different to political questions, as long as they are allowed to be busy about good works, and to fulfil their mission. But their indifference to politics does not extend to politicians themselves. They are unable to take the same view of rogues as of honest men. We may blame the want of tact and the mistakes of the honest men, and we may commend the cleverness of the rogues, but we can never place upon the same line MacMahon and Grévy, Dufaure and Clémenceau, Jules Simon and Gambetta, Wallon and Hérold. The clergy and the Catholics watch the course of events, and learn from experience like the rest of the world. When an election takes place they are only anxious to vote for honest and religious men, and since unfortunately the republicans now in power seem to glory in being irreligious and of lax morals, they do not obtain the votes of Catholics. It would be absurd to conclude from this fact that the Catholics and the clergy are hostile to the Republic, unless the Republic and irreligion are one and the same thing. So long as the Republic is distinct from the Revolution the Catholics do not condemn her, but at the present moment it is not a republic or a monarchy which is in question, but order or disorder, government or anarchy..

It is, therefore, unjust to ascribe the present crisis to the clergy, for they did not provoke and are not responsible for it. Their attitude as a body has been irreproachable during the last ten years, and will continue to be so. They neither court nor defy the Government, but stand aloof, calm, dignified, and reserved, and busy themselves in good works as far as they are allowed to do so. This is as true of the regular as of the secular clergy, the Jesuits included, of whom the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris lately spoke as follows:

"In the midst of the dissensions which agitate and divide our country, the whole body of the clergy have strictly confined themselves within the limits of their spiritual office, nor has the congregation of Jesus been less careful than the rest to avoid any interference with political questions, and assertions to the contrary are unfounded. A bishop who has the principal Jesuit establishments under his jurisdiction is entitled to vindicate them from this reproach."

"*

The clergy are exposed to insults, attacks, and outrages; they are dragged through the mud and are persecuted in all sorts of ways, and they submit in silence. It would be impossible to find in any age or in any country a large body of men who have maintained a more reserved and dignified attitude under such a trial. It is grossly unjust to assert that the clergy of France have provoked the Republic and the republicans. As the Bishop of Autun

*Letter from the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris to the President of the Republic, April 12, 1880,

observes in his letter of the 15th of April, 1880: “We did our -duty as citizens and as Frenchmen during the war and in the disastrous epoch of the Commune. After these disasters we renewed our labors among you. We only demand the right of alleviating the ills of society, and the liberty necessary for accomplishing the task. No one can say that we have taken an undue part in the manufacture of the constitution and of the laws. We are justified in saying to politicians, you do not come across us in your own department, in the sphere of interests which is your special charge." The hatred to religion and the desire to please Bismarck led to the open war which has long been meditated. An occasion was found and eagerly seized on the 16th of May. The clergy are the victims, and it is only by a strange perfidy that the attempt is made to fix the guilt on them in order to justify their destruction. Men must be blind or deaf who ignore this truth.

VII.

We have now only to ask, What will be the issue of the present crisis? The reply would be easy if the republicans were sincere and really desired peace. The clergy and the Catholics do not ask for protection and privileges, but for common justice and liberty. The Government, instead of being hostile and oppressive, has only to become neutral and indifferent, and peace will be made at once. If the Republic should be overthrown, it will certainly not be owing to the Church and clergy. The republicans themselves will be wholly responsible.

In fact, it is difficult to see how the present crisis is to end in a state of relative tranquillity after the orders of the day in the Cham ber, and the decrees of the 29th of March. The majority of the Chamber consists of men who can pull down, but who cannot build up, so that there is no hope of a peaceful solution. The arbitrary course on which the Government has entered cannot be arrested. The Freycinet ministry has accepted the part of Pontius Pilate, but in three months it will have ceased to exist, in order to give way to still more violent men.

A conservative President might then make his own 16th of May, and make it under favorable conditions. If he were to appeal to the country with the question, Do you, or do you not, desire a religious persecution? we are persuaded that the country would return a Chamber of more moderate views which would reject the projets Ferry. Such a measure would not only be good but republican policy. The life of the Republic might perhaps not be saved, but it would be prolonged.

It is unfortunately very doubtful whether President Grévy will accept the responsibility of dissolving the Chamber, and the imme

diate prospect-which could in any case only be deferred-includes persecution, the Commune, and a dictatorship of some kind, probably Napoleonic.

Prince Napoleon may perhaps make his advent to power possible, in spite of his numerous faults, among which his recent letter swas not the least; and he will be accepted, if not welcomed, by a country which every day becomes more weary of a Republic served by such republicans.

There is nothing seductive in such a prospect. But we can only accept facts as they are.

ABBÉ MARTIN, in the Nineteenth Century.

A STRANGER IN AMERICA.

No person could be more completely a stranger than I was in America. After being interested in American history and public affairs from my youth, I saw the country for the first time in August last. Being born in Midland, England, I had more English insularity of thought than most of my countrymen; and Whaving a certain wilfulness of opinion which few shared at home, and probably fewer abroad, I had little to recommend me in the United States. Years ago I knew some publicists there of mark Land character, but that was before the great war in which many of them perished. My friend Horace Greeley was dead, Lloyd Garrison was gone, with both of whom I had spent well-remembered days. Theodore Parker, the "Jupiter of the pulpit," as Wendell Phillips calls him, paid me a visit in England before he went to Florence to die. To me, therefore, it was contentment enough to walk unknown through some of America's marvellous cities, and into the not less wondrous space which lies beyond them.

For one who has seen but half a great continent, and that but for a short period, to write a book about the country would be certainly absurd. At the same time, to have been in a new world for three months and be unable to give any account whatever of it would be still more absurd. To pretend to know much is presumption-to profess to know nothing is idiocy. A voyager who had seen a strange creature in the Atlantic Ocean as he passed it, might be able to give only a poor account of it; but if he had seen it every day for three months, and even been upon its back, he would be a very stupid person if he could give no idea whatever of it. I saw America and Canada from Ottawa to Kansas City for that length of time, travelling on its lakes and land, and may give some notion, at least to those who never were there, of what Lob

served-not of its trades or manufactures, or statistics, or politics, or churches, but of the ways, manners, and spirit of the people. After all I had read or heard, it seemed to me that there were great features of social life there unregarded or misregarded. New York itself is a miracle which a large book would not be sufficient to explain. When I stepped ashore there I thought I was in a larger Rotterdam; when I found my way to the Broadway, it seemed to me as though I was in Paris, and that Paris had taken to business. There were quaintness, grace and gayety, brightness and grimness, all about. The Broadway I thought a Longway, for my first invitation in it was to No. 1455. My first days in the city were spent at No. 1 Broadway, in the Washington Hotel, allured thither by its English military and diplomatic associations, going back to the days when an Indian war-whoop was possible in the Broadway. At that end, you are dazed by a forest of tall telegraphic poles, and a clatter by night and day that no pathway of Pandemonium could rival. Car-bells, omnibus-bells, drayhorsebells, railway-bells, and locomotives in the air, were resounding night and day. An engineer turns off his steam at your bedroom window. When I got up to see what was the matter, I found engine No. 99 almost within reach of my arm, and the other ninety-eight had been there that morning before I awoke. When one day at a railway junction I heard nine train-bells being rung by machinery, it sounded as though disestablishment had occurred, and all the parish churches of England were being imported.

Of all the cities of America, Washington is the most superb in its brilliant flashes of space. The drowsy Potomac flows in sight of splendid buildings. Washington is the only city I have ever seen which no wanton architect or builder can spoil. Erect what they will, they cannot obliterate its glory of space. If a man makes a bad speech, the audience can retreat; if he buys a dull book, he need not read it-while if a dreary house be erected, three generations living near it may spend their melancholy lives in sight of it. If an architect in each city could be hanged now and then, with discrimination, what a mercy it would be to mankind! Washington at least is safe. One Sunday morning I went to the church, which is attended by the President and Mrs. Hayes, to hear the kind of sermon preached in their presence. But the walk through the city was itself a sermon. I never knew all the glory of sunlight in this world until then. The clear, calm sky seemed hundreds of miles high. Over dome and mansion, river and park, streets and squares, the sunlight shed what appeared to my European eyes an unearthly beauty. I lingered in it until I was late at church. The platform occupied by preachers in America more resembles an altar than our pulpit, and the freedom of action and grace in speaking I thought greater than among us. The sermon

before the President was addressed to young men, and was remarkably wise, practical, definite, and inspiring; but the transition of tone was, at times, more abrupt and less artistic than in other eminent American preachers whom I had the pleasure to hear.

Niagara Falls I saw by sunlight, electric light, and by moonlight, without thinking much of them-until walking on the Ameri can side I came upon the Niagara River, which I had never heard of. Of course water must come from somewhere to feed the Falls -I knew that; but had never learned from guide-books that its coming was anything remarkable. When, however, I saw a mighty mountain of turbulent water as wide as the eye could reach, a thousand torrents rushing as it were from the clouds, splashing and roaring down to the great Falls, I thought the idea of the Deluge must have begun there. No aspect of nature ever gave me such a sense of power and terror. I feared to remain where I stood. The frightful waters seemed alive. When I went back to the Canadian side I thought as much of Niagara as any one-had I seen the Duke of Argyll's recent published Impressions" of them (he also discovered the Niagara Rapids) before I went there, I should have approached Niagara Falls with feelings very different from those with which I first saw them.

In the Guildhall, London, I have seen city orators point their merchant audience to the statues of great men there, and appeal to the historic glories of the country. Such an audience would respond as though they had some interest in the appeal-feeling, however, that these things more concerned the great families who held the country, whom they make rich by their industry, who looked down upon them as buttermen or tallow-chandlers, No orator addressing the common people employs these historic appeals to them. The working class who are enlisted in the army, flogged and sent out to be shot, that their fathers may find their way to the poorhouse, under their hereditary rulers, are not so sensible of the glory of the country. The working-men, as a rule, have no substantial interest in the national glory: I mean those of them whose lot it is to supplicate for work, and who have to establish trades-unions to obtain adequate payment for it. Yet I well know that England has things to be proud of which America cannot rival.* At the same time we have, as Lord Beaconsfield discerned, "Two Nations" living side by side in this land. What is wanted is that they shall be one in equity of means, knowledge, and pride. Nothing surprised me more than to see the parks

* Americans are not lacking in generous admissions herein, as any one may see in William Winter's "Trip to England." The reader must go far to find more graceful pages of appesciation of the historic, civil, and scenic beauties of this country,