rious virtue. The same distorted stand- | When the Hebridean begins his song, he ard ruled other parts of practical morals. takes out his handkerchief, and gives the If loyalty and fidelity were justly regarded end of it to his neighbor, and they both as virtues, unfortunately revenge in cer- swing it as a sort of accompanimenttain cases never passed for a heinous vice. Our voices keep tune, and our oars keep time. Hundreds of instances might be given of assassins being employed to ex- Two centuries ago this rhythmic moveecute revenge stimulated by private hate ment entered into the ordinary toil of the or fancied wrongs, and where the atrocity common people, who were always emithus displayed seldom brought justice nently social and gregarious. When any down upon itself. considerable piece of work was to be done on the farms of the tacksmen, a large number of persons were set to work together. Whatever they did was done by them all in the same way. If they were reaping the corn, they kept time by singing or chanting, swaying their bodies to and fro in unison, bending down and rising up at the same moment, and moving with the regularity of a regiment of soldiers, sometimes to the strains of a bagpipe or the Jew's-harp. In the same way they fulled cloth, sitting in two opposite rows on a board, with the web to be fulled between, to be kicked from side to side.

It must in fairness be admitted that in this respect the Hebridean or Gaelic conscience was a very unsafe guide. To a large extent true law meant revenge with the unsophisticated Highlander, and all other law was a foreign imposition that received only very slight respect. A story is told of a widow who had been blessed with three husbands in succession, and who, when asked what sort of men the deceased had been, replied that the two first were honest men, for that both had died for the law (i.e. had been hanged for sheep-stealing), whereas the third was a poor creature "who teid at hame on a puckle of straw, like an ould tog." The distinction drawn by the Gaelic conscience between meum and tuum was, that thieving on a small scale and in petty things within the clan was highly disreputable and dishonest, but that wholesale theft, such as cattle-lifting from the south of the Grampians, or a ship wrecked or cast upon the coast by storms, was a profession highly becoming a gentleman, and in full accord with the moral law. The wretch who stole a cow or a sheep was a common thief; he who soared higher and hurried past the defile with a hundred was a gentleman drover. The Lowlands and the east-coast clans were in perpetual conflict with these veteran free booters, and sometimes tracked the lifted cattle into the fastnesses of Lochaber or Glenorchy. Sometimes spies and experts were bribed to go into the suspected country, and gather evidence that might be serviceable against the veterans. But, if any one were known to accept the reward offered for this kind of information, his life was not worth a single day's purchase. In passing to give a sketch of the second sight, the most extraordinary system of belief ever created by the sensitive Gaelic imagination, I may give one or two curious customs which partly explain it. One of these meets one in every genuine Hebridean song sung by a true islander. The song is a simple but wild series of movements, which the singers reproduce in the sympathetic swing of the body.

Then, as in a less degree they are still, the Highlands and islands were the land par excellence of apparitions, ghosts, and shades, overspread with all sorts of bewildering terrors, and inhabited by an underfed and starving people, who had a strong hereditary tendency to melancholy and mystic tears, who were creatures of impulse and fantastic in their hopes, and whose spirit was under the dominion of broken beliefs and harrowing story, From intercourse with the outside world the mass of the people got little or no light; and in the troubled shades of their own traditions and pagan creed they clung to many venerable follies and continued to dream idle dreams. The spirit of the old pagan religion lingered under the alien forms of the Christian faith, and the Hebrideans left to themselves became the easy prey of false prophets and soothsayers. Their dearest and most permanent beliefs were founded on nothing more solid than hearsay evidence; the thin coating of Christianity over their pagan faith and practice had no other effect than to give some additional terror, or to raise some fresh or wild hope, only to vanish as it came. With such a people the tendency to illusions was always strong. The whole air was teeming with fantastic creations. The fairies, as representing the shadows and the unrealities that thwart mortal enterprise, were an important element then. In the Gaelic mythology they represented the painful unreality which flitted around the Gaelic

race, in the lethargic atmosphere of the ests, by his correct reading of the best Isles, the weird mist of the corries, the aspirations of our nature, and by his exluxuriant growth of myths and fables, and quisite sense of the beauty that surrounds the tendency to illusion and the avoid- us, why should not a shrewd inhabitant ance of facts and their practical lessons. of one of the remote Hebrides, amidst Tested in the strong light of day, many of scenes that tend to throw a veil of mys the beliefs which they cherished were but tery over the cloudy judgment and the as the shadow of some inexplicable shade. uncertain penetration of his contempora The folklore of the Highlands was copi- ries, astonish the untutored rustics around ous and wild, full of budding romance and him by the force and accuracy of his darcharged with much fierce pessimism. ing prescience? Belief in supernatural Relics of old water cult were wondrous at interference was common in the Western the Union. Each lake had its dread mon- Isles. By assuming that he was more ster, the treacherous ealh hirze, who, unscrupulous than those around him, that Proteus-like, could assume all shapes, and he was working by mystic rules which who was ever intent on mischief to the their own traditions had sanctioned, and human race; every storm had its wraith; that he knew his neighbors' weakness as and a thousand grotesque figures filled well as his own strength, we can easily and frightened the troubled imagination. understand how the prophet of the second Amongst such a people we might ex- sight could make himself an object of pect to find prophets of the second sight regard and a source of power in his localthick as autumnal leaves. When Presby-ity. To some extent the prophet himself terianism was established in the Isles two occasionally shared in the common delucenturies ago, second sight was already sion. For the Gaelic race, with their pasreduced to a system and practised as an sionate love of life, their intense impresart. It had its code of signals, its sym-sibility to fear and hope, their sensitive bols, and its recognized methods of interpretation. The prophets of the second sight pretended to be born, but they were really made. It was not professed that the gift was common, or that every one could see the signs which were to be interpreted. But the favored few who could see what was generally invisible read the symbols according to the recognized rules of a recognized craft. The prophet or the seer claimed the power of seeing into the dark future, and of foretelling what was to come to pass. What he saw the multitude could not see; but, if he deigned to reveal what he had seen, the common herd could foretell as well as he, for certain signs always indicated certain events. For example, if a woman was seen standing at a man's right hand, that was accepted as a proof that she should become his wife, whether both or either were married or unmarried at the time of the apparition. If three women were seen standing at a man's right hand, the nearest would be his first wife, and so on. Through a large and intricate system, the growth of many ages, the art of the Highland seer was not altogether based upon quackery, but it was strengthened by the pretence of the rogue. So long as an Ayrshire ploughman, brought up like his class in the rude routine of the furrow, can suddenly shake himself free from the depressing traditions of the soil, and astonish after ages by his intense appreciation of human needs and inter

fibre, their perturbed feelings and uncertain beliefs, nurtured the very conditions which point to or generate definite fulfil ment of vague prophecy. For in all such cases there is a wide reserve for mental confusion. As the patient, by brooding over his disease, insensibly gives it unconquerable strength, and so aids in his own destruction, so the Gaelic race helped their own seers in the work of illusion. In some cases, no doubt, the seer was an out-and-out quack, and took the surest means to strengthen his reputation by divulging the oracle after the fact, or by vague predictions which might mean any. thing. Sometimes the oracle was dark or mysterious on purpose. Instances are quite common in which a vague statement was converted into a direct prophecy through ingenious distortion or suggestive silence, whereas the true prophecy was only an after-thought.

A highly-strung people, who had an abnormal dread of the supernatural, and who drew largely upon the horrors of various pagan creeds without understanding any, would have a certain tendency to brace up their imagination and to give its forecasts a certain amount of intelligence which was not altogether fictitious. Their wisdom was contained in their songs, proverbs, and sayings, and it did not profess to encompass any mystery except by something more mysterious. They placed the facts of sense and of imagination, those of objective fact and subjective feel

From The Leisure Hour. DUTCH ETIQUETTE.

ing, on the same platform. They had a tary isle. It is the essence of mystery number of myths and time-honored leg- as well as of sorrow. At a period when ends regarding the future and their per- each noble English house had its own sonal salvation; but these braced up the haunted chamber and its own sombre resources of their imagination by making ghost, we need not wonder if we find each them more fitful and more melancholy. Highland hamlet in fanciful intercourse To the view of their philosophy and re- with its kith and kin after as well as beligion the departed soul was not lost, but fore death, through its own chosen seers; gone before, to a place where there would that the under-fed Hebridean saw his own be fierce retaliation, and where salutary ghost heralding his approaching death, terror might strike at defiant conscience and that in a depressed and uncertain as well as at exasperated affection. And state of mind the Gael pictured out for hence the general sense of vague terror himself an uncertain future. A people greatly aided the seer. The Highland surrounded by many intelligible terrors seer professed to see what was invisible - in a changing, phosphorescent sea and to ordinary mortals. He held that a lively a troubled, thundery sky and frequent impression was made upon the nervous storms would see the flickering, pale system, and that, like Socrates under the light as it moved slowly towards the lonely influence of the demon, he became ab- graveyard, or the dark funeral crowd sorbed in contemplation to an extent alto-around the hut of him who was fated to gether denied to the multitude. The veil die, or they would hear the piercing fuof the future, he said, was uplifted before neral wail, or their imagination would dehim; coming events projected themselves rive strange pleasure from the sorrowful within the sphere of his vision; he could luxuries of the literature of the second see strange sights and hear strange sight. sounds; and he knew how to interpret them aright. This much he claimed, and this much the multitude readily conceded. But even as early as the reign of Dutch William the seers had their critics, who, in spite of the conservative tenacity of popular beliefs, tried to pick holes in their practice. It was held that they were either enthusiastic visionaries or persons of disturbed temperament; that not one of the fraternity could give a rational explanation of his practice, the rules of his art, or the vague predictions of his order, and that the whole system of second sight was an imposition by skilful and unscrupulous rogues upon the credulous and the silly. But without adopting this extreme view, we may give a reasonable explanation of the practice. Fire never gave up trembling, and woe from that day until the day of forever;" and whoever is fa miliar with the piercing wail of the Highland laments as they used to resound through the long, narrow glens, or has witnessed the rapid hysterics that frequently accompany the departure of the Clansman" or the "Dunara Castle" from the Broomielaw, may understand to what extent sorrow and pain, tears and trouble entered into the life of the islanders, and how gladly they would look to wards any sort of prophet that professed to open up the future. Funeral wailing was a profession in the islands at the time of the Union. I know nothing more plaintive than "McCrinnon's Lament when heard in a lonely glen or on a soli

SOME years ago a book was published on "German Society, by an English Lady." It contained many things that gave great offence, and the critics said that the writer must have seen very little of German society, and could not be a true lady! Taking warning by this book, I think it best to say that I write only my own experience what actually came under my own notice. Though I know most parts of Holland as a tourist, I know Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and sev eral villages socially. I will not say (for I do not positively know it) that all the points I mention as Dutch etiquette hold good in all parts of the country, but from the class of people I know, I am perfectly certain they do in the places I speak of.

It seemed to me that in Holland - and I have been there pretty often, and know all the principal places the woman is nowhere; man is everything, the first and foremost consideration.

There is a great lack of chivalry in the manners of a Dutch gentleman. He dis plays none of that sentiment which the French embody in these words, Place aux dames. I do not altogether blame the men for this deficiency in what we should consider good manners, for I think to a

very great extent the women have them- | bow so profoundly, until I got some one selves to thank for it. There is much to ask if he knew me. I found I had that is absurd and prudish in their etiquette, and yet they permit slights, and even impertinences, which an Englishwoman would never overlook.

In accordance with the roaring-lion idea, a lady must not pass a club. She must, if she has to pass down a street where there is one, cross to the other side, and, if necessary, cross back again. In winter this becomes a great nuisance, for there is much wet weather and roads are very muddy, but no Dutch lady of high class will brave the obnoxious windows, though she will allow the very men who are sitting at them to smoke in her drawing-room without an apology.

once met his father somewhere, and that was the-shall I say excuse? I should if he had been English. Well, after an absence of three years, I returned to the Then, too, a Dutch lady outside her town where he lived, and there he was own door is always acting on the defen- grown into a man, bowing still. For some sive, and tacitly guarding herself, as it months we had quite a lively bowing were, from any possibility of insult. She acquaintance, and there it ended, as aforebehaves as if men were her natural ene-time. I must, however, include "compli mies, going about like roaring lions, seek-ments" with_bowing in the Dutch idea of ing to gobble her up alive-o. I must say politeness. Every parcel is sent home that I have never seen any disposition on with the sender's compliments, and I once the part of the men to simulate the rôle heard this message delivered at the door of the wild beast aforesaid, unless the of a house where I was calling: "My lady happened to have a large dot. The compliments to the mevrouw, and has first thing I noticed in Holland was that she any dust?" It was the dustman! gentlemen walk on the pavé and ladies Surely any comments are needless. turn into the road; how dangerous and muddy that road may happen to be makes no difference to the universal custom it is invariable. It is not etiquette for a gentleman to speak to a lady in the street, no matter how well he knows her. That is as well, for, as in France, the gentleman bows the first, so that though a lady may be saluted by a hundred men who have never been introduced to her, and whose names she does not even know, none of them have the privilege of addressing her, though they may have bowed for ten years. The etiquette, by the way, of bowing is most extraordinary. I used to tell my Dutch friends that their politeness begins and ends with a bow. Everybody bows - nobody nods, and touching of the hat is unknown. You bow to every one you may have met when calling on a friend, for callers meeting are introduced. You give an order to a gardener or a workman, and he takes off his hat with a bow which would not bring discredit on a duke. Every one bows on passing a house where they visit. I often used to amuse myself by watching behind a curtain, to see every second man take off his hat to the win dow, it being quite immaterial whether any of the family are visible or not; and every second lady make a polite bend of the whole body, not a mere inclination of the head, as our ladies do. Everybody bows. Men take off their hats to each other; tradesmen do the same to all their customers. A well-known lady is bowed to by all her father's, husband's, or brothers' friends, and any gentleman knowing a lady is staying at a house where he visits, will bow to her. I even had a bowing acquaintance with a student, whom I never met and did not know from Adam. I could not imagine what made the boy

In Utrecht, perhaps the ultra-aristocratic city in the country, where every second house has " Baron on the lintel, and where professors, lecturers, and offi cers are as plentiful as blackberries on a bramble-bush, there is a street called the Line Maart, in which is the principal club of the students. The ladies of the town will not even pass down it. I was walking once with the wife of a professor, a woman of very high standing, and quite above most of the little, prim restrictions to which others yielded, but she would not pass along the Line Maart even when hurrying home late for dinner, and that the nearest way. She made a round of several streets to avoid it. As the students were, for the most part, raw lads from sixteen to one or two and twenty, it did seem to me absurd that they should have any influence over the movements of one of the most influential ladies of the town.

It is the fashion, if a lady take young ones out for a promenade, if gentlemen walk with ladies, or if two girls walk together, to go to a confectioner's and eat taatjes, ices, or drink chocolaat. For this purpose all confectioners have one or two rooms adjoining their shops, furnished with little tables, sofas, and chairs. If