lectures, and concerts, with sea-bathing and fishing. Some ten thousand persons congregate at this unique wateringplace every summer. Martha's Vineyard, as the island is called, is far better worth a visit than aristocratic Newport. I know of no place like it in the world. This summer life, and the more extended travel, which is very common, is no doubt a species of education which was unknown fifty years ago, and has a certain value along with some disadvantages.

But the great pride of the village is its public schools, on which the town expends a thousand pounds a year, in addition to another thousand on the seventeen schools in other parts of the township. The village schools are six, with eleven teachers, and about 500 scholars. They are called the Primary, Higher Primary, Lower Intermediate, Intermediate, Grammar, and High Schools. Two of the teachers are men with salaries of £17 and £24 a month. The others are women with salaries of from £6 to £10 a month. There are sixty scholars in the High School, which has a four years' course, and in which instruction is given in Greek, Latin, French, Mathematics as far as surveying, Physiology, Natural History, Physical Geography, English Literature, History, Geology, Chemistry, Physics, Botany, and Civil Government. All the schools are free, and scholars living at a distance are brought to school at the expense of the town. They usually enter the High School at the age of fourteen. The buildings for the village schools are commodious, but less expensive than those in many other towns. The material arrangements are good, and the discipline is strict; but it may be questioned whether there is much real improvement over the old district-schools of fifty years ago. There is more display and more expense, but a wellknown American writer has lately condemned the public schools of this State as utterly impracticable and unscientific, as a cross between a cotton factory and a model prison. This is an extreme view, but it is true that they are unpractical, superficial, and to some extent at least adapted to discourage the taste for honest labor, and to develop self-conceit

rather than solid learning. There are many who question very seriously the propriety of giving a High-School education at the expense of the State, who fear that we are raising up a class of demagogues too proud to work, too ignorant to earn their living in the learned professions, and accustomed to look to the State for aid, who will make the most dangerous and unscrupulous of politicians. The State should furnish to all a plain practical education, scientifically adapted to make better farmers, mechanics, and merchants, and leave all higher education to be paid for by those who can appreciate it. The history of America, especially of our public men, shows that poverty is no hindrance to genius, that free secondary education is not necessary to stimulate those who are qualified to appreciate it. Such views are not popular now, because there is a vague belief among the people that free education is a natural right, and universal education a panacea for all the evils in the land. Common-sense will no doubt prevail in the end, but blind sentiment rules at present, even in New England. We are not yet prepared to offer our free-school system to England as a model for her to follow. We have still too much to learn ourselves.

The superficial nature of our education is seen in many things, which prove that even New England villages have not yet attained any Utopian perfection. They are much nearer perfection than our cities, however. There is no fraud or corruption in the administration, but there is a great deal of extravagance and stupidity in many cases. Within twenty years the taxes have been doubled without any corresponding advantages, and in some towns tripled. In the town of which I am writing £1700 was expended on roads, and this is about the usual annual expenditure; but there is not a properly built road in the town. On this subject the authorities have only two ideas-the roads must be broad and straight; there is also a general impression that there cannot be too many roads. After leaving the village, the town is a labyrinth of roads, cut in all directions through the wild woods, wide enough for a city, but often not used once a day. But there is not a rod

of paved or macadamized road in the township. The bridges are as unsatisfactory as the roads.

Another illustration of a different kind will show another phase of the results of our educational system. I think it is an acknowledged fact that our judges, lawyers, and physicians, if not our clergy, as a whole, are not so thoroughly educated as they were a generation ago. In this village, for example, out of six doctors of medicine only one has had even a nominally complete education. I think the same thing is true of the majority of the lawyers. The people are not educated up to the point of appreciating the value of thorough education. There is no country in the civilized world where ignorant quacks and deliberate swindlers obtain the patronage from respectable people that they do in America. According to the theory, the legislators and public men of the country ought to have steadily improved in quality as the number of educated men brought forward by the freeschool system increased; but it is a generally acknowledged fact that our legislative assemblies and politicians have rather deteriorated. There seems to be something wrong in the system, which not only brings forward inferior men, but also teaches the people to be satisfied with such men. There are, of course, thoroughly educated men, and great men, in high official positions. The President-elect, Mr. Garfield, is not only a statesman, but a scholar; but who are the men who are to represent New England in the next Con

gress? How do they compare with the great men of past generations? They are generally honest and respectable men, for which we are duly thankful; but very few of them have ever been thought of as men of superior ability, and the culture of Boston is represented by a German Jew who deals in readymade clothing. This is no doubt an honorable calling, and there are worse and weaker men in Congress than_he; but it is not the old style of New England statesmen.

This is a digression. To return to our New England village. While it is by no means perfect, it certainly comes nearer to an ideal village than anything I have seen in Europe. There is absolute civil and religious liberty. Even public opinion is not tyrannical there. Individual rights are respected, without any infringement upon the dignity and supremacy of the law. The people are moral and religious, without being uncharitable or fanatical. There are no social castes, not even such as a late writer in the Times declares must exist in all communities. The people are contented and happy. They are intelligent, acquainted with what goes on in the world, believe in progress, and contribute freely not only to support their own institutions, but for the enlightenment of the world. It is not strange that they believe in the form of government which secures all this to them, nor that they honor their English ancestors, whose wisdom and piety were the foundation of New England society.-Contemporary Review.

BY THE AUTHOR OF

THE name of Jacques Cartier, first explorer of the St. Lawrence, remains to this day in Canada an honored name and very little more-in France it is almost entirely forgotten-in England almost entirely unknown. Yet, born in a time of great possibilities and of great deeds, the man who bore that name was well worthy of remembrance, not only because he was in his own person a true hero-brave, honest, and God-fearingbut also because he gave to France a

A CANADIAN HEROINE."

territory larger than all Europe, and laid for England the first foundation of a colony which is almost an empire.

Of a family long settled and well known in the busy town of St. Malo, Jacques Cartier was born at that place on December 31, 1494. Scarcely anything is known of his boyhood, but since the port was full of seafaring men, his first recollections were, no doubt, associated with marvellous stories of the newly-discovered Western India, and of

the mysterious northern seas, ice-laden and fog-veiled, through which there must surely be somewhere the passage to Cathay. While he was still a child, fishermen from St. Malo had begun to go with those of Dieppe and other ports to fish for cod, sailing boldly out into the still almost unknown ocean in frail little barks built only for coasting voyages. As he grew up he joined some of these expeditions, and evidently prospered, for at twenty-five we find him a person of some consequence, master of a little Manoir of Lemoïlou, and husband of the Demoiselle Catherine des Granches.

It was not, however, until 1534, when Cartier was forty years of age, that his first great enterprise was undertaken. At that time he boldly presented himself to Philippe de Chabot-Brion, Admirai of France, proposing to go and explore, in the king's name, and for his Majesty's benefit, the shores of Terre-Neuve. This name seems to have been given, rather vaguely, to the coast of North America from Labrador to the South of Cape Breton, and Cartier thought that a coast so broken, and hitherto so little known, might, perhaps, conceal that passage to India, to discover which would be fame indeed. De Chabot was one of the king's oldest and most intimate friends; to obtain his patronage was almost to secure the permission needed. The time of the proposal, too, was fortunate. The Treaty of Cambrai had left Francis at leisure to think of the affairs of his kingdom, and by his defeat and imprisonment he was sufficiently exasperated against Spain to feel a lively jealousy of her achievements in the new world. He had already sent out one expedition under Verazano, but with no satisfactory results. He seems at once to have received the idea favorably, and agreed to furnish the Malouin captain with two ships and all that was necessary for his voyage.

On April 20, 1534, Cartier sailed from St. Malo. We cannot follow the course of his voyage here, though his own narrative, simple, direct, full of every kind of useful detail, and empty of all self-glorification, is exceedingly tempting. He followed in the track of John Cabot, until on May 11th he reached Newfoundland (or Terre Neuffue, as he

writes it), and from thence explored the coasts north and south of that island. So discouraging, however, was the result of this exploration that he writes in his journal: "It ought not to be called a new land, but a mass of rocks and stones, terrible and roughly piled together. In fact, I am much inclined to think that this is the land God gave to Cain.' Still he could not consider his labor lost, since those inhospitable rocks might yet hide the wished-for Western passage.

It was near the end of June when the two small ships discovered pleasanter regions and safe harbors. From that moment Cartier changed his opinion of the new country, and his pages are full of accounts of its beauty and fertility. He made the acquaintance of some friendly Indians, and persuaded them to intrust to him two boys (apparently of their chief's family) to be taken to France. He erected a great wooden cross with much solemnity on Cape Gaspé, and then, winter approaching, and the navigation again becoming difficult, he turned homeward, and reached St. Malo safe and well on September 5th.

So well satisfied was King Francis with what had been done on this first voyage that he at once resolved to send out another expedition in the following year, and to place the command in the same capable hands. Cartier received the title of "Capitaine Général et Pilote du Roy," and was provided with three ships, each with its captain and crew, and permitted to take with him a number of volunteers, many of them young men of good family. The two Indian. boys were also on board the ships, which sailed from St. Malo on May 19, 1535.

The expedition made its way directly and without special adventures (except the encountering some bad weather) to the coast of Labrador. Here, apparently at Mingan (Cartier called it St. Nicolas), they set up a great wooden cross, the position of which is carefully described for the benefit of future voyagers. ers. Leaving this place, they met with a terrible storm, from which they thankfully took refuge in a beautiful bay full of islands. To this place, and not to "the great river of Canada," Cartier gave the name of St. Laurent. It seems to have been at the mouth of the River St. John,

Labrador; but it is impossible to say when or why the name, originally attached to this harbor of refuge, was applied to the whole magnificent stream and gulf which now bear it.

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Carefully exploring the coasts as he went on, the captain, always anxiously mindful of that perfection"-the passage to Cathay-which more than all else would reward his toils, led his little fleet along the northern shores of the gulf, past the dangerous island of Anticosti, and the innumerable smaller ones lying higher up, until he reached" the country of Saguenay" and the great river which still bears that name. Here he was not only pleased with the beauty of richly wooded and watered lands, and with the report of the Indians that copper was found in the neighborhood, but also saw some creatures not more wonderful to his eyes than his description of them is to our ears. "Here we saw, he says, some fishes such as no man had seen or heard of. They were the size of porpoises, with heads like greyhounds, well made and white as snow, without spot. The Indians called them 'adhothings,' and said they were good to eat.'

Sailing on past Ile aux Cendres (which still retains the name he gave it), and other small islands, he anchored at last, one fair September evening, near the north shore at the lower end of the Ile d'Orléans. “Here," he says, "Here," he says, "began the land and province of Canada," and here he allowed his men to go ashore, and to accept freely the presents of fruit, maize, and fish brought to them by the Indians.

The boys, Taignoagny and Domagaya, who had been in France, were received with the greatest joy by their countrymen, and there seems to have been a tremendous uproar of welcome about the ships all that evening and night. Next day "the lord of Canada, who was called Donacona by name, and Agouhanna as his title," came in state to visit the strangers. Standing up in his canoe, he addressed the captain in une predication et preschement," with gestures d'une merveilleuse sorte, expressive of confidence and friendship, and was easily persuaded to taste the bread and wine presented to him.

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The difference between the conven

tional Indian of romance, and the real and perfectly unsophisticated Indians of this true narrative, is very wonderful. Not only Donacona and his people, but all the other tribes whom Cartier met with, seem to have been simple, almost childish sauvages, wild men, friendly, hospitable, confiding; and cunning only in the clumsiest and most transparent fashion. Like children, they show themselves sometimes wilful and unreasonable; but the worst complaint Cartier makes of them is that they were "marvellous thieves," while they certainly seem to have been quite as ready to give as to take.

After a little delay the ships left their anchorage, and, passing below the beautiful fall of Montmorenci with its veil of silver mist, coasted the green north shore, drawing near with wonder to the grand cliffs that rose majestically, towering above the broad waters, as if Nature had made her citadel there and bade the strangers stand back from her impregnable ramparts. At the foot of the rock fortress they again dropped their anchors, sheltering themselves at the mouth of a stream which flowed quietly into the great river from the north. To this smaller stream they gave the name of Ste. Croix, which it retained for less than a hundred years, till in 1617 the Recollet Fathers of Quebec rechristened it the St. Charles.

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In the whole of Cartier's story there is no trace of any origin for the name by which the place he had now reached is known to us. He calls it simply Stadacona, and it is evident that he never attempted to give it any other appellation. The story of his sailors crying out 'Quel bec!" and their exclamation being repeated until it came to be used as the name of the cliffs which caused it, is never hinted at. Indeed, after many attempts to find a Canadian origin for the name of Quebec, one is obliged to confess that the question remains as much unanswered as ever. Charlevoix says that the word is Algonquin. "Les Abenaquis, dont la langue est une dialecte Algonquine, le nomment Quelibec, qui veut dire ce qui est fermé, parceque de l'entrée de la petite rivière de la Chaudière par où ces sauvages venaient à Quebec, le port de Quebec ne paroit qu'une grande barge." But, on the

other hand, when we remember that Quebec is an old form of the word Caudebec, it seems probable that the French did really give the name, though after the time of Cartier. The Earl of Suffolk of Henry VI.'s reign bore the titles of Domine de Hamburg et de Quebec. He was a powerful seigneur in Normandy, and the same place may easily have given him his title and the gem of La Nouvelle France its name. In the time of Cartier, however, the Quebec of to-day was certainly called Stadacona, and was a populous and prosperous Indian town.

No sooner were his ships safely anchored than the captain went on shore to return the visit he had received from the Indian chief."Near the river," he says, "there is a people of whom Donacona is chief, and their dwelling is called Stadacona, which is as beautiful a place as it is possible to see, and very fertile -full of fine trees the same as in France, such as oaks, elms, ashes, walnuts, maples, vines, whitethorns which bear fruit as large as damsons, and other trees; under which grows fine hemp as good as that of France, without any cultivation." Kindly received by the Indians, and guided up steep pathways to the rugged heights where the citadel now stands, Cartier, first of Europeans, looked down upon one of the most magnificent landscapes in the worid. That grand panorama is Nature's own, and must have been in its outlines the same to his eyes as it is to ours. At his feet the cliffs, sharply cut by some long past convulsion, formed a precipitous wall 200 feet high, at whose base clung the narrow strip of beach, then green and fertile, but now covered by Champlain Street, and the wharves and warehouses of the Lower Town. Beyond this line of beach stretched the glorious waters of "the great river," cradling the green Ile d'Orléans, with its abundant foliage, where, perhaps, the golden touches of autumn had already given their first splendor to the vines. On his right, parted from him by the broad current, rose the broken Point Levi shore, a wild wooded solitude, “very fair," but seemingly undisturbed by man. On his left the shallower stream of the Ste. Croix flowed peacefully out from a channel already far too wide for its waters, and

there his ships, with the royal arms of France displayed, lay safely-a little stronghold of European power and civilization in the midst of the primitive region. Beyond the ships. a grassy and level shore extended, until, rising gradually, it grew into those steep cliffs fringed with clinging bushes, over which, six miles off, the Montmorenci flung itself, marking its descent by a cloud of glimmering whiteness. Farther on and farther back from the river the land still rose, richly wooded and beautiful, but all solitary, where in later. days Wolfe's little army was to have its encampment, and where now scattered villages lie, stretching mile after mile past the place where the white houses and glittering spire of Les Anges Gardiens nestle among the green slopes of the hills.

It must have been a day never to be forgotten when Cartier-surely for a moment unconscious that his voyage needed any other perfecting-climbed the heights of Stadacona and looked down upon this picture. He was to grow familiar with it, to see it daily through times of difficulty, danger, and almost despair; but for all the suffering that might come to be associated with it, it would keep its place in his memory as something to be recalled in the peaceful years to come with all a lover's admiration and a discoverer's pride.

A short time was spent in exploring the neighborhood of Stadacona and the Ile d'Orléans (on which, from its abundant vines, the name of Ile de Bacchus was bestowed) and in taking measures for the safety of the ships; but the captain's mind was now resolutely bent on a voyage up" the great river," to visit an important Indian settlement of which reports had reached him. The chief and people of Stadacona were for some reason opposed to this expedition, and not only contrived causes of delay, but finally managed so that the French were obliged to do without the guides and interpreters on whose help they had counted. Cartier, however, was not to be discouraged; and on September 19th started up the river with the Emerillon, the smallest of his three small vessels, and two boats. They stopped at a place called Ochelay, which seems to have been at or near Richelieu, and were