father always spoke of him, with grimly sarcastic truth, as "der Sohn der Magd."

It is quite probable, as Mr. Spencer very properly points out, that Edwin is not, as a rule, brought to Angelina's feet by her German. But surely it is as equally true that, unless Edwin is an absolute idiot, the knowledge that Angelina can whisper soft nothings in his ear in that learned but slightly guttural language will not be a very fatal obstacle to his declaration. Rosy cheeks, laughing eyes, and a finely rounded form are no doubt great attractions, and very desirable. But if one's wife has only these physical attractions, without a corresponding mental development, she may prove a very good nursemaid, but not a very intelligent helpmeet. It is also worth remembering, as Professor Mahaffy very properly says, that "it is only when mental refinement is added to physical beauty, that love rises from an appetite to a sentiment." And when those laughing eyes grow dim, and the rosy cheeks assume the contour of the full moon, while the finely rounded form has reached those proportions that roused so much the susceptibilities of Nathaniel Hawthorne, then will one find out, if not before, the advantages of having some mental as well as physical health and beauty. And such education will not render women the less capable of undertaking one of the most important tasks that fall to the lot of any, viz., the care and training of the growth and development of a child's mind.

Finally, we should recognize a fact, too often ignored, that, after all, woman has a life of her own to lead. There are many problems in life that a woman has to solve for herself with such light as she may derive from her education, and on the proper solution of some of these problems will depend much for good or for evil, both to herself and to those with whom she may be connected. It is, therefore, very desirable that she should have as much help as may be given by a highly trained intellect, and, in proportion to her previous mental training, will be her capacity for judging and living rightly.

In conclusion, one cannot but feel that this movement will not only be of advantage to women themselves, whom it will raise socially and mentally, but that it will also be of service to the race, by giving us mothers whose cerebral development will be such that their children will be more easily taught, and capable of much more than the children of less able mothers. Further, by giving otherwise inadequately occupied women healthy occupation for their minds, it will get rid of that ennui which is so fruitful of much evil, and so prolific of patients that fill the consulting rooms of medical men. Tennyson's ideal

"She with all the charm of woman,
She with all the breadth of man

may be only an ideal, but it is one, at least, that is worth striving for. And

if, with our narrow and limited methods of education, we do meet with some women who come up to this ideal, what may we not expect when a fuller and more gracious life is opened out to woman?

The movement may be marked by extravagances, and the methods adopted for the attainment of the end may not be the best possible, but this is, after all, only another mode of saying that the movement is directed by human beings. George Macdonald says truly: "The tide of action in these later years flows more swiftly in the hearts of women, whence has resulted so much that is nobler, so much that is paltry, according to the nature of the heart in which it swells." Let us then recognize generously that there is such a tide, and that although we may, by our opposition, delay the progress of the current, yet we can no more arrest it than could Dame Partington with her mop stop the progress of the Atlantic.- Westminster Review.

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.

ONE-FIFTH of the human race dwells in India, and every fifth Indian at least is a Mahommedan, yet many people contend that Islam is not a creed which propagates itself vigorously in the great Peninsula. Where do they imagine that the fifty odd millions of Mussulmans in India came from? Not ten per cent. of them ever claim to be descendants of immigrants, whether Arab, Persian, or Pathan, and of that ten per cent. probably halt are descendants only by adoption, the warrior chiefs who followed successful invaders allowing their bravest adherents, if Mussulmans, to enroll themselves in their own clans. Almost all, moreover, are half-breeds, the proportion of women who entered India with the invaders having been exceedingly small. The remainder-that is, at least ninety per cent. of the whole body-are Indians by blood, as much children of the soil as the Hindoos, retaining many of the old pagan superstitions, and only Mussulmans because their ancestors embraced the faith of the great Arabian. They embraced it too for the most part from conviction. There is a popular idea in this country that India was at some time or other invaded from the North by a mighty conqueror, who set up the throne of the Great Mogul, and compelled multitudes to accept Islam at the point of the sword; but this is an illusion. Mahommed authorized conversion by force, and Islam owes its political importance to the sword, but its spread as a faith is not due mainly to compulsion. Mankind is not so debased as that theory would assume, and the Arab conquerors were in many countries resisted to the death. The pagan tribes of Arabia saw in Mahommed's victories proof that his creed was divine, and embraced it with a startling ardor of conviction; but outside Arabia the bulk of the common people who submitted to the Khalifs either

retained their faith, as in Asia Minor, or were extirpated, as in Persia and on the southern shore of the Mediterranean. The Arabs colonized on an enormous scale, and, being careless what women they took, mixed their blood freely, so that in Syria, Egypt, the Soudan, and the enormous territory stretching from Barca to Tangier the population is essentially Arab with more or less of crossing. The Tartars were persuaded, not conquered, and they and the Arabs are still the dominant races of the Mussulman world which has converted no European race except a few Albanianswith all their intellectual superiority and their military successes, the Arabs never converted Spain-and has gained its converts in China and in Africa almost exclusively by preaching.

It was the same in India. Here and there, as in Sind and Mysore, a small population may be found whose ancestors were converted by persecu tion, and doubtless successful invaders occasionally terrified or bought with immunities large groups of Indians. But that the process was neither general nor steadily pursued is proved by two broad facts-first, that India is not a Mahommedan country, but a Hindoo country in which Mahommedans are numerous; and, secondly, that in no part of the Peninsula can the distribution of faith be fairly considered territorial. Mussulman villages are everywhere found among Hindoo villages, and Mussulman families dwell among Hindoo families in a way which, if India had ever been "converted" systematically, would have been impossible. The early missionaries of Islam could not use force, and, as to the invaders who conquered and remained, they seldom or never wished to use it, for the sufficient reason that it was not their interest. They wanted to found principalities, or kingdoms, or an empire, not to wage an internecine war with their own tax-paying subjects, or to arouse against themselves the unconquerable hostility of the warrior races of the gigantic Peninsula, who were, and who remain, Hindoo. The truth is that Mahommedan proselytism by preaching began in India, then held to be far the richest of the great divisions of Asia, within three centuries from the Hegira, and has continued ever since; that is, for a period of probably nine hundred years at least, during which the process, now vigorous, now slackening, has never been entirely intermitted. In other words, Islam, though often assisted by authority, has taken three times the time to convert a fifth of the people of India that Christianity, though constantly suffering persecution, took to convert the Roman Empire. Islam probably never advanced with the speed of Christianity when first contending with paganism, and certainly never with the speed with which the faith spread in the tenth century throughout Russia.

Yet the missionaries of Islam from the first had many and great advantages. They were, if judged by our modern standards, exceedingly numer.

ous.

The more fervent Arabs, with their gift of eloquence and their habit of teaching, after the long battle with the outside world had ceased, took to

the work o. proselytism with an ardor never displayed by modern Christians, and as fast as they made converts they raised up new missionaries, often by villages at a time. Europeans habitually forget that every Mussulman is more or less of a missionary; that is, he intensely desires to secure converts from non-Mussulman peoples. Such converts not only increase his own chance of heaven, but they swell his own faction, his own army, his own means of conquering, governing, and taxing the remainder of mankind. All the emotions which impel a Christian to proselytize are in a Mussulman strengthened by all the motives which impel a political leader and all the motives which sway a recruiting sergeant, until proselytism has become a passion which, whenever success seems practicable, and especially success on a large scale, develops in the quietest Mussulman a fury of ardor which induces him to break down every obstacle, his own strongest prejudices included, rather than stand for an instant in a neophyte's way. He welcomes him as a son, and whatever his own lineage, and whether the convert be Negro or Chinaman or Indian or even European, he will without hesitation or scruple give him his own child in marriage, and admit him fully, frankly, and finally into the most exclusive circle in the world.

The missionaries of such a faith are naturally numerous, and when they first assailed India they found, as they have done ever since, a large proportion of the population ready at least to listen to their words. India was occupied then, as it is occupied now, by a thick population of many races, many tongues, and many degrees of civilization, but all differentiated from the rest of mankind in this. Cultivated or uncultivated, they had all keen minds, and all their minds were occupied by the old problem of the whence and whither. They were all religious in a way, and all afraid of something not material. Hindooism was then, as it is now, not so much a creed as a vast congeries of creeds of modes of belief as to the right method of escaping an otherwise evil destiny rendered inevitable, not only by the sins of this life, but by the sins of a whole series of past and unremembered lives. It is the belief in transmigration which Europeans always forget, and which governs the inner souls of the Hindoo millions, who believe in their past existence as fervently as orthodox Christians believe in a future one. The efforts to solve the problem and rescue themselves from destiny were endless, and included millions. Some heresies involved whole peoples. One heresy, Buddhism, almost became the creed of the land. Great heretics made more converts than Luther. New cults rose with every generation into partial favor. New castes sprang up almost every year, that is, new groups of persons separated themselves from the rest of mankind in order, through new rules of ceremonial purity, to insure further their security against a pursuing fate. The process which now goes on endlessly then went on endlessly, till India was a sweltering mass of beliefs, ideas, religious customs, and rules of life all or nearly all

instigated by fear, by an acute dread that somehow, after so much labor, so much self-denial, such hourly bondage to ceremonial precaution, the end might ultimately be missed. The essence of the life of Hindooism, if not of its creeds, is fear-fear of the unknown result which may follow upon error either in conduct or in faith or in ceremonial. A single belief, the belief in his pre-existence, which is firmly accepted by every Hindoo, fills his mind with vague terrors from which, while that convictions lasts, there cannot be by possibility any full relief. He is responsible for sins he knows nothing of, and who can say that any punishment for them would be unjust or excessive? If misfortune comes to him, that is his due; and a Hindoo, once unlucky, often broods like a Calvinist who thinks he is not of the elect. The modes of obtaining safety are infinite, but are all burdensome, and all, by the confession of those who use them, are more or less uncertain.

Amidst this chaos the missionaries of Islam preached the haughtiest, the most clear-cutting, and the least elevated form of monotheism ever taught in this world-a monotheism which accounted for all things, ended discussion, and reconciled all perplexities by affirming that there existed a Sultan in the sky, a God, sovereign in His right as Creator, unbound even by His own character, who out of pure will sent these to heaven and those to hell who was Fate as well as God. This Being, lonely, omnipotent, and eternal, had revealed through Mahommed His will, that those who believed in Him should have eternal bliss in a heaven which was earth over again with its delights intensified and its restrictions removed, and that those who disbelieved should suffer torment for evermore. Could anything be more attractive to a Hindoo? If he only accepted the great tenet, which, after all, he suspected to be true, for the notion of a Supreme lurks in Hindooism, and is always unconditioned, his doubts were all resolved, his fears were all removed, his ceremonial burdens were all lifted off him, and he stepped forward comparatively a free man. Year after year, century after century, thousands turned to this new faith as to a refuge, tempted, not by its other and baser attractions, to be discussed presently, but by what seemed to the converts the intellectual truth of this central tenet, by which the complexity of the world was ended, for all things were attributed to a sovereign Will, whose operation explained and justified the Destiny which is to a Hindoo the ever present problem of his life. Nothing goes as it should, yet all things must be going as they should; what better or easier reconciliation of those facts than the existence of a Creator who, because He created, rules all as He will? Monotheism explains the mystery of the universe, and to the Hindoo dissatisfied with Hindooism seemed perfectly light.

In teaching this faith the missionaries of Islam had some further advantages besides its simplicity, though they are not those usually ascribed to them. To begin with, whether Arabs or Pathans or Persians or Indian