dren to the State ought to satisfy, and more than satisfy feminine ambition.

In one matter, I am bound to consider, the advantage lies wholly on the side of France. The sunniest tempered, wittiest, most inventive people of Europe, are at the same time the most severely practical. Taxation is higher in France than in England, or even Germany. Gigantic calamities have afflicted the country within our own time. The five hundred millions sterling paid to Prussia in 1871 were followed by a loss at least as large, caused by the phylloxera. Yet the solvency and the savings of the French remain phenomenal. A telling calculation has recently been made by the first statistical authority in France.* The Eiffel Tower weighs from seven to eight million kilogrammes (the kilogramme is 2 lbs. oz.). Reconstructed in silver, an Eiffel Tower would require two additional stories in order to represent the actual deposits of French people in the national savings banks.

.

3

26

Within the last ten years the sum of savings has doubled. There is no race for wealth in France. Ambition, for the most part, is limited to a competency; for the sake of that competency, the golden mean invoked by Hezekiah and Horace, the dignity and ease arising from independence, unimaginable sacrifices will be made. The wholesome, agreeable, bracing aspects of thrift strike the traveller at every turn. Here France is the schoolmaster of the world.

Thrift, however, in France, like the Roman Janus, is a two-headed deity, the one aspect gracious, smiling; the other stern as that of Necessity herself. In thriftless England improvidence is petted; we may almost go so far as to say encouraged; on the other side of the Channel, poverty, regarded as the outcome of unthrift, is pêché mortel. "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge" is a proverb of universal application in France; "The laborer is worthy of his hire" a text that seems to have escaped her teachers alto

* L'Epargne en France, par A. de Foville, Imprimerie Nationale, 1890.

It is now two milliards and 800 million francs. But, as M. de Foville points out, a milliard is a figure not to be easily grasped by the mind, not a milliard of minutes having as yet elapsed since the Christian era!

gether. The French task-master or taskmistress is without bowels of compassion; thrift is fostered by the hard measures meted out to the breadwinner. You will find educated women in Paris working as bookkeepers from twelve to fifteen hours a day, Sundays as well as week days, their only holiday being half a day once a month. I have known a chambermaid in a hotel who during three years had never had a whole day to herself. Domestic service is too frequently a condition which no Tilly Slowboy in England would accept. In Paris, for instance, locked out of her mistress's doors at night, her attic adjoining that of shop assistants or fellow servants of the other sex, an inexperienced country gil has but one lot before her, that of becoming fille mère, her own offspring being put out to nurse and to die, while she herself in smart hood and flying ribbons gives suck to rich women's babies in the Parc Monceau.

Much I might say, did space permit, concerning many points on which the advantage is wholly on the side of France. In artistic taste, for instance, the French workman is immeasurably superior to the English, his love of the beautiful being cultivated by the opening of museums on Sunday, by the abundant statuary adorning the towns, and by the sight of noble cathedrals and cities obtained during the three years' military service. Much also might be written on the utter absence of snobbishness characterizing large sections of French society, on the wholesome directness people are not ashamed to display about money matters and pecuniary circumstances generally. The great drawback to English enjoyment of French life is the almost universal indifference shown to the sufferings of animals. That the bull-fight should be tolerated in the French capital at the close of the nineteenth century is a moral anachronism of no hopeful augury for the future. After the lesson of the Commune, one might have supposed that brutalizing spectacles would be sternly forbidden, if only on grounds of expediency.

Let us now consider a point on which I differ widely from Mr. Hamerton. The author of French and English seems to think that politeness and civility are all we must expect in the way of AngloFrench intercourse. Anything like cordial friendship, much less affectionate in

66

timacy between the two nations, he evidently regards as wholly Utopian. But my experience and it is now tolerably comprehensive-points the other way. We are no longer, to use Thackeray's expression, magnificently hated" on the other side of the Channel. I hear that Eton lads, devotees of Captain Marryat, still look upon it as a patriotic duty to hate and despise the French language and French people. Throughout experiences now extending over many years I have never detected any trace of the traditional animosity toward England or personal distrust of the English. By all "sorts and conditions of men" I have ever been cordially welcomed. Politics, of course, have aroused bitter feelings from time to time, which newspapers on both sides have done their best to intensify; yet the relations of the two countries continue to improve. Cheap travel has undoubtedly contributed to this result. Fifty years ago a trip to Paris was the privilege of the rich and well-to-do; in these days it is enjoyed by the grocer's assistant and journeyman carpenter. From Hastings a workman may now spend from Saturday to Monday on the French coast for a few shillings, and large numbers avail themselves of such opportunities. Tens of thousands of small shopkeepers, clerks, and artisans visited the Centennial Exhibition last year, returning with quite altered views of France and French character. Surely sympathy and friendliness are more likely to arise under these circumstances than at any former period of our history.

I will here quote the opinion of a thoughtful and instructed Frenchman, retired notary and landed proprietor in the south-west. The passage is translated word for word :-"The French do not at all know the English, a misfortune for two nations, differing assuredly in natural gifts and qualities, but each worthy of the other's esteem. There is one important point on which both are entirely agreed, namely, the necessity for parliamentary or representative government; hence their deep attachment to Liberal institutions,

purchased by them at the price of the greatest efforts and most painful sacrifices. Placed by their free institutions, their literature, science, arts, and commerce in the vanguard of progress, any conflict between France and England would not only prove the greatest conceivable misfortune for both nations, but would retard the march of civilization for several centuries. I am far from fearing such a catastrophe, yet it is clear that to aid the rapprochement of two nations so great and so enlightened-is to aid the cause of progress generally. We must at all costs avoid petty quarrels and ignoble misunderstandings, and encourage as far as possible international intercourse by means of associations, festivals, syndicates, etc. ter we learn to know each other the greater will become our mutual esteem, and from esteem to friendship is but a step. It is for these reasons that I am so warm an advocate of the Channel Tunnel or Bridge. The realization of this grandiose project would do more for progress and European peace generally than all the triple alliances and armaments which threaten to ruin great nations as well as small."

The writer of this letter has never visited England or had commercial relations with English-speaking people. His views are perfectly disinterested and candid.

I have often thought that an international league of public instruction might do much to improve Anglo-French relations. In a preliminary history of France or England it ought to be made clear that political, rather than national, antipathies have led to wars and feuds. Even the monumental work of Henri Martin, as well as Marryat's novels, requires revision on this score.

Up to the present time the great advocate for John Bull on French shores has been Charles Dickers. That wonderful pen has succeeded in making the English amiable in French eyes. If Waterloo were not already clean forgotten, Pickwick would heal the sore.-Fortnightly Review.

AFTER a period of comparative tranquillity, during which people had begun to think our relations with the Chinese were really becoming more sympathetic, we have been startled by a series of fresh outbreaks, characterized by the old spirit of hostility. As before, missionaries have been the principal objects of attack. One mission station after another has been menaced, or ransacked, or destroyed, from Ichang to Nanking, throughout the length of the Yangtze valley. The laymen have not been treated with benevolence, for at more than one place bayonets have had to be employed to fend off the mob; but it is against missions that the original attacks have been commonly directed, and it is against missionarics that the libels by which the riots are worked up have been mainly levelled.

Unhappily, religious persecution is no new thing in China. Tolerant and easy going up to a certain point, the Chinese admitted the propaganda under the broad interpretation of the early Jesuits, but op posed it directly it touched the one cult which has a hold upon their convictions. They might have accepted Christianity, as they accepted Buddhism, if it would have absorbed ancestral worship; but Clement's

bull sounded the destruction of the edifice which Ricci and Schaal and Verbiest had built up the very claim of the Pope to interfere angering them not less, probably, than the dogma he asserted. Rome, however, kept a foothold one of the churches that has just been burned down is said to have been ministered in by Ricci himself, and Huc showed us Christian congregations in Szechuen. But the proselytes have been subject to periodic molestation, with the sanction, at times, of the Imperial authorities, at others by merely local instigation. The treaty of Tientsin finally legalized the propaganda. The era of official persecution was then closed; but persecution has gone on all the same, under the auspices of the literati; and a retrospective glance over the years that have intervened may help us to appreciate more clearly the conditions of the recent outbreak.

Events of paramount importance crowd

so quickly upon each other, nearer home, that many of us have probably forgotten the "Tientsin Massacre" of 1870, in which twenty-one foreigners, besides a good many native converts, lost their lives. It will not, however, be superfluous to recall that atrocity; for the events which led up to it have been reproduced, with variations, during the past twelvemonths; and it is useful to realize that the riot at Tientsin was not, any more than the late riot at Wuhsüeb, a sudden or an isolated explosion. Four years previously it had fallen to my lot to strike a note of warning in the following terms

*

"A proclamation has been extensively posted throughout Hunan and in the adjacent provinces, denouncing their (the missionaries') interference with established to rise and exterminate them. customs, and calling on all loyal subjects. Beginning with a sweeping denunciation against foreigners generally, whose specific character is half man, half beast,' and who, allowed by the extreme kindness of the Emperor to trade at Canton, have penetrated writer goes on to direct the whole flood of into every part of the empire, . . . the his wrath against missionaries in the following terms:

666

"Those who have come to propagate re

ligion, enticing and deluding the ignorant masses, print and circulate depraved compositions, daring, by their deceptive extravagances, to set loose the established bonds of society, utterly regardless of all modesty. worship only Jesus, yet, being divided into Although the adherents of the religion Catholic and Protestants, they are continually railing at each other. Daughters in a family are not given in marriage, but retained for the disposition of the bishop, thus ignor

ing the matrimonial relation.'

"A hundred other enormities, some with a certain foundation in fact, others existing entirely in the writer's imagination, are alleged against these teachers of a new creed; and, in conclusion, the village elders are exhorted to assemble the population,

*Shanghai correspondence of the Times, November 28, 1866.

'that the offenders may be hurled beyond the seas, to take their place with the strange things of creation!''*

Two years later, in October 1868, an attack was made on some members of the Chinese Inland Mission who had recently settled in Yangchow (famous as the city where Marco Polo once held office), about fifteen miles north of Chinkeang. To excite popular feeling against them, the usual system of placarding had been employed. They were accused of kidnapping children and boiling them up for medicine, of abstracting the heart and liver from dead bodies, of administering to Chinamen drugs and philters which turned them into foreigners. Their religion, too, was foully abused. As a natural consequence, the populace became excited. Representations to the Prefect were futile; and the excitement rose to fever heat. A mob broke into the mission premises, maltreated the occupants who escaped with difficulty, and made a bonfire of the con

tents.

This proved to be only the first among a series of outrages that culminated in the terrible riot at Tientsin, when the French Consul and several French subjects, besides priests, sisters of mercy, and many native inmates of the mission premises, were massacred ainid circumstances of horrible brutality. The excitement in that case also had been wrought up in the same way. Placards had been posted alleging the usual accusations of kidnapping children for the purpose of using their eyes, breasts, and other parts of the body as medicine; and an alleged kidnapper was brought forward, precisely as on recent occasions, as proof positive that the charges were true. Then, as now, there were other outbreaks between and after those two notable explosions. Then, as now, a connected purpose was traced, and common report went so far as to fix on a man named Chen Kwo-jui as the disturbing spirit who had fired the train. From Szechuen to Nanking and up the Grand Canal to Tientsin, where (it was alleged) he had been a guest of the Governor, and had led the rioters in person, this man, it was said, travelled, prompting violence as he passed; and his execution, together with that of the Tientsin magistrates who had failed, as at Yangchow, to take precautions or to afford protection when urgently required, was at one time loudly

called for. Then, as now, a wave of alarm ran through the Treaty ports wherever foreigners were settled, and grave apprehension for the safety of all outlying missions was felt. Happily, however, the force of the movement seemed to expend itself with that final convulsion; or rather, perhaps, the authorities were awakened to the necessity of greater precautions. Placards inciting and threatening hostile outbreaks were posted in various cities; but the excitement gradually subsided. Certain terms of reparation, including the despatch of Chunghow on a mission of apology to Paris, were exacted, and matters gradually resumed their normal aspect.

Now, twenty years later, we find ourselves in presence of a crisis remarkably similar, originating with proclamations emanating from the same hotbed of reactionary agitation. The stock stories of stealing children and taking out their eyes to use for medicine, of the vilest immorality, of preaching tenets subversive of social order, have been disseminated broadcast. What is new is the rumor of political conspiracy which has been adduced in explanation of the gravity and the synchronism of the outbreaks. Wuhu, a town on the Yangtze, fifty miles above Nanking, enjoys the distinction of having first set the example. On the evening of Sunday, the 10th of May, when two nuns attached to the Roman Catholic mission were making their way home from a visit to a sick convert, they were suddenly seized and carried before a petty official, on the charge of having bewitched two children and rendered them dumb. Influence was of course exerted to procure their release ; and the Chinese magistrate, with a wisdom worthy of King Solomon, decided that they should be set at liberty as soon as the spell was removed. Naturally, before twenty-four hours had elapsed, the children became tired of obeying orders

and spoke! Such a tame conclusion, however, did not suit the views of those who had been laying the train. Two days later, a woman presented herself before the mission, accompanied by a score of ill-looking fellows, and, screaming as a Chinese woman can scream, claimed her child, whom the missionaries had stolen, as they had done others whose corpses were within the wails of the establishment! This succeeded. A mob rapidly

assembled, and broke into the mission premises. The graves in the enclosure were opened, and the bodies of those who were buried shown as proof of foul play. They were clearly those of Chinamen who had been cut up by the foreigners and the mob thereupon cried out to destroy the premises, which were looted and burned. Some adjacent houses were set on fire, and an attack on the Custom House was repulsed only by the deter mined resistance of the Staff. The mob remained in charge for three days, and was eventually dispersed by the fortuitous arrival of three Chinese gunboats escorting a high Mandarin to his seat of government in the adjacent province.

A fortnight after Wuhu came the turn of Nanking; and so deliberate were the preparations that the officials are said to have warned the missionaries of the very date of the attack. The women and children accordingly withdrew, and were allowed to get safely away; but the American Methodist Mission premises were destroyed. Up and down the Yangtze valley, explosion now followed explosion under similar conditions. At Tanyang, not far from Chinkeang, a mob burned down the fine old French church, which had survived even the seventeenth century persecution, pillaged and burned the mission buildings, desecrated the cemetery, and offered violence to the local Mandarin when he showed a will to interfere. A few days later, the Jesuit mission at Wusieh, in the same neighborhood, was attacked and destroyed. An impending riot at Kiukiang, on the 7th of June, was nipped in the bud by the determined bearing of less than a dozen foreign residents, who formed in line, charged the mob, and drove them out of the foreign settlement; after which Chinese soldiers took charge of the approaches. Briefly, there were riots and disturbances, of more or less importance, during a period of a few weeks, at Chinkeang, Nanking, Nganking (the capital of Anhwei), Woosih, Wuhu, Tanyang, Wuchow, Yangchow, Kiukiang, Wusuch, and Ichang. Even Shanghai, with its considerable foreign population, was at one time threatened, and an attack upon the great Jesuit establishment at Sikawei, in the vicinity, apprehended. But, how tempting soever an object of plunder, Shanghai is hardly a tempting object of attack: the volunteer force is

too considerable, and the prospects of opposition are too keen. The same thing, with the same result, had occurred in 1870. Prompt organization for defence averted danger, and confidence was quickly restored.

At Wusüeh alone, happily, has any life been lost; but some of the tales of the Indian Mutiny scarcely exceed in dramatic interest the experiences of the actors in that tragedy. On the evening of the 5th of June, a Chinese convert entered the city gate carrying four children destined for the Roman Catholic orphanage. Conspirators appear to have seized the opportunity to collect a mob. The man was hurried off to the nearest magistrate; and, despite the efforts of the latter, who urged that the matter did not at any rate concern that establishment, rioters attacked, burned, and gutted the Wesleyan Mission. It chanced that the missionaries themselves were away on tour: only ladies and children remaining on the premises. There were, in fact, only two foreigners in Wusüeh, and both were murdered while trying, like brave men, to make their way to the help of their country women. Mrs. Warren and Mrs. Boden may best tell the tale* of their own experiences.

Mr.

"The mob broke into the front gate and attacked us with long poles. We escaped through the back door, and made our way to the main street; while we were going there Mrs. Protheroe got separated from us. Fan, our native teacher, stuck to us as long as he could. We got to the residence of the Makow sze (a small official) and got inside, but were turned out, the people striking and hurting us. We made our way a little up the street, when Mrs. Warren with Mrs. Protheroe's child in her arms was knocked down by pick up the child. The mob turned us back a pole. She managed, however, to get up and and made us go down the street; but in that direction we were hemmed. Mrs. Boden, Mrs. Warren, with the child she was carrying, and the Amah turned down a small alley, and thus got separated from Fân and Chu and from Mrs. Boden's baby. We went into a small mat-shed hut, and sat on the bed for an hour. The people in the hut put out nearly all the lights, and gave us refuge. The Amah

went out to look for Mrs. Boden's baby after we had been in the hut nearly an hour. Chu's brother found us, and then he fetched his brother and native clothes for us, and took us to the Urh Fu's (prefect's) residence, where

we found Mrs. Protheroe and her baby."

*China; No. 3 of 1891. Correspondence respecting Anti-Foreign Riots in China.