again from strongholds of prejudice which she might have hoped to carry at the first assault. I will venture to give you two illustrations which naturally rise to the mind of a European visitor to America. Whoever travels in the United States, or in Canada, must be struck by the perfect satisfaction which every one expresses with the total separation of the Church from the State. Here, members of all sects are agreed that this is incomparably the best arrangement for both the Church and the State, and find it hard to understand how there can be persons in Europe who think differently. This American view is confirmed by the experience of contemporary Europe. It is strongly supported by his tory. It is still more clearly in accordance with the spirit of the New Testament. Were it not for the respect due to some eminent men who are otherwise minded, I would venture to say that the argument against State Establishments of religion is absolutely conclusive. Yet this argument wins its way very slowly in European countries. History and experience, and the example, not only of yourselves but of all the British Colonies, effect but little against prepossession and habit. The other illustration is suggested to me by a visit which I recently paid to the Constitutional Convention now sitting in Kentucky. In that State I asked many of the leading men, including several members of the Convention, whether the unfortunate change effected by the Constitution of 1850, which made all judgeships elective instead of (as formerly) appointive offices, would not now be reversed, and the selection of the higher posts in the judiciary again entrusted to the Governor. These eminent persons, without an exception, answered that this ought to be done; but they declared, with equal unanimity, that there was not the least use in proposing such a reform, because the sentiment of the vast bulk of the people was strongly in favor of choosing judges by popular vote, deeming this to be the more democratic arrange ment. There is, I suppose, scarcely a point in which the constitutional arrangeinents of one State vary from those of another on which the ample experience of the working of both methods is more decisive than this. The example of the Federal judiciary and of the judiciary in States which have retained the appointive plan and a life tenure, as contrasted with the

example of States which elect judges at the polls for short terms, shows incontestably the evils of the latter method. Nevertheless, in Kentucky-a flourishing commonwealth, with a striking and brilliant history-a commonwealth full of able and thoughtful men whose opinions ought to carry weight, a commonwealth whose Bench has confessedly suffered from the change made in 1850-the great majority of the voters seem to prefer their own prepossessions to the voice of reason and the plainest teachings of experience.

We may now, after this somewhat rambling survey of what was expected and what has been attained in the Old World, proceed to answer the question from which we started. The discontent of contemporary Europe is due not so much to a failure to secure objects which were the direct and primary objects of desire three or four decades ago for those objects have mostly been secured-as to a disappointment with the fruit they have hitherto borne. It is a scantier crop than we had hoped for, and, if I may pursue the metaphor, while some of it is still unripe some of it is already rotten. Reformers are in every age apt to make the old mistake of expecting too much from the destruction of bad institutions, because they forget that the evils they suffer from are caused not solely by those institutions, but by permanent faults of human nature, which, when they have been driven out in one shape, will reappear in some other. Better institutions are worth fighting for, since they may give these faults less scope for mischief. But the faults are not expunged. Nor is it superfluous to add that this disappointment at the result of our reforming efforts has come just at the moment when there is a natural reaction of fatigue after effort. The sense that labor put forth has been, not indeed wasted, yet inadequately requited, coincides with the listlessness which follows on ardor and excitement.

There is also another cause for unrest and discontent. The world during these forty years has been spinning swiftly onward, and new problems, faintly foreseen by our fathers, have come to the front. They are not really new, for most of them are as old as civilization itself, but they have taken new forms and acquired a new urgency. The admission to political power of the masses of the people has given a stern significance to every question that

affects their material condition. The relations of labor and capital, the methods of relieving want, the readjustment of public burdens, the possibility of using State agencies more largely for the benefit of the community-these are all forms of the great problem how far that measure of comfort which is now enjoyed in Europe by the less wealthy section of the so-called middle or educated classes can be extended to the whole population, so that none, save the vicious and idle, need have absolute penury to fear. Now that the masses have become, in two of the greatest European countries, masters of the situation, it is natural that they should desire to use their power to improve their prospects. Social reformers and economists are much concerned-some to find the best way in which the masses can accomplish this, others to dissuade them from ways which can lead only, like the two paths that in the Pilgrim's Progress" diverged to right and left of the straight track, either into the thick wood of Danger, or among the dark precipices of Destruction. But But dissuasion is not enough. Some positive measures are demanded. And whereas the work of thirty years ago was largely that of clearing away old things that needed to be removed, our work in Europe to-day is to devise new means for checking the mischiefs and the waste of unrestrained competition and for moderating the pressure of the strong upon the weak. It is constructive work, and therefore far more difficult than that of expelling tyrants and abolishing restrictions. The path is not clear before us, and we feel the pains of perplexity.

So far of Europe. If you ask whether the visitor from Europe discovers here in America any phenomena similar to those he has left behind, I hesitate to answer, because one does not catch in a few weeks or months the true temper of a people, but must observe them long and carefully before he pronounces on a matter so subtle. Your citizens are at all times more buoyant and sanguine than either the English or any continental nation. A few weeks ago an English Socialist was reported to have observed, as he sailed for Liverpool, that he left the New World profoundly depressed by the cheerfulness of the masses of its people. "Nothing," he said, can be done for them till they begin to resent their lot. What they need is a NEW SERIES.-VOL. LIII., No. 2.

66

'divine discontent." " Nevertheless it has struck me that your people are at present somewhat less jubilant, less thoroughly satisfied with their circumstances and their prospects, than they were in 1870, when I first visited this country, or even than in 1881, when I came for the second time. The kind of pressure we are familiar with in Europe, the pressure of over-crowded citics, of an over-stocked labor market, of a mass of ignorance which makes men the easy prey of demagogues, is beginning to be felt here, though as yet only in a few spots, where the flood of new immigrants has swept in with a full stream. Some among you doubt whether you have not bestowed the active rights of citizenship upon those immigrants with too generous a hand. Others are alarmed by the cry which has arisen for State interference in matters hitherto left to individual action, and fear that the characteristic self-helpfulness and enterprise of Americans may suffer. Others lament the continuance of misgovernment in your greatest cities; nor can the visitor who recollects Tammany as it flourished in 1870 and sees Tammany to-day flourishing like a green bay-tree, fail to perceive that municipal reform does not advance at lightning speed. Travelling in the West and South, through those regions where the Farmers' Alliance is rampant, there is abundant evidence of dissatisfaction with the existing conditions of production and transportation and commerce, a dissatisfaction not unlike that of older communities in Europe. The New World is, in many points, economic and industrial, growing more like the Old World. Twenty years ago one felt the likeness as far west as Buffalo or Cleveland. Now, when the traveller, retracing his steps from the Pacific, reaches Minneapolis and St. Paul, he is inclined to say, varying the famous mot of Alexandre Dumas," Europe begins at the Mississippi." Our experience, therefore, has its value for you; nor is Europe so remote as you sometimes think. It used to be said that in political matters the United States were what Europe would be. With equal truth it may now be said that the economic problems of Western and Central Europe at this moment are what the problems of the United States will be before many decades have passed. Happily the United States have many advantages for confronting the problems of population, and pauperism

which we in Europe want. Happily, also, you are still but little depressed by them or by any other difficulties. Our English Socialist was right in the main. The vexations which flit across your minds are no more like the anxious broodings of Europeans than the light mists that hang on autumn mornings over your harbor resemble the murky gloom of a London December.

One question remains on which you will expect something to be said. Does this discontent, which prevails so widely in Europe, show the marks of permanence? Is it a deep-seated despondency or a passing depression of spirits?

One

There are two kinds of discontent. is that of those who wish to be as they once were, or, in the case of nations, as their ancestors were. The other is that of those who would fain be what they have never been, neither they nor their predecessors. There were long centuries, during which the state of perfect happiness and peace, the Golden Age of the poets, was deemed to have lain in the distant past. This was the belief or fancy of the ancient world; and a somewhat similar belief filled the minds of mediaval poets and churchmen, who looked back to the early centuries of Christianity, after she had been delivered from persecution and ignorance, but before the barbarians had descended upon her, as a time from which the world had degenerated, and to which it must strive to return. The discontent of those ages was regret, a melancholy sense that things had worsened and were worsening, a sense of inability to climb again to a height whence one has fallen. You may find it to-day among the Mohammedans, and notably among the sluggish and surly Turks.

Very different is the discontent whose signs we have noted in Europe. It looks forward, not backward. It is due, partly indeed to disappointment with the results of past efforts, but partly also to the belief that many evils exist which we ought not to tolerate. It is a revolt against the mass of poverty and misery that still exists among us, a belief that man was made for BOInething more than to spend his days in incessant toil, winning from nature nothing more than food and raiment. Poverty, and misery, and toil are, however, no more general or severe now than they have usually been in the world. In Eng

land, at least, they are, relatively to the increase of the population, less general and less severe. It is we that have grown more sensitive. The chords of sympathy vibrate to a lighter touch. Sufferings which fifty years ago would have been accepted by the philosopher as a necessary part of the world's economy, and justified by the divine as essential to give scope for the exercise of Christian virtue, are now felt to be a slur upon civilization to which remedies must be promptly applied. This kind of discontent, though its sentimentalism has sometimes a mischievous side, is, on the whole, a laudable state of mind, a necessary condition of progress. It is turning many people in England, especially the younger sort, to ideas which savor of Socialism and even of Communism. There is evidently a similar tendency among yourselves, which in the East takes the form of what are called "Nationalist" societies, and in the West seems to have prompted the one-tax agitation, and a good deal of the paternalism of State Legislatures. In England, the adherents of the old economic doctrines-now sadly reduced in numbers-are distressed by this tendency, being less accustomed than you are to take things lightly, and to rely on the ultimate good sense of the people. They swell the volume of our discontent, prophesying nothing but evil from the new departure which the more cheerful disquietude of the younger generation insists on taking. One need not, however, be a Socialist, or have much faith in sweeping remedies, in order to sympathize with the spirit which propounds this new departure. It is a protest against hide-bound acquiescence in the existing arrangements of industry and the existing distribution of wealth. It is a vehement expression of the same desire to improve the condition of the great toiling and enduring lower strata of mankind which has given birth to all our modern philanthropic schemes.

The language held by our young Socialists is sometimes not only vehement but acrid and intolerant. Yet their scoldings stir us up, they dispel the apathy that steals over most of us as life goes on, they force us to examine our assumptions, they impel us to try experiments by reminding us that the world is constantly changing, and that nations can keep abreast of it only by open-mindedness and resourcefulness. Nations and individuals, we all of us need

to be continually roused and kept moving, perhaps even threatened, by the preachers of new doctrines, and even by that personage who is so often the butt of your newspapers, the personage for whom we, among whom he is less actively vitalized, have no name, but whom you call a Crank. It is one of the merits of a democracy that it produces the Crank, and deals leniently with him. He is one of the voices of dissent and dissatisfaction, not useless even when he preaches some old fallacy, for he obliges us to refute him, but eminently useful when he has got hold of a fragment of a forgotten or only half-discovered truth. Many merits and many faults have been untruly ascribed to Democracy, but one merit, at least, may safely be claimed for it. It disposes men to listen, and to listen peaceably, even to an unwelcome voice. Mr. Lowell has happily said that the greatest discovery in politics was made when men took to counting heads instead of breaking them. The counting, however, does not always give the right result. To-morrow you hold your biennial elections. Of the half million of men who will cast their ballots within the next twenty-four hours in this and the adjoining cities, how large is the percentage who will merely follow a party name or a plausible leader. But where there is voting, there must be publicity, and publicity means a fair opportunity for every one to speak, a duty recognized on every one to listen. Reason and justice have in a democracy advantages which no other government secures in like measure; and when men have learned, as even the citizens whom you import from Poland or Roumania will at last learn, to listen and reflect, reason and justice are apt to prevail.

last word as to the temper of Europe which I have sought to describe. Do not suppose that it is a despondent temper. The best proof to the contrary is the zeal with which many suggestions are put forward, many plans canvassed. Everywhere there is activity, because everywhere there is eagerness, uurestful, but not unhopeful. The movement of humanity is not, as the ancients fancied, in cycles, but shows a sustained, though often interrupted, progress. It is not like the movement of the earth performing its annual journey round the sun, but like that of the whole solar system toward some point, as yet undiscovered, far remote in the heavens. Of the ultimate destiny of human society here we know as little as we do of that point among the distant constellations. But history entitles us to believe that though depression and discouragements frequently overshadow its path, its general progress is upward, that in each age it gains more than it loses and retains most of what it has ever gained. Nor is this progress clearer in anything than in the fact that evils which men once accepted as inevitable have now become intolerable.

Of America also, since I have ventured to advert to the circumstances of America, a concluding word may be `said. Confidence in progress is a great element of strength; and although your European visitors observe that anxieties they are familiar with are beginning to show themselves here, they do not cease to feel how great is the strength which the hopeful spirit of America bestows. You have the honor of being among civilized peoples that which has the fullest faith in the future of humanity as well as in the destinies of your own republic. Long may this honor be yours. -Contemporary Review,

was employed in making it as strong as it could be.

The position of our home of eight months was long. 29° 27′ E., lat. 1° 20' N.; its height 3,500 feet above the sea.

The native name of the village and surrounding district is Ibwiri. But to arrive. at the names of the numerous tribes around us would seem a hopeless job. Each collection of villages in this part of the forest belongs to a sultan or chief, whose rule is despotic. In the course of one good day's march you will find two different languages. Thus, if you were to start on a Monday morning from a certain place whose people spoke a certain language, you would camp that night perhaps at a village whose people could barely talk intelligibly with those you had left in the morning, and on Tuesday evening you would find yourself among others to whom the language of Monday morning meant nothing. The people of cach of these central villages called themselves tribes. The nearest term for the people who originally resided at or near the fort would be Wasongora.

On the 26th of April, 1888, I found myself back in Fort Bodo, wearied and worn down to a skeleton with the march through the forest to and from Ugarrowas station, 220 miles west of the fort. It was on the 22nd of December, just eight months later, that we set fire to and destroyed our home in the forest.

To make this little account of our experiences of life in this fort in the forest intelligible, some description of its internal structure must be given.

The general form of the fort was as that of a tortoise, so placed as to cominand the ground on every side. Two high towers at the north-west and south-east corners or angles gave extra command, and enabled sentries to look down upon the standing crops of corn, etc., on all sides. Two other towers, with platforms eleven feet high, gave flank defence to the north and south faces. Whatever dead ground there might be was rendered useless to an attacking party by means of stakes, etc., cunningly concealed after the fashion of the natives of the country to the west of us.

We had inside the boma, or stockade, four large clay houses as quarters for the Europeans; cook-houses, granaries, a magazine and storehouse, and one house for our head man (a black). The two granaries together had a capacity of eleven

tons, and were raised twelve feet off the ground, to secure them from rats and other thieves.

A circle of 280 yards radins, described with the flagstaff of the fort as centre, would just about cut the edge of the forest on all sides. Thus we had a clearing of about eleven acres with the fort as centre, situated in the depths of this enormous forest. To the east lay the nearest open country, five good hard marches.

To the west, forest down to the banks of the Congo, 630 miles distant.

To the south, forest for three months' march; and to the north I doubt if any one can tell its limit-at least 200 miles. Try then to realize our position. It seemed to us as if we were in a different world to that in which we had lived most of our lives.

There was notbing in common with our existence and that of people in other parts of the world, except perhaps our own natures. Every single article of food that we ate was to be planted, reaped, and gatl.ered within 500 yards of our housesfuel, water, clay and leaves for houses, poles, ropes, everything necessary for our daily life was found in the same small circle.

Waiting for your dinner at home is not, I think, generally considered a lively pastime; but to plant your crops, weed them, reap and gather them, and not till then get your dinner is decidedly unpleasant. It is calculated though to give you an appetite for your dinner when it does

come.

Our

Luckily for us there were the native banana plantations in the immediate vicinity of the fort to draw on, and our diet for some time consisted of this excellent fruit (vide reports of travellers). ideas on the subject of bananas were that, when nothing else could be got, they were good eating; but that after several months of bananas roasted, fried, baked, raw, stewed, and worked up into puddings, it was quite time to cry "Enough!"

The strength and composition of our little garrison was as follows:

Europeans. Zanzibaris. Soudanese. Madis..

from 2 to 3 ...from 50 to 60 ...from 3 to

Natives from various parts of the forest... ..

Total.

5

from 15 to 30

.70 to 103