. It is exactly a thousand years ago, at the same period when the Northmen ravaged the shores of the West, settled in Northern France, and founded the houses of the rulers and the aristocracy of half of Europe, that the Magyars or Hungarians entered the country bounded by the Carpathians and by the flanking spurs of the eastern and southern Alps, which forms the great basin of the middle course of the Danube. They conquered it, settled in it, and for the first time in history established a united and stable realm in this part of Europe. Formerly only those portions lying near its boundaries had temporarily belonged to the sphere of civilised states ; the great plains between and along the Danube ;uid the Theiss had never formed the seat of a nation before the Hungarian immigration. A large part of the territory was at the time a scarcely inhabited waste ; the mountainous and hilly districts, covered by forests, were sparsely occupied in the North and in the South by a Slavonic, and in the West by a German population. The number, however, of the conquering Magyars, though sufficient to ensure their victory and to render them terrible to their western and southern neighbours, was not large enough to fill the expanse of the provinces their valour had acquired and their determination was able to defend permanently. Hence foreign elements were introduced, first by compulsion, later on, as Christianity was adopted, by invitation and grants of royal privileges ; and the policy ushered in by the great King Stephen, the Apostle-Saint of his people, and continued by his successors, consisted mainly in inducing immigrants from all parts to settle and gradually to infuse their life into that of the realm. The institutions of Western countries, the ideas embodied in the capitularies of Charlemagne and his successors, and in the laws of the Church, were adopted and adapted to the Magyar traditions, Hungary. 39 in which the germs of self-government and of the participation of the subjects in the sovereign power were deeply ingrained; constitutional government was gradually developed out of these rudiments in conjunction with the moral and legal conceptions, which formed the common heritage of mediaeval semi-Latin civil- isation under the fostering care of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus in the twelfth and thirteenth century the annals of Hungary present an absolute parallel to those of the Western countries, all the more, because the pretensions of the Holy Roman Empire to over-lordship were successfully repulsed. It is therefore no mere freak of history that the Golden Bull of Andrew II., analo- gous both in its antecedents and contents to the Magna Charta of England, was granted to the nation within a few years of the success of the English barons at Runymede ; nor is it a coincid- ence, occasioned by chance alone, that the demands of the Pope for feudal supremacy, and his attempts at foisting a sovereign of his choice on the nation, were equally resisted in Hungary as in England. Still, the increase of the population was not able to keep pace with the advance of culture. The best blood of the foreign settlers was continually absorbed by the ruling Hungarian element, which was never chary of admitting into the pale of social and political rights all those who, unreservedly, took part in the tasks of the organisation and defence of the nation. As to the kingdom itself, it never recognised any aristocracy of race. Yet the continual drain occasioned by incessant wars — the strain upon the Magyars who had principally to sustain the military burdens — always rendered new immigrants welcome. Especially the great Mongolian invasion of 1241 decimated the country, and the Roumenian and Ruthenian populations were gradually settled in their present abodes, for the most part about the second half of the thirteenth century. During the two hundred years that followed, from the four- teenth to the sixteenth centuries, Hungary, under the rule of the elective Kings belonging to the Neapolitan Anjou, the Bohemian Luxemburg, the Austrian Hapsburg, the native Corvine, and the Polish Jagellone dynasties, sought to establish itself as the centre of an empire, under the suzerainty of which Bosnia, Servia, Wallachia, and Moldavia were to occupy the position of feudatary provinces, and these efforts were to some degree crowned with success. The spirit of imperial destinies again attracted promin- ent members of every minor nationality to follow the instinct 40 National Life and Thought. of the unity of the Hungarian State. At the same time, a continual tendency was manifested towards forming a stable union by the identity of the monarch in Hungary, and in one or the other of the great neighbouring kingdoms. This was attempted, as regards Poland, by Louis the Great, and by Sigismund with reference to the Holy Roman Empire. Later on, as the Turkish power loomed up, menacing from the South, the task of ensuring assistance in defence of Christendom against the encroachments of the growing Mohammedan power became more imminent, and both the House of Austria and Matthias Hunyadi rivalled each other in the attempt to join the hereditary eastern dominions of the Hapsburgs and Hungary permanently into a single system. The Jagellones at last actually succeeded in uniting the crowns of Hungary and of Bohemia on their heads. But in connection with these endeavours there necessarily arose in Hungary the conviction of danger to Hungarian independence and to con- stitutional liberty, from the Kings having under such circum- stance an at least equal regard for the interests of another foreign country. Hence a certain tone of legal opposition was given to the national sentiment, which was destined to exercise a consid- erable influence over its further development — all the more because it was at this very juncture that the common law of the realm was systematically collected in the so-called Tripartite Institutes of the great jurist Verboczy; and that, in consequence, all the elements of the State became fully conscious of the precise extent and limits of their rights, and of the influence each in turn could claim in the shaping and determining the course of the nation's life. Up to this period the tenor of the history of Hungary essen- tially coincides with the contemporary vicissitudes of other countries. But the simultaneous occurrence of three momentous changes, the Turkish conquest, the separation of Transylvania, and the Reformation, was to determine a novel and tragical turn in the fate of the realm. Its dynasty and power were shattered by the onslaught of the Turks, who subsequently for a hundred and fifty years occupied the central plains, and oppressed and devastated the homes of the richest and sturdiest part of the Hungarian people. The rest of the country was torn into two ; the western half raised to the throne and acknowledged the rule of the House of Hapsburg, which was thus able to unite in the person of the ruler the sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire, of Bohemia and of Hungary, besides disposing of the strength of its Hungary. 41 hereditary provinces, the hopes of assistance by which had con- stituted the principal reason for the election of the head of the Austrian dynasty to Hungarian royalty. The eastern counties of Hungary, not subject to the Turks, gathered around the princi- pality of Transylvania, which, under elective native dynasties, organised itself separately, with the firm intent, however, of joining in the reconstitution of the realm so soon as this might be feasible after the expulsion of the Ottoman invaders. The Pro- testant Reformation meanwhile rapidly spread over the whole country ; permeated all classes of the population ; gave the people a new interest in religion, in education, and in literature; supplied a new opportunity for the development of self-government in its ecclesiastical institutions ; but it also inevitably entailed upon the coming generations the secular dissensions and bitter struggles which for the moment still further weakened the enfeebled nation, although destined later on to elicit its full enthusiasm in the defence of constitutional rights, and ultimately to lead to the establishment of religious tolerance and of the liberty of con- science. From 1526 to the end of the seventeenth century Hungary was thus the scene of continual depredations, of wars, and of civil and religious strifes ; and in spite of the patriotism of great leaders on both sides, of the Bathorys, of Bocskay, Bethlen, and Rakoczy, of the Zrinyis, of Cardinal Pazman, and of Eszterhazy, — in spite of the brilliant successes achieved from time to time, which assisted in keeping up the spirit of the people, and continually preserved the consciousness of common interests and single national destinies, the population, as well as the wealth of the country, was diminishing fast; and although poetical and religious feelings were aroused to a high pitch, although science was earnestly cultivated, and thus the conviction of a happier future, and of the assertion of the unity and independence of Hungary was main- tained, yet the decrease in numbers, power, and influence became undeniable, and the melancholy cast acquired by popular senti- ment in those well-nigh hopeless days of darkness has ever since remained a marked trait in the character of the people. At last, in 1686, Buda, the ancient capital of Hungary, was retaken, and by the end of the seventeenth century the territory of the entire kingdom recovered from the domination of the Turks. Not, however, by Magyar forces alone, but by the imperial army, under Charles of Lorraine and Eugene of Savoy, an army of which the Hungarian troops formed no small con- 42 National Life and Thought. tingent, but which otherwise was composed mainly of levies and volunteers from almost all the countries of Europe, and received considerable subsidies from Pope Innocent XI. The consequence was that attempts were made by the ministers of the Emperor and King Leopold I. to assimilate Hungary with the hereditary provinces of Austria, to suspend and abolish the constitution, to extirpate Protestantism, to germanise the Administration, to establish the absolutism of the Court of Vienna over a people that, it was supposed, would with the lapse of time forget the memories of its separate existence, and be content to merge into the mass of subjects, denuded of political rights, which constituted the bulk of the inhabitants of the inherited dominions of the Hapsburgs. But the Magyar population, although reduced in strength and pride, had preserved enough of vitality and energy to resist forcibly these endeavours of sanguinary proselytism and of despotical centralization ; and it was only after long-undecided civil convulsions, coinciding with the War of the Spanish Succes- sion, that peace was secured, the constitution of Hungary re- established, and the dynasty and the realm completely reconciled. But a great part of the territory had been laid waste, and was absolutely depopulated, and on this Serb, German, and Slovack immigrants were settled, " hewers of wood and drawers of water," who were a valuable addition to the resources of the country, but who required a long apprenticeship before growing ripe for political liberty, and being able to acknowledge as their own the inspirations of national life. As the decades of the eighteenth century succeeded each other, without the internal peace of the country being disturbed, though there was no lack of foreign wars and of sacrifices for upholding the right of succession of the great Queen Maria Theresa, estab- lished by the acceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction, and for advancing the interests of the Austrian hereditary provinces, the community and mutuality of the defence of which, with that of Hungary, had been legally provided for — slowly and gradually the nation, and especially the upper and middle classes, composed almost entirely of landed proprietors, attained a considerable measure of material prosperity. Notwithstanding, a certain torpor, like the uneasy sleep of exhaustion after feverish excite- ment, crept over the minds of the people. Tied down to the feeble policy of the sinking Holy Roman Empire, removed from the great questions of European import, which were managed exclusively by the Viennese Chanceries, deprived of the healthy Hungary. 43 stimulants of commerce and industry, which were monopolised by the more advanced town-inhabitants and capitalists of Austria and Bohemia, competition with whom was again excluded by an elaborate fiscal system of duties along all the frontiers, and cut off from immediate contact with the progress of Western Europe by the system of absolutism which rendered the hereditary provinces an almost impervious barrier to the entrance of novel ideas — Hungary fell into a sort of fatalistic quietism, during which it came perhaps nearer to losing its independence, its feeling of proper personality and identity, even its very language, and thus incurred a danger by far greater than had ever been the case under the blows of its adverse fortunes. Its governing nobility, apprehensive of the recurrence of events that might justify or, at least, furnish pretexts for new schemes of subverting the constitu- tion of the realm — already isolated on the Continent of Europe — dreaded and warded off all legal change and reform, and became attached to the doctrines and practices of extreme provincial Conservatism. The technical Latin of mediaeval documents quite supplanted the Hungarian language in the business of legislation, of administration, of the courts of law, and often even in the common intercourse of private life. The watchword of liberty had by a scarcely perceptible misuse degenerated into being synony- mous with the expression of aristocratical privilege, and the traditions of dearly acquired rights had been corrupted into jealousy of their further extension. The masses Avere looked upon as the "misera plebs contribuens? a miserable populace of tax- payers; the few hundred thousands of the privileged classes imagined themselves to be the totality of the nation, and in their ignorant scorn were fond of repeating, " Extra Hungariam non est vita ; si est vita, non est ita " — " Beyond Hungary there is no life; if there is any, it does not come up to ours." The turn of the tide, however, came yet in time to arouse the nation. The well-meaning but impracticable bureaucratic in- novations of the Emperor Joseph II., who refused to have himself crowned King, being unwilling to burden his conscience with oaths of upholding a constitution he wished to abolish, dispelled the dreams cherished as to the security of the ancient institutions, and evoked an active opposition to the denationalizing tendencies, which had been carefully fostered, and now were openly avowed by the court. The supreme importance of a national spirit in the development of Hungary, if it meant to retain its individuality as a State, the necessity of national ideals, of a broader and more 44 National Life and Thought. enlightened patriotism, even for the leading classes, flashed upon the minds of the whole people ; and the excitement occasioned by the democratical doctrines of the French Revolution, which had penetrated only so much as to merely touch the higher social layers, soon polished off the rust that had settled on their minds. In the memorable Parliament of 1791-92 the principles of in- dependence, of political, civil, and religious liberty were asserted anew, feelings of enthusiasm were kindled for the national language, and for the first time again, after a secular neglect, the interests of the masses began to be considered. The movement was arrested, and the realisation of the more high-minded proposals adjourned in consequence of the revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and of the reactionary policy all over the Continent, of which the Viennese Government became the stronghold. For the first quarter of the present century even the manifestation of Liberal views was effectually suppressed ; and later on, all legal changes were hampered by the refusal of the Government to assent to them, and by the predominant influence of the Court in the House of Lords. But even though the actual institutions and the material conditions remained undeveloped, the progress of the ideas could not be stopped ; and thus even- tually, as the times ripened, the changes could be effected in an easier and more even manner. Public opinion gradually grew too strong to be successfully opposed any longer. Great leaders of the nation arose. Count Sze'chenyi from amongst the members of the Aristocracy urged economical reforms in the first place, demanding laws for the establishment of credit, favouring industry, developing communication, instituting social and humanitarian clubs, and, above all, raising the cry for universal and equal taxation. Francis Deak, essentially the representative of the middle classes, but whose noble and enlightened patriotism, disinterestedness, moderation, wisdom, and eloquence were to render him the universally acknowledged spokesman and guide of his people, the arbiter of their destinies, was the presiding master- spirit of the party of reformers who prepared the ground for the achievements of 1848. Last, but not least, Louis Kossuth, rising from the ranks of journalism, communicated the fire of his extraordinary genius to the whole country, and decided the constitutional contest in favour of the emancipation and enfran- chisement of the lower orders, and of the adoption of the system of responsible parliamentary government. The twenty years that elapsed between 1828 and 1848 were indeed the period of the Hungary. 45 effervescence of the national spirit, which was manifested not only in the brilliant debates of the Legislature, not only in the self- governing activity of the counties, not only in the broad views of generous religious tolerance adopted by the adherents of all churches, nay, to a degree unprecedented in any other epoch or country, by the clerical authorities themselves, but equally so in poetry, especially by Vorosmarty and Petofi, in literature, and in all the walks and occupations of life. Nor was participation in public concerns any longer confined to the formerly governing classes. The necessity of a democratical remodelling of the constitution was openly avowed. It was clearly seen that the concurrent efforts of all elements of the nation were indispensable to its being raised to the eminence from which it might proudly claim a position equal to that of the peoples of other European States. The fruits of these struggles and labours were reaped in 1848. The peasantry was relieved of the dues it had to pay to the land- lords, in work and kind, for the use of its farms ; a considerable part, nearly half of the land, was made over in fee simple to the tenants, the compensation of the landed proprietors being assigned to the fund of general taxation. Class privileges were abolished, equality before the law was asserted, equal civil rights were extended to the entire population, and political rights attached to a comparatively low franchise. Ministerial responsibility was introduced, Transylvania reincorporated into Hungary, and the sovereign independence of the State not only theoretically re- established, but practically given effect to in its several institutions. The royal sanction was obtained to all these measures ; and the general hope seemed to be well founded, that all obstacles to peaceful progress had thus been overcome by lawful means, without the reproach of a single deed of violence. Once more, however, a cruel disappointment lay in store for the country. The settlement of two questions had been neglected, the attendant dangers underestimated, and the inexperience which thus afforded the enemies of Hungary a handle for carrying out their sinister plans was dearly paid for by the nation. Parallel with the expansion of Magyar sentiment in Hungary, the ambitions of the southern Slav population of Croats and Serbs had also developed. In spite of the prophetic warnings of Count Szechenyi, no account was taken of the symptoms of separatistic tendencies in Croatia. Instead of offering to this province — -the only part of Hungary which was geographically and historically distinct from 46 National Life and Thought. the remainder, and which, while the rest of Hungary by its natural features is mapped out as an essential unity, seems to bear equally the evident marks of having been destined for a sort of Federal union — some degree of Home Rule, it was fused into the rest, nor was the equal use of the Croatian with the Magyar language in the Legislature conceded to its representatives. The feelings of dissension thus engendered, as well as the unreasoning hatred felt by portions of the Servian and Roumanian peasant populations, especially in the South and in Transylvania, against their former landlords, were still further inflamed by the intrigues of the reactionary party in Austria, and finally broke out in sanguinary insurrections. On the other hand, no contrivance had been effected by which the foreign and military policy, the common affairs of the Kingdom of Hungary and of the hereditary provinces of the Hapsburg dynasty, which constituted the Empire of Austria, properly so called, might be managed harmoniously and with common consent, especially since constitutional govern- ment had been introduced, not without the urgent insistance and assistance of the Hungarian Parliament, in Vienna, too. Besides, no arrangement had been made for Hungary's acknowledging and assuming any share of the burden of the public debt of Austria, incurred, partly at least, in the interest of the common policy of both countries. Hence misunderstandings and ill-will arose between the Governments and Parliaments of Vienna and Pest ; and a pretence, wearing some semblance of justice, was thus furnished for meddling with the internal affairs of Hungary, which the Court, anxious to do away altogether with innovations and constitutional government alike, was not slow in making use of. Thus, first an armed civil struggle ensued in the South and in the East ; then the Imperial Austrian Government, which, after quelling insurrectionary movements in Prague and Vienna, had practically restored Absolutism, supported the Croatian and Roumenian rebellions, and openly attacked Hungary. The war lasted for one year. The armed resistance of Hungary, strictly legal in the beginning, assumed a revolutionary hue when the abolition of the constitution and independence of the Realm became the avowed object of the Viennese statesmen. The Hungarian armies, victorious so long as they were opposed to the Croatian and Roumenian insurgents, and to the Austrian forces alone, were unable to cope with the superadded power of Russia, the intervention of which had taken place in the interests of despotism. By the end of the summer of 1849 Hungary. 47 Hungary was again prostrate at the feet of a relentless foe ; her best blood A\ras profusely shed on the scaffold, the flower of her citizens were cast into prison, or escaped as fugitives into foreign exile. For twelve years the name of Hungary, as a State, was erased from the map of Europe. Bureaucratic Absolutism ruled supreme in Austria, and did its best to obliterate all Hungarian institutions. Germanisation was the order of the day, the German tongue being declared the exclusive language of official life as well as of the higher schools. Government was carried on by means of foreign, German, and Czech officials. No vestige was left, not only of the national independence, but either of Home Rule or of self-government of any sort ; the country was divided into pro- vinces without regard for historical traditions ; in short, an attempt was made to wipe out every trace denoting the existence of a separate Hungary. All ranks and classes opposed a sullen passive resistance to these attacks against the existence of the nation ; even the sections of the nationalities which had rebelled against the enactments of 1848, at the instigation of the re- actionary Camarilla, were equally disaffected in consequence of the short-sighted policy of despotical centralisation ; and it was at this critical phase of the national life that the diverse elements of the country were again welded into the unanimity of patriotic sentiment, that all minor differences were sunk in the passionate craving for the restoration of the realm and of its constitutional rights, and that the paramount importance of the national questions rendered the people definitely tolerant as to diverg- encies on all other issues. Finally, after the collapse of the system of Absolutism in consequence of financial disasters and of the misfortunes of the Italian War of 1859, the Hungarian Parliament was again con- voked ; and after protracted negotiations, broken off and resumed again, the impracticability of a system of provincial Federalism having been proved in the meantime, and the defeat incurred in the Prussian War of 1866 having demonstrated the futility of any reconstruction of the Empire of Austria, in which the national aspirations of Hungary were not taken into due consideration — an arrangement was concluded under the auspices of Francis Deak, Count Andrassy, and Count Beust on the basis of the full acknowledgment of the separate national existence of Hungary, and of the continuity of its legal rights. The idea of a centralised Austrian Empire had to give way to the dual Austro-Hungarian 48 National Life and Thought. monarchy, which is in fact an indissoluble federation of two equal States, under the common rule of a single sovereign, the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, each of the States having a constitution, government, and parliament of its own, Hungary especially retaining, with slight modifications, its ancient institutions remodelled in 1848. The administration of the foreign policy, the management of the army, and the disbursement of the expenditure necessary for these purposes, were settled upon as common affairs of the entire monarchy, for the management of which common ministers were instituted, responsible to the two delegations, co-equal committees of the parliaments of Hungary and of the Cisleithanian (Austrian) provinces. Elab- orate provisions were framed for the smooth working of these common institutions, for giving weight to the constitutional influence, even in matters of common policy, of the separate Cisleithanian and Hungarian ministries, and for rendering their responsibility to the respective Parliaments an earnest and solid reality. The financial questions pending in the two independent and equal States were settled by a compromise ; measures were taken for the equitable arrangement of all matters which might arise in relation to interests touching both States, such as duties, commerce, and indirect taxation, all legislation on these subjects taking place by means of identical laws separately enacted by the Parliament of each State. Every device human foresight and political ingenuity, sharpened by long experience, could suggest to ensure the requisites of both firmness and stability of the entire monarchy, as well as the maintenance of the free and independent national life of each of its realms, was adopted in order to harmonise the conditions of imperial dominion with those of the sovereignty of the separate constituent States. Simultaneously with these arrangements the political differences between Hungary and Croatia were compromised by granting provincial Home Rule to the latter, an expedient which has not quite done away with the difficulties that crop up from time to time, but which still, on the whole, has diminished the chances of direct collision, and, up to the present, has prevented the occurrence of irreconcilable conflicts. Thus the organisation of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy on the basis of dualism, and the compromise entered into between the two halves composing it, whilst uniting for the purposes of defence the forces of two States of a moderate size and extent into those of a great empire, able to cope with the exigencies of Hungary. 49 an adequate position amongst the first-class Powers of Europe, restored also to Hungary its independence and its unfettered sovereignty in all internal matters. On this solid foundation it was rendered possible for the country to devote its attention chiefly to the reform of its institutions, and to the development of its resources, moral as well as material. The pressure, which for centuries had directed the efforts of the people mainly towards upholding constitutional rights, and had concentrated the national thought into opposition to absolutistic attempts in the service of foreign ideas, having been removed, new channels were opened out for the energies of the community in all those directions in which the modern life of civilised nations demands their activity. All the great human and social interests, scientific, educational, administrative, sanitary, and economical, which by the side of the paramount claims of the national cause upon the people, necessitating practically the sacrifice of all minor, though important, aims, had formerly received merely a partial, and rather theoretical than actual recognition, have thus obtained their due position in the public view, and are able to attract the amount of attention and devotion they deserve; indeed, the proper balance of national life in Hungary has been, in conse- quence, re-established. A full picture of the life and thought of Hungary in the present would, therefore, merely repeat the well-known outlines of the social, industrial, mental, and moral features of other civilised communities in Europe. The Magyar has ceased to be a so-called " interesting nationality," Hungary has neither an eastern nor an antiquated character, but has simply resumed its position amongst the factors of Western culture. There are doubtless certain differences between its condition and that of other nations, but rather of degree than of kind, and manifesting themselves no longer in salient outward traits. Hungary is still far more of an agricultural than of a commercial, and perhaps more of a com- mercial than of an industrial country. Its acquired capital is not yet proportionate to its natural wealth, nor are its investments commensurate to the talent, skill, and industry of the nation. It is only by persevering efforts, with due patience for the accumul- ation of results in course of time, that essential and indubitable progress can be accomplished. There are, however, already certain social conditions as to which Hungary, even at this day, stands well nigh unrivalled. The bulk of the population in the plains and midlands is composed of a freehold peasantry, D 5<D National Life and Thought. endowed with the franchise, accustomed to communal, and participating in county self-government, entirely independent in thought and bearing, who for public spirit, education, working power, and for their standards of life and comfort and wealth, may favourably compare with any other similar class on the face of the earth. The cities and towns, too, are rising fast, have become almost entirely Magyar in character, and are growing to be more and more centres of intellectual activity. Political life, although happily no longer occupied by con- stitutional questions, has not lost its attraction for the people, and, as is natural in a free country, absorbs a great part of public attention. An enormous mass of political work has been done since 1867, and is still going on. Elementary education has been rendered universal and compulsory, and the institutions for higher and University courses have been taken charge of by the State, and rendered national. The system of railway communica- tions has been perfected to a high degree, and the State has obtained direct control of almost all the lines. The franchise for the House of Commons, and the election of the members, has been regulated, and the House of Lords reformed, without, however, any elective element being introduced into it. Agri- cultural, industrial, and commercial laws have been passed in great numbers. The administration of justice has been assured by a system of an independent judiciary appointed for life, and removable only for cause, and even the great task of legal codification has been begun, and is in a fair' way of being accomplished. Of course, a considerable amount of the strength of the nation has been devoted to military armaments. Indeed, the sacrifices demanded by the circumstances of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy for keeping step in its military organisation with the immense and unprecedented development of the armed forces of the neighbour- ing empires, have proved a severe strain upon the finances, and have taxed to the uttermost the ingenuity of Hungarian statesmen, and the forbearance of the taxpayers, in order to be enabled to incur permanently the attendant expenses, without the utter ruin of the country. Compulsory universal military service for the men of all classes has been adopted, and besides the common imperial and royal army, the Hungarian Honve'd-army has been Constituted and fully equipped. But though nothing has been spared to enhance the means of the defence of the monarchy, the even balance of receipts and expenditure in the Hungarian budget, Hungary. 5 1 which at first was endangered by the necessity of profuse state- investments and by the expenses for the army, has been re-estab- lished, and all political parties are unanimous in their determina- tion of not allowing it to be disturbed. As to social and political tendencies in general, the overwhelm- ing majority of the Hungarian people is neither Conservative nor Radical, but adheres to tenets which in England would be termed the views of moderate Liberalism. The aristocracy has preserved a certain amount of prestige, and no one dreams of abolishing the House of Lords. The bulk of the political power is in the hands of the middle-class landed proprietors, whom the peasantry at this day, too, willingly accept as their political leaders. Demo- cratical ideas have acquired a permanent hold over the minds, but not so far as to obliterate traditions, which in Hungary bear no tinge of reactionary associations, but rather point to devotion to the cause of national rights. There is no virulent sectarian feeling, nor any possibility of the success of ultramontane doctrines, Church matters being essentially regarded from the standpoint of broad tolerance. In consequence of all these circumstances, there is no strongly marked line of division between any sections of the people ; and although party feeling at times inevitably runs high, the implacable spirit of faction is seldom entertained, and then but by very few ; nor is there any important body of citizens advocating any doctrines other than those of steady and gradual progress in consonance with popular ideas. Especially with regard to the foreign policy the whole nation is absolutely unanimous in favour of peace, not only for the moment, but on principle, so far as possible, for all times. Every one in Hungary knows that the country has nothing to gain, and much to risk, by any extension or conquest whatever. There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that the Hungarian people are eager for military glory, or desirous of revenge, because their ancestors have fought well on many a field, or because the last generation has given brilliant proofs of its valour in the wars of past decades. On the contrary, there is probably no nation in Europe in which any interference with foreign affairs is less popular. Even the occupation of Bosnia was accepted with reluctance, and only because it became evident that it was indispensable for the defence of the southern frontier, and as a counterpoise to eventual offensive plans of Russia, Naturally there is a resolute determin- ation throughout the people to be ready for any sacrifice, in order to resist aggression, and to maintain the independence and the 52 National Life and TJiought. conditions of the free internal development of the nation. But war in any case would be regarded as the last measure of dire necessity. The consciousness that the strength of the realm' is continually increasing in peace, that the welfare of the people requires all the combined efforts of the citizens of Hungary, is much too deeply ingrained by the lessons of the past to be lightly forgotten or set aside. It is universally felt that Hungary is, though quietly, on the road of progress ; and in our days it is not the communities which know they are progressive that are likely to embark upon perilous adventures, or to jeopardise the benefits derived from the harmonious advance of the peaceful co-operation of mankind. IV. GERMANY— POLITICS. SIDNEY WHITMAN. I FEAR it is only a sad repetition on my part if I begin by repeating what has been referred to each Sunday I have been present here, namely, our deplorable average ignorance of foreign countries in general. But I must even add to that, and mention our strange want of interest in other European countries. Some years ago an excellent standard work on France, by an eminent German author, was translated into English and published by one of the leading London publishers. Now, although the book was published at a moderate price, although neither the author nor the translator received one penny for their work, the book at the end of an eight years' sale showed a loss of ^28 on the bare costs of publication ! Not a very encouraging speculation for author or publisher, you will admit. One of the most ambitious of our monthly reviews lately treated a book on Germany by a person I am acquainted with to this nice little criticism : "A dull book on a dull subject." It is this arrogance which, inculcated by a certain section of our snobocracy, settles down in wider circles, and does us more harm than making us disliked ; it keeps us in ignorance. Though, of course, this is an isolated flagrant case, still, if this same author had written a book in German on England, although many German reviewers might have called the book itself dull, I venture to say that in the whole of Germany it would be impossible to find one educated critic who could be such a self-satisfied Pharisee as to call the subject of England a dull one. But it is only fair to state that we are by no means alone in our ignorance of our neighbours. I remember seeing the letter of a French prisoner during the war of 1870, who was interred in the city of Stuttgard, the capital, as you are doubtless aware, of a petty German kingdom nearly adjoining France. He wrote home, "lama prisoner here in Stuttgard, on the frontier of Russia." 53 54 National Life and Thought. I have found very strange ideas prevailing in Russia with regard to us, and even with regard to Russia's immediate neighbours, the Germans. Even the Germans themselves, by far the best educated of Europeans, have some very strange notions about us, although, as I shall have occasion to notice later on, their acquaintance with other nations as a rule is extraordinary. But it is not the ignorance of the untutored many that is so surprising as that of men in high and responsible positions. It is a well-known fact that the belief of Napoleon III., at the outbreak of the '70 war, that South Germany would join France, a belief shared by a great number of educated Frenchmen, could only have been the result of most culpable ignorance. At that very time an exceedingly able Frenchman, Baron Stoffel, was military attache at the French embassy in Berlin, and only too truly gauged the real state of affairs, but he was not listened to. Unhappily for France, the politicians of Paris did not want enlightenment ; they preferred to follow the blind impulse of passion and hatred. In our own country, the biographies and memoirs of political personages during this century again and again reveal an astonishing ignorance of the most simple facts regarding other countries — ignorance which, fortunately, has not involved us in any of the disastrous consequences above referred to, although more than once it has brought us very near to serious international complications. Against the above, it is pleasing for us to know that the authors of the standard works on Germany's two greatest men of the last century were Englishmen. Carlyle wrote the History of Frederick the Gnat, and G. H. Lewes the best History of Goethe. These two works are each accepted in Germany as the standard ones in their respective subjects. That shows us what we are capable of doing when we set ourselves to familiarise our minds with the doings and thought of other countries. It is indeed a start the Germans have over us that, firstly, through their superior general education, and, secondly, through the wonderful hunger for information and knowledge of all kinds that pervade that people, from the highest to the humblest, they possess an acquaintance with other countries that is perfectly unequalled. This knowledge has assisted their leaders enormously in shaping their policy ; it has assisted the mass of the nation in their unceasing efforts to rival other nations, and particularly us, in Germany — Politics. 55 commerce and manufacture, as well as in science ; in fact, in every branch of national striving and activity. The history of our time affords a very striking instance of this intimate knowledge the Germans possess of other countries. During the Secession War in America we English, even leading politicians and the wealthy classes (I do not like the words upper and lower classes), were entirely at sea as to the aspects and prospects of that struggle. The masses of this country — to their honour be it said — sympathised with the North. The well-to-do classes not only sympathised with the South, but, a proof of great ignorance of the realities of the struggle, believed in the success of the South, and even invested their money in their belief. In Germany there was perhaps less barren sympathy spent (the Germans, unlike us, are not in the habit of squandering that commodity broadcast) ; but every servant girl, every boots at an inn had his savings snugly invested in green-backs. Millions and millions of money were made in Germany by the population at large in this one instance, not to mention what larger capitalists made — a striking instance, I hold, of the usefulness of geogra- phical and political information about other countries beside our own ! So much for the drawbacks of ignorance ! Now let me draw nearer to the subject of my lecture. Of course, in the short time at my disposal, the limits of which I promise you not to exceed, it is quite impossible for me to tell you much about Germany ; anything, in fact, at all compre- hensive. Nor can it be my sole aim to-day to point out to you by a series of parallels where the Germans are deficient or where they shine to advantage by comparison with us. The most I can do is to endeavour to give you some faint notion of the general political history that has gradually, after a lapse of over a thousand years, brought Germany to the position she occupies to-day. All I can hope for is, that the subject may interest you suffi- ciently to warrant your pursuing it yourselves more fully to some purpose. The Germans have reaped great benefits from studying us. It is high time we endeavoured to gain some more solid advantage by studying them and their institutions ; for we have reaped many advantages already by so doing. For instance, our wonder- ful progress in industrial art and manufacture, our technical schools that are springing up everywhere, not to mention our 56 National Life and Thought. greatly improved educational status of late years, is almost solely owing to what we have learned of Germany. But, believe me, there is still more to be learned from that source, particularly in the present day, than is dreamt of in our philosophy. I need only refer to the great problems of social progress which clamorously await solution with us. The study of Germany offers us valuable hints, believe me, in this important branch of politics. With your kind permission, I should iike to begin by dwelling for a few moments on the word politics itself, the one science everybody seems to think he understands without having learned it. I presume the word itself is derived from the Greek — 7roAis : polts = a city. iroXires : polites = a citizen. Politics, then, in the original acceptation, might perhaps be termed the science that shall treat in a broad aggregate sense of the wellbeing and the prosperity and progress of the units of a nation — the citizens. That must have been in remote ages when civilisation was simpler than it is to-day, and when the wellbeing of the citizen was, except for occasional interruption by war, famine, or flood, the whole concern of the rulers of a people. The greatest happiness of the greatest number is an ideal state of things. In our time politics has come to mean in its full sense that vast and complex science which deals with the balance of power ; the supremacy of one people over the other ; the predominance of one race over another ; the dominion of one continent, or of one small island, over a great part of the inhabited globe. That is what politics have come to in our time. Now, although it is a wise saying that you should not prophesy unless you know, I will venture to prophesy that we have reached an epoch in the history of civilisation when politics will have to go back to their primitive occupation and busy themselves more earnestly, devotedly, and unselfishly with the welfare of the unit — the citizen; the poor citizen; the weak, who cannot fight the battle of life in a callous world rolling with wealth, and side by side with misery, poverty, and degradation. And let me tell you, that the first step towards attacking — I do not say solving, that is still far distant — this most pressing political problem of our time was taken by the late Emperor William, assisted by his great minister Bismarck, in his proposals for the care of the aged, the sick, and the wounded in the grim battle of life — the life of the working man. Germany — Politics. 5 7 The science of politics, as I have endeavoured to point out to you, has mighty problems to solve, and yet we are daily in the habit of receiving and giving opinions on them with a very slender foundation of knowledge or experience. What would the specialist think if we were to give a confident opinion, and back it by our vote, on an important point of a science which we have never specially studied ? And yet we do this daily with regard to that most intricate of sciences — the science of politics. Believe me, the question of home politics requires a close study, not only of our own social conditions of life; in our time I think, I may safely say, it is also necessary to study and profit by the experience gained, through much individual effort and suffering, by other countries also. But as for some of the broader questions of international politics, I make bold to say, it is unlikely for us to have three consecutive logical ideas on the subject, unless we are more or less familiar with the past history of other countries beside our own. Now for a glance at the past history of Germany, in order the better to understand its product — the present. The centre of Europe had been inhabited by a number of German tribes even before the time of Csesar, nineteen hundred years ago, but it was not until the year 800 of our era that they were united into one great empire. It was on Christmas Day of the year a.d. 800 that Charle- magne, the head of the Franks, was crowned at St. Peter's, in Rome, as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, King of Ger- many, and Arch Protector of the Christian Faith. Thus over two hundred and fifty years before the battle of Hastings, from which our modern English history dates, we find Germany a great power — the central constituent of the greatest power in Europe. I must pass over the history of centuries in leaps and bounds, merely mentioning that the dissensions of the sons of Charlemagne and their successors ultimately resulted in dividing the centre and west of Europe into three distinct monarchies : — i. France, the least powerful, but the foundation of the France we all know. 2. The kingdom of Lorraine, a great part of which, together with Burgundy, is now merged in the France of to-day. 3. Finally, the kingdom of Germany, ruled by elective monarchs, 58 National Life and TJiought. who at the same time were only crowned as Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, by this fact of being kings of Germany. The time at my disposal does not allow me to do more than refer to the splendour of the Empire of Germany during the Middle Ages, when she was practically supreme over the whole of Christianity, except independent little England. The dawn of the Reformation found the German King or Roman Emperor virtually ruler over a realm on which the sun never set. We require an effort of the imagination even to recall that there was a time when the ships of the Hansetowns brought over unrivalled wealth to their harbours, and had a larger seaboard than the whole of England, when Germany was the home of merchant princes who helped their monarchs from their own private means, when German architecture was most splendid, when German life was most luxurious, and German manufacture the most renowned. The greatness of Germany found its apogee in Charles V., and began to decline immediately after his death. Charles the Fifth lived 1520-55, and was cotemporary with our Henry VIII. , who, in fact, as well as Francis the First of France, both competed for the German crown, which, as I have already pointed out, was elective. Charles the Fifth practically ruled over the whole of Central Europe, Spain, and those parts of America which had been discovered by Spanish naviga- tors and explorers. France, who has within the memory of living men — though only of the very aged — held sway over the whole of Europe, always excepting England, was a comparatively small Power in these days. But it was not to be very long before she should profit by the most potent causes of decay of the German Empire — internal rivalries, selfish family policy, and religious dissension — and rise to power at its expense. And this brings me to that part of the history of Germany — the period of the Reformation, and one of its results, the terrible Thirty Years' War, without knowing something of which, I think, it is almost impossible to form a fair idea of the political aspira- tions of Germany of the present day. We must bear in mind that it was Germany that bore the brunt of the fierce struggle on the Continent against the intellectual bondage of the Roman Catholic priesthood of those days. It was a German peasant's son, Martin Luther — whose birthday it is this very day — who stood alone with the Bible in his hands, Germany — Politics. 59 before the Imperial Court at the Diet of Worms, and with the prospect of death before him, sooner than yield one inch of his convictions, held by these memorable words, " I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen ! " When warned not to go to Worms, for fear of assassination, this mighty peasant's son replied, " And yet I will go to Worms if the house-tops were crowded with devils." This battle cry of conviction, pitted against the power of Rome, backed, as was that power, by all the immense might of the Catholic Emperor, Charles V., found an echo far and wide among the best blood of the Fatherland. Thus began the dawn of a new era in Europe, the Reformation initiated in Germany by Martin Luther, although it took nearly seventy years to grow strong enough to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by Charles V.'s suc- cessors, backed as they were by the whole weight and power of Catholicism. This led, in its consequences, to the Thirty Years' War, perhaps the most dreadful curse and calamity that ever befell a people. In that war the northern and central part of Germany fought for thirty long years, at times assisted by the Swedes, the French, and other foreigners, against the power of the Houses of Austria and Bavaria. We in England also have our glorious pages of Protestant history connected with the Reformation. We need only recall Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada. But with us its inception was more of a political and aristocratic character. In Germany the dawn of modern times sprang from the very heart of the best of the people, and they also it was who suffered most in its furtherance. We always had the advantage of being safe on this tight little island we love so much. Our country has never been invaded, and our population decimated, as was the case in Germany during the Thirty Years' War. Before that war Germany had a population of over sixteen millions ; at its close less than five millions remained. Before that war broke out Germany was perhaps the wealthiest country in Europe ; at its close the population was on the verge of starvation. To give you some faint idea of the horrors of the Thirty Years' War, reliable chronicles of the time inform us that towns which were only visited by it when it was half over lost seventy-five per cent, of their population. For years hordes of robbers and thieves, disbanded troops, traversed the country from one end to the other, burning and 60 National Life and Thought. stealing and murdering in broad daylight. Prosperous manufac- turing towns with 10,000 inhabitants had a population of 500 left after the war. Hunger and famine led the people, in many instances, to tear the newly-buried from their graves and devour them. Disease carried off what the sword had spared. When the Peace of 1648 put an end to the war, the country itself was one mass of waste, fields not tilled for a generation, whole towns swept away, burned or razed to the ground. The Peace of Westphalia, as it is known in history, stripped Germany of the fruits of centuries of labour and effort, which even now she has only partially recovered. It left the Protestant part of Germany impoverished, helpless, unable to defend itself, in the centre of Europe. France profited by a large extension of territory, and from that time onwards found it more and more easy to turn German soil into the battlefields of her ambitious rulers. From that time down to our own, excepting the brief period of the French Revolution, when German sovereigns — not their people — endeavoured to coerce the French people, and paid dearly for it, — from that time the policy of France, the policy, in common fairness, it should be said, of French rulers and statesmen, not of the French people, has been the spoliation of Germany. Any student of history can tell you that the whole of Germany is marked by mementoes of French battlefields and burnt ruined castles. If I refer to Frederick the Great, it is to point out that with him rose in the last century a Protestant great Power in the north of Germany which in our time has crowned the long-longed-for edifice of National Unity. He it was who, with a population of five millions — one quarter more than London to-day — held the determination to stake every- thing sooner than run the risk of falling back into the hideous political nightmare of the past. In England we cannot understand the strength of this resolve ; we have practically never known a foreigner on our soil for eight hundred years ! But the Germans have hardly known anything else ! And I contend, not only that they are justified in holding on to the armaments ; but, I maintain, their whole history proves — even that of the last twenty years as well — that the Germans are a peaceful, non-aggressive people. You may answer to this, that their government has lately Germany — Politics. 6 1 shown itself occasionally aggressive with regard to the African Colonies ! True, perhaps ; but what a paltry matter that is compared to the enormous annexations of territory we have accomplished during the last ten years ! And yet, even those small, but, I hold, perfectly justifiable, efforts to have colonies of their own, have met with great opposi- tion from the German people. Believe me, the Germans do not aspire to rival us beyond the seas ; and if they did, they could not ! No more than, I honestly believe, they will ever beat us in the long run in commerce with all their cheapness. But I do not say we should indulge in any sentimental feeling with regard to them. If Germany trespasses on our interests, let us defend them ; but do not let us cant over it. But England and Germany have every interest to remain at peace ; and thus, without any entangling alliance, they are both at one in the interests of peace as against all peace-breakers, and so will remain. Further than this, I say we should try and inform ourselves as to the history and the qualities of a great nation, whose interests, whereas they nowhere seriously clash with our own, go hand in hand with them in many important matters. We should try to look at such a nation, which is bound to play a great part socially, with judgment intellectually, as well as politically, unbiassed, without favour, but without prejudice, in order, if possible, to gain some benefit to ourselves, some ex- perience in many important matters, social, intellectual, and political, by so doing. How comes it that we find the united armies of Russia, Austria, and France, representing a population of over a hundred millions, at bay more or less for seven years ? And when he passed away, it was not long before the greatest soldier of modern times, an avenging Attila in modern form, I mean Napoleon the First, appeared on the scene ; and profiting by the dissensions and incapacity, yea, even the want of character of German rulers, again turned Germany into the battlefield of Europe, and preyed on the vitals of the impoverished German people for nearly twenty years ! The history of the last two hundred years, and the sufferings the people of Germany underwent all through that long period, explains the readiness of Germans to-day to bear any taxation, to put up with any strain, even poverty if you will, and to stand and fall 62 National Life and Thought. with their Emperor to retain the position they have bought with their blood. If I have especially dwelt on the misery revealed in the history of the last two hundred years, it is because it affords an explanation of the central idea that governs the politics of Germany. If we find such difficulty, as we undoubtedly do, in appreciating that main principle, may it not be more or less in consequence of some such frame of mind as this : — If a nation prospers by different methods to our own, we do not regard them exactly so much with envy as with a certain diffident incredulous irritability that their prosperity must be " delusive," as it has not been secured by our own hallowed, patent process ? The success of Germany in our time can be distinctly traced to the initiative of great men. Our democratic age does not believe in great men ; it is rather inclined to sneer at them — at least at its own great men, who have yet to face the verdict of posterity. I would venture to say there is a time for great men ; everything in its proper time; great men, majorities, and ballot boxes; but nothing final, for all illnesses — like a patent medicine — in this great world of ours, in which nothing is final but change. Our attention is drawn to the affairs of other nations. We know little of them. We have a hazy idea that they are some- how not so free as we are ; hence, we take our stand by the magic word " Liberty " — itself only a means to an end — and judge others by our standard of that magic quantity ! It is perhaps true that we do enjoy the greatest amount of political liberty of any country, consequently some of us think we are in a position to look down upon others and to pity them, their status and their aims, forthwith ! I am sorry to say that I am unable to endorse this view, much less to believe in its finality. And if I had not restricted the limits of my lecture to-day to the politics of Germany — after all, only one phase of a nation's life — I think I could easily prove to you that, as far as the comparative amount of happiness is con- cerned, that is to be found here and in Germany, we are by no means in the position to pity our neighbours or look down upon them. I am sorry to say that the frame of mind which enables a man to call out, " I thank my stars that I am an Englishman," is one I cannot share. I hold that not only to be a reprehensible senti- ment, savouring of the Pharisee of the New Testament, but one precluding any possible fair estimate of other countries. In this Germany — Politics. 6 3 case it is doubly so, at least from my point of view, holding, as I do, that although we owe our first affections to the land of our birth, we do not owe it blind idolatry, which prevents the critic recognising where there is something beyond our seas to admire and to learn from. I hope I cede to no man in my pride at what England and Englishmen have achieved and are achieving, but there my feelings stop ; for if they did not, I should consider myself perfectly unfitted to address you on the subject before us. In fact, I might never have taken the trouble to study it ! But you may say, Yes, that is all very well, but you cannot deny that it is a sad state of things that, with all admitted prosperity and military success of Germany, there should be so little liberty there, that thousands and thousands of emigrants flee their native shores year by year in order to escape the hated conscription. Well, I do deny the latter part of that contention. I even am of opinion that it is a libel on the manhood of Germany ! I even believe that, without any conscription at all, emigration would be just as great, for it is the natural consequence of that mysterious law that seems to govern mankind since thousands of years to steer from east to west in search of fortune ! It is disproved by the thousands and thousands of Germans who hurried back to their native shores at the trumpet call of war in the memorable year 1870 ! It is indirectly disproved by analogy by the enormous emigration from Ireland ! Is that caused by the law of compulsory military service ? Now, as regards individual political liberty, the contention must be admitted to be partially true. But what does it amount to ? Everything gained on earth is the result, it would seem, of a compromise. Must we not ourselves admit that, notwithstanding our boasted political liberty, we have a greater amount of social slavery, of drunkenness, of bigotry, of human misery to show than military- ridden Germany. If you will not admit it, I pledge you my word of honour it is so, nevertheless. The facts are simply these : The Germans had to accept national independence — the first condition of national life — whence and under what conditions it was possible. If they had waited until public opinion — I do not deny that public opinion was partially for it — a free press and the ballot-box had beaten off their enemies and cemented their hopeless internal differences, 64 National Life and Tkouglit. surrounded by enemies, as they always were, they might have waited in vain until the day of judgment ! Strong men had to come, but, mind, honest, fearless,' self- sacrificing men ! And they came, and led, and conquered the right of a great nation to regulate its own affairs, without let or hindrance, from outside. These advantages must remain ; their comparatively trivial drawbacks must yield gradually to the spirit of the time. You must remember in judging Germany that she has only just emerged from a life struggle for her very existence as an inde- pendent united nation ! What are twenty years in the life of a nation ? A day, a week in the life of a man ! Germany in some senses can only fairly be compared to England as it was centuries ago, and that comparison involves no disadvantage to her. She will soon be found in touch with, if not ahead of her time, believe me ! It is the policy of Germany to-day to retain the fruits of the sacrifices that have been brought. These fruits are necessary for her existence as a strong, independent, peace-loving Power in the centre of Europe ; she does not wish to add to these fruits from the mere lust of conquest. At present, it must be admitted, there are many inconveniences to be met in Germany that jar on our unaccustomed nerves. The officials are in many cases arbitrary, and inclined to think themselves the masters and the public their servants. These are disadvantages, I admit; but against these, and sundry others, believe me, there are many things to be met with in Germany for which we might well envy the Germans, police-ridden, military- ridden as they are ! If they enjoy less political liberty than we, they suffer less from heartless social tyranny, from ostracism of the poor, than we do. If their educated men frequent the churches less than ours do, on the other hand, when you enter a German church you will find the rich sitting beside the poor. If their system of administration is somewhat cumbersome, irksome, and inquisitorial, on the other hand, the Government of Germany protects the poor from the unprincipled adulteration of articles of food, which is the curse of Italy, England, and America. Imprisonment and enormous fines await the adulterators in the Fatherland; here in the land of liberty an eminent statesman Germany — Politics. 65 once told Englishmen that, according to these wondrous laws of supply and demand, adulteration is a mild form of competition ! A nice creed for the working-man with £1 a week and a family to console himself with when he is half-poisoned with whiskey adulterated with sulphuric acid. I will only add, for your information, that many of the stoutest planks of your Radical platform — a long way off practical applica- tion in this country — are already accomplished facts in poor Germany. For instance, local government, which exists all over Germany in excellent working order, side by side with, but subor- dinate to, the Imperial Parliament at Berlin. I fancy I could tell you a deal more -about Germany that would be new to you, but it is slightly outside the scope of my lecture of to-day. With your permission, however, I should like to conclude with a word regarding the general acceptation of militarism and war — a subject we cannot overlook in dealing with political Germany. We may like it or not, but the sad truth it is, nevertheless, that mankind is always at war. The battle of life is one of the inexorable conditions of existence all the world over in the whole animal kingdom — man- kind at its head included. And, among mankind, let me tell you, there are few more per- sistent fighters than the entire Anglo-Saxon race. In fact, we who now indulge in dreams of peace, we owe our very existence to our capacity for fighting and beating our enemies all over the world. The Americans, our kinsmen, are at present silently at war with the North American Indians ; we ourselves are at war with the Maoris in New Zealand, the aborigines in Australia, who, all in measurable distance of time from now, will as surely be cut off from the face of the earth, as the extinct bird, the dodo • as surely as if they were cut off by the sword in one single night. The ordeal of battle is by no means the most terrible one humanity has to face, particularly if it has to be faced in an honourable cause by a whole nation in arms ; the rich fighting in the ranks side by side with the poor ; both equal, under the directing hand of genius. And the nation which shirks this ordeal when its honour and its existence are at stake is sure to go towards decay and ultimate obliteration. Is that not war we see in our midst ; the grim fight of the E 66 National Life and Thought. dockers for a bare existence ; the constant fight of the Sheffield grinders with death, which vanquishes them invariably before the prime of life ; the struggle of the stokers on board the American liners, which finishes them in three to five years. Go into the slums of Salford and Manchester, and look at the population there, and come back and tell me whether you have not seen one of the most hideous struggles amidst dirt, improvidence, and poverty ? Let us endeavour to see things as they are, not as an over- excited, though kindly, imagination would picture them to us. We are told of the cruel wrong of taking men away from the blessed productive labour of peace ! I cannot see much blessing or much happiness in a family during peace starving on ten shillings a week. It is, doubtless, a grand achievement of our time that the desire to arbitrate should have arisen, even when only compara- tively trivial interests and imaginary honour are at stake; but, believe me, as surely as we owe our national and racial pre- dominance almost exclusively to successful fighting, so surely will it ever be in the future, that we must be prepared to back our arguments, in the last resort, by the sword. The lessons of history teach us that it is imperative that a nation should be able to fight. Humanity teaches us to be merciful and just in the hour of victory. To those who look at politics without illusions, and yet with a full belief in the onward progress of humanity, there can be few more cheering and consoling items in our time than the history of the great American Secession War of 1 86 1-68, in which, although the passions were inflamed as much as ever in times gone by, yet in the moment of victory a new spirit of mercy and forgiveness came over the victors, that would not allow a drop of blood to be spilt, but sought to heal the wounds an unavoidable struggle had struck. Why is America at peace now ? Because she is humanitarian ? No ; because nobody dare touch her ! We hear of a war that throws a nation, and with it civilisation, fifty years back. But this is not always the case. Even an unsuccessful war has before now been an admitted benefit, in some instances, to a nation, let alone a legitimate and successful one. Witness the case of Austria in 1866. That war acted on Austria like a storm that swept away the miasmas of stagnation. Austria since that Germany — Politics. 6j period has become one of the most liberally constituted countries in Europe, if that is of any benefit to a nation. Frederick the Great, on his return to Berlin after the Seven Years' War, could not restrain his tears when he heard the loyal cheers of the half-starved and beggared population that had suffered so much. And yet, who shall deny to-day that those sufferings of the Seven Years' War, as well as later those of the War of Liberation against the First Napoleon, steeled the nerves of the nation to do and die in our time ? And to-day, if you read the newspapers, you will find that every- where the German Emperor goes he is received with enthusiasm. If you think that the poor enslaved Germans cheer their chains, you are very much mistaken. Whatever socialistic malcontents and opponents of every form of royalty may think, yet among the vast majority of the nation he is immensely popular, because he represents the national aspirations — if not all of them, at least the principal ones. When he said that eighteen army-corps would bite the dust before the ground which had been won by such sacrifices should be yielded, he gave vent to a sentiment which we Englishmen can only understand, if we imagine the eventuality of Ireland being threatened by a foreign Power ! To hear people tell about the peace of the world, the sympathy between peoples, etc., does credit to the illusions of those that propound these ideas, and credit to the heart of those that take them up and applaud them. But from the point of view of the student of politics, the hope of practical realisation of these senti- ments has little basis in the history of the world ! I think it would be a little more natural to look for more sym- pathy between ourselves, as man to man, as class to class, before we go far afield in our desire to embrace the whole world in one bond of union and cheap sympathy. We allow our politicians to make party capital out of the wrongs and sufferings of nations and races at the other end of Europe. I have never yet seen any benefit accrue to my country- men from such doings ! Believe me, there is more real unhappiness, more hopeless misery to be met with within a mile of London Bridge than in the whole of Asiatic Turkey ! Let us drop our artificial sympathy with the sufferings of others. We cannot afford it. Let us strive to find out where there is something to admire in others ; where they are ahead of us ; where they are better off than we. And if we can gain some 68 National Life and Thought. of the advantages others possess without their disadvantages, let us make up our minds that we will have them too, or know the reason why ! Before we indulge in dreams of cosmopolitan sympathy, our aristocracy, and particularly our middle classes that are led by the clergy, must get rid of the suspicion of looking upon poverty as next door to a crime. Our democracy must get rid of that " envy and hatred " which it vents "sometimes" against those who do not share its views. Listen to the tone of some of our democratic organs against the so-called military despotism of Europe. What do they usually know of those countries, and their vital necessities ? Very often but little, I fear. Then let us strive and add to our knowledge all round, so that we may be better able each of us to fulfil that little part in the battle of life unconsciously assigned to each of us, namely, each to contribute, according to his opportunities, his mite towards the solution of that great social political problem — to leave the world a little better than we found it ! V. GERMAN CULTURE. SIDNEY WHITMAN. IF I venture to submit a few words on German Culture for your consideration, it is that I was partly educated in that country, and have been lastingly impressed by much I saw and learnt whilst there. I shall not be surprised if you even opine that my picture of German culture be rather a favourable one. If so, I can only say I am dealing with the spirit of things, and not with any preference for the nation as individuals. There seems to be little doubt that a certain unpopularity of Germany has of late years made itself felt, not only in this country ; but history fails to show that temporary popularity, much less unpopularity, as distinct from the verdict of posterity, has much to do with the merits or demerits of a people. Every nation in its turn comes in for a gust of international dislike. The weaker a power, the less likely she is to earn foreign animosity; but that does not prove her to be any the better on that account. About the year 1848, Lord Palmerston, our Foreign Secretary, was so disliked all over the Continent, that they used to sing a ditty in the streets of Vienna ending — " And if the devil has a son, He surely must be Palmerston." Yet we are not told that this did Lord Palmerston any harm in his own country. Now, as regards the partial unpopularity of Germany of to-day, all I can say is that, as a student of the German nation, I do not join in that feeling. Not that I deny there may be some cause for it ; but whatever it may be, I do not let it affect my judg- ment of the nation, which I respect, nor of its culture, which I greatly admire. If the Germans try to beat us in politics, my common sense 69 JO National Life and Thought. tells me that we, as a great power, are perfectly well able to stand up and defend our own interests if they are trespassed upon. As for the poor German princes whom we think fit to call over to our shores, and endow with money and position, and who at our Radicals are constantly railing, my common sense again tells me that it is we who are to blame for being so liberal, not they for accepting our bounty. I know of one or two impecunious English noblemen who pass through the bankruptcy court with amiable regularity, and who would only be too delighted to go and live in clover in Germany, if that country were so foolish as to pay them to do so. I also know of a few German princes who are almost as wealthy as our wealthiest peers, and who would not care to come over here and accept our favours. As for German competition in the labour markets, there are undoubtedly pushing traders in Germany as there are here. Well, competitors in trade are never congenial acquaintances. But as for the Germans underselling us, and living on nothing in doing so, I do not believe these are the causes that need make us fear German competition. I believe there are as many poor Englishmen at the present time forced to live on starvation wages as any German. No, believe me, the main cause of German success in the labour markets is to be found in the superior culture and education of the masses ! I cannot hope to prove that to you to-day ; I can only ask you to accept it at present on trust, to be proved, perhaps, with your kind permission, on some future occasion. All I can do to-day is to draw your attention to some features of German culture which I think may interest you, and to be impartial in doing so. In the first place, the very subject of my lecture, " Culture," almost precludes an exact division of light and shade, of advantages and drawbacks. These are to be found everywhere and in everything. We do not all believe in the Old Testament notion of the " chosen people." It smacks too much of privilege and favouritism for our taste. It seems more natural to believe that every people has its special failures and its compensating virtues. And if it happens to be my set task to-day to illustrate a bright side of the German people, that does not mean that you cannot find the same amount of envy and uncharitableness in Germany as we can show of cant and hypocrisy in England. But we do not analyse shadows when we are dwelling on the characteristics of light. And those must be left to take care of themselves to-day, even at the risk of your fancying that I ignore German Culture. yi their existence. It is well known that in Berlin and elsewhere the struggle of life is becoming as severe as with us. In Germany, as elsewhere, there are social problems to be solved which culture alone can neither solve nor put out of sight. But I believe firmly that there are hardly any political or social problems the solution of which will not be ultimately facilitated for any nation by widespread education and an exalted standard of thinking. Culture, in its higher sense, has hitherto with us been the privilege of the few. I maintain that in the future many of its attainable features must become accessible to all. For when I speak of the adhere of a nation, I do not mean an artificial refinement, nor do I refer to a privileged, cultured class. I refer to the thought and aspirations of many millions, including the best of all classes. In this sense, I look upon "culture" as the very sun that brightens the daily life of a nation. And if on this point I am guilty of partisanship for Germany, it springs from the belief that I have sometimes seen more true dignity of life and enjoyment among the population there than here, strange as this statement may appear to you. Only the other day I was talking to a friend, a hard-headed, matter-of-fact London solicitor. He said to me that he could not understand why I often seemed so favourably impressed by Germany. " Well," I replied, " you yourself have often been there. Tell me honestly, where has it struck you that there seems to be more happiness among the people — here or there ? " His immediate reply was, " Undoubtedly in Germany." " Well, then," I answered, "that is my justification." Let me take an incident at random from Christmas time in Germany as evidence of what I mean. The Standard contained a telegram the other day from Berlin stating that over 400,000 Christmas trees had been disposed of there. That means practically a Christmas tree in every family in the capital. That means a gathering of good-will and an exchange of presents, however trifling, in every family, down to the humblest working-man of the community. Surely no insignificant sign that, notwithstanding blood-tax and heavy money taxation, there exists in Germany a universal feeling of culture in a family sense, and the means to gratify it in an almost unparalleled proportion. If I have admired the beauties of nature in Germany, the culture of the educated ; if I have J 2 National Life and Thought. participated in the enjoyments of the wealthy, as well as in the simpler pastimes of the humble, my enjoyment has seldom been spoilt by the sight of the hard, cold, cheerless life of ■ the many. And I adhere to this, notwithstanding the important fact that the masses in this country hardly pay any direct taxes at all, whereas they are almost always paying petty taxes in Germany. These may seem strong statements to you, who mostly only hear of foreign countries as so much behind our own, and of their people as only deserving pity in their thraldom; but what is more, I am morally certain, that if you had lived in Germany or France, and knew these countries as I fancy I do, you would share my views. I have found plenty of travelled Englishmen who feel even stronger on this subject than I do. And now I must ask your indulgence for the apparent egoism of these few preliminary personal remarks. But I judged them necessary, in order to enable you the better to understand the drift of my lecture. For it is really no easy matter to give you even a faint idea of German culture in the sixty minutes at my disposal. To begin with, what is culture? Like most terms of far- reaching application, it is somewhat difficult to give a concise definition of it. The word itself would seem to mean simply the process of cultivation ; something that is cultivated; a soil that has been ploughed, that is eager to produce. The Germans even use the very term Kultur, as applied equally to a high state of mental education and also to a tilled soil — Culturboden. And I think you will find the same wide application of the word in some English dictionaries. And yet that will not give us a sufficient indication of the word's meaning. For the Americans, with all their excellent school training, are in some respects less cultured than the uneducated Italians. The French, again, although vastly inferior to the Germans in book knowledge, are, from some points of view, perhaps more cultured than the Germans. The explanation of the above contradiction must be sought and will be found in the fuller explanation of the meaning of the term itself. Culture does not stand alone for the amount of exact knowledge or talents we possess, be they artistic, practical, or scientific. It includes in its significance the feeling for refine- ment, for the fitness of things in general. Thus a man who. with imperfect mental attainments, combines a refinement of feeling for the sufferings or the wants or susceptibilities of others a fulness of true sympathy, as opposed to a false, hysterical, German Culture. 73 diseased sentiment — is in many respects more cultured than a walking encyclopaedia of knowledge, combined with coarseness of manner and feeling. Self-respect, in its best sense, is part of all true culture, even when possessed by the unlettered. And this speciality of culture will be found most prevalent in those countries in which the dignity of labour is most generally recognised. That rare quality, tact of the heart, which enables us to respect ourselves in showing a proper regard for the feelings of others, is a part of true culture that may be learnt by mixing with the world, but which is ever best exemplified when it is inborn. I have seen it in some of very humble station, and found it wanting in many holding exalted position. Again, a proper respect for women is a special feature of true culture, and one in which, I make bold to say, Englishmen are perhaps second only to our own race beyond the seas. Another point of culture, in which the long stability of our political system has undoubtedly given us a striking pre-eminence, is the great respect we have in England for established law. This feeling extends even towards the law's humblest representative. The moral ascendency of the English policeman I hold to be unparalleled in the world. Another point, which I venture to think is not unconnected with our prosperous and great national history, is a certain generosity and breadth of mind we often meet with in England in judging others. I may be biassed in this, but it has struck me in comparison with the rapidity and ease with which I have found slander and misrepresentation travel and propagate in some other countries. Bigotry and intolerance, class pride and class selfishness, are incompatible with true culture, which itself is synonymous with a broad and generous cast of mind. Again, the mere jQ s. d. utilitarian, whose narrow mental horizon does not enable him to discern even the indirect money value of knowledge, let alone its power of adding to the dignity of our life, he will pooh-pooh our ideas of culture, and simply ask, " What is your bank balance?" "Very little." "Well, then, you are a pauper, with all your culture." Such was the frame of mind of an otherwise worthy citizen, to whom a friend of mine showed a complimentary letter he had been honoured with by Mr. Gladstone, whose birthday it is to-day. Now, I think you will agree with me, that whatever political party we may belong to, we may look upon a personal compli- 74 National Life and Thought. ment from an intellectual giant such as Mr. Gladstone as a high honour. But our Avorthy citizen thought otherwise, and merely asked, t: Is there a cheque in the letter ? " This man was slightly wanting in the sense of reverence — an important one in all culture. It is true the apostles of culture do not often amass riches. The late Mr. Matthew Arnold died the other day little better than a pauper, from a banker's point of view. He did not write books that were read by the million. But the day may come when such books, though on a broader basis, will touch the minds of the million as Dickens' works now touch their heart ; and then it will be plainly seen that the one goes hand in hand with the other — the heart with the mind — in educating us to feel the beauty and dignity of life on this earth. However, I will not tax your attention any farther by vague generalisations, but rather try and make my meaning clear by explanation as I go along. To begin with, I think I can discern three distinct, broad lines of culture — that of the mind, that of the heart, and, thirdly, the culture of the body. Now, taking the last first, if we accept the splendid advertisements of " Pears' Soap," of " Sunlight Soap," of " Brooke's Soap" that " won't wash clothes," and many others, as any criterion to go by, we must either be dreadfully in want of soap, or we really ought to be bodily the cleanest nation on the face of the earth ; and if you believe it, no word of mine shall cast a doubt on your faith. In that other important branch of body-culture — namely, our outdoor sports, and hygienic science in general — I think it is less open to doubt that the Anglo-Saxon race is really the first in the world. Indeed, the indomitable spirit of emulation and rivalry shown in the practice of athletics is not unconnected with our mighty history of colonisation and world-power. But as I do not believe in the uncompensated superiority of any people all round, so also I cannot help remarking that the prevalence of the spirit of gambling and betting is a direct outcome of some forms of sport, and goes far to moderate our complacency. As for the culture of the heart, the splendid record of individual unselfish effort for the good of others that is stamped on every page in our national history, the charity of the wealthy, the devotion of the humble, — these show us what our race is capable of, and make me feel it unnecessary to stray at large under this heading in order to point a moral or adorn a tale. Now, let us note what the great Russian novelist Turgenieff has German Culture. 75 to say on German Culture. He expresses his views very unmis- takably in a letter dated 1 8th August 1862: — " When you leave muddy Poland and arrive on German soil, you find yourself, as it were, in a radiant land. The poor Slavonic race ! We blame Hegel for having assigned to the Slavs a less illustrious mission than to the German family. Alas ! every one can convince himself that Hegel was right. Civilisation is worked out, not by ideas, but by manners. Yes, here es wird behaglich zu muthe (a sense of comfort comes over me) ; this is mainly because my intellectual development is associated with Germany. Not to mention philo- sophy and poetry, even German humour is after my own heart. Alas ! our Russian so-called education disposes us to imitate rather French morals, and the more is the pity. Moreover, what pleases us in French education are its bad sides — notably its licentiousness and its slipshod ways ; it is mostly these things that the Russian selects and assimilates. The German spirit, which is made up wholly of discipline, is not in harmony with our nature. What a pity that Russian tourists merely pass through Berlin, without entering into the spirit of the place ! Only good schools can cure us of our superficiality." It is to some aspects of the German spirit that I wish to draw attention, and particularly to one special feature thereof — the unconscious endeavour to make the everyday aspect of life less cold and cheerless, particularly to those who are not blessed with wealth and other worldly advantages. This special German feature seems to me to be a joint product of heart and mind, acting for generations past in rare unison, in a direction already marked out for us, although on somewhat different lines, by the ancient Greeks, the most cultured people of antiquity. That truly great and good man, Abraham Lincoln — in my humble opinion one of the most cultured men we have seen in our time — had a jocular habit of illustrating his most important utterances by the following playful words : " Now, let me tell you a little story." Among my memories of Germany, few have retained such a firm hold of my thoughts as a little woodcut taken out of an American illustrated paper. It represented an elderly German citizen in bed, reading by the light of an enormously long candle, stuck into a small shaky candlestick. The bedcover, one of those dreadful feather-bed counterpanes to be met with perhaps only in Germany, reached from his chin down to somewhere a little below his knees. Underneath this realistic sketch the following words were printed ; 7 6 National Life and TJwught. "The candle too long, the bedclothes too short ; but what does it matter as long as you are happy ? " It seems to me there is a world of fact and of food for thought in that little sketch and in those accompanying words. In the first place, note the small, shaky candlestick. Could there be a more apt illustration of the one great drawback of much we might otherwise admire in Germany — namely, the want of practical ability in everyday matters ? — one of the qualities the possession of which has long given the Anglo-Saxon people such a start in the race for wealth. I never remember seeing a properly-fitting candle- stick in Germany, and it is only lately that German beds are anything like the practical coaxers to rest that we are accustomed to here. The political misery and the poverty of the past have undoubtedly had a deal to do with the neglect of this depart- ment of culture — namely, the culture of " comfort." But in this respect Germany has made great strides within the last twenty years. Now, coming back to my woodcut, let me draw your attention to the fact that this man is in bed — at first sight a trivial circum- stance, but in reality a most instructive one. He might be sitting up and drinking, or, worse still, be out at some music hall or public-house. Not that this German is a henpecked husband, who dare not go out and enjoy himself; or that he, like an English blue-ribbonite, never indulges in malt liquor. Far from it. He polishes off his mug of beer at his favourite beer-house, where the humblest, and some of the high and well-born too, mingle and behave themselves. He whiles away an hour there in the congenial company of the educated men of the town, for he is no psalm-singer, who denies himself the harmless enjoyments of life. But he keeps early hours, he goes to bed at a reasonable time — in fact, he is a moral man. Oh, you may say, it is late, and the public-houses are closed ; and there you would be sadly mistaken. In the first place, there are no public-houses in Germany. The culture of the German people would prevent their patronising such dens of adulteration and cold-blooded drink. In the second place, there are no Draconic early-closing laws in Germany. It is even a great question whether the politically down-trodden German would tamely submit to such tyranny, let alone local option or total prohibition. Only some years ago there was a riot, attended with bloodshed, merely because of an attempt to raise the price of beer. It would want a bold legislator indeed to dare to tell the humblest German to give up his harmless glass of beer, and turn German Culture. jj out at the strike of the clock into the street like so many children. But as there is no coercion, so there is little drunkenness, although no teetotalism, and that notwithstanding the unlimited hours the beer-houses are allowed to remain open. The case of Germany goes to show, that it is self-respect, and not prohibition or enforced pledges of teetotalism, that will make a nation sober. As I said before, the subject of my sketch is in bed, and even risking to set fire to the bed-clothes and to catch rheumatism in his lower extremities, in order to improve his mind before courting the slumbers of the just ; for I feel convined that he is reading some instructive book — perhaps Darwin's Origin of the Species. Yes, it is this wonderful thirst for useful knowledge which distinguishes the whole German people, and mentally ennobles them. This is one of the most striking features of their wide- spread culture ; for the Germans look upon intellectual know- ledge as something almost divine, something to be regarded with reverence, to be worshipped for its own sake. It is this trait in the national character which explains the extraordinary influence the poet Goethe, as a man and as a thinker, has exercised over the minds of his countrymen. And here the Germans possess a great advantage over us, who unfortunately know next to nothing of the personality of our greatest countryman, Shakespeare. We can only judge what an immense loss this is to English culture, when we know what Goethe's personality has been to Germany. Take away the poet Goethe, who, perhaps, of all moderns, has best rendered and revived the Grecian ideals of the beauty and dignity of life, and there remains the intellectual character of the man, to whom every fruit from the tree of knowledge and truth was a prize to live for, and the search of which was its own reward. " Oh," he once exclaimed, " that I could come again in a hundred years, if only to see and enjoy the sight of the progress mankind will have made in that time along the path of truth." And these words strike the key-note of the best culture of Germany — the love of scientific truth, of mankind, the unselfish interest in its progress and happiness. No field of learning but what Goethe strove to work in it ; not in a spirit of vanity, or with a feverish longing for worldly honour and the noisy recognition of the multitude ; no, from pure love of truth itself, of which our own poet Keats so aptly says — ■ "Beauty is truth, truth beauty ; That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." -A 78 National Life and Thought. Goethe, as is well known, foreshadowed the conclusions since drawn from Darwin's works, which in our time have revolutionised our conception of cosmogony. It was Goethe, the friend of princes, who, in the character of Faust, teaches the highest philosophy to all— namely, that happiness is only to be found in the fulfilment of duty, useful work done for the benefit of all. Faust, after passing through every stage of worldly power and enjoyment without obtaining rest, at last finds contentment as a tiller of the soil ! But even where his efforts were incomplete or unproductive, his example has remained a constant spur to the intellect of Germany. Well might such a man exclaim, without vanity, on being created a noble: "The dignity of nobility has nothing surprising in store for me ; I was not con- scious of an addition to my standing." For him there could only exist the truly aristocratic distinctions of mind and character. To Goethe is in great part owing the wonderful appreciation of Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Burns, and Byron we find all over Germany. Of Shakespeare he once said, "When I think of Shakspeare, I cannot understand how I can have the audacity to attempt anything." And yet Goethe knew that he, too, was destined to be immortal ; but, like all true greatness, it is ever found hand in hand with the recognition of kindred genius. It is reserved for the Liliputian to cavil at those whose size makes him doubly conscious of his littleness. I have travelled much in Germany, and I think you would be surprised if I could tell you of the widespread admiration and knowledge to be met with everywhere of our English literature, and of our English greatness of thought and action. The Germans stand first in their eager recognition of the best in foreign countries. We might well learn from them in this. A German schoolmaster once told me : " I always urge my pupils to read Sir Walter Scott. In the first place, he is a glorious novelist ; and then the perusal of his works inculcates a nobility of aim and feeling that are only too rare nowadays in this money- making age." Shakespeare is known to all in the Fatherland, and I might even say the same of Dickens — that great poet of the human heart, as an eminent German man of letters once styled him to me. The other day I read in the Times (Nov. iS, 1889) respecting German theatres: "The stage interpretation of Shakespeare is rapidly rising to a higher level in Germany even than in England." How neatly put, " even than in England " ! I cannot under- German Culture. yg stand these circumlocutions, when it is so easy to speak the truth. Why not state the plain truth — namely, that the stage interpretation of Shakespeare in Germany is not "rapidly rising," but rather that it lias long been far above that, " even " in England ? There are at least a dozen towns in Germany in which you may any day witness not only as good representations of Shakespeare as our best, but many masterpieces of Shakespeare that are never performed in England at all, because they don't pay. But they pay in poor, military-ridden Germany, because the Germans love Shakespeare. The mind of Shakespeare' is one of the corner-stones of German culture. They have fairly gained a right to love the greatest Englishman that ever lived. They have won him for themselves by studying and reverencing his divine spirit — perhaps the proudest conquest in the field of intellect to be met with in the history of the world, this conquering love of a foreign nation of forty millions for a humble Englishman who lived three hundred years ago ! If I wished to pay the spirit of German culture, in one sentence, the highest encomium I can think of, it would be that it is worthy of sharing the proudest boast of the Anglo-Saxon race — namely, the possession of Shakespeare. The other day I was reading an account of the foundation of Cavendish College, Cambridge. I may add that its peculiar feature is to consist in its cheapness, and in the desire to help forward the industrious but poor student — a most praiseworthy intention, no doubt, and one which is hailed by a public organ with pleasure as a new endeavour to bring the universities and the people into closer communion. But it is somewhat strange to read such a mouthful about so little in the freest country in the world ! Why, in poor despotic Germany there are twenty-two univer- U" sities, some of them far larger in number of students than any of our English ones. Talk of our tiny, new-fangled thread of communion between the universities and the people ! Why, the German universities are almost identical with the German people ; the former are part of the latter, as the heart is part of the human frame. The youth of the German people, in their twenty-two universities, are not the representatives of the respectability of a class, but have long been the torchbearers of every national ideal striving towards independence and culture. The German nation did not want the threatening wave of democracy in order to open up the portals of instruction to the poor. Education has been gratuitously open to the poorest in Germany for generations. 8o National Life and Thought. If it be true, as a thinker has said, that "the elevation and expansion of the individual is the true aim of government," then I say, without fear of contradiction, that, as far as culture is concerned — the beautifying of our daily life, its dignity and its happiness — even the petty German governments of the past have in many ways more to show than we, with all our boasted machinery of ballot-boxes — which, by-the-by, the Germans have now got into the bargain, as well as universal suffrage. It is but lately that it has been thought worth while to educate our people at all. The word education is not to be found in the gospel of the Manchester school of middle-class money-bags, with their ten commandments summed up into one, "Buy in the cheapest, and sell in the dearest market." Sell your soul to the devil, if necessary; but keep a bank balance, be respectable, and court popularity if you can. Germany has its unscrupulous devotees of the laws of supply and demand as well as we have. It has its greedy traders, who would adulterate every article of food if they dare— the only difference being they dare not; but they do not rule Germany, much less represent German culture. We have certainly secured the almost unlimited political liberty of the subject. That is undoubtedly a great gain, though due as much to our favoured geographical position as to our matchless national virtues. But we have, up to the present, lived under an almost despotic social tyranny. We have hitherto neglected the mental and moral well-being of the helpless unit, and been content to leave him unfettered to fight the battle of " the devil take the hindermost " without much care of his mental status. I do not deny that this hard struggle has done a great deal to foster that manliness and energy for which the English national character is noted throughout the world. I do not deny that our political freedom has given us, in some sense, the supremacy of the individual, as against a fussy bureaucracy. But I think well enough of my countrymen to believe that we might retain these qualities, and yet pour a little light on the lives of those whose fight in the battle of life is at best but sunless and dark. Hitherto it is the strictly practical that has guided us most. I think it is time to mix a little ideality with the elixir of life. Fortunately, we are tending in that direction, but more through the initiative of private individuals than through the action of our responsible authorities. It is by means of such societies as that before whom I am lecturing, and of which so many have spontane- German Culture. 81 ously sprung up in this country, that charitable individuals seek to make up and atone for a ruthless system of neglect. We thought little of education as long as it only meant to us a higher perception of life to the people, a weapon to emancipate us from social and mental slavery. Not that I mean we are forcibly enslaved by others, but rather by ourselves, through our ignorance and want of true culture. Unlike some politically backward people, we are undoubtedly free in a political sense — the pity is that want of culture often prevents our using the freedom which the franchise has given us. For I contend, that being so favoured through our geographical position in our past political history, we ought to enjoy every advantage other nations possess, and a deal more besides which they have been unable to attain. In money we are the richest nation in the world ; I see no reason why we should not be the happiest and the most cultured, which, I maintain, we are not. We only adopted popular education when we adopted breech- loaders. When the German wars of 1866 and 1870 suddenly revealed to our surprise that education also helped to make a nation fight successfully ; and when it had fought, to compete with us in commerce, and to send over its better-educated sons here, and take the bread out of the mouth of our neglected, untutored countrymen. And this may show you what I omitted to refer to at the beginning — namely, that superior education may also assist us to prosper in an jQ s. d. sense. Now, you may say this is all very well, but seeing is believing. Where are the tangible proofs and results of all this culture to be seen? How can you trace their connection with the well- being of the community ? Well, then, let us cast a glance at the outward aspects of the country. It is not so very long ago that the poet Coleridge referred to Cologne as the town of ugly wenches and nasty stenches. Now, I am not going to say that the physical beauty of the modern representatives of the mythical eleven thousand virgins — God bless them ! — has improved since the days of Cole- ridge, nor do I say that sanitary science is as yet as far advanced in Germany as it is with us. This, as I said before, is a branch of culture in which we are still ahead of the Germans, though it may not be for long. For there at least we witness the honest and thor- ough application of old-fashioned principles by the corporations, whereas with us the best scientific systems are sometimes negli- gently and dishonestly applied by our parochial authorities. 82 National Life and Thought. However, I do say I only wish, in order to prove the truth of a few of my contentions, that I could accompany some of you on a fortnight's trip through the Germany of to-day. It would be doubly instructive to you at the present time, when we read daily of the dishonest extravagance of our hospitals ; the jerrybuilding of our board schools, and its consequences of typhoid fever and diphtheria ; the dirt of our metropolitan bakehouses, swarming with vermin ; the dirt of our military barracks, of our police-cells, and sundry other unsavoury little indications that our institutions are not yet all that they might be. I would only ask you to come in a fair frame of mind, not in that of a lamented club friend of mine, whom I once met in one of the most picturesque of the many lovely German watering- places. " How do you like Kissingen ? " I asked. " Why, they haven't got a decent glass of brandy at the hotel, and I can't get up a rubber of whist in the whole blessed place ! " I think I could show you dozens of towns in Germany with finer and better-kept streets and public buildings than our own. The town of Frankfort, for instance, one of the most beautiful and most wealthy towns of Europe, has as low a death-rate as even our most favoured seaside health resorts, and that not- withstanding a drainage system that does not come up to our standard. Or, take a typical smaller town, such as Hildesheim, in Hanover, a coloured print of which I have brought for your inspec- tion. This is a town of about 20,000 inhabitants ; and if you look at the print, you will see among its sights five different buildings of public schools, every one of which is of interesting, if not of commanding architecture. Walk through the streets of any one of these German towns on a Sunday. You will find them as clean as a new pin. You will find the shops closed after mid-day, and the people enjoying themselves in a sensible, healthy fashion. In larger towns, where there are museums and picture-galleries, they are open from early in the day. In the afternoon the population has flocked out to the numberless coffee and beer gardens in the suburbs, where they are sitting in family groups, all classes inter- mingled, listening to the military bands. Suddenly the people rise from their seats and take off their hats, but no one leaves their places. It is only the king and queen taking an afternoon walk with their children, and passing along the country road adjoining the beer gardens. The king's family has reigned over the country more than 800 years in one unbroken line. German Culture. 83 He himself is acknowledged to be one of the best military leaders of the country. The people, although strongly demo- cratic in feeling, have a great respect for their ruler and his tamily ; but they don't rush after them and mob them. Their tact, their self-respect, prevent them doing so. Also, the royal family is to be seen almost daily walking among the people, and returning their respectful silent greetings. Towards evening many stroll back to town and crowd the theatres, where, on a Sunday, almost always some classical plays or high-class operas are given. In few things is the culture of Germany more apparent than in the sound character of their amusements, inviting all classes alike by their excellence and cheapness. It is true you are reminded everywhere of the military charac- teristics of the nation. The whole nation is in arms ; it is a sad fact, but at least it is not for conquest. But even here the effects of "culture" are strongly visible. Go back to the Franco-German war, and history — I believe even French history — will tell you that, during a six months' influx of nearly a million men in an enemy's country, flushed with the excitement of victory, there is not one single authenticated instance recorded of insult to a woman. If you want to know what that means, you can take the trouble to read up the detailed records of a few previous struggles in the history of this century. I remember being present in Berlin at the triumphal entry of the troops, 45,000 men, in July 1871. The town was so crowded that I had to pay 15s. a-night for being allowed to lie down at night on the floor with several others in a fifth-rate hotel. I think I was on and off the pavement that day from five in the morning till nearly five the next morning, and I can assure you that I did not see one single drunken person. But let us come back to our times. Look in on a German town on a week-day, and pass the public schools. You will be struck by the palatial buildings, situated on the finest sites, reserved for the education of all classes alike, at which instruction is given free to all alike. Come nearer, the windows are wide open, and you may just happen to witness the singing lesson, and hear the youthful voices sing one of those glorious choral songs of Martin Luther : — " God is a mighty citadel, A trusty shield and weapon." Let us come away out for a stroll in the open country. You 84 National Life and Thought. may not see many mansions of the immensely wealthy nobility ; but what there is will not be walled round with bricks and ornamented with boards advising you that you will be prosecuted by the lord of the manor if you dare try to look at and trespass on the choicest bits of scenery of your country, the private property of a few. I say, it was want of culture of the heart that originally made landowners surround their property with brick walls, broken bottle glass, and iron fences. In Germany you can, as a rule, at all times walk, unhindered and unheeded, in the private grounds and gardens of the great. You can see and rejoice in all — gardens, orchards, and vineyards ; and nobody will be there to watch you, and warn you that you are a trespasser. But also nobody would dream of robbing an orchard in Germany. A people is backward in culture, discipline, and self-respect that cannot be trusted to pass under a tree without pilfering its fruit. But the sight of fruit is no incentive to theft in Germany. A numerous peasant class exists. They are landowners and fruit- growers. In fact, throughout the greater part of Germany the public high roads are lined with fruit-trees, and passers by are kindly allowed to pick up whatever falls to the ground. Walk on. You may come upon some big factory, nowhere a very picturesque sight ; but in Germany sometimes anything but an ugly one. You may even chance to come when work is stopped. The workmen are all marshalled in military fashion in a large courtyard, for they have all been soldiers, workmen, clerks, and employers alike, and as often as not the latter as privates in the ranks. You ask, What is the matter ? It is the fifty years' jubilee of an old workman. There is going to be a little speech- making, and a concert afterwards by the band of the men. The head of the firm is going to hand a gold watch to the workman in question ; more important still, the reigning prince of the petty state has sent down one of his own ministers in person to deliver the gold medal for faithful service to the humble workman. This may be a bit of the comedy of paternal government ; it may be mere sentiment. Then all I can say is, the world is the poorer for the lack of a little of such sentiment. Now, if you are not already tired of my company, then come back to the German town with me. It is already dark, but we are met by a vast surging concourse of people. A brilliant torchlight procession marches past, followed by a large crowd and a band playing — ■ not one of those wretched German bands you see, and unfortun- ately hear too, in London, which do not hail from Germany at German Culture. 85 all, which are in fact forbidden there. No, it is a band composed of citizens, some of whom have fought in twenty pitched battles in defence of their country, and have the medal on their breast to testify to it. What is it all about? we ask. Oh, it is the twenty-five years' jubilee of a popular lady-teacher at one of the public schools, and the different trade-unions have turned out to do honour to her, and to bring her a serenade ! Stand still a moment in the crowd, and let your thoughts wander. I fancy it would take a strong dose of insular prejudice to make you believe that you are standing in midst of the unhappy population of a down-trodden, despotic, military-ridden country ! Now, in conclusion, let me come back to the little woodcut I mentioned to you, and the words inscribed beneath it, " What does it then matter as long as you are happy ? " There you have the key-note of my thoughts on the culture of Germany — the wish to point out a few items illustrative of the dignity, self-respect, and happiness of the greatest number ; and I cannot but think that, notwithstanding the unavoidable blood-tax of a so-called, but wrongly so-called, despotic government, in some respects the Germans are happier than we are, if not than we might be J and if so, their culture, fostered by their government, has largely con- tributed to that result. VI. RUSSIA. W. R. MORFILL, M.A. MY hearers may imagine that in the short space of an hour I should never be able to exhaust all that can be said about Russia — certainly one of the most interesting of European countries. All I can hope to do is to set before you on this occasion some of the most noteworthy points in the political, historical, and social life of this great people. I have some fear that I shall not carry the sympathies of all my audience with me, and there will be some who will find my lecture dull, when I say frankly at the beginning that I have no stories of Socialists or Nihilists, no revelations of "underground Russia," as it is called, to communicate. In the first place, we shall probably be best able to realise the importance of Russia as a -factor in European politics if we consider the area of the country and the number of its population. The former exceeds 8,500,000 square miles, and, according to the valuable article contributed to the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the gross total of the inhabitants is one hundred and six millions. Of course in this aggregate a great number of races are included, the Slavs largely predominating. The Russians, if we add the Malo-Russians in the South, and the White Russians in the West, amount to more than sixty-three millions. These form the dominant race, and the dominant tongue is the Great Russian, which is now the only language allowed to be spoken at court, and has been so since the days of Nicholas. During last century and the early part of the present, French was in vogue — just as it was at the German court and in Sweden ; but when a people have risen to self-consciousness, they don't caie any longer to talk in the idiom of the foreigner. Such a habit argues a degraded condition in a nation, and it speaks well for the English that during last century, when the French language had such world-wide influence, our grandfathers and great grandfathers 87 88 National Life and Tliought. never tolerated anything else than their native Saxon. At the present time, no one can hold any office in Russia who is not acquainted with the national language in which all business is transacted. After the Slavs come the Litu-Lettish, the Ural-Altaic, and Tatar races. These populations cannot be said to affect the solidarity of the Russian Empire. The first amount to about three millions. They are an ancient people, who have been driven, as it were, into remote corners by advancing races. They have been receding since the commencement of the historical period. They remained pagans longer than any other of the European populations. They were converted in a rather violent manner in the fourteenth century, but when Herberstein travelled among them at the beginning of the sixteenth, he found them in some places still worshipping lizards. Russia, as early as the time of Peter the Great, had acquired a portion of Finland ; the rest of the country was ceded by Sweden to Russia by the peace of Frederikshamm in 1809. Up to this time the Finns have been able to preserve their diet, and have enjoyed autonomy, but we have been hearing latterly that these valuable privileges are going to be taken away from them. Let us hope that the report will not prove true. Certainly the Finnish language has developed under Russian protection ; under the Swedes it had been depressed, but now the professors in the University of Helsingfors deliver their lectures in it. The Turco-Tatar races inhabiting Russia are numerous, amount- ing to 3,629,000. They are in a backward state, and offer little to our notice that is interesting. They do not exhibit any dis- loyalty to Russia, and indeed do not seem to have any powers of cohesion. During the last Turco-Russian war, as Leroy-Beaulieu has told us, prayers were offered up in all the mosques of the Caucasus for the success of the Russian arms. Perhaps it is true of Russia, as it is also true of us with regard to our own Mussul- man subjects, that they would rise against us, if we showed any weakness ; but this is the nature of subject-races, especially of the conceited and ignorant Mussulman, when he is under the dominion of the giaour, whom he is pleased to think his inferior. I remember reading years ago, in a book on the Indian mutiny, how changed the manner of the native servants became towards their masters, when they thought that the raj of the Europeans was coming to an end. A few words must now be said about the Poles and Germans. Russia. 89 Of the former there are many in Russia, not only in the old kingdom of Poland, now divided into Russian governments, but also in the Ukraine and Lithuania, where they form the landed proprietors. They amount to nearly six millions. The feud between the Russians and Poles is of long standing. We have it as early as the time of the wars between Stephen Bathory and Ivan the Terrible, in the sixteenth century, and the occupation of Moscow by the Poles under Wladyslaw or Ladislaus the Second. The latter by force of arms caused himself to be elected Tsar, and held the supreme power for two years, owing to the exhausted state of the country, for it is impossible to conceive the Russians tolerating for any lengthened period a sovereign of the Latin faith. The iniquitous dismemberments of Poland which took place last century are well known. I shall say nothing to attempt to exonerate Russia in this matter, but we must remember that the blame is to be shared by the Prussians and Austrians. The spoliation was not begun by Russia, as must be acknowledged in all fairness. The plan was suggested to Catherine by Frederick the Great, through the agency of his brother Prince Henry, when he visited St. Petersburg. Austria has treated her Polish subjects well, but the same cannot be said of Prussia. A Polish gentleman once complained to me of the complete Germanisation of the province of Posen : the names of villages and small towns, some of which are of historical celebrity, are changed into Sedan, Weissenburg, and Bismarckdorf ; the porters at the stations are Germans, and the apparent Germanisation of the country is complete, but you have only to step a few yards from the railway station and you will frequently find yourself in a country where hardly a word of German is understood. As I have said before, it is impossible on the present occasion to enter into a discussion about these melancholy events. I can only say that the Pole, in his relations with the Russian, is dealing with a brother Slav, who does not regard him as an inferior being, as the German affects to do. Some of my hearers will perhaps remember the sarcastic verses of Heine on the Poles, who, although by origin a Jew — a people who, we must confess with shame,, have been grossly ill-treated and despised — still writes with the most aristocratic race-hatred when dealing with the Slavs; such is the inconsistency of human nature. There is another powerful alien element in Russia — the German. Now we hear a great deal about the Germans in the Baltic provinces, and the Russian encroachments upon them. 90 National Life and Thought. The Germans have plenty to say about the Muskovitischer, Byzantinismus, and other things of the kind ; but, of course, the Germans dwelling in these provinces have no more to do in reality with the German Empire, than the inhabitants of the Channel Islands have to do with the French Republic. Prince Kropotkin, in his valuable article already alluded to, tells us that, in the Baltic provinces, the prevailing population is Esthonian, Curonian, or Lettish; the Germans (landlords in the country or tradesmen and artizans in the towns) in the three provinces, Riga included, hardly reach a total of 120,000 out of 1,800,000 inhabitants. The relations of the Esthonians and Letts to their landlords are anything but friendly. I must here quote an anecdote which my friend, the late Yuri Samaun (one of the most eminent of Russian patriots), told me, which illustrates the spirit in which the Baltic Germans have but too often acted towards the native population. Some years ago an Esthonian Finn emigrated from one of these provinces to America and made a considerable fortune there. Being, I suppose, at length overcome by a sort of nostalgie or mal de pays, he resolved to return to his native country, and on coming back spent a part of his fortune in founding a handsome Finnish club. The German inhabitants, who had always considered the Finns a kind of proletariat, were highly indignant ; such a thing had never been known before. What right had a semi-civilised race to such social privileges ? I merely quote this anecdote to show what has been the state of feeling there, and not to engender race-hatred, still less to speak disrespectfully of a race with which Englishmen are so closely connected, and which has furnished to the world so many eminent men. The Semitic race is represented by three millions of Jews, chiefly in Poland, in west and south-west Russia, and the Caucasus. There is also the peculiar sect of the Jews called the Karaites in the Crimea ; they are found in considerable numbers in the picturesque city of Baktshi-Serai, once the residence of the Khans. It is deeply to be regretted that in the last few years some obsolete laws to the prejudice of the Jews should have been revived in Russia. Some of them, however, have already been abrogated. I can only join with the eminent Frenchman Leroy-Beaulieu, who has written so well upon Russia, in his eloquent appeal to the Czar to grant complete religious freedom throughout his dominions — a policy especially necessary in a country which can show such varieties of belief among its Russia. 9 1 inhabitants. Certainly the feudal maxim, '• Cujus est regio ejus est religio," is long since obsolete. Whatever the policy of the government may be, the Russian peasant cannot be accused of intolerance. He is found living peaceably side by side with Mohammedans in many parts of Russia. If there is any antipathy felt towards the Jews by the peasant, it is because he thinks he is exploited by him. Careful observers of the matter all concur in this view. It is more the Kahal, or Jewish economic society, that the peasant fears than any dogma. In some periods of Russian history Judaism has actually made many converts. Russia has not many populous cities. The list is headed by St. Petersburg with 929,090, but many of the so-called towns of Russia are in reality little better than villages. Catherine created several, which after her death fell into insignificance. The fact is, the Slav, where he is not mixed with other races, is a pure agriculturist, and has few trading tendencies. It was the want of an active middle class which threw all the trade of Poland into the hands of Germans and Jews, and was one of the main causes of the fall of the Republic. It has been truly remarked of that unhappy country that there was no sympathy between the nobility and peasantry, and therefore no national spirit. The Jews who busied themselves with commerce sold at the same time to the serfs and their masters, and thus prevented the two classes from coming in contact with each other. They carried on the economic functions of everyday life, and yet could not be considered a part of the nation. I have but little time for anything more than a few general remarks on the physical geography of Russia, but something must be said, because it is only from realising this that we are able to explain some of the facts of the history of a nation. Russia, as a whole, is a vast plain ; high plateaus and mountains are only met with in the Asiatic parts of the Empire. These flat lands vary in their characteristics — sometimes they are dry deserts or low table-lands, or lake regions, or marshy plains. There is the splendid Caucasian range which separates Europe from Asia, and in the east of Siberia there are volcanoes. When in 1224 the Mongols invaded the country, the vast plains of Russia assisted them in their incursions. There Were no mountain fastnesses in which an heroic people could make their stand ; the cities were, for the most part, small and poorly fortified, and thus the country lay at the feet of these barbarians. Wordsworth has told us in a beautiful sonnet that liberty has two voices, that of the mountain 92 National Life and TJwught. and of the sea, but both mountain and sea were equally wanting to Russia. Of course, Russia has abundance of water power in lakes, huge rivers, and canals, and great diversities of climate. When we consider the varieties of race in Russia — Slavs, Finns, Germans, Tatars, Georgians, Armenians, and many others — we can see that it must be no easy task to unite all these peoples, with their different religions and languages, under one government ; and perhaps this difficulty may furnish some slight excuse for the slow progress of Russia in constitutional development with the Aryan portion of her population. Her course is smooth enough, but it is difficult to imagine, at all events at present, a Parliament in which Chukches, Bashkirs, and Samoyedes would be members. It does not come within the scope of my lecture to give any detailed account of Russian history ; too much of this would be merely of antiquarian and academic interest ; but in order to understand a nation we must see what forces underlie it, what stages of experience it has gone through, and these I shall en- deavour to trace. No one can say anything with much certainty about the Slavs till the times of Procopius and Jordanes, in the sixth century a.d. The ancients knew nothing about them ; perhaps the Russians are to be found in the Budini and Neuri of Herodotus. There seems to be some continuity of the population there, because on the splendid electrum vase which was discovered in the tomb at Kertch, we find figures represented with the same expression of face and dressed in the same way, especially with their trousers tucked in their boots, as one may see any day among the peasants of Russia at the present time. We have a lot of Sagas in the picturesque chronicle of Nestor, or that which is attributed to him. He was a monk of Kiev who lived in the eleventh century. It would be difficult to say how much of this has any historical value; certainly we meet with many replicas of his stories among the Norse legends. We hear of Scandinavian adventurers coming and making themselves masters of the Slavonic tribes. Novgorod and Kiev rise into importance, the former the great commercial city, and the latter the first to be Christianised. Round it gather the religious tradi- tions of Russia. She receives her civilisation from Constantinople, and it is the Greek, not Latin, form of our common faith. We must thus recognise what some people are unable or unwilling to understand — how Russia to all the Eastern Christians is really the head of their Church. We owe her some gratitude for her Russia. 93 protection of them. So great was the power of the Turks, and so apathetic were the Western sovereigns — -as shown among other things, by allowing these barbarians to take Constantinople — that in a short time all South-Eastern Europe and the Christians of Asia, such as the Georgians, would have followed the example of the Bosnian Beys and gone over to Islam en masse. But Peter the Great turned the tide by showing the raya/is, groaning under the Turkish yoke, that they could look to Russia for protection. It is to her that the new nationality of Bulgaria, which gives such excellent promise, owes its existence Granted that her conduct to the Bulgarians at the present time is ungenerous — and I am sorry to confess it — still no Bulgarian can forget that, had it not been for Russian blood and treasure, he would still be treated as a dog by a Mussulman master — still, withal, the smallest rights, politically and socially. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that the Christians of the East have felt grateful to Russia. Have we not played into her hands by refusing to recognise the young states rising upon the ruins of the decrepit and moribund Turkish Empire ? We must reach out a hand to them unless we wish to lose our influence in the East. In this early and half-legendary period of Russia, we have Vladimir of Kiev, the first Christian sovereign, the nine-hundredth anniversary of whose baptism was celebrated at Kiev in 1888. Yaroslav is the first legislator, and we have a specimen of his law- making in the Rtisskaya Pravda, which has come down to us in a manuscript of the chronicles of Novgorod. One of the great features of this early code is, that we see in it the Russians wholly unaffected by those Mongolian corruptions which afterwards vitiated them. Russia was at that time a purely European country, and on a level with the other European nations. At this time the rural peasants were not bound to the soil; they were not in that condition till the sixteenth century. As yet Moscow has not arisen : the history of the country groups itself round Kiev and Novgorod. For nearly two hundred years after this, we have the most dreary period in the Russian annals. The country is divided among a lot of princelings. These little Slavonic princi- palities, like the small Saxon kingdoms of the heptarchy, are not destined at first to be united, although joined in brotherhood by a common language and common institutions. They have not the instinct of nationality, and at first the desire of private aggrandise- ment impedes unity. Thus they are ripe for the attacks of the 94 National Life and Thought. Mongols, who waste them with fire and sword. All Russia except Novgorod was under Mongol rule. During this gloomy period, there was little national life ; but a great many monasteries were built, and in them the monks were cloistered, and busied them- selves with the compilation of a series of chronicles. The yoke of the Mongols was indeed humiliating, but it can- not be said to have had a great influence upon the country. They made no attempt to turn the people into Tatars. They were satisfied with the homage of the princes, with the poll-tax which was exacted, and the military contingents which were fur- nished. Intermarriages took place between the upper classes occasionally, and thus the Muscovite nobility received a certain Oriental admixture, although the amount of it has been greatly exaggerated. Napoleon is reported to have said : " Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar," but, like most epigrams, it is only half a truth. There is nothing of the Tatar in the tall, blonde men, with blue eyes, and frequently red or yellow hair, whom we see forming the bulk of the population of so many parts of Russia. They look more like Scandinavians than Tatars. Many of the Russian customs — such as the seclusion of the women, and the dress, the long, loose, flowing caftan — now became Oriental, but this was altered by Peter the Great. People are apt to imagine that the Russian language contains a great many Tatar words, but in reality such is far from being the case. They are confined to a few expressions for clothing and names of material objects. To the Mongols is probably owing the intro- duction of the knout, the use of which is now illegal. The word, however, appears to be of Scandinavian origin, the same as our knot. The little principality of Moscow during this gloomy period con- tains the germ of the future Russian Empire. It reminds one of the fine lines of Cowper on Yardley Oak. When speaking of the magnificent tree, he tells us there was a time when it was an acorn, and the thievish jay might have swallowed ' ' All its close-woven latitude of boughs And all its embryo vastness at a gulp." It is in 1147 that the city of Moscow first appears in the Russian chronicles, but for a hundred years after its foundation it remains an obscure dependency of the principality of Suzdal. Gradually the little state which has grown round it receives constant accessions of territory. During the Mongol invasion Russia lost much — Kiev, together with Volhynia, Podolia, and Russia. 95 Galicia ; and the last of these she had never regained. When Ivan III. and his two vigorous successors are seen holding the reins of power, and emerging from the chaos of the Middle Ages, Russia has the powerful principality of Lithuania on the west — the official language of which we must remember was White Russian — stretching almost from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and by the marriage of Jagiello, its prince, with Jadviga, the heiress to the Polish throne, it has become united with that country. Thus Russia comes into conflict with Poland; the former symbolises the Greek Church, the latter Catholicism. Their rivalries are to last for two centuries ; nay, they are not terminated at the present day. Russia is kept from the sea in the north by the Swedes, and in the south by the Turks, in whom her old enemies the Mongols are merged. She lies like a sluggish mass, cut off from commun- ication with the outer world. When Ivan IV. wants artificers to help him in his plans for civilising Russia, the Poles can block their entrance into his dominions. Hence we shall not be surprised at the welcome he gives to English seamanship, which brings ambassadors to him by way of the White Sea. He has his idea of getting an outlet into the Baltic, but it is too early. However, he has some success in the south, and gets Astrakhan on the Caspian. He also stretches his empire to Siberia. This cruel but far-sighted man died in 1584. The press had been introduced into Russia twenty years previously. The country at this time swarmed with Englishmen, who have left us some very amusing stories about Ivan. I only wish I had time to tell some of them here. The vigorous rule of the usurper Boris Godunov (1598-1605) was on the whole beneficial to Russia. He also was a far-seeing man, and had the courage to break with the exclusive traditions of his country, for he sent some young Russians to England to be educated. After his death Russia is again put back for nearly fifty years by internal struggles and rival adventurers ; but Alexis, father of Peter the Great, finally turns the tide ; the Western provinces, including historical Kiev, are got back, and the transfer by the Zoporoghian Cossacks of their allegiance from the Poles to Russia brings her closer to the Black Sea. The country is full of useful adventurers, including many Scotchmen. Peter the Great comes before us as a titanic figure. Inheriting all the traditions of autocracy, we must not feel surprised if, like our own Edward I., he had no scruple about removing any obstacles which appeared in his path. To the same cause must g6 National Life and Thought. be traced his lack of self-rule. He was descended, we must remember, from a long line of semi- Asiatic sovereigns ; and if he had not been a man of powerful genius, would have been content as they were, with the idleness and luxury of a palace. He was willing to abandon all these pleasures, so captivating to the ordinary mind, to put himself, as it were, to school ; to endure privations and labour, in order to break with a system against which his intellect rebelled. At the beginning of his reign, Peter found Russia Asiatic, he left her European. He created a navy, and gave her an outlet in the Baltic ; instead of the disorderly, badly-accoutred regiments of the Streltsi, he gave Russia an army, clothed and disciplined on the European model. He added many provinces to the Empire, constructed canals, developed industries, and caused useful books to be translated into Russian, so that his ignorant subjects might be instructed. By the way, it is a curious fact, and not generally known that the first Russian grammar was printed in 1696 at Oxford, while Peter the Great was in England. He gave Russia libraries and museums, galleries of painting and sculpture ; and finally, from an obscure barbaric power, isolated from her European sister kingdom, he created a powerful Empire, able to make its voice heard in the councils of Europe. The feeble reigns of Catherine L, Peter II., Anne, and Elizabeth effected little. A worthy successor to Peter did not appear till Catherine II. ascended the throne. Russia then advanced to the Black Sea, and gained the Crimea, and Odessa and Sevastopol were built. There is no need of going through the well-known events which make her prominent in nineteenth century history — the great Napoleon War, the burning of Moscow, and the retreat of the French in 18 12. Familiar to us are also the wars of Nicholas, especially our own conflicts with him, when the fields of the Crimea were soaked with our blood. With what sad feelings have I walked over the site of these fiercely-contested battles — " How that red rain has made the harvest grow ! " The most noteworthy event of later times has been the great emancipation of the serfs in 1861. I have already said that the rural peasants were only fixed to the soil so late as the time of Boris Godunov, at the close of the sixteenth century. The krestiane, as they were called, had been personally free up to that date, and had the right of quitting their masters. This right was especially put in practice on St. George's Day, and the recol- Russia. 97 lection of it has survived among the peasantry till the present time, in a solitary proverb, " Vot iebe, babushka, yuriev dyen." "Here's St. George's Day for you, old woman." After this time, we find serfdom gradually developing. The first suggestion of their emancipation belongs to Prince Golitsin, the favourite of the Tsarevna Sophia, towards the close of the seventeenth century. In his conversation with the Polish Ambassador Neuville, he spoke to him of the necessity of putting Russia upon the same footing as other more civilised nations, and he thought that the first step towards this was the emancipation of the peasant, and the transference to him of the land which he cultivated. Nothing, however, at that time resulted from these intentions, and they did not get their liberty till the time of Alexander II. At the emancipation, twenty-three millions were set free. It is now pretty generally known, that according to the system of the Russian Mir, the land in a village is divided among the peasants in proportion to the number of their families, and that the re-distribution takes place at certain intervals, this and other points concerning the Mir being settled by the village parliament, at which not only men but women are allowed to vote. My hearers will find all this clearly explained in the excel- lent work of Sir Mackenzie Wallace. Subsequent researches on the subject have shown that this land system is of great antiquity, and can be traced thoroughout Europe — to say nothing of Asia. In India the English met with it as soon as they had become well acquainted with the country, and were at first puzzled by it. In Switzerland and Servia it is still found flourishing, and there are traces of it in England and Scotland. The subject is too vast to be treated here ; in fact, to do it justice, I should require the time allowed me for the whole lecture. Many persons have thought that in this institution the Russians have the germ of self-government, but in other respects the peasants and artisans show ideas of co-operation : thus the artel or confederation of workmen, whereby they lodge and board together, each contributing his quota, is very curious and inter- esting. People see in these things a certain, power of cohesion and independent action among the Russian lower classes ; and, as Leroy-Beaulieu very truly remarks, the number of religious sects among them, which suffered considerable persecution in old time, and even now are put under disabilities, shows that in matters of conscience the Russian will have his individual opinion, and will not be dictated to. G \ 98 National Life and Thought. I shall say something about these religious sects further on, but will now proceed to consider the condition of the serf in his newly enfranchised position. At the emancipation the com- mune (Mr) received the village land, and might either pay as before by so many days' personal labour from the inhabitants, or might elect to redeem the allotments by the help of the crown, and they then became free from all obligations to the landlord. The crown paid the landlord, and the peasants have to pay the crown for forty-nine years six per cent, interest on the money advanced, that is, nine to twelve roubles on allotment. Each village commune received 13! acres (five desiatiue) for each male member. For many interesting facts on the condition of the peasantry, I recommend my hearers to read the little work of Mr. Ling Roth, entitled, Agriculture and Peasantry in Eastern Russia. As regards the government of Russia, which is a pure autocracy, I need say nothing ; it is well known to all of you. Concerning the Church, as I have said before, it follows the orthodox or Greek faith. An excellent book has been recently written on Religion in Russia, by M. Leroy-Beaulieu, which forms the third volume of his opus magnum, L 'Empire les Tsars et les Russes. He does not consider the religion of the muzhik or peasant a mere system of fetish. Because it is overlaid with so many gross superstitions and ceremonies, it does not follow that there is no real piety or feeling underneath it. Tried by the same standard, the Italian and Spanish peasant, and, we might add, the Roman Catholic Irish, might be considered pagans. One of the most striking facts in the history of the Russian Church is the raskol (lit. cutting asunder, or splitting), the great religious schism which began when Nikon, the primate, corrected the errors which had crept into the religious books. This priest was a remarkable man ; some have not hesitated to call him the greatest man produced by Russia before the days of Peter. When summoned before the council, his answers exhibited remarkable boldness. Nikon was the Beckett of Russia, and might have carried the day with the superstitious Emperor Alexis, whose ecclesiastical pro- clivities have been noted for us in the quaint book of the physician, Samuel Collins, but the Boyars were too much for him. They talked the Tsar over, and Nikon lost his ecclesiastical dignities and ended as a simple monk. Thus came the staro- obriadtsi or old believers into existence, and since that time sects have multiplied in Russia down to their latest development — that Russia. 99 of the Stundists — a kind of offshoot of German Protestantism, who derive their name from the word Stunde. There are many striking parallels to these sects in America and England. When we see the shakuni or leapers, who make religious dances a great part of their ritual, and the molokani, or milk-drinkers, we are reminded of the Shakers and Quakers. Other sects recall the Plymouth Brethren and the Irvingites. M. Leroy-Beaulieu does not consider that the Tsar is as much the head of the Russian Church as Queen Victoria of the English. Neither Moscow nor St. Petersburg, he says, has ever seen an assembly of laymen like the English Parliament legislate in Church questions. Much has been said about the ignorance of the Russian rural priest, but we must remember the laborious life he leads, the great extent of the parishes which are under his care, and the privations to which he is subject. Poor and half-educated as he frequently is, he is the consoler of the muzhik in his troubles, and the partaker of his joys, as the Irish priest has been in the sister isle; he is like the "soggarth aroon" of Banim's pathetic songs. We must all hope that Russia may advance gradually in the path of constitutional progress, but it is difficult to see how she can move in any other way than slowly and by degrees. The peasants are at the present time too illiterate and the middle class is too small, so that all power would necessarily fall into the hands of the nobility. The late Emperor Alexander II. did a great deal for Russia ; his assassination was not merely a crime, but a blunder. I cannot do better than quote the words of Dr. George Brandes, the Dane, the author of Moderne Geister, and other works (p 129): — "Nothing has set Russia further backward than this last occurrence, which was pregnant with misfortune. It immediately prevented the formation 'of a sort of parliamentary constitution, which had just then been promised. It frightened the successor to the crown back from the paths his father had entered upon at the beginning of his reign, and it seemed to justify the rulers in reprisals and measures of persecution of every kind." With these words I turn from a part of my subject which suggests painful reflections, and gladly leave the heated atmosphere of politics to say a few words on Russian literature. Russian authors are at the present time coming into fashion, and my audience may care to hear a few remarks upon them. Beside their written literature the Russians have abundance of folk-song, legend, and folk-tale. The former are called bilini, L«rc IOO National Life and Thought. which may be roughly translated, "tales of the olden time." They have been divided into various cycles, as, for instance, those of the older heroes, siarshie bogatiri, those of Vladimir, the Prince of Kiev, of Novgorod and Moscow. The heroes of the first cycle are Titanic beings, who have the power of assuming various shapes. A great hero of the time of Vladimir is Ilya Muromets, an unwieldy giant, in whose history some writers have seen a symbolism of Russia herself. The cycle of Novgorod has stories to tell us about rich merchants, but perhaps the cycle of Moscow, with its legends about Ivan the Terrible, is most interesting. An Englishman named Richard James, a graduate of Oxford, who for some reason was in Russia at the beginning of the seventeenth century, either copied out, or caused to be copied out, some curious contemporary bilini, or historical ballads. His pocket-book containing these pieces is preserved in the Bodleian Library. Beside the bilini, there are many collections of skazki, or prose tales, some of the most interesting of which were made known to the English public by my late friend Mr. Ralston. As regards their written literature, the Russians have a series of chronicles, compiled by monks in their cloisters, and extending from that attributed to Nestor in the eleventh century to the time of Peter the Great, in the latter part of the seventeenth. In the earlier period of her history, in fact, down to the time of Peter the Great, the traditions of Russian literature were wholly Byzantine. We have sermons and lives of the saints in abun- dance, and perhaps there is more to please the antiquary and the philologist than the man of taste. There are a few exceptions, such as the prose-poem on the Expedition of Prince Igor in the twelfth century, and the Zadontschina of the fourteenth, which describes the great victory of Dmitri Donskoi over the Tatars. The fashion imitated was nearly always Byzantine, and that, it must be confessed, was not a noble school in which an infant literature could be formed. The Byzantine Greeks have been sarcastically called the European Chinese ; their civilisation has been said to be the corpse of antiquity laid out in state, and all this is more or less true. Poetry was dead among them, unless we are to find it in the tvoXltlkol o-riyoi of Tzetzes, and history had degenerated in the veriest drybones of chronicles. But changes were coming, even before the time of Peter, when the Russians got back Kiev in 1686, which, although the cradle of their nationality, had for upwards of three hundred years been Russia. IOI in the possession of Lithuanian and Pole. Something of the culture of the West was communicated to them by the Academy which had been founded there, and Simeon Polotski, who came to Moscow in 1665, and in 1672 was appointed tutor to the children of Tsar Alexis. He began to write verses on the Latin model and sacred dramas. With the reforms of Peter the Great commences an entirely new period in the history of Russian literature. From her Byzantine traditions, from legends of saints, confused chronicles and orthodox hymnologies, Russia was to pass, by one of the most violent changes ever witnessed in the literature of any country, into epics moulded on the Henriade and tedious odes in the style of Jean Baptiste Rousseau. Then appeared Lamonosov, the son of a poor fisherman of Archangel, who forms one of the curious band of peasant authors, of very various merit, it must be confessed, who present such a singular and unexpected phenomenon in Russian literature. The life of this man, who died full of honours, exhibits the most startling contrasts. The reign of Catherine II. (1762-1796) saw the rise of a whole generation of court poets. The maxim, ■'' Un Au°ustc peutaisement faire un Virgile" was seen in all its absurdity in semi-barbarous Russia. These wits were supported by the Empress and her immediate entourage, to whom their florid productions were ordinarily addressed. Macaulay has somewhere a homely but very vigorous simile to express the relations in which a writer stands towards his public in countries where education is little diffused. He says that the patron, if he wants to have the odes of a poet, must support the poet — just, he adds, as when you go to out-of-the-way countries, if you want a mutton-chop, you must buy the whole sheep. In the strict sense of the word, at that time there was no reading public in Russia ; only in the dreary huts of the peasants, through the long winter nights, the wandering rhapsodist kept up the tradition of their popular legends. But the Gallicised courtiers of the epoch of Catherine regarded these productions with contempt, as the babble of savages. They were only to be collected in the present century, when the great reaction against the pseudo-classical school had set in. The classicists, who numbered some prominent poets, Derz- havin among them, lasted till some way on in the present century. Then came the introduction of the romantic school by Zhukovski, who survived to a good old age, dying in 1852. Alexander Pushkin (1799-1857) symbolises this school at its height, with 102 National Life and TJiouglit. strong influences of Byronism, in spite of which he has written poems national to the core, and was followed by Lermontov and others. It was in Alexis Koltsov that the real voice of the Russian people first spoke, which up to that time had only been heard in the national songs. I will give some of the details of his life as it illustrates Russian society. Lemonosov, Pushkin, and Zhukovski, were in one sense artificial poets, well acquainted with the literatures of Western Europe ; but in the new writer all Russia recognised a man of the people, who, like Burns, could tell their aspirations and griefs, and whose songs had been awakened by the influence of the popular lays of the country. It is in this sense that Koltsov is the most national of the Russian poets. Alexis Koltsov was born at Voronezh, in the government of the same name, October 2nd (old style), 1809. His father traded in sheep, whose carcases were to be boiled down for the tallow factories. The family had been engaged in this calling for some generations, and were fairly substantial people of the burgher class. Still, educationally speaking, his condition was a low one. If Russian tradesmen show but little culture now, it was still more the case seventy or eighty years ago. Voronezh was once an active place, especially in the time of Peter the Great, but it is now dull and decayed. Koltsov grew up amid coarse and vulgar associations, and received a poor education. Till his death he used an ungrammatical style, and his orthography was capricious. Prosaic as some of the features of his life were, political acces- sories were not wholly absent. He was occasionally sent to tend his father's sheep on the steppe, and thus found himself in communion with Nature. The account given by his biographers reminds us very much of some of the details of the life of the Ettrick Shepherd, and the days he spent upon the solitary Scottish hills. It is of this steppe that the Russian poet is never weary of singing, and he has consecrated to it many of his most beautiful poems. His fancies were first stimulated by reading the works of Dmitriev, a poet of the classical school, who flourished in the interval between Lomonosov and the romantic revival under Zhukovski. Soon afterwards he was able to purchase some of the works of the Russian poets, but he did not make much progress in the art of composition till Kashkin, a good-natured bookseller, had given him a work on Russian parody. There is a sad love episode in the life of the poet. His father, Russia. 103 although a mere burgher, owned some serfs, and among them was a young girl who had grown up in the house, and had become half servant and half companion to Koltsov's sisters, and indeed there would not be much difference between them in matters of education. The girl appears to have been a beauty of the South Russian type. The poet fell in love with her, and his passion was reciprocated. His father, however, determined to put an end to such an attachment, which he thought little conducive to his son's interest. He accordingly took advantage of the absence of Alexis in the steppe, and sold Duniasha, as she was called, and her mother, to one of the landed proprietors dwelling in the district of the Don. The father of Koltsov appears in most of his actions to have been a hard, money-loving man ; but it is not easy to forgive him for this act of brutality. This sad instance of the abuse of parental authority occurred when the poet was twenty-two years of age. We are told that Duniasha soon fell into a consumption, and died through grief at parting. In 1835 eighteen of the poems of Koltsov were published through the agency of his friend Stankevich, the son of a landed proprietor of Voronezh, and the book soon made its way. In 1836 Koltsov had occasion to visit St. Petersburg and Moscow, with a view to the settlement of some of his father's affairs. It was on this occasion that he was introduced to the chief literary lions of the two capitals, and the salons of the aristocracy were thrown open to him. The memoirs of Koltsov are full of painful details of the constant squabbles of the poet with his father, a coarse, selfish old man. After his return from Moscow in March 1841, Koltsov first began to show signs of that disease which was to carry him off in the following year. The disagreeable condition of his life is made only too apparent in his letters to the critic Bielinski. Fortunately, the poor poet fell into the hands of a kindly and sympathetic doctor. Life had, however, become distasteful to Koltsov ; he used to say to his medical man, " If my disease is inevitable, if you are only protracting life, I implore you not to do so. The sooner it is over the better, and I shall give you less trouble." On the advice of his medical attendant, Koltsov went to a friend in the country, so that he might bathe regularly in the Don, and for some time his health improved. " But this improvement," remarks Bielinski, "was only deferring death." For the re-estab- lishment of his health rest was necessary, and that was denied him. As happened in the case of Burns, some of his friends, "flies of estate and sunshine," to use the words of George 104 National Life and Thought. Herbert, deserted him in his declining days. The poet died on the 19th of October 1842. The volume of verse which Koltsov has left us is not great in extent, but its contents are valuable. He has all moods, but the melancholy one is predominant. And we must remember that the sorrows of Koltsov were real ones, and his desponding utterances are not like the expressions of Weltschmerz of the poets of the Byronic school, who too often show their self-inflicted wounds to the world, as mendicants do for an alms. We cannot say of him that he is "Sad as summer night for wantonness." Another poet, whose life has great interest, and gives us a genuine picture of Russia, is Taras Shevchenko, the Cossack. He wrote a short autobiography, from which I shall borrow some incidents. He was born on the 28th of March 18 14, in the village of Mornitsa, in the Government of Kiev. His parents were serfs on the estate of a certain landed proprietor named Engelhardt. He has told us that he never knew any happiness after his ninth year. He appears to have been a dreamy child, full of strange impulses ; thus he was always gazing at the distant mountains, which he could see from his village, and thought that they must be iron pillars which supported the sky, He accordingly wandered from the village to put his belief to the test, and would perhaps have been lost if he had not been brought back by some pedlars. In the year 1823 he lost his mother ; his father married again, and the new wife proved a severe stepmother to the children. Taras, with his little sister Irene, who was his constant companion, used to go to the neighbouring Lebedinski monastery. Here he saw an old monk who had been an eye-witness of the struggle between the Malo-Russians and the Poles in 1768. This man had many a story to tell of the period, and gave the youth the material for his striking poem, Haidatnak. The father of Shevchenko sent him for instruction to a certain Hubski, but died soon afterwards. The stripling was then intrusted to a drunken priest named Buhorski, who treated him with brutal severity. "This was the first despot I ever had to deal with," says Taras, in his auto- biography, "and he instilled in me for the rest of my life a loathing for every sort of oppression which one man can commit against another." He also narrates his adventures with two other persons of this sort by whom he was instructed, and from Russia. 105 whom he learned something of the art of painting, for they were employed in the preparation of icons, or sacred pictures. Thus, besides a genius for song, an inclination for art was developed in Taras. But his fortunes were to undergo a change. In the year 1823 his old master, Engelhardt, died, and his son and heir took the youngster as his page. This new position, although at first it seemed to cripple his freedom, was, in the end, advantageous to him. His duty was to remain in an ante-chamber, to await the summons of his master. The poor youth, to wile away his time, was accustomed to copy the pictures hanging on the wall. This practice, however, on one occasion, brought him into trouble. He accompanied his master to Vilna on the occasion of a festival in honour of the Tsar. During the absence of M. Engelhardt and his family at a ball, given in honour of this fete, young Shevchenko set himself to copy the pictures which were hanging on the walls. While the rest of the household slept, the young artist secretly rose, lit a candle, and began drawing. He became so engrossed in the pursuit that he did not perceive when his master returned, and was rudely awakened from his artistic dreams by his ears being pulled by the angry nobleman, who terrified the young painter by telling him that by his sitting with a candle among the papers, he had not only nearly set on fire the house but the whole city. The unfortunate Shevchenko received a beating. A better time, however, was in store for him. M. Engelhardt resolved to send him to a house painter, with the idea of employing him on his estate. To a decorator of this sort he accordingly went, and luckily found a kind-hearted man. In the year 1832, the master of the poet went to live permanently at St. Petersburg, and Taras followed with the rest of the servants. His talent for painting became more and more developed, and finally in 1838 some benevolent men raised 2500 roubles, the sum required to purchase him from his master, and set him free. Shevchenko now became a member of the Academy of Arts, and everything promised a successful career for him. In 1840 appeared his Kobzar containing a collection of lyrical pieces in the Malo-Russian language. But unfortunately, while staying at Kiev, he got mixed up with some secret societies, and was denounced to the Government. He was sentenced to serve as a soldier at Orenburg, on the Asiatic frontier of the empire, and remained in exile from 1847 to 1857. His fate was the more severe, because he was forbidden to amuse himself with painting. 106 National Life and Thought. He, however, contrived to secrete materials, even carrying a pencil in his shoe, and his proceedings were winked at, through the good nature of the officer in command. The following story is told by the great novelist Turguehiev : — " One general, an out-and-out martinet, having heard that Shevchenko, in spite^of the prohibition, had made two or three sketches, thought it his duty to report the matter to Perovski (the commander-in-chief of the district) on one of his days of reception ; but the latter looking sternly on the over-jealous informer, said in a marked tone, ' General, I am deaf in this ear, be so good as to repeat to me on the other side what you have said.' The general took the hint, and going to the other side, told him something which in no way concerned Shevchenko." The poor poet during his captivity lamented his fate in some sad poems. But a day of deliverance was at hand. In 1855 the Emperor Nicholas died, and soon afterwards Shevchenko, through the influence of his friends, was released. He returned to St. Petersburg in 1858 ; in the summer of the following year he paid a visit to the Ukraine, and saw his sister Irene in her native village. But he was so poor, that he was only able to give her a rouble ; at that time all the rest of the family were serfs. Towards the middle of July he again made his appearance in St. Petersburg, and occupied apartments in the Academy buildings. A new edition of his Kobzar also appeared. He now became anxious to settle down in the Ukraine, but his health was breaking up. On the 26th of February 1861, the poet died suddenly in his studio. He had expressed a wish to be buried in the Ukraine — ' ' When I die, one thing I crave, Lay me by the Dnieper, That his broad and rushing wave Lull in rest the sleeper." His friends resolved that his wish should be carried out, and he was buried in a picturesque spot, in the presence of a great crowd of people. In imitation of the old Cossack tombs, a vast mound of earth was piled on the grave, which was surmounted by an iron cross. This tomb is an object of reverence among his countrymen, and a little while ago it was spoken of in one of the Polish journals as the Mecca of the South Russian revolutionists. I have unfortunately no time for a detailed criticism of the writings of Shevchenko. He loves to describe the wild exploits of the Cossacks in their independent days. He has in a clever manner interwoven with his poems the popular superstitions and customs Russia. 107 of his countrymen, hence his pieces are full of national colouring and racy of the soil. The Russians began early to write historical novels, under the influence of Scott — that wizard whose genius pervaded Europe. But it is in the realistic novels of modern life that they have been destined to achieve their greatest success. We might per- haps say that Nihilism, the exiles in Siberia, the supposed pro- gress of the Russians towards India, and the Russian novel are the only Russian subjects about which the ordinary English- man feels any curiosity. In the stream of realistic fiction the Russian mind has flowed ; and this is only what we must expect, when we reflect that in the nineteenth century the epic and the drama, as forms of fresh creative literature, are dead throughout Europe. The novel of everyday life, in its higher development, giving scope for fine psychological analysis, is everywhere trium- phant. It was introduced to the Russians by Nicholas Gogol (1809-1852), a writer of striking talents. As he was a native of Malo-Russia, the colouring of his tales is taken from that picturesque part of the empire. But even he, great as were his merits, hardly during his lifetime succeeded in making himself known beyond the boundaries of his native country. This was done by Ivan Turgueniev, who died in 1883. Much has been written by way of criticism upon the writings of Turgueniev, but of his biography little is yet known, especially in this country. In the latter part of the year 1884, there appeared in the pages of the Russian Review, ■ Viestnik Yevropi, some interesting papers by a Madame Zhitov, who had been adopted by Turgueniev's mother during her long widowhood. We get from them a curious view of Russian domestic life in the earlier part of the century, and the sketch forms a fitting pendant to the biographies of Koltsov and Shevchenko. The mother of the novelist, Barbara Lituvinova, was descended from an old and wealthy family. Unfortunately, her mother, who became a widow at an early age, married again ; and both she and her second husband ill-treated the daughter, for whom she never seems to have felt any affection. The poor girl, persecuted by her family, at last took refuge with a rich uncle, who treated her well in the main, although he seems to have been a man of harsh character. With him Barbara remained till his death, at which time she was nearly thirty years of age. He left her all his property, which was considerable. She soon afterwards married Sergius Turgueniev, a man of noble family and handsome appear- io8 National Life and Thought. ance, according to tradition. By him she had two sons, Ivan and Nicholas. Her husband died early, and Madame Turgueniev appears for the rest of her life to have vented her spleen and melancholy upon the unfortunate serfs in her power. It was from what he saw on his mother's estate that Turgueniev drew the vigorous pictures of serfdom to be found in his works, especially that which was the earliest to become celebrated, Zapiski Okhov- nika — The Memoirs of a Sportsman. In his mother's house occurred the pathetic incident of the dumb porter — a man whom Madame Turgueniev had chosen for the post on account of his gigantic stature, and who consoled himself in his desolation by the companionship of a dog. His cruel mistress had the animal removed, because he occasionally made a noise. Ivan, the future novelist, was continually devising means whereby the cruelty of his mother to the serfs could be baffled. Thus, when she ordered the child of one of her female serfs, whom she employed in attendance upon herself, to be sent to another estate, because it diverted the attention of the mother from her mistress, Ivan, to spare the poor woman's agonies, caused the child to be secretly brought up on a part of the estate where the mother could visit it, and Madame Turgueniev never discovered the trick which had been played upon her. She had educated one of her serfs as a medical man. He had acquired such skill that his services were in great request in the families of the district, when Madame Turgueniev was willing to lend them. The serf-doctor was employed to attend the young protegee of his mistress (Madame Zhitov) ; but as the little girl got no better, Madame made up her mind to send to some doctors in the neighbouring town. But the serf, whose name was Porphyry, would not agree to this. The rest shall be told in the words of Madame Zhitov : — ' "With his air of imperturbable quiet and heavy step he entered the room of his mistress, at the very moment when she was writing a letter to invite the physician to attend. " ' Do not trouble yourself, madam, to write to any one. I am attending the young lady, and I will cure her.' " Madame Turgueniev cast her eyes upon him, put her letter aside, looked closely at the audacious speaker, and said, 'Re- member, if you don't cure her, a journey to Siberia awaits you ' — whither in old times rebellious serfs were sent as a punish- ment. " But this did not trouble our good doctor. He went out of the Russia. loo room as slowly and quietly as he came, sat behind my bed, and never left me day or night till the disease had taken a favourable turn. Then, in the same phlegmatic manner, expressing neither triumph nor joy (although he was very fond of me), he went into the room where he had been threatened with Siberia, and said 'The young lady is now alive and safe, only it will be some time before she is convalescent.' " With Turgueniev, Count Leo Tolstoi and Dostoievski (who died in 1881) divide the honours at the present day. Tolstoi allures his readers by his vigorous portraiture and the strange under- current of socialism which runs through all his writings. Dostoi- evski has an overpowering realism. This realism in art, which is so great a characteristic of the Russian mind, besides appearing in the novelists, is conspicuous in the paintings of Verestchagin, and also in the poetry of Nekrasov, who died a short time ago. Count Melchior de Vogue, who has written a powerful book on the Russian novel, says very truly the Russian thinker goes with a bound to the depths of things. He sees the contradictions, the vanity, the great nullity of life ; and if his artistic temperament urges him to reproduce it, he does it with a disdainful impartial- ity, at times with a frigid despair, most often with the fatalism which is inherent in the Oriental parts of his soul. It is this fatalism which makes the Russian accept with such apathy and even with apparent cheerfulness whatever misfortunes he finds himself compelled to undergo. Thus in spite of his exile and the many physical and mental sufferings which he underwent, Dostoi- evski returned from Siberia with an unbroken and loyal faith in the political and religious institutions of his country. Aksakov has told us that once Dostoievski, together with Mackenzie Wallace and others, were spending the evening with him, when in the course of a conversation on the Emperor Nicholas, the novelist warmly eulogised him. After his departure the English- man came up to Aksakov and asked, " Did you not tell me that was Dostoievski ? ' "Yes." " The author of Memorials of the House of Death " ? " The same." " But it cannot be he who was exiled to the mines ?" "No other; and pray why not?" "Why, how could he eulogise the very man who sent him to the galley?" "You, as a foreigner," replied Aksakov, "may find it difficult no National Life and TJwught. to understand, but to us it is intelligible, and is thoroughly Russian." 1 A few words are due about the Russian press. Many of the newspapers are known in England by name, but little more. Thus there is the Novoye Viemya, the proprietor of which is Suvorin, the publisher. At Moscow is published the Russkia Viedomosli, probably the most widely circulated paper in Russia, edited by Sobolevski, formerly a professor, and the Moskovskia Viedomosti, which used to be the organ of the celebrated Katkov. There is also the Grazhdaniu. The Golos has, we believe, come to an end. Of the Reviews, the most noteworthy are the Viestnik Yevropi, edited by Stasiulevich, in which some of the novels of Tur- gueniev first made their appearance. There is also the Moscow periodical, Russkaya Mist, Russian Thought, and to these may be added the Russkaya Starina, Russian Antiquary, and Istoricheski and Viestnik, both of which are published at St. Petersburg. The former is an invaluable magazine to all who study Russian history, containing, as it does, articles relating solely to the life and thought of that country in previous times. It is edited by Semevski. The Istorie/ieski Viestnik has a wider range, inasmuch as it includes also the histories of other countries besides Russia. The articles are of a very substantial character. It is edited by Shubiaski, the author of some very interesting historical mono- graphs. So vast a subject as Russia it would be impossible to fully treat of in a single lecture. All I have attempted to do is to put before you some of the landmarks of the history and literature of this strange country, which has only lately been studied among us. Let us hope, as I have previously said, that Russia may advance slowly and safely in the path of constitutional progress, and play the great part which she seems destined to do in the history of the nations. Nor need any of my hearers be terrified by the bugbear of Panslavism, which is so often brandished before us like a red rag. There seems to be an idea that Panslavism was invented by the Russians, but as every one properly informed on the subject knows, such is far from being the case. The first person to start the idea was a certain Yuri Krizhanich, a Serb, who was in Russia for some time during the reign of Alexis, the father of Peter the Great, but from unknown causes was banished to Siberia, and is supposed to have ended his days at Tobolsk. His works are full 1 Turner's Modern Novelists of Russia. Russia. Ill of interest, and show great acuteness ; he carried his enthusiasm so far that he believed in the possibility of a common Slavonic language. It seems to me impossible that a political union of the Slavonic races should ever be formed. That there should be a certain amount of sympathy among them is not to be wondered at, but language and religion alone will prevent their complete fusion. The Eastern Slavs are members of the Orthodox or Greek Church, the Western of the Latin ; and each clings to his special alphabet, in one case leading to the almost ludicrous result that the Serbs and Croats, practically the same people, are divided into two families, one of which uses the Latin and the other the Cyrillic letters. Nay, we may actually see literary journals, one column of which is in Cyrillic, and the other in the Latin alphabet. Moreover, although the various Slavonic languages have roots, and forms in common — as must necessarily be the case from their belonging to the same family — yet the people who use different languages are not mutually intelligible. In the same way, show an Englishman a page of Dutch or Swedish, and he will immedi- ately point out a great many words, obviously the same as English, with slight modifications, but we hardly expect to hear an English- man engaged in easy conversation with a Swede or a Dutchman, unless he has learned their languages. And just as this Panslav- istic idea is a mere " scare," so the result of all my reading has been to find that the will of Peter the Great "is a fond thing vainly invented;" but I have no time to go into a discussion upon it here. The subject is far too lengthy. In conclusion, I can only say of Russia, in the words of one of her own poets, which I have attempted to versify, who is listening to the peasant as he sings : — "More boldly those songs of half-sadness are flowing, And full of a strength that is young ; They tell of a soul that triumphant is growing, Tho' for years it was tortured and wrung. "Maybe, thou hast bowed, native land, 'neath thy sorrow, And harsh was thy fortune to bide, — But nay — I'll believe not that freedom's glad morrow And her songs to these fields are denied." k • J VII. POLAND. ADAM GIELGUD. IT was, I think, a happy inspiration which prompted the Com- mittee of this Institute to include Poland in the series of lectures on the European nations now being delivered to you. There is certainly no country that has played an important part in European history of which so little is known among the present generation of Englishmen as Poland. I have often heard people, fairly educated people too, ask whether such a nation as Poland still exists, and whether the Poles are not the same as the Russians. Nor, indeed, is this very surprising. It is now a hundred years since, by an act of spoliation unexampled in history, Poland was divided among three great powers — Russia, Austria, and Prussia — which have exercised every means of persuasion and violence to wipe out the Polish national spirit, and to assimilate their Polish to their other subjects. A hundred years is a long time even in the life of a nation, and only a very sturdy and patriotic one cculd have survived this disintegrating process, carried out with steady persistence by some of the greatest statesmen of Europe, with vast armies, ample funds, and all the resources of civilisation at their command. No wonder that people conclude that Poland must be dead, and that the Poles have accepted their fate and made friends with their rulers, as, looking at the matter from a purely material point of view, it was obviously their interest to do. It is, perhaps, a little singular that a nation which inspired English poets, historians, and orators — whose cause was supported, within the memory of many now living, by splendid entertain- ments, in which the chief members of the English aristocracy, with the Duke of Sussex, the Queen's uncle, at their head, took a leading part, and by public meetings of Conservatives, Liberals, and Radicals, addressed by such representative men as Edmund Beales and Lord Dudley Stuart, who may be said to have lived 114 National Life and Thought. and died for Poland — that a nation whose valour and misfortunes have been the subject of endless debates in Parliament, and nearly caused a war between this country and Russia in 1864 — should now be almost entirely forgotten. Possibly this may be explained by the advance of what is called materialism. These are not times when men's pulses are stirred by such names as Kosci- uszko, Garibaldi, and Kossuth. We are a more practical age ; our admiration and sympathy are for success, not for misfortune ; and Bismarck and Moltke have eclipsed the heroes of our youth. The unfortunate, like the absent, are always in the wrong, and it has become the fashion to say that Poland fell because she did not deserve to live, and that the Poles are a turbulent, imprac- ticable race who will never be capable of self-government. Such wholesale accusations against a nation are very un philosophical, and are generally falsified by events. It is not very long ago that the general notion in England about the Germans was that they were a nation of dreamers; about the Italians, that they were either mere dilettanti or visionary conspirators ; about the Roumanians, that they were sunk in luxury and corruption ; and about the Bulgarians, that they were ignorant boors with not enough spirit to turn out their Turkish oppressors. Yet we now know that the Germans and Italians are among the most practical politicians in the world, and that Roumania and Bulgaria have not only obtained their independence, but successfully resist even the bullying of a great power like Russia. The fall of Poland, we are told, was to a great extent brought about by her internal dissensions. This is undoubtedly true. Internal dissension is a bad thing for a country, especially when it is surrounded by three great powers who are eagerly waiting for an opportunity of pouncing upon her and seizing her territory ; but people who look for a reason for the fall of Poland, are too apt to forget that countries which are now the greatest and most flourishing in the world, have been the scene of internal dissensions as bad as those of Poland, though, owing to their more favourable geogra- phical position, they have not been punished for them as she has been. This has, indeed, for centuries been the chronic disease of all Europe. Look at England : from Wat Tyler's revolt and the persecution of the Lollards to the wars of the Roses, from the wars of the Roses to the blood-stained annals of the Tudors and the dynastic civil wars of the Stuarts and the Georges, her history has been an almost unbroken succession of internal struggles; and even now, though Englishmen have ceased to Poland. 115 settle their differences by the sword, we all know that political adversaries in this country attack each other as bitterly in Parliament, at public meetings, in the press, and even in the law courts, as they ever did on the battlefield. In French history we see the risings of the peasants and traders against the nobles in the fourteenth century, the civil war between North and South in the fifteenth, the thirty years' war between the Huguenots and Catholics in the sixteenth, the wars of the Fronde in the seven- teenth, and the horrors of the Great Revolution in the eighteenth ; Germany had the Hussite war in the fifteenth century, the nobles' war in the sixteenth, the thirty years' war in the seventeenth ; and the Italians, after the hundred years' war between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, continued to fight each other almost incessantly until Italian unity was finally established in 187 1. Now no one would be so foolish as to say that the English are a turbulent nation incapable of governing themselves, because during some three centuries of their history they were chiefly occupied in cutting each other's throats. Why, then, should this be said of the Poles— unless, indeed, it be that having failed to help them, we try to console ourselves for the failure by saying that they did not deserve to be helped ? The radical error of this view of Polish history is, that it passes a sweeping condem- nation on the Poles for faults which were not specially Polish, but were those of Europe generally before the great French Revol- ution. It is all very well for us in England, at the end of the nineteenth century, to hold up our hands in horror on reading of the anarchy which prevailed in Poland a hundred and fifty years ago. There was plenty of anarchy at that time in the other countries of Europe. The condition of Germany, for instance, is thus described by one of the most recent of our radical historians, Mr. Fyffe, author of the History of Europe: — "A system of small States, which in the past of Greece and Italy had produced the finest types of energy and genius, had in Germany resulted in the extinction of all vigorous life, and in the ascend- ancy of all that was stagnant, little, and corrupt. If political disorganisation, the decay of public spirit, and the absence of a national idea, are the signs of impending downfall, Germany was ripe for foreign conquest." Germany, France, Italy, Holland, escaped the fate of Poland, not because they were more orderly and peaceful, but because they were not, as Poland was, surrounded by despotic powers, each with far greater resources than herself, which not only coveted her fertile plains, but hoped 1 1 6 National Life and Thought. in crushing Poland to stem the rising flood of liberty on the Continent. The truth is, as the poet Campbell indicated in his famous lines, that Poland was the victim of her love of freedom ; in signing the Constitution of the 3rd of May 1791 — that Constitution at whose promulgation Burke said that "humanity must rejoice and glory" — she signed her death-warrant. That this was the case, is proved out of the mouth of Frederick William himself, who, after complimenting the Poles through his ambassador on their Constitution, sent an army into their country, and justified himself before the other powers by asserting that "the principles of Jacobinism were gaining ground in the country, and the spirit of the French democracy was taking deep root among the Poles." Catherine, less Jesuitical, simply protested against the Constitution, and backed up her protest with an army of 100,000 men. I will not here give any more details of the sad and well-known story of the intrigues of the Fredericks and Catherine ; it will suffice to quote the words of our last and greatest historian on the subject, Mr. Lecky, who, in his History of England in the Eighteenth Century, says : — ' ' It was the deliberate and systematic policy of Russia and Prussia to maintain anarchy in Poland in order that it might never rise to prosperity or power or independence. The policy of Russia towards Poland was one of cynical, undisguised rapa- city; while the King of Prussia not only broke his word and betrayed his trust, but took an active part in the partition of the defenceless country which he had bound himself in honour to protect." I know that Carlyle takes a different view ; but hero- worship was one of the defects of that great and rugged genius, and he chose his heroes from among the mighty ones of the earth, who are not always the noblest or the most generous. What I would specially call your attention to is, that Poland has from the beginning of her history been the land of liberty, and that it was because she was the land of liberty that the despotic governments which surrounded her have always been her enemies, and have always striven to compass her destruction. It is the fashion to blacken the idols and to glorify the villains of our forefathers ; and that clever apologist of Russian despotism, Madame Novikoff, has probably persuaded many people that Poland was not a free country after all, but was ruled by a turbulent aristocracy who, when they were not fighting among themselves or with the neighbouring States, were chiefly occupied in oppressing the peasants. The latest disciple of this ingenious Poland. 1 1 7 lady is, I see, a writer in the current number of the Quarterly Review, who affords a good illustration of the ignorance which prevails, even among writers in reviews, with regard to Poland. With a complacent dogmatism, which is the usual accompaniment of imperfect knowledge, he boldly asserts that Poland will never again be an independent nation ; that the Poles were politically imbecile, because in 1811 they hesitated to join their old enemy Russia against France, in whose army there were whole regiments composed of their countrymen ; that one of the causes of the fall of Poland was the "lowness of the suffrage" (a bad look-out for England); and that the Polish nobles were slaveholders. In support of the latter assertion, which, as I shall show presently, has no foundation in fact, he produces a bit of philology which will make those who know the Polish language and people stare. "The common appellation for the peasant," he says, "in the language of the upper classes (chlop), is equivalent to 'the dirt of the earth.'" Now the word " chlop," as any one who has resided in Poland will tell him, is the appellation for the peasant used not only by what are called the upper classes, but by the peasants themselves. Its precise origin is unknown, but it was certainly never equivalent to "the dirt of the earth," except in the sense in which bad landlords everywhere treat the peasants as the dirt of the earth. The word is, indeed, usually derived by philologists from "leb," head, and it originally meant the head of the family, the kindred word " chlopiec " meaning " boy " to this day. But to resume our subject : According to Madame Novikoff, the partition of Poland was not a crime, but a good deed, as it put an end to the tyranny of the minority over the majority — an assertion which sounds somewhat strangely in the mouth of the principal advocate of a system of government under which all power is concentrated in the sovereign, whose mere word is sufficient to consign any one of his subjects — whether innocent or guilty, whether a murderer or a political writer — to those horrors of exile in Siberia of which we are now again hearing so much, and which Mr. Kennan has so graphically described in the Century magazine. Now let us look into this charge a little more closely. There is a certain air of plausibility about it, for it is unquestionable that political power in Poland was, until the passing of the Constitution of 1791, entirely vested in the hands of the nobles. But here we see the danger of employing words which bear a different signification according to the country in which they are used. In England a nobleman belongs to a small class of persons 1 1 8 National Life and Thought. with " handles to their names," whose town and country residences and ancestry are recorded in Burke and Debrett ; in Poland there were no titles of nobility ; and when a man became a noble, he simply acquired the right of bearing arms, together with certain political privileges, of which the most important was the right of voting at elections. Among the nobles were lawyers, doctors, and merchants; and a Polish proverb said that "a noble on his field is equal to a lord in his castle." In the eighteenth century the number of " nobles " in Poland was so great that it constituted a fifth of the whole population, which is a much larger proportion than that of the people who enjoyed the franchise in England after the first Reform Bill. And this Polish patent of nobility — the right to take part in the government of the country — was not, as with us, given indiscriminately to all who were above a certain standard of material prosperity ; it was the reward of the peasant for services, civil or military, rendered to the State ; in a word, for noble actions. It is absurd, therefore, to talk of Poland having been ruled by an aristocracy in our sense of the term. The poorest noble, that is to say, the poorest voter, had precisely the same amount of political rights as the richest ; and to the exaggerated development of political individualism, which made every voter an active politician, was partly due the anarchy from which Poland suffered. I have already stated that the main cause of the partition of Poland was that she enjoyed free institutions such as at that time were not possessed by any other continental nation. Towards the end of the eighteenth century revolution was in the air, and the despotic sovereigns of Europe were trembling on their thrones. In the midst of them was a country as large as France, with a people brought up in the principles of freedom, having the widest powers of self-government, and under a king whose power was even more strictly limited than those of the present sovereign of England. What wonder that the despotic rulers of Russia, Prussia, and Austria should have feared that the "canker of liberty," as a Russian writer has called it, might spread to their own down- trodden subjects? No doubt they were influenced to a great degree by the greed of territory; but they were much more influenced by the instinct of self-preservation; and Campbell and the English statesmen of the time rightly judged that the fall of Poland was a deadly blow to the cause of freedom all over the world. We now come to the second count of the indictment — the Poland. 119 oppression of the peasants. But where were the peasantry not oppressed in the eighteenth century ? All modern civilised nations- have gone through the same phases of equalisation of the rights of the various classes in the State. First, all political power and privilege is concentrated in the sovereign ; then some of it passes down to the great feudal lords or barons ; then it is extended to the professional and mercantile classes ; and, finally, it descends, in a very attenuated form, it is true, to the artisans and peasants. In the eighteenth century this process was barely in its initial stage in every great country of Europe, except England and Poland. In Russia all power was, as it is still, in the hands of the sovereign, and the peasant was nothing but a slave, as he could be sold like a dog, separated from his family, and moved about from one estate to another. In Germany and Austria the monarch was also practically absolute ; while the peasants, under the system known as "Leibeigenschaft," were serfs attached to the land and forced to work for the landowners. In Poland, much the same system prevailed as in Germany; the Polish peasant was entirely maintained by his master, who had consider- able powers over him, which were, however, to some extent restricted by law and custom ; he had no political privileges, but was frequently rewarded by the diets for services to the State by being made a noble ; he was obliged to work for his master during a certain number of days in the week, and he could not, as in Russia, be moved from the estate to which he belonged. That the Polish landowners, like those of other countries, often terribly abused their power over the peasants is unquestionable. But landlords were no better in other parts of Europe, as we know from the statements of French and German writers — which may be mythical exaggerations, but must have been based on a substratum of fact — about such monstrous practices as that of the droit du seigneur, and the still more atrocious one of the bauchrecht, i.e., the right of the master to warm himself, when hunting on a cold day, by stabbing his serf in the stomach and placing his hands in the wound. In Poland, at least, the more enlightened people publicly denounced landowners who ill-treated their peasants; and with the general advance of humanity and civilisation, the peasants of Poland have long since shared in the improvement which has taken place all over Europe in the relations between the various classes of the agricultural population. In 1760 Count Zamoyski and several other wealthy Polish landowners substituted the payment of a money rent for the old system of 120 National Life and Thought. forced labour; and the Constitution of the 3rd of May 1791 made the peasants equal to all other citizens in the eyes of the law. The relations of the peasant to his master then became those of landlord and tenant; and this system worked so well that, according to M. de Lavergne, the eminent French economist, one-fourth of the property of the country passed into the hands of persons not of the noble class, and the value of land trebled. Many of the Polish landowners in Lithuania, which was then under the Russian government, proposed that their peasants should be made proprietors of their holdings ; but the Emperor Nicholas steadfastly rejected these proposals, though they were made to him by some of the most eminent personages in the country. Then came Alexander II., who, after introducing peasant proprietorship in Russia, could hardly persist in the refusal of his predecessor to grant it to Poland. But an ingen- ious method was adopted by which the grant of compensation to the landlords was arranged without any expense to the Imperial Treasury. The compensation allowed them was fair enough; but, at the same time, they were ordered to pay a special tax, the amount of which rather more than covered the sum due to them as compensation. They were compensated as landlords but taxed as Poles. What would our Irish landlords say to such a scheme? It would be a very convenient way, no doubt, of settling the thorny question of land purchase in Ireland, for it would absolutely save the English taxpayer; but the Irish landowner would certainly not bear as tamely as his Polish colleague had to do, what in England would be called sheer robbery, though in Russia it bears the more euphonious appella- tion of "an administrative measure." But to return to the Polish peasants. In Prussia the peasants remained serfs until 1809 ; in Austria until 181 1 ; in Russia until 1 861; while in Poland they were placed on the same legal footing as the landowners in 1794. There could not, therefore, have been any reason for political antagonism between the Polish nobles and peasants, and as a matter of fact they have always acted together in the great national movements which have taken place since the first partition. The notion industriously propagated by the ene- mies of Poland that the nobles are a class apart from the rest of the population, that they alone wish for the restoration of Poland, as it would restore to them the privilege of oppressing the peas- ants, and that the other classes are content under Russian and Prussian rule, is a silly fable which will not stand a moment's Poland. 121 examination. Is it credible, I would ask not only the student of history, but any man who knows human nature, that the tens of thousands who, from the insurrection of Kosciuszko in 1794 to the last disastrous rising of 1863, escaping the vigilance of the Russian police, went out at night into the woods to fight for their country armed only with a scythe or a knife and stick, and kept the whole Russian army at bay for months, belonged to the aristocratic class? No, gentlemen, these unknown heroes who silently died a soldier's death against the enemy, or disappeared from among their relations and friends to linger in the nameless tortures of Siberian exile, were for the most part what we would call working men, that is, artisans and peasants. Kosciuszko, himself a noble, was followed in the memorable rising of 1794 by 4000 peasants armed with scythes ; and his first achievement with this little band was to attack 12,000 Russians near Cracow, who, after a battle of five hours, in which the Polish peasants captured the Russian artillery and turned it against the enemy, were beaten with a loss of 3000 killed and many prisoners. The insurrection which broke out shortly after at Warsaw was headed by a banker, Kapostas ; a shoemaker, Kilinski ; and a butcher, Sierakovski. The revolution of 1830 was begun by the non-commissioned officers and privates of the Polish army; that of 1863 by the arti- sans of Warsaw. The fact is that in Poland, as everywhere else, revolutions were made by the middle and poorer classes, and not by the aristocracy, who knew too well the fearful odds to take the responsibility of leading the nation to almost certain destruc- tion, though when the people had once risen, they cheerfully sacrificed their lives and their properties for the cause of their country. The working men had only their lives to give, and had not even the prospect of leaving to their children a glorious name ; but they emulated none the less their more fortunate countrymen in the brilliancy of their courage and the purity of their self-devotion. Thus we had the noble spectacle of a whole nation struggling with its oppressors, never knowing when it was beaten, but rising again and again to resume the unequal conflict. Nor is it only in insurrections that the peasantry of Poland have acted in unison with the other classes of the nation. In the Polish parliament of the Austrian province of Galicia, peasants sit and speak side by side with landowners, lawyers, and merchants — a consummation at which we have not yet arrived even in our Parliament at Westminster, since Mr. Arch sat in the House as the representative of the agricultural labourer. In 122 National Life and Thought. Prussian Poland, too, the most sturdy opponents of Germaniz- ation are the peasants, who at large meetings in the country districts have made eloquent speeches protesting against the efforts of the Prussian government to suppress the Polish language, and to swamp the Polish population by German settlers. The result of the elections which have just taken place in Ger- many, and which are carried on under a system of universal suffrage, shows that the number of Polish deputies in the Reichstag has been increased to 16; and although (Prussian Poland being an agricultural country) the great majority of the voters must have been peasants, the whole of the sixteen deputies whom they have elected belong to the class of so-called nobles, and one of them is a member of the aristocratic family of the Czar- toryskis. The unity shown by these Polish voters, all going like one man to the poll to vote for their candidate, is held up by the German press as an example to the German voters, who are split up into numerous parties, each with its own candidate, and whose votes consequently often neutralise each other. I may add, to show the growth of the Polish nationality irt Prussia, that while in 1881 the number of Polish voters voting for Polish candidates was 194,894, in 1890, it was 245,852 — an increase of nearly thirty per cent. Undoubtedly the political system of Poland was very defective. The Poles had the faults of a warlike and high spirited race ; they were impatient of restraint, fond of luxury, and demoralised by the dissolute manners introduced by their Saxon kings ; and the result was a laxity in the machinery of government which in the eighteenth century almost stopped it altogether. That this did not arise from the incapacity of the Poles for self-govern- ment (they had governed themselves for 800 years) was proved by the constitution of 1791, which was admitted by the greatest statesmen of the time to be the most masterly measure of the kind which had yet been devised, and which, if Russia and Prussia had not crushed it in the bud, would certainly have proved an effectual remedy for the anarchy from which Poland suffered. I have shown that in this respect, and in the oppression of the peasants, there was at that time no great country on the Continent which could have cast at her the first stone. But,, it might be said, a mere negative admission of this kind is hardly a sufficient justification for a country's claim to exist. England, the first home of liberty, " the mother of parliaments," the saviour of Europe from the tyranny of Napoleon, the Poland. 123 propagator of civilisation in three Continents ; France, the apostle of ideas and literary culture ; Germany, the school of philosophers ; Italy, the nursery of the Arts, — all these countries have established a right to the gratitude of humanity, and we should all be losers by their extinction. What has Poland done for the good of the world ? We have all heard that Sobieski saved Vienna from the Turks, but it is not so generally known that this event was only one of a series of similar ones. Poland had for centuries been the van- guard of European civilisation against the incursions of barbarous invaders from the East ; and to her it was mainly due that our modern Europe was preserved from the withering scourge of an Attila or a Brennus. While Russia was groaning under the yoke of the Mongols, who utterly defeated her in the middle of the thirteenth century, and ruled her with a rod of iron for two hundred years, Poland was an insuperable barrier to their advance southward, thereby rendering, at the price of her blood and of some of her richest towns, which were repeatedly destroyed by the Tartar hordes, a service to Europe which can hardly be over-estimated- Yet though warlike, the Poles were not aggressive. In the earlier part of their history, when they had to build up the Polish State, they did it by conquest, as such things are always done. But from 1333 to 1587, when Poland was at the highest point of her prosperity and greatness, she did not add a single inch to her territory ; not once did she make an aggressive war, and though there was a great deal of fighting, it was only to repel the attacks of the Germans, the Russians, and the Tartars. " Defence, not Defiance," was her motto, like that of our Volunteers. And she was not only the defender, but the propagator of civilisation. As early as the fourteenth century the Poles were celebrated in all Europe for their learning and literary culture. Latin was the language, not only of the universities and of diplomacy, but of good society, and in the Polish Parliament the debates consisted of Latin orations worthy of the best period of ancient Rome. The University of Cracow, founded in 1364, was attended by about 15,000 students yearly from all parts of Europe. It was here that one of the first printing-presses was established, and the original wood blocks of a very early edition of the Bible are still preserved there. Copernicus, the great astronomer, and Veit Stoss, the famous sculptor of Nuremberg, were both Poles, and did most of their work at Cracow ; the best Latin poets of the Middle Ages were a Scotchman, Buchanan, and a Pole, Sarbievius. I have said that Poland was the land of liberty. The great 1 24 National L ife and Thought. principle of our Habeas Corpus Act, that no man should be imprisoned without trial, was the law in Poland so early as the fourteenth century. Feudalism did not exist among the Poles; there was no vassalage nor holding of the land subject to the lord. Personal liberty and the independence of every citizen in the State was the leading principle of the social organisation, and even prisoners of war became proprietors of the land on which they were placed after they had cultivated it. Among the freemen, or nobles, as they were called, the feudal idea of personal service was unknown ; no man was another man's servant, he was only the servant of the State. The result of this principle was naturally to give the people a predominating share in the government from the earliest ages. The first Polish Parliament, composed of the bishops, the high state dignitaries, and the freemen of the lower class, met as early as 1331, and for two hundred years before that date no decision of any Polish King was held to be valid without the consent of his council, composed of the leading men in the country. A Prussian once said to a Pole, in astonishment at the limited power of the Polish sovereigns, "Why, you have no king!" to which the Pole answered, "Yes, we have, but your king has you." The drift of public opinion on any question of the day was ascertained at conventus or public meetings, at which all men freely expressed their opinions, and the parliamentary representatives learnt the views of their con- stituents. There were three estates of the realm — the King, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, or, as we should say in England, King, Lords, and Commons ; but all real power was in the hands of the House of Representatives. There was not a single case of a Polish king rejecting a proposal made by his Parliament, or acting in opposition to its wishes. On the contrary, the Polish kings often had to listen to some very plain language in the House of Representatives, where they were obliged to be present during the debates. In 1459 King Casimir II., after opening Parliament, was thus addressed by one of the deputies : — "Sire, our calamities are notorious, and you are the author of them. If the nation had not been protected by Providence, it would have perished. We have been obliged to demand the convocation of the present assembly in order to ask for reform ; we are your subjects and your sincere friends, but we deplore your hostility to our country, and we are not afraid of saying so, in spite of the army you have brought to coerce us. We demand your protection for those who claim justice ; we ask you to cast Poland. 125 off your indolence, to show that you are a man, and are ready and willing to defend the country against its enemies. If you do this, you may reckon on our fidelity, we will hasten to obey your orders, we will sacrifice our fortunes for you and the State, and we will watch over your happiness ; if not, you may rely upon it that we will not give the smallest part of our wealth to assist you." This threat to refuse supplies soon brought the king to his senses, as similar threats have done in English history. Even the great Sobieski, during a debate in which he was accused of intriguing to appropriate to himself property belonging to the State, was addressed by one of the deputies in these bold words, ''Sire, either reign justly, or (ease to reign." What a contrast between this free country, where r.ny man could speak his opinion of the government and criticise the sovereign to his face, and its neighbour Russia, even in this nineteenth century ! After the speeches I have just quoted, it is curious to read the account given in the Times last December of the late General Trepoff by an Englishman who lived at St. Petersburg when the General was chief of the police there. " He was a typical specimen," says the writer in the Times, "of the Russian military despot, and the policemasters of other Russian towns set themselves to imitate his example. When he walked along the streets, the cabmen took off their hats and crouched before him with fear. . . . When the Czar returned to his capital after a long absence, Trepoff drove at a gallop in front of his Majesty through the crowded streets, stand- ing erect in his open carriage, glaring round with knitted brows, and commanding the people to cheer." Such a scene would be impossible in any other European country except as an incident in a burlesque, yet it is not un- common in Russia, where you constantly hear people of the most unblemished reputation speak with bated breath of the power of the police ; and one can only account for the submission with which the Russians bear so outrageous a state of things, by the assumption that they must have had the spirit of independence and self-respect, which is the natural birthright of every man, knocked out of them by seven centuries of barbarous and tyrannical government. I have not a word to say against the Russian people — they are kind-hearted, intelligent, and intensely patriotic ; they have a fine literature, and they have shown wonderful enterprise and determination as soldiers and administrators; but they are to be pitied for having a detestable government, and for not having the spirit to shake it off. 126 National Life and Thotcght. To return to our subject — There were two other points in which Poland was in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries far ahead of any other country in the world. These were religious freedom and freedom of trade. While the Huguenots were being massacred in the streets of Paris; while in England, France. Spain, men were being dragged by hundreds to the stake and the scaffold for their religious opinions; while the Jews were being hounded out of nearly every country in Europe, Poland, though the great majority of her people have always been devotedly attached to the Roman Catholic Church, opened her gates to the persecuted of all creeds. "The people of Poland," wrote an Italian traveller in the fifteenth century, " have among them a multitude of Jews who are not, like in most countries, reduced to a life of misery as usurers or menials. Several have fields and offices of their own, in which they transact business as merchants; others adopt literary and scientific pursuits, chiefly astronomy and medicine. The Jews in Poland often become rich and celebrated, and are treated on the footing of freemen ; there is no distinction made between them and Christians ; in fact, they are in all respects on a footing of equality with the other inhabitants of the kingdom." The Protestants, after the Jesuits had obtained a footing in Poland, were under certain disabilities, like the Roman Catholics in England up to the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Bill in 1829, but they were never persecuted as the Protestants were in France, Germany, and Austria, and they were admitted to the franchise like all other freemen, which was not the case with the Catholics in England before the Emancipation. One of the chief articles of the pacta conventa, or contracts made by the Poles with their kings on their election, was, that no person should be oppressed on account of his religious opinions, and that full liberty should be accorded to every man in Poland to practise the rites of his religion. It was on account of this stipulation that Henry of Valois, Duke of Anjou, when the Poles sent a delegation to Paris to offer him the Polish crown, hesitated to accept it, as he had just been fighting the Huguenots. But the Polish delegates declared that if he did not agree to the stipulation he would not be their king ; and it was only when he thus became convinced that he could only get the Polish crown by binding himself to give equal rights to the members of all religions that he gave way. Lutherans, Calvinists, Greek sectarians, Mahomedans, Armenians, and Jews flocked into Poland, where alone they could not Poland. 1 27 be molested on account of their creed ; and you can now see in the Tudor Exhibition in Regent Street the portrait of the Duchess of Suffolk, who, being a Protestant, fled from the persecution of our Catholic Queen Mary, and was received with the utmost kindness by the Catholic King of Poland, who gave her an estate, where she lived until the accession of Queen Elizabeth enabled her to return to England. As regards freedom of commerce, it was England that chiefly profited by the free admission of foreign goods into Poland. A treaty of commerce was concluded between England and Poland so early as 1386, under the reign of Richard II. In the fifteenth century great numbers of English and Scotch merchants settled in Poland, and established their offices there. In 1579, under the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a British Eastern Company was founded for the purpose of trading with the ports on the Baltic ; and a letter from the Queen to King Sigismund of Poland, dated Greenwich, 1 6th January 1589, is still extant, in which she begs the king to extend his protection to British trade in his dominions. So friendly, indeed, were the relations between England and Poland, that in 1650 the Polish Parliament decided specially to relieve all English merchants in Poland from the payment of taxes, in order to enable them to pay a contribution of 10 per cent, on their incomes which had been imposed by the Government of Great Britain, and which was duly handed over to the British Minister •at Warsaw by the Polish tax-collectors for transmission to London. Another treaty was concluded by Queen Anne in 1707, for the purpose of acquiring very advantageous commercial privileges for English trade with the Polish harbour of Dantzig ; and this treaty was fully confirmed by Article 13 of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. The Poles were, however, always opposed to monopolies, ■even when they would have been highly advantageous to the Polish Treasury. Thus Philip II., King of Spain, offered to pay a very large sum for the exclusive right of buying corn and wood from Poland, but his offer was rejected. The rule was to treat all foreign states alike as regards commercial privileges, and England was the only exception to that rule. The consequence was, that in the eight- eenth century the trade of England with Poland was greater than it was with France. From 1697 to 1773 tne trade of England with ^ Poland amounted to ^22,65 1,901, while that of England with France was ^19,013,818. Burnett, in his View of the Present State rf Poland, 1807, says — " England is the best customer of Poland. . . . Almost every article of manufacture imported is either 128 National Life and Thought. really or nominally English. Having occasion to buy a hat at Lemberg, I found the name and ticket of a well-known London hatter, on it, though I perceived plainly that it was of foreign manufacture." After the partition, owing to the obstacles imposed by Russia and Prussia on Polish trade, all commercial relations between England and Poland ceased ; when part of Poland gained a sort of autonomy after the Congress of Vienna, they revived; and when her liberties were finally extinguished by the Emperor Nicholas, her trade with England also disappeared. Indeed, this sympathy between England and Poland, for centuries the only two great nations in Europe that were free, is of very old date, and it was a common practice with the wealthy families of Poland to send their sons to complete their education in England, where they studied constitutional law at Oxford, and witnessed some of the most memorable debates in English parliamentary history at St. Stephen's. I have, I think, now shown what Poland has done for mankind. She protected Europe from Tartar invasions ; she alone for many centuries held high the banner of freedom amid the despotic States of the Continent ; she was the patron of learning and the arts ; she was the refuge of all who were oppressed on account of their religious opinions ; she was the first State that practised free trade, a system which, though in some countries it may be in- applicable, has undoubtedly been of great advantage to the world at large. I have shown you what Poland was; I will now endeavour to show you what she is. Among the historical fables which, though they have been amply proved to be untrue, are still generally believed, is the saying " Finis Polonicz ! " — Poland is no more — which was put into the mouth of Kosciuszko at the time when, himself wounded by the Russians, he saw his faithful followers being cut down by the conquering enemy. I do not know whether the similar saying attributed to Lord Chesterfield after the capitulation of the Duke of Cumberland's army to the French in 1757 — " We are no longer a nation " — was as fictitious as that alleged to have been uttered by the Polish hero. But of one thing I am quite certain, from my personal knowledge of the country — that Poland is still living; is indeed very much alive. Her population has nearly doubled since the partition a hundred years ago; it is now 31-i millions. The number of Polish news- papers and other periodicals published in Poland is nearly 300 ; of Polish books, 150c a year. The Poles have a very varied and Poland. 1 29 extensive literature, but it is almost entirely occupied with national subjects, and is therefore not of much interest to people of other nations. Their greatest writers, however — Mickiewicz and Krasinski among the poets, and the contemporary novelist Sienkievicz — have been translated into all the European languages. Two of their painters, Mateyko and Siemiradzki, stand in the front rank among artists of the Continental schools ; and among the chief singers at the opera in London within the last few years have been the two Reszkes, Mierzwinski, and Madame Sembrich, all Poles devoted to their country. Notwithstanding the obstacles imposed by the Russian frontier authorities on importation and exportation, there has in Poland been a considerable development of trade and industry. The chief articles of export are wood, meat, skins, and eggs. The country is mainly agricultural, but the exports of wheat have much diminished, owing to the compe- tition of the United States and other non-European countries. There is, however, a large manufacturing industry; the number of workmen employed in manufacturing establishments, in coal mines, and on the petroleum oil wells in Galicia, is about 200,000. The chief articles of manufacture are textile fabrics, employing 45,000 workmen ; machinery ; beer ; spirits ; and sugar ; and the total value of the manufactures of Poland is about ^35,000,000 a year, not an inconsiderable sum for a country whose industry on the greater part of its territory is impeded at every step by a Government whose object is to crush the Polish nationality at any price. The tyranny of the Russian government is indeed a byword ; and when Mr. Chamberlain in 1885, and Mr. Gladstone in 1888, compared the conduct of the government in Ireland to that of the Russian Government in Poland, they doubtless considered that no comparison could be more opprobrious. I am not going to say one word about the Irish question; this is not a political meeting, and party politics would be out of place in a lecture which deals mainly with facts and not with arguments. But I would point out that any comparison between the system of rule in Ireland and that in Poland must be fallacious, because the circumstances are entirely different. Poland lost her independence at the end of the eighteenth century, when she was a civilised State and one of the great powers of Europe ; Ireland was conquered in the twelfth century, when all the countries of Europe were more or less barbarous, and Ireland not the least. Poland has a language and a literature of her own, not inferior to those of the most 1 130 National Life and Thought. ■cultivated nations ; the Irish language has practically disappeared, and the language of all educated Irishmen is English. In the Polish province of Lithuania, the Poles are fined for speaking Polish, and any person teaching the Polish language is subject to a fine of 300 roubles (^30) or two months' imprisonment ; if Irishmen paid a fine each time they spoke or taught English, what a handsome source of revenue it would be for the Treasury ! In Russian Poland a Pole is not allowed to buy land. In Ireland the government assists the Irish tenants to become proprietors by purchase of their holdings. In Russian Poland a man suspected of conspiracy against the government is seized in his own house in the middle of the night and dragged away without trial of any kind to Siberia, where he may linger for years without his family knowing what has become of him. In Ireland there is at least no secrecy ; the man is openly tried by a magistrate, and we have long ceased to transport our criminals, political or other, to distant parts of the Empire. Again, in Russian Poland whole villages of peasants have, by a liberal use of bribes, and failing these, by shooting down all objectors, been converted, as it was called, en masse to the Russian Church, and members of other religions are impeded in every way in their business and family relations, so that many Jews have found it worth •their while to pay fifty roubles to a priest to make them orthodox Russians. I need hardly say there is nothing of the kind in Ireland. Finally, in Russian Poland not a word can be printed in any newspaper or book without the permission of the government, and English newspapers often arrive with whole columns ruthlessly obliterated with printer's ink when they contain any remarks likely to be disagreeable to the Czar or his officials ; while in Ireland, as you know, the most violent fulminations against the government in the Pall Mall Gazette or the Star are admitted without even a pencil remonstrance in the margin. In a word, there is not a single point in which what is most characteristic of Russian rule in Poland exists in Ireland. Whether the government in Ireland is bad or good is quite another question ; all I say is that that government is utterly different from the government of Russia in Poland, and that the two things cannot be compared. We are, happily, a free country (though we don't seem to appreciate the blessing as much as we used to do), and it would be absolutely impossible for any English Government, however bad, to do in Ireland what the Russian Government is doing in Poland. The oppression of the Poles in the German part of Poland is, Poland. 131 of course, not so barbarous ; but it is far more insidious. There is a show of constitutional government, as Polish deputies sit in the Prussian and German parliaments ; but they are naturally, as the representatives of three-and-a-half millions of people out of the fifty millions that constitute the German Empire, in a small minority ; and the German majority have cheerfully voted, under the inspiration of the wily Bismarck, laws for the exclusion of the Polish language from courts of law and schools in Prussian Poland, and large sums of money for colonising with Germans estates vacated by Polish proprietors. These ingenious schemes, however, are not so successful as was hoped by their promoters. Not being allowed to have their children taught Polish in the schools, the Poles in Prussia have them taught at home ; and every number of every Polish newspaper published in Prussia contains in large capitals an exhortation to its contributors to teach their children Polish. The attempts of the Prussian Government to settle Germans on Polish land, too, are counteracted by a bank, founded by Poles from all parts of Poland, which helps landowners when they are in financial difficulties, and bids for Polish estates that are in the market so as to prevent their getting into German hands. One of the strongest witnesses to the vitality of the Polish nation is the great Bismarck himself, who, in a speech which he made in the German Parliament, declared that the three-and-a- half millions of Poles in Prussia constitute a danger, by their indomitable patriotism, to the vast German Empire ; that they are much more prolific than the Germans ; and that, when a German marries a Polish woman, he almost always becomes a Pole himself — not a very cheering prospect, one would think, for the promoters of German colonisation among the Poles. His statement is, how- ever, perfectly true. Like France, England, and other vigorous European nations, Poland has a force of assimilation which draws to itself the members of other nationalities living on its soil; and experience shows that Ruthenians, Lithenanians, Germans, and Jews, residing on Polish territory, become Poles not only in language, but in national feeling. Poland, like England, is made up of many races ; but it is one nation, with the same history, the same literary language, the same literature, and the same political traditions. I have mentioned above that the greater part of Poland is still under governments which use all the immense power at their command to crush out the Polish nationality. There is a small part of Poland — the Austrian province of Galicia — where a more I32 National Life and Thought. humane and enlightened policy is pursued. This province is not small in itself, for its area is 29,937 square miles, and its popula- tion six millions, but it is small compared with the whole of Poland, whose area is 300,000 square miles, somewhat larger than that of France, and whose population is thirty-one and a half millions. Now Galicia, though relatively not so rich in. industrial establishments as Russian Poland, is a very fair illustration of what Poland would be if it were independent. Since Austria lay at the feet of Prussia after the disastrous war of 1866, the western half of the empire has been organised on the federative principle, and Galicia practically governs herself, subject to the central authority at Vienna, where she has a minister and delegates of her own. It is interesting to see how this Poland in miniature is governing herself. She has a. council of administration and a parliament, with Polish officials,, a Polish university, and other local institutions which are just the same as if she were an independent State. To judge by the- statements of the enemies of Poland, who represent the Poles as- h-redeemable revolutionists and anarchists, one would suppose that Galicia is a sort of cockpit of political factions all fighting together, oppressing the peasants, and without the slightest regard, either for law or order. But what are the facts ? The Galician Parliament, or diet, is composed of men of all nationalities, classes, and religions. Jews, Ruthenians, united Greeks, peasants, sit side by side with Roman Catholics, Poles, great landowners, and professors. Yet the debates in the Polish Parliament, though they are often very animated and show plenty of party spirit, are conducted with an order and regularity which might serve as a model for several representative assemblies nearer home. Poles and Ruthenians quarrel a good deal — there was even a duel between a Polish and a Ruthenian member the other day, on account of a speech made by the former in the House — but there is no obstruction, no "talking against time," no disturbance of the order of debate by frivolous motions whose only object is to wear out one's opponents. And as to respect for the law, there is no nationality in the Austrian Empire which is so law-abiding as the Poles. Crime is rare, and the streets of Cracow and Lemberg are much safer than those of Vienna or Prague. Owing to the poverty of the country, ex- hausted by incessant wars and the oppression of former Austrian Governments, trade is not very flourishing, but the petroleum industry is gradually developing itself, and it would become a mine of wealth to any foreign capitalists investing in it. The. Poland. 133 want of capital is, indeed, the chief obstacle to the development of Galicia, which is very rich in natural resources, and the con- struction of railways, of mills, of dyeing establishments, and of manufacturers of textile fabrics on a large scale would be very profitable. And finally, as to the political capacity of the Poles, who have never been wanting in statesmen, I need only mention the fore- most, next to the Prime Minister, of the members of the Austro- Hungarian Cabinet, M. Dunajevski, the Minister of Finance, who is universally acknowledged as a man of extraordinary ability, endowed with the highest qualities of statesmanship, and by his skilful management of the Austrian finances has now for the first time for many years produced a budget with a surplus. We have now seen the past and the present of Poland. What of her future? To prophesy in politics is foolish and dangerous, but the field of speculation is wide, and stranger things have happened than even the restoration of Poland, the only great historical country (now that Hungary, Italy, and Greece are free) which still lies in bondage. What a blessing it would be to humanity if " the canker of liberty " could be made to revive in Northern Europe, and by eating away the accumulated slough of centuries of despotic rule, leave the great Russian and German nations free to pursue their natural development — if a nation like Poland, independent, high spirited, not aggressive, but with the highest qualifications for self defence, and nurtured in traditions of freedom from its infancy, could show the Russians that servility, with her handmaid corruption, is a curse, and the Germans that there are higher things to strive for than mere empire — if there would then be an end of the Russian greed of conquest, carefully fostered by the Russian officials in order to divert the minds of the people from the scandalous abuses and oppression of their government at home ; and if the nations of Europe, relieved of the incubus of Russian aggressiveness, were enabled to reduce those enormous armaments which are among the most crying evils of our time ! You will say that this is a dream ; but the dreams of nations sometimes come true, and the friend of liberty will never despair of Poland ; for if the world's progress is not a mere phrase, Time and Education, the great levellers, must gradually undermine the great absolutisms of the Continent, and Poland will surely then be called to resume her place and her beneficent mission among the fraternity of European nations. ■VIII. ITALY. J. STEPHEN JEANS. IT is not too much to say that no nation of either ancient or modern times has played so distinguished a part on the stage of history, has had a more varied and chequered career, has contributed more to the advancement of laws and learning, arts and sciences, commerce and colonisation, than Italy. There is not an inch of her soil that is not classic; there is not a hamlet, village, or town in her whole extent that has not its story of pillage and slaughter, resistance to oppression, feudal customs, priestly tyranny, high purposes, and noble achievements. "The rude forefathers of the hamlet" have often, in Italian history, lit beacon fires of freedom that have been reflected throughout the world. Italian art remains the envy and the despair of the art of all other nations and of all other times. Italian jurisprudence, whether in the form of Roman law, or in the later phases of mediaeval codes adapted to altered conditions, has been the foundation on which most of our legal precedents rest even to the present day. Italian navigators, Columbus, Marco Polo and his brother, and their antetypes, have been the pioneers of travel and commerce all the world over. Italian liberty, as enjoyed by the Free States of Venice, Florence, Genoa, and Lucca, has been the basis of later political systems that recognise equality before the law as the first principle of just government, and have upon that foundation reared a superstructure that is indestructible. Education and literature have been equally under obligation to Italian minds. The Universities which were founded at Bologna, Naples, Padua, and other Italian cities were the forerunners, and in many cases the types of those that have since been able to achieve perhaps a more illustrious name in other lands. The great libraries of the Vatican and of the Florentine Republic preceded by many years the establishment of most of the other libraries of 136 . National Life and Thought, Europe. Municipal Institutions are equally indebted to this remarkable country. Buried for generations in the grossest of superstitions,, and under the most galling tyranny, municipal freedom every now and again, even while the unbridled license of personal rule seemed to be the only alternative available for the whole of Europe, assumed a certain definite form which at least kept it alive, and interposed some sort of check, however feeble and ineffectual in the main, to the autocracy of the Popes, the dukes, and the other powers of the period. Eager in the pursuit of commerce, and adventurous beyond nearly every other nation, the citizens of Florence, followed by those of Venice and Genoa, established some of the first trading com- panies and guilds for mutual protection and the advancement of material interests. In an age when railways were not, before the principles of road-making were understood as they now are, and when engineering was almost entirely neglected elsewhere, the Italians not only provided themselves with excellent roads, but with navigable waterways as well, of which the Canal between Milan and the Ticino is one of the most striking examples. The Roman aqueducts, whereby water supplies were conveyed to the towns and villages from the adjoining hills or mountains, are masterpieces of art and of engineering skill, and many of them are in constant use even at the present day. The architectural skill and taste of the early Italians is attested by many examples, alike in churches, palaces, and other buildings, scattered up and down the face of the country, and making the Italy of to-day perhaps the most interesting land to visit that the world can show. These are but a few of the considerations that throw a halo of romance around the name of Italy, and compel the admiration, if not the adoration, of all time. In undertaking to speak of such a country, the difficulty is, of course, to know how and where to begin. But as we must begin somewhere, and as it is necessary to a correct appreciation of the subjects to be afterwards dealt with that we should have the position and form of the country clearly in our minds, I may at once proceed to say that Italy is mainly a peninsula, to which is added the large islands of Sicily and Sardinia, the island of Elba, and about sixty-six minor islands. It has a total area of nearly 111,000 square miles, or about 12,000 square miles less than the United Kingdom, while its population at the last census amounted to about thirty millions, being about eight millions less than that of our own country. Italy. 1 37 One of the most striking physical features of the country is its immense length in proportion to its breadth. The total length of the Peninsula is about 700 miles, but its breadth in some places does not much exceed 20 miles. This, of course, involves another remarkable physical characteristic — namely, the ex- ceptional extent of coast line, which in Europe is only equalled by that of our own country, and amounts for the mainland to about 2000 miles, and for the islands to nearly 2000 miles more. Another prominent feature of the country is that it is traversed throughout the greater part of its length by the chain of the Apennines ; and as its northern limits are formed by the chain of the Alps, which separate it from France, it is obvious that the country must have a considerable extent of mountainous territory. This is not only the case, but it is the case to so considerable an extent, that less than one-half of the total area is under cultivation, so that relatively to her size, Italy can hardly be regarded as a productive country in the same sense as that term may be applied to the much more prolific and densely-populated countries of Belgium and Holland. In a country extending from north to south through ten degrees of latitude, there must be a great difference of climate due to position alone ; but besides that, the climate of Italy is influenced by the proximity of the lofty mountain ranges referred to in some of its divisions, and by the influence of the air from the sea, which almost surrounds the other parts. If we follow the classification of Saussure, we may divide the climate of Italy into four regions. The first extends from latitude 46.28 to 43.30, and thus com- prehends the whole of the Austrian and Sardinian dominions, and the other territories to the north of the Apennines, with Bologna, Ferrara, and Romagna. In this region the quicksilver in Reaumur's thermometer descends to ten degrees below zero ; the lagunes at the mouths of the rivers are frozen ; and sometimes in January and February the snow remains from ten to fourteen days on the ground. Delicate plants do not grow except in sheltered situations ; but the mulberry trees flourish, and rice is grown. The slight night-frosts appear in November, and some years as late as April. Even in summer a benumbing cold is brought down from the Alps by a violent storm of northerly wind. The second region extends from 43.30 to 41.30, comprehending Tuscany, Lucca, the Papal States, the Abbruzzis, and the whole of the western shore to the south of the Apennines, though some part of the latter does ■ extend as far north as 44, but, from being sheltered by the moun- 138 National Life and Thought. tains, has a climate similar to the southern part. This is the appropriate climate for the growth of the orange, the lemon, and the olive ; but even in this region the snow is occasionally to be seen on the fields. The third region extends from 41.30 to 39, and comprehends the greater part of the continental dominions of the former kingdom of Naples. Here snow is rarely seen, and never remains ; the quicksilver seldom falls below three degrees, and all plants of the agrumenous tribe flourish in the open air. The fourth region extends from 39 to 35.50, and comprehends the southern part of Caiabria and the island of Sicily. The quicksilver rarely falls below zero, and snow and ice are unknown except on the summits of the mountains. The tropical fruits come to perfection in the open air, the sugar-cane flourishes, the cotton plant ripens, the date trees are seen in the gardens, and the enclosures of the fields are formed by aloes. It will be obvious that this classification cannot be universally applied, and principally attaches to the flat land of Italy. Thus the positions on the sides of high mountains, the vicinity of the sea, and the volcanic nature of the soil, all have an influence which must cause many local variations in any classifica- tions, and form exceptions to what is generally correct. The tops of the Alps in Savoy and Piedmont are covered with perpetual snow. The Apennines are also commonly clothed with snow from the middle of October till the beginning of April ; and on the highest mountains of Abbruzzo, the Majella, and the Velino it remains from September till May. The northern part of Italy, including Tuscany and the Papal States, does not generally present that charming aspect which people from the North picture to themselves of the garden of Europe ; and they are only introduced into that region on proceeding to the east from Manfredonia, or to the west from Terracina. There the winter is scarcely colder than our September; vegetation proceeds without interruption; and the air is filled with the most aromatic odours. There are many ways of writing history. If I were called upon to give you, in an hour's lecture, a historical sketch of the development of Italy, I should probably be expected to occupy at least one-half of that time with references to the rulers who had at one time or another misled, oppressed, and deteriorated the people. But I do not so read the functions of history. The nations of the world are no doubt very much what their rulers. Italy. 139 make them, but they are also largely responsible for the making of their rulers. In my view, the ruler of a nation is the embodiment for the time being of the acts, aspirations, and characteristics of the people over whom he wields authority. That is no doubt the case to a much larger extent now than it was in former days. It is due to the electric telegraph, the newspaper press, the railway, and other modern institutions, that a national sentiment can be diffused and acted upon much more quickly than formerly. One- man power is now only wielded so long as it is permitted. The will of the people is the potent and sovereign factor; not the will of the ruler, who is only their temporary mouthpiece and agent. The real circumstances of a country are, therefore, to be sought for not in the pomp and pageantry of courts, nor the tread of armed men, nor the incidents of a campaign, nor the personal relations of different sovereigns ; but in the typical features of race, climate, social condition, physical powers and attainments, degree of well- being, stability, endurance, and growth of the means that make for civilisation and improvement. Of all these, so far as ancient Italy is concerned, and, to a large extent, as regards modern Italy as well, there is less absolute and complete knowledge than we could wish for. An occasional ray of light is projected across the dark surface of mediaeval times, but the glimmer is short, un- certain, insufficient. We know much of the rulers and their ways ; of the habits, feelings, hopes, and condition of the people, only very little. But we can imagine more than we actually know. For hundreds of years Italy was not the cockpit perhaps, but certainly the chief battlefield of Europe. The opening of the Christian era found Italy the centre of Roman power, with wars and revolutions on hand in almost every quarter of the then known world. A hundred years later, and it was still the same. Rome was at war with Parthia, Media, Armenia, and other States ; the Christians were undergoing their third persecution ; the philoso- phers were being expelled from the Imperial City ; and con- spiracies, heresies, and schisms were rampant on every hand. It was the same old story, with an infinite variety of detail, both of scene and circumstance, until in 476 an end was put to the Western Empire of Rome by the deposition of Augustus. There- upon began the long night of the Middle Ages. Italy was delivered over to the rule of a Scythian chieftain ; Odoacer was placed in supreme power by a revolt ; and for a long time the country was controlled by bands of foreign and licentious mercenaries. 140 National Life and TJwiight. In speaking of the history of Italy, we do not, of course, mean to refer at any length to the history of ancient Rome, which has, for our present purpose, a very limited interest. It has been well observed that the history of Rome and the history of modern Italy are no more related to each other than a tragedy is to the after- piece. Not only the nations and their language, not only manners and morals, laws and gods, have given place to others ; not only the monuments of men have been swept from the face of the land, but the land itself, its general aspect, and its very climate are changed. The history of Italy since the old Roman Empire perished by inanition, and was overrun by the hordes of northern barbarians, may be divided into six distinct eras or epochs, which I shall briefly summarise. I. The period of the Middle Ages, a.d. 568 to 1183, the age of the fathers of the Church, of the monkish chroniclers of the Middle Ages, of the theological and philosophical universities founded by Charlemagne and his successors, of the sources of modern institutions, manners, and feelings, arising from the contact of the rude but active temper of the northern conquerors, with the more enlightened manners of the conquered, and of the new religion of Christianity, which, displacing the Paganism of the ancient Romans, and the idolatrous worship of the Goths and Greeks, levelled the distinctions of caste and race, and provided the germs of a new morality. II. In the second epoch the Italian republics were in the full plenitude of their power and greatness, controlling and admin- istering the commerce of the world, and establishing principles of freedom and independence which tended to promote arts and letters, to excite energy and enthusiasm, and to get rid of tyranny and feudalism. In this age Genoa, Pisa, and Venice shared between them the empire of the seas ; Milan and Florence were the workshops of the then known world. This was the epoch of Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo ; of Colonna, Strozzi, and Dandolo ; of the Cabots, Amerigo, and Columbus ; of Dante, Varchi, and Macchiavelli. III. and IV. The third period, which extended from 1434 to 1748, has been described as that of Italian principalities, of domestic tyranny ; when the noble families of Este and Medici achieved a splendour and maintained a state that contrasts sharply with the simplicity of the republics which they superseded ; while the fourth period, which, to a large extent, overlaps the third, and extended Italy. I4I from 1530 to 1789, has been described as that of foreign dominion or the age of decline; an age during which the French, the Spaniards, the Austrians, and the Swiss were by turns invited and expelled by the Italians themselves ; an age that witnessed the long struggles of Venice against the Ottoman powers, the wars of the House of Savoy against France and Austria, and frequent revolts against inquisition and despotism. During this period literature was all but dead ; it was a literature of Inquisitors and Jesuits, of fetters and fagots. The fifth period of modern Italian history brings us down to the year 1848, and embraced the stirring times of the French Revolu- tion. This period was distinguished by a long peace under the tardy and sleepy rule of the Austrians, during which the rigours of the Inquisition were entirely got rid of, and many political and religious reforms were introduced, not, however, without much pressure, as evidenced by the revolutions of Naples and Turin in 1820, and the insurrections of Modena, Parma, and Romagna in 1 83 1. Finally, we come to the era of unification and regeneration, of which we shall speak later on — the period of valour, trial, and triumph, with which we associate the names of Victor Emmanuel,, Garibaldi, and Cavour. Hitherto we have said but little of the Italians themselves. We must now endeavour to see what sort of people they are and were. Most prominent among the sons of Italy are the Lombards, who have for many centuries inhabited that vast tract of country which lies between the Alps and the Apennines, down to the Adriatic Sea — the richest part of the Peninsula, with a fertile soil and a healthy climate. The Lombards, unlike the Southern Italians, are distinguished by fair hair and complexion, comparatively large stature, a sanguine temper, and an enterprising and active habit of mind. They have always been the most prosperous among the races of Italy, and have been conspicuously successful in agricul- ture, commerce, and industry. The Genoese are the descendants of the fierce Ligurians, and, until recently, at all events, had to a great extent escaped foreign admixture. They are a hardy and thrifty race, and have for generations enjoyed the reputation of being the best sailors on the Mediterranean. This characteristic has naturally produceda race of rovers and adventurers, who have navigated and, to a large extent, settled in the four quarters of the globe. 142 National Life and Thought. Very different to the Genoese are the inhabitants of Tuscany — a soft, gentle, and highly refined people, of elegant but effeminate features, and slender frames, who have made Florence for many centuries the ruler of arts and letters, and have produced a greater number of eminent men than all the rest of Italy put together. The island of Sicily, and the southern parts of the Peninsula, were early settled by Dorian colonists, who imparted to the inhabitants of the seaboard a more or less Grecian character, with schools, games, poets, and philosophers, which rivalled those of the Fatherland. Both claim that the character of the Neapolitans is essentially Greek, although the calamities of the feudal system, of the Provencal, Spanish, and Austrian yokes, and of the tyranny and troubles that they have endured from other sources, have tended to sadden them, and modify their Grecian levity and play- fulness, their taste for sophisms and specious arguments, their delight in national dances and festivals. The inhabitants of Calabria, on the other hand, are a mixed race, very different from those of Tuscany and Piedmont. Traces of Greek, Norman, German, French, and Spanish blood may be found among them, and they have little in common with their neighbours, whether as regards their race, their character, their history, or their national aspirations. When we remember that all these various elements of race and blood had been for centuries warring against each other; that Milan and Pavia, Pisa and Florence, Naples and Palermo, Venice and Verona, had been rival cities, with different rulers and systems of government, with opposite and opposing interests, with few traditions or memories in common, with bloody grudges and long-cherished antipathies, the work of Italian unity, which was commenced less than half a century ago, and is now an accom- plished fact, would seem, on the first blush, to be the merest chimera. External circumstances were apparently leagued against the consummation of this ideal to a still more serious extent. Italy had a powerful and jealous neighbour in France, who, whatever her professions may have been, could hardly be expected to favour the rise of a great and independent Italian kingdom, which should assume its due place in the councils of Europe, and be a for- midable rival in those waters which France desired for herself. Another very near neighbour, the kingdom of Austria, held Venetia by the title of treaty and the possession of nearly seventy Italy. lA? years, and there could be no united Italy without Venice. The creed of the great mass of the Italians was that without Rome there could be no Italy ; but Rome was held by the Papal troops, aided and abetted for a time by the legions of France, and the Pope had, besides, at his back, the prescriptive authority of centuries and the countenance of Christendom. Although subjected to the galling yoke of an infamous tyrant, Naples looked coldly on the project of Italian unity, and did but little to advance it, while the King himself bid defiance to those who sought his deposition. Garibaldi, eager, daring, and impetuous, was likely to precipitate a crisis by engaging in a war with Austria for the liberation of Venetia, which could hardly have been regarded with favour by the rest of Europe. On the other hand, there was the possibility that if the King appeared backward in the cause of Italian unity, Garibaldi would join with Mazzini, and set up a Republic at Naples. Finally, there was the jealousy of all the other states and provinces of Italy at the ascendency of the star of Victor Emmanuel and Sardinia. When, therefore, the captivating cry of " Italy for the Italians " was raised, its realisation appeared to be unattainable in the face of the difficulties to which allusion has been made. That it should be realised through the House of Savoy and the kingdom of Sardinia was wildly improbable. That State had an area of only 29,500 square miles, or about one-fourth of that of Italy as a whole; while its population was very little above four millions, being only one-fifth of that of the consolidated kingdom proposed to be established. Victor Emmanuel, however, knew what he was about. He engaged with the Western Powers in the struggle against Russia in the Crimea, without any imaginable cause of war, and thus forced his kingdom and his personality into prominence. The times were, moreover, ripe for a change. From the kingdom of Naples, with its area of 43,000 square miles and its population of 7,500,000, down to the little republic of San Marino, with its area of forty-four square miles, and its population of only 8400, the govern- ments that ruled in Italy were unsatisfactory, and their tenure of power was unstable. The question was, What should supply their place ? It was all very well to speak of Italy for the Italians ; but it was well said that " since the time of the Roman Empire there had never been a time when Italy could be called a nation, any more than a stack of timber could be called a ship." Besides, even if it had been otherwise, the problem arose, " Who was to bell the cat ? " To realise the fruition of the aspiration, there must be 144 National Life and Thought. insurrection against established Italian governments, or the over- throw of Italian dynasties. In other words, it appeared to be inevitable that one independent state, as then constituted, should foment insurrection in the dominions of another. A parallel case would be the invasion of Saxony or Bavaria by Prussia, under the pretext of securing " Germany for the Germans." Such was the position of affairs when, in November 1859, by the Treaty of Villafranca, Lombardy was, under one instrument, ceded to France, and by another was ceded by France to Sardinia. The area of Lombardy, then held by Austria, was 18,450 square miles, and its population was 4,279,000, Milan being the capital. Insurrection in the island of Sicily in the following year led to the deposition of the king ; and, a few weeks later, Garibaldi assumed the dictatorship of the island in the name of Victor Emmanuel. This secured for the House of Savoy the control of three-fourths of Italy. The conflict with the Papal States and the termination of the temporal government of the Pope followed. Italy had practically become Italia Irredenta when, in 1870, the capital was transferred to Rome, the Eternal City, upon which, as Cavour expressed it, " five-and-twenty centuries have accumulated all- glorious memories, as destined to become the splendid capital of our Italian kingdom." I have spoken of a body who are known as the Irredentists. This is the name given to a political organisation formed in 1878, with the avowed object of freeing all Italians from foreign rule, and of reuniting to the Italian kingdom all those portions of the Italy of old which have passed under foreign dominion. The operations of the "Italia Irredenta" party are chiefly carried on against Austria, in consequence of the retention by that Empire of Trieste and the Southern Tyrol. Until these territories have been relinquished, Italy, or at least a certain part of it, will remain unsatisfied. Whether this may, in the near future, precipitate an Austro-Italian war is, of course, a moot point ; but in the meantime, at all events, Italy and Austria are good friends, and lie down together under the sheltering wing of Prince Bismarck. It would hardly be proper to pass from the consideration of Italian history without making some reference, however incidental, to the part which has been taken in the record by the Papacy. I do not hesitate to say that, in my view, that part has made wholly for evil. I say this alike of the system and its professors. You cannot, indeed, separate the two. If we go back to the earlier centuries of the Christian era, we find that the Papacy was dis- Italy. 145 tinguished chiefly for its grasping covetousness and assumption, under the guise of religion, of powers and prerogatives to which it had no claim. In a stand-up fight between any two interests or systems, as between any two persons, a fair-minded man would naturally desire that there should be an entire absence of " fear, favour, or affection," and that both sides should have a fair chance. But the Papacy never did, and, in the very nature of the case, never could give its opponents a fair chance. It has an armoury of spiritual weapons to which they cannot possibly resort, after its temporal means of defence or defiance have been exhausted. It works upon men's hopes and fears with regard to the future. It has encouraged and profited by superstition, and has made full use of that fearful engine of oppression — the holy Inquisition — through whom it has martyred countless thousands in every nation in Europe. Its sacerdotal pretensions have not been more absurd and offensive than their application has been iniquitous. All this, however, might have been borne if the character of the popes and the priesthood had been above reproach. A bad system may, indeed, have good and righteous apostles, and the most holy zeal may be enkindled and applied on behalf of a lie. But in the case of the Papacy there has been grave fault to find with the personal character of its leaders. Many of the popes have been notorious for their depravity. Where their authority has been divided, as it was on several occasions during the Middle Ages, they have proved their human frailty by abusing one another like so many Kilkenny cats. One Pope even stooped so low as to earn part of his income by the licensing of brothels. They have often cast in their lot and influence with tyranny and wrong where the course of right and charity lay clearly marked out before them. They have placed under a ban many of the most potent agencies of modern civilisa- tion, including the printing press and the railway system. They have claimed an authority over the consciences of men which nothing could possibly justify. And, finally, when their temporal authority was assailed, they have ranted like the fishwife whom Dr. Johnson spoke of as an individual. Pray do not let me be mis- understood. I am far from seeking to make an attack upon the Roman Catholic Church as such. That Church has, perhaps, as much cause to be satisfied with itself and its work as any other. On that I express no opinion. But I do unhesitatingly say that the influence of the Papacy upon Italy from first to last has not been salutary ; and but for that influence, Italy would probably have become a united and homogeneous kingdom much sooner than it K 146 National Life and Thought. did. At the same time, we would be ungrateful did we not remember that some of the popes have been equally distinguished for piety and learning, and have done good work alike for art and for literature. We have seen that the task which Italian statesmen have suc- cessfully accomplished has been that of uniting the many conflicting interests of the different States and Duchies already named, with their divided authorities and unconformable financial arrangements, into one compact, united, and consistent whole, subject to the same supreme temporal head, with identical political laws and institutions, and with a prestige and strength sufficient to place it in the fifth or sixth place among the great powers of Europe. All this has been accomplished in the face of the most determined opposition, alike of temporal and spiritual powers, with slender financial resources, with lukewarmness on the part of a large section of the population, and with very limited co-operation on the part of other states. The heroes of the achievement have been Garibaldi, Cavour, and Victor Emmanuel. Their labours have borne fruits that could hardly have been anticipated, and England rejoices at the result. The vow which Victor Emmanuel took after the crushing defeat of Novara in 1S49, Per dio V Italia Sara ("Italy shall be"), has been fulfilled. Something, however, remains to be dene. " Italy is made, but who will now make the Italians?" This question, originally pro- pounded by Massimo d'Azeglio (who was Prime Minister of Sardinia before Cavour commenced his great work of Italian unification), has not yet been satisfactorily answered. Italy is poor ; she is burdened with an enormous debt ; her armaments are large and costly ; her people for the most part are imperfectly educated ; her death-rate, notwithstanding that she has the finest climate in Europe, is exceptionally high ; her commerce is of limited dimensions; her industries are few in number, and fail in the majority of cases to compete with those of more Western nations. All this is only what might be expected under the circumstances. A kingdom is little more than a geographical expression, which may be called into existence to-day, and blotted out to-morrow. A people are what their circumstances make them; and if, as in the case of Italy, those circumstances have been inauspicious throughout a long course of years, the processes of elevation and amelioration are likely to be slow, and perhaps tedious. One of the most unpromising features of the recent history of Italy. 147 Italy has been the great increase of her national debt. Between 1858 and 1868 the national expenditure of Italy rose from 20^- to 47f millions; and in 1872, two years after the final touch had been given to the consolidation of the kingdom by the occupa- tion of Rome, the expenditure had increased to 54! millions. The present annual expenditure may be put at about 70 millions, which is only 10 to 15 millions under the expenditure of a rich and prosperous country like the United Kingdom. Much of this ■expenditure has perhaps been wasteful, and a great deal may have been unnecessary. A state like Italy, which has been consoli- dated by frequent appeals to the sword, and as the ultimate result of force, cannot halt by the way to consider cheeseparing econo- mies, nor can it easily restore the balance between revenue and expenditure. That balance, in the case of Italy, was for many years on the wrong side. The task of adjusting the two sides of the account, difficult even in a rich country under ordinary cir- cumstances, demanded, in the exceptional circumstances of Italy, that expedients should be adopted that pressed with severity upon the people. The duties on salt and tobacco had to be increased. Additional taxation was imposed on postage, on petroleum, on •corn, and on colonial goods generally. State lands were sold, .and fresh Treasury bonds were issued. The usually oppressive grist tax had to be increased. Lotteries, at all times an unsatis- factory source of national revenue, had to be resorted to again .and again, and in some years produced close on 4 millions sterling. All incomes were made liable to taxation, those derived from manual labour as well as those from capital and rentes. Manifestly, therefore, Italian emancipation has not been purchased without entailing grave inconvenience, much suffering, and not a little permanent hardship and sacrifice on the part of the people generally. But there is no evidence that the sacrifice has been unwillingly borne. On the contrary, as all the world knows, it is the ambition, and apparently the fixed determination, of Italy to become and to remain one of the great powers of Europe, able to hold her own in the councils of the nations, whether in war or in peace. With this end in view she maintains a vast army and a powerful navy, which Avould be likely to give a good account of themselves in any issue that could possibly arise to demand the arbitrament of the sword. It is questioned whether this force is needed to secure Italy from external attack and preserve internal peace. But Italian statesmen appear to deem it indispensable that their country should be equal to meeting any force likely to 148 National Life and Thought. come against her, whether by land or by sea. Nor must it be forgotten that Italy has some reason to regard her powerful neigh- bours with distrust and suspicion. Nations have long memories. Austria is not likely to forget the humiliating circumstances under which she was compelled to cede the greater part of Lombardy in 1859, and Venice in 1866. Recent events in Africa demon- strated the constant liability to misunderstanding and rupture with France. The opening of the St, Gothard Railway places- Italy at a greater peril of invasion from Germany. The relations of the Italian Government and the Pope are not yet so satisfactory as could be desired, and there is even now a question of wounded amour firopre, which increases the strain. All these considera- tions appear to justify the Italians in their demands for a strong army and navy; but these can only be purchased at the price of considerable sacrifices on the part of the people generally; and so long as this policy is adopted as expedient or necessary, so long will the material prosperity of the country be retarded. Indeed, the ordinary taxpayer in this country can hardly form any idea of the crushing character of the burden of taxation which the Italian peasant and mechanic are required to bear. Taking the national and the local taxation of Italy together, the revenue that has to be raised annually amounts, as I have just stated, to about ^70,000,000, or, roughly, 50s. per inhabitant. This sum is not nearly so large as that which has to be provided in the United Kingdom and in France. But then the national income of Italy is incomparably less than that of either of these two countries; and when we come to apply the test of income, or ability to support taxation, it comes out that in Italy the taxes represent 20 to 25 per cent, of the national income, as compared with only 10 per cent, in the United Kingdom, and 14 to 15 per cent, in France. Not only so, but in the United Kingdom, and to a less extent in France, the incidence of taxation is so contrived as to press with but little severity on the great mass of the popu- lation, whereas in Italy taxation is levied largely upon the necessaries of life and the incomes of the poor, so that the most abject destitution cannot purchase exemption from its baleful demands. In considering the important and pressing problem of how the- effects of this crushing taxation can be mitigated, one question that will naturally be uppermost in the minds of Italian econo- mists is that of whether more can be made than is made at present of the produce of the soil. The great point to be Italy. 149 •determined is whether the country is adapted to growing with advantage crops that will return a better ultimate result than those that are generally cultivated at present. The time has gone by when a nation required to be self-contained in all the essentials of existence. Independence of outside supplies of food is no longer the shibboleth of political and fiscal reformers. In all the other countries of Europe, as in Athens of old, external sources of supply are now called in. It has been demonstrated that in most of those countries the cultivation of wheat and some other cereals cannot be followed with advantage, in the face of the severe competition of the United States, India, .and one or two other countries. Italy is among the countries which do not grow sufficient wheat for their own wants. She is also, despite the remarkable climate with which Nature has en- dowed her, among the nations that have, relatively to population, .a low income from the soil. The agricultural product of Italy per head of the rural population is calculated at less than ;£n, or only about one-half of that of our own country. This is due to a variety of causes, some of them remediable, others the reverse. The cultivable area of Italy is relatively less than that of most other European countries. This defect of sterility of soil is one that cannot be cured. The average yield of the corn and other crops of Italy is also exceptionally low. The difficulty of providing for adequate rotation of crops, fertilising the soil, and applying scientific husbandry, is probably the chief among the preventable causes. The system under which the metayer holds and culti- vates his farm is one that has a tendency to leave much to be desired in this respect. He is not, like the French peasant, the proprietor of his little farm, but holds it on a lease from a large landowner, to whom in too many cases he is under heavy pecuniary obligations, and with whom he divides his produce in varying proportions. Hence the frequent origin of difficulties of which we have had recent experience in our own country in the agrarian troubles of Ireland and the Crofter's agitation in the north of Scotland. The part which Italy has played over the occupation of Massowah may be regarded as a pledge that she means to continue in fact, as well as in name, one of the great powers of Europe. It will be remembered that when Egypt evacuated the Soudan, Massowah, which was a portion of Egyptian territory, fell into the possession of Italy by force of arms, although the town was claimed by the Abyssinians as the natural port of their country. 150 National Life and Thought. England has concurred in the Italian occupation, presumably because we did not desire that the natives should be in posses- sion. Neither Turkey nor the other great powers have, however, recognised the part taken by Italy in this matter, and it is held by eminent jurists that the claims of Italy cannot be maintained in international law. France has actively intervened against the Italian occupation, and at one time it looked as if this inter- vention would lead to an open rupture. France, however, not having any real interest in Massowah, has not proved her objections so far as the point of the sword, feeling assured, no doubt, that if she did, Germany, which has countenanced the action of Italy, would have supported that power. In such a case, of course, France would have been embroiled in a war with Germany and Italy, and could hardly have hoped for victory. The fear now is, that having been so successful both in their arms and in their diplomacy, the Italians may deem themselves invincible, and rush upon a conflict that will reduce them to a much lower rank among the great powers than that which they now occupy. The Massowah matter appeared to indicate that Italy would not be averse to trying conclusions with France,, hoping thereby, no doubt, to secure a firmer footing on the Red Sea and in the East, as well as to come abreast of that power in the European family. A country that has, like Italy, a great and unsatisfied ambition, is usually liable to attempt more than its- strength will justify. Behind Germany, Italy could, no doubt, make a good fight, but single-handed her chance of success in a war with France is not very bright. Her political and diplomatic prospects are at present, however, tolerably reassuring. She is a member of the Austro-German alliance, and may count upon the co-operation of these two empires in the event of her prestige being assailed. It will be perfectly evident from the short sketch I have attemped of her history, that during the last half century Italy has been the most fortunate of European powers. She has advanced from the position of a congeries of petty states, with no cohesion, unity, or real strength, to a power of the first rank,, with interests in the East, and a voice in the settlement of inter- national affairs. She has fished in troubled waters, and has succeeded in obtaining many concessions and advantages where she might just as readily have met with resistance and annihilation. She engaged in the Crimean War, and thereby Italy. 1 5 1 laid the foundations of an alliance with France, which, however much she may now affect to disregard its results, has in reality been of great use to her, seeing that it secured Lombardy and the Duchies for Victor Emmanuel, and a little later, Naples and the Papal States. By the war of 1866 she added Venetia, and by the war of 1870 she secured possession of Rome. Italy has shown within recent years that her rulers fully appreciate the great importance of the development of her material resources by the construction and efficient maintenance of public works. The part which Italy has taken in the con- struction of the St. Gothard tunnel, and in thereby improving her intercourse with the rest of Europe, is sufficiently well known. The railway system of the kingdom has also been advanced with remarkable strides for a kingdom that has so limited a store of wealth and so comparatively small a traffic. The ports and harbours of Genoa, Venice, Naples, and other leading towns have been put into a creditable condition of repair; and it is now proposed to increase the maritime resources of the country by canalising the classic Tiber, and by constructing a canal right across the Peninsula for a distance of 180 miles, with a view to avoiding the long journey round Cape Lucca. The latter enterprise, if it is ever carried out, is estimated to involve an expenditure of some twenty millions sterling, and it would also involve the draining of two large lakes — those of Bolsena and Thrasimene. Italy, as we all know, has been justly celebrated for the liberal and enlightened part which she has always taken in advancing academic and scientific institutions. Many of the sciences were greatly developed there before they had obtained even a foothold elsewhere. And it is not without interest to recall the fact that although many of our schools and universities are even still hesitating whether they should admit ladies to degrees and professorships, and while women are still excluded from seats in the Commons House of Parliament, the Academy of Sciences in Bologna, as far back as 17 12, not only admitted ladies as members, but gave them professors' chairs. In that famous school of learning it is still remembered with pride that nearly two hundred years ago Anna Manzolini was professor of anatomy, and Laura Bassi was celebrated for her knowledge of the abstruse sciences. As there were at that time some 550 academical institutions of the kind in Italy, the country may fairly be reckoned the nursery, as well as the depositary, of many of 3 5 2 National Life and Thought. the arts and sciences that have since blossomed into the noonday •emulgence of nineteenth century practice. The Italy of modern times has been a strange compound of ignorance and superstition, of coarseness and refinement, of religion and impiety, of liberty and the most galling yokes, of toleration and intolerance. The same Italy that was founding the academy of sciences at Bologna, originating the modern school of xylography, drawing up the statutes of the Cosmo- graphical Academy at Venice, advancing by the establishment •of several learned institutions the cause of economic science, and enfranchising the serfs in Savoy, was, through the Pope, denouncing Freemasonry, expelling the Jesuits, and confiscating their property, and practising the terrors of the Inquisition. But the lamp of science, although it often burnt dimly, was never wholly extinguished. While Genoa was being besieged by the Imperialists, Beccaria was making those electrical experiments which tended to lay the foundations of the modern science of electrical engineering. While the people were sunk in the direst misery from the ravages of a prolonged war, the first chair of political economy was being established at Naples, and a new code of laws was being issued by Charles. While the finances of the country were in a frightful state of disorganisation, and the great bank of Genoa was being declared bankrupt, Herculaneum was being disinterred from the ashes which had overlain her temples for nearly one thousand seven hundred years, and a meridian arc was being measured by Boscovich and Le Maire from Rome to Rimini. Truly these Italians were a versatile people, and such as they were, such mutatis mutandis they are in our own day. If we were asked to furnish a notable example of the truth of this latter statement, we should point to the crushing load of taxation which the people appear to bear without a murmur in order that their country may take the place to which they aspire in the family of nations ; to the existence of the galling system of conscription, which requires every male to serve in the army, unless subject to physical disqualification ; and to the risks that they appear prepared to undertake in order to maintain their national prestige. Italy has really little interest in any part of the world outside of her own borders ; and if she limited herself to these, it is exceedingly probable, now that her relations with the Papacy are more cordial, that she would escape molestation from any outside quarter. But, as we have seen, she is prepared to Italy. 153 run the most fearful risks — even that of being utterly annihilated and wiped out — for the sake of so trivial a mess of pottage as the colonisation of the dreary desert port of Massowah, at the same time that she is building up a solid and substantial basis of prosperity and permanence at home. To my mind, Italy seems to have just as much business with Massowah as Tenterden Steeple has with Goodwin Sands, and her chances of profiting thereby are about equally remote. It is a well-known principle in human affairs that the less a man has to lose, the more ready he is to lose it. Italy has not so much to lose as some other European powers ; but that which she does possess has been pur- chased at the cost, and by virtue of, many sacrifices, great endur- ance, patience, and heroism, unlimited loyalty and devotion to the present dynasty. She now acts as if she were ready to throw all these, and much besides, upon a reckless cast, and stand the hazard of the die. The condition of the people of Italy is still unhappily far from prosperous, although it is much more satisfactory than formerly. Less than half a century ago, a writer who knew some- thing about the country, described the circumstances of the inhabitants in the following terms : — " The greater part of the population of Italy is to be seen in the country devoted to the pursuits of agriculture. A few, a very few, of them are in circumstances of moderate affluence ; a few more may be represented as in a state of comparative ease, enjoying a bare sufficiency to support life ; but the great body, to whom all others bear a slight proportion, are in the most wretched condition. They are the occupiers of small portions of land, some of them not exceeding an acre in extent, and most of them less than four acres, where, in miserable hovels, barely sheltered, they labour in the fields, and subsist, themselves and their families, on half the produce of the land, the other half being delivered to the proprietor at the time of harvest as his rent. Their food, simple as it is, is far from being sufficient to keep them in a healthy state. They taste neither bread nor animal food. Their chief subsistence is called polenta, made from Indian corn, which is merely pounded and then boiled, no expense on account of the miller or the baker being incurred. This kind of meal, made to the consistence of hasty pudding, would certainly be an aliment sufficient to support life when the quantity could be adequately supplied ; but, with the utmost parsimony during the whole year, the termination of it, as the next 154 National Life and Thought. harvest approaches, often finds them utterly destitute, and with no other resource but beggary or starvation. This is the con- dition of the larger class of human beings in the north and middle of Italy ; whilst in the south the lazzaroni of Naples are living proofs of the wretched condition of great numbers in that more fertile soil and more temperate climate." I have left myself but little time to speak of the political institutions and systems of government which obtain in Italy,, although I can hardly altogether leave these unnoticed. The legislative authority of Italy rests with the King and two Chambers — the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. The former (unlimited in number) is composed of princes of the royal house after attaining their majority, and of members nominated for life by the King. The Chamber of Deputies is elected by seratin de liste, by conditional universal suffrage for periods of five years, and contains 508 members, or one to every 57,000 of the popula- tion. For electoral purposes, Italy is divided into 135 districts, which again are sub-divided ; one-eighth of the inscribed electors must vote to render an election valid. The present Chamber of Deputies was elected on May 23rd, 1886, a dissolution having been decreed by the King on April 27th. The division of parties in the Italian Chamber is unusual. The majority, and the bulk of the minority alike, profess Liberal prin- ciples ; the one being known as the Ministerial left, and the other as the Opposition left or Pentarchists. There is, besides, but little difference in their political programmes. The Opposition includes some minor groups of varying tendencies, a knot of advanced Republicans or Socialists, and the so-called Moderates. There is little or no union in the Opposition ; and it is this that has con- stituted the chief strength of the Ministerial left, which after successfully surviving some nine or ten Ministerial crises, has been uninterruptedly in power for twelve years, a result in a large measure due to the skilful leadership of the late Signor Depretis. On the death of the latter on July 29th, 1887, the ministry under- went no change ; as a matter of form, its resignation was tendered, but was withdrawn at the request of the King, Signor Crispi taking over the Presidency of the Council in addition to the Portfolios of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs. Since his advent to power, Signor Crispi, although an old Garibaldian, a Republican, and a professed friend of France, has been the loyal and devoted servant of the monarchy ; and so far from disturbing Italy's relations with Austria and Germany, as the Irredentists fondly hoped, it has Italy. 155, remained for him to definitely cement the alliance of the Central European Powers. In spite of Parliamentary differences, however, on one point Opposition and Ministerialists are alike united — namely, in the desire to maintain the present Savoy dynasty, which they regard as the keystone of Italian unity. So far as present appearances go, that dynasty has a great future before it. We must all hope that nothing may occur to mar the fortunes of so august a house, or of so spirited, capable, self-denying, and patriotic a people as that over which it presides. IX. SPAIN. PROI'ONGO ALGO V CON'CLUVO NADA. MRS. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM. THE Portuguese have a word called "saudade," which means a longing after, a desire to see some long unvisited place, some long unseen face. It seems, if the following story is true, that one feels these " saudades " even in heaven itself. Adam got weary of Paradise, and asked leave, if only for a few hours, to revisit the earth. He was told that he would find all changed. No use ! He must go ! England, he found one workshop. Even the face of Nature was altered. Nothing as he left it ! France, Italy, Germany, failed to evoke any remembrance. All was changed. So, south- ward, like the swallows, to Spain ! As he felt the hot sun bite his cheek, and his eye swept over the fertile vegas of Murcia and Valencia; as he observed the uncultivated country, desolate and unpopulated, he exclaimed with rapture : " This, indeed, is the earth I knew. Under that olive tree could I sit me down and rest, and begin once more to name the animals, male and female, after their kind." A foreigner happened to relate the foregoing story in a ter- tulia or conversazione of Madrid. A distinguished Spaniard, who was present, remarked, and he expressed the opinion of all present : " Si, Sehor, y tenia razon, La Espafia es Paraiso." "Yes, Sir, and Adam was right, for Spain is Paradise." These two anecdotes, which are to be met with in almost any handbook of Spain, and which, if not true, might well be so, com- pletely synthetise her present position, and the view which every Spaniard, born and bred, is supposed to take, or ought to take, of his country. 158 National Life and Thought. The modern influences of the nineteenth century have not worked much change on Spain. The railroad here assumes a certain listlessness, foreign to all idea of hurry and rush ; one can almost watch the grass as it grows between the rails ; we might still fall asleep and dream that Philip II. still reigns, and the Inquisition also, as we wander through the sombre mediaeval streets of the decayed cities of Castille. There is nothing to destroy the illu- sion, except the ugly clothes which we have donned as the world has grown uglier. Away from the narrow converging lines of railway (an admir- able lesson in perspective ; I wish for ever they had remained in prospective) there indeed the illusion grows so strong that it wants little of reality. Let us conjure up a traveller, and send him by sea to Spain. Let us follow him as he arrives fresh from the Northern greyness into the pellucid atmosphere of the South. Let us watch how his first impression of a new country, vivid as a flash of lightning, almost bewildering in its suddenness and strangeness, affects him. Let us suppose that it is night before the ship anchors in the smooth waters of a Spanish seaport. Let us take Vigo, for instance, with its incomparable bay and magnificent scenery. In the calm bosom of the gently heaving water, shut in on all sides by dark and mysterious shadows, are mirrored thousands of twinkling lights. They are the lights of the town in front of him, which climb up and cling to the dark mass of an eminence whose vague and rocky outlines he can feel rather than see. The feeble lights which twinkle redly from the houses alone illumine the mystery of an unknown town. The long quavering notes of the bugle, sounding the "Retirada," are. wafted over the water. In the early morning he hastes to seek the solution of the problem of the unknown. Against a broken mountainous background, which rises against a sky which every successive moment thrills with fresh pulses of colour, translucent, cold, and serene, like that we see framed by the dark shadow of a door or window in old German pictures ; the serried lines of houses which form the town glimmer whitely in that cold light which precedes sunrise. Hither and thither, above the irregular outlines of their roofs, rises the grey cupola of a bell tower, in which, even as he watches, the bells begin to move, and with grave and sombre sound wake the sleepers to life and prayer. He lands enthusiastic. He has only seen such scenes before Spain. 159 painted by Hawes Craven, when he has been to see Irving at the Lyceum Theatre. An hour spent on the quay, in company with a sleeping cur, waiting for the Custom-house officer who never •comes, somewhat damps his enthusiasm. The lazy curiosity and remark, excited always in Spain by the appearance of a stranger, and especially if that stranger be a foreigner, of the loungers and unemployed boatmen (unemployed, you must understand, not so much for want of work as will) who lean over the railing at the landing-place, and while away the morning hours over a cigarette, irritate him. He resents the suspicious attitude of the green- gloved Carabiniers, who lean on their muskets, roll cigarettes, and watch him grimly. The sun begins to bite his unaccustomed •cheek shrewdly. He savagely meditates a letter to the Times on the barbarism of Spanish institutions and officials. He curses the hour that brought him to Spain ! A Spaniard, accustomed all his life to patience and longsuffering, to whom time is no object, and discomfort cannot exist, is calmly indifferent, offers his cigarettes freely to all around, and "takes the sun," which is gilding the world around him. But our Englishman fumes. At last he finds himself in what we will courteously allow to be an hotel (for such it calls itself), which is very little removed from the Arab caravanserai, or Fondak. Indeed, the word " Fonda" shows that its origin sprang from the East. His room has no curtains, no carpet, an iron bed and a straw chair are all the furniture. Depressed by the comfortless interior, he stands gazing vaguely out on to the sunlit patch of grass, which stretches in front of the hotel to the mole. He follows the movements of a horse feeding, the play of two yellow curs, a woman cutting grass with an antediluvian sickle. As she cuts, she intones one of those nasal, melancholy songs peculiar to this Scotland of Spain. He will find, too, that the sun has its melancholy, a calmer and serener melancholy than that of the long grey days of a northern climate, but a melancholy all the same. The senses seem to be steeped in an unknown sadness, a sadness which is reflected in the rich, fertile, beautiful, but most melancholy landscape of Galicia, in the wild undefinable burden of the song of the labourer, and the women washing at the stream. After breakfast, when he saunters up the hill into the town, he will find himself in the midst of an arcaded plaza or square. It is surrounded by great stern old granite palaces, which were the town houses of the powerful families who owned land in the vicinity of Vigo. Coats of arms project from their angles, and 160 National Life and Thouglit. hang threateningly over the sombre gateways ; and yet, one of the contrasts of Spain, alongside of them, nay, in their very ground floors, little shops and booths, open to the street, flaunt their gaudy wares to entrap the innocent countryman. He passes before the prison, where murderers, smugglers, men and women are confined pell-mell. A basket dangles from the grated win- dow, tied to a cord of esparto grass, in which the relations deposit food ; the charitable, as they pass, a copper. The Spanish Government, no pamperer of men, contents itself with securing, not nourishing, the persons of its prisoners. Here rank is taken from the nature of the crime. The greatest ruffian smokes calmly at the window, the observed of all. The idlers step aside respectfully as his wife comes up, bearing tobacco and provisions. Her cry of " Gentlemen, my husband is the murderer ! " at once commands respect. What is it that he misses ? At first he does not analyse, but presently, like a flash of lightning, the thought strikes him, that there is no sound of wheels ! Let us go with him as he passes out of the brilliant sunshine of the plaza into the narrow, precipitous streets, full of cool shadows, where the sunlight is blotted out by the almost meeting eaves of the roofs on either side. The street is badly paved, uneven, tortuous. If any sound there is, it is of the echoing ring of a donkey's hoofs pattering over the cobble stones, the low murmur of voices from an open doorway. A closely veiled figure returning from early mass glides past him with prayer book and rosary. He almost stumbles over a little pig, which runs squeaking between his legs. The street brings us out on to the Alameda, the public garden, which looks down upon the sea, which lies spread out beneath it, an inland lake shut in by mountains, studded with the white sails of fisher-boats coming in from the open sea. It is hot ; the atmosphere balsamic with the scent of pine woods and the fresh salt smell of the sea. He begins to feel the soporific influences around him, a conquering laziness, an apathetic indifference. Care seems to have been left behind in duller climes. He stretches himself on a bench, twists a cigarette lazily, and com- placently watches a blind beggar sitting in the sun, a mass of rags, merry, and jesting with all who pass. Silent and dignified, he utters no words but, " Your grace, for the love of God ! " Curious, is it not, hardly to be conceived, that this being, so Spain. 161 ■deformed and hideous as to be terrible to look upon, maintains a certain dignity? Yet, is he not a Spaniard, a Christian — a gentleman? Give him of your copper largesse. He desires, courteously, that "your grace may go with God." If you refuse it, he will not implore curses on your head, but gravely regret that "your grace's heart is not open to the cry of poverty." His •condition implies no disgrace. It is his trade, just as another man happens to be a carpenter or blacksmith. The priest sweeps by in long black robes, which leave a trail on the dusty road. The black-gaitered " pareja," the pair of Guardia civiles ; the successors of the Hermandades of Isabella the Catholic, with muskets shouldered, their tricornes glittering in the sun, step briskly past into the country, to patrol the King's highways. It is night before our traveller returns to his hotel. His foot- step reverberates as he passes down the empty street, full of deep blotches of shadow. A narrow strip of starlit sky, alone, is visible between the spectral forms of the houses. Under a dark archway where an oil lamp flickers feebly before a blackened oil painting of our Lady