moreover, noticed some English engravings, not of the kind collected in France-interiors of Windsor and

views of York Minster-and it turned out that the mother of this lonely gentleman was the daughter of an Honorable and Reverend Prebendary of the Church of England, and first cousin to a noble lord who was a once famous Cabinet Minister. She died in giving birth to her son, and he had never spoken a word of English. What was worthy of remark was that while he was closely connected with the British Peerage, he had not even a particule to his French name, and that being the owner of a big house and nice estate, he did not call himself Marquis or Vicomte. Perhaps it was unconscious English pride that caused this rare selfrestraint, as not one French hobereau in a hundred, even when his origin is humblest, refrains from decking himself with a title, whether he has the shadow of a right to it or not.

This place, like all the others we had seen in Touraine, seemed not a desirable winter residence, and that objection applies not only to the few which are to let, but to most of the inhabited country-houses. It is due to the fact that most of the châtelains who do not go to Paris have hotels for the coldest months in their provincial towns. The former owners of the property I have called Château Renard always thus migrated to Tours, at the St. Martin, to their hotel near the basilica dedicated to that saint. What M. Taine said of the "Ancien Régime" is true now that only the English and the Germans are content to spend the sad months of rain in the solitude of a castle.

Time fails to recount all our other expeditions. On one, eastward from Paris, in the direction of Champagne, a château we inspected had belonged to an ambassador now dead. It was a fine house, with a beautiful library worthy of its late owner; but the place was going to ruin from disuse, and even when in good repair it was said to be glacial in winter. We had heard that the present proprietor little resembled his refined and distinguished father, but we were not prepared for the apparition that greeted us. We were told that he lived in a farm the life of a

peasant; but French peasants are generally small creatures in blue blouses, while this was a bearded and booted giant, like the traditional pictures of ranchmen or South African Boers, with an undiplomatic voice of thunder.

Another tour of inspection we took on the north coast, not with any conviction that we should settle in that region; but I was tired of travelling far from my little sons, and before the tourist season Le Treport is a charming place for babes, when the fisher-people decorate their sails for the Fête-Dieu. Our most amusing incident in Normandy and Picardy was at a pretty pace near Abbeville, where the owner had long wished for an English tenant, and to prove it showed us a printed catechism sent him by a London estate-agent, which he had answered with the aid of a well-known authoress. It was easy enough to reply to the questions about the trains and the drains, but when he was asked, "Is the county society in the neighborhood agreeable ?" and "What are the nearest packs of hounds?" he felt some difficulty in describing the charms of the scattered and unsociable petite noblesse de province, and that a reference to the occasional rallye-papier of the officers at Amiens was scarcely adequate. The incident illustrates the difference of English and French ideas on country life.

But the summer was marching along, and we were as far from finding our château as when we commenced our hunting in early spring. Our friends continually said, "Why not settle in Seine-et-Marne or Seine-et-Oise? The country is lovely, and swarming with nice people; and if you are bored you can always run up to Paris, while for studying provincial life there is no difference between one neighborhood and another, except for the patois of the peasants." The last observation is, unfortunately, almost true, as a village in the Brie is organized in exactly the same way as a village in Dauphiné or Guienne, so after some disdainful protests about the banlieue de Paris, we began to explore that radius.

Our first attempt was not promising. A" Moderate" politician of our ac

quaintance covets the seat of a Socialist deputy, and owns a local newspaper to further his campaign. He kindly offered to announce in it our wants, with the result that a perfectly lyrical description was forwarded to us of a château near the Forest of Montmorency. We did not fancy that side of Paris, though the neighborhood of an illustrious lady-almost the last of the second generation of the Mater Regum, whose tomb I have seen at Ajacciowould have been agreeable. But even the proximity of St. Gratien did not justify the rent asked, 18,000 francsover £700. The odd thing was that though this indicated a place of great pretension, no one knew its name, and it was not marked on the map. How ever, it was so near Paris that the day of M. Bourget's reception at the Academy, after M. de Vogué had finished his peroration, there was time to fly to the Gare du Nord, visit the property, and return for dinner. On the way we decided that, however attractive the place, we would not be tempted by its luxurious comfort-and we were not. It was a dusty roadside villa in a rather pretty garden, and the whole property, including the shabby furniture, was not worth three years' rent. We conIcluded that the owner was a lunatic.

A day or two later I was enjoying the marvellous view over the Place de la Concorde from the balcony of the most finely situated town-house in the world, where the Prince de Talleyrand died, and Baroness de X., who has a special kindness for her country women, for she was born in England, said she had found what we wanted not far from her own famous château. The next afternoon a carriage met us at a station on the Strasbourg line, and drove us to a perfectly charming place. A farmergeneral of Louis XIV. had built on a smaller scale what Fouquet reared at Vaux, and when in the next reign it was given to Madame de Pompadour, it was decorated within by the most famous artists of the period. It was then that Louis XV. had a chaussée laid down of fifty kilometres for the favorite to drive thence with ease to Versailles, and sometimes in our drives we come to a "carrefour Pompadour" to recall the history of that paved road,

though we did not become the successors of La belle Marquise. The owner, the grandson of a celebrated regicide of the Convention, showed us all the beauties of the house, and of the great park stretching down to the Marne; but he wanted to sell and not to let, and our specious plea that the season for sales had passed for the year was belied a fortnight later when some of our own friends bought the place.

It was only an hour's drive from that pleasant spot, in an even more pictaresque corner of the Brie, that we finally found a resting-place. The kind châtelaine, who had told us of the former, asked the wittiest member of the Académie Française to call to see me and sing the praises of a place, also within reach of her own stately domain, which we had originally heard of from an agent in the days when we mistrusted agencies, and despised the environs of Paris, and thus we became his nearest neighbors. We had lighted upon an ideal French home. The château, standing high in a finely timbered park, possesses within and without all the qualities that a country home ought to have-beauty, spaciousness, and comfort. It was built in the closing days of Louis XIII., and is a perfect specimen of the epoch. Madame de Sévigné saw its completion when, as Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, she came here from Bourbilly and spent the last years of her girlhood in the village. More than a century later, a letterwriter of a very different school, Diderot, dated much of his correspondence with Mlle. Voland from the château in the valley below, and some of his most embarrassing anecdotes refer to the then occupants of this place.

Our Curé is an authority in architecture and in title-deeds, and he tells us that in those days the Chapter of Paris (although the parish is no longer in the archdiocese) were the seigneurs, and a curious ecclesiastical usage has survived revolutions and republics. The Chapter presented to the church a fragment of the true cross, so the "exaltation de la Sainte Croix" became the village fête, and on Holy Cross Day, as the occupiers of the château, we had to give up a green outside the grille d'honneur for a noisy fair,

which lasted a fortnight. M. le Curé in one respect fails in his duty. As he is approaching a venerable age, having been born under the Restoration, he ought, in compliment to his most brilliant parishioner, to cultivate the long white locks of l'Abbé Constantin; but being well preserved and solid, he bears no resemblance whatever to Madeleine Lemaire's portraits of that worthy priest.

Between the humors of every-day life and the distant history of the past, there is a period foremost in the thoughts of all French men and women. From the terrace of the château there is a glorious view over the Marne, finer than that of the Seine from St. Germain. The old trees of the park luckily hide the disgraceful Tour Eiffel, and the only monument of Paris visible from the windows is the Sacré Coeur of Montmartre. But the valley, so populous and peaceful, that lies between us and the Donjon de Vincennes on the horizon was the battlefield of

Champigny. The Wurtemberg division had its headquarters here in this house, and in an attic, used by the invaders as a point of observation, one may still read names in German characters scrawled on the ceiling. We are surrounded by all the contrast and contradiction of French life. The gayety and movement of Paris reddens the northern sky at night with the glow of its lights; below these windows, within these walls, there are pathetic memories of invasion and defeat, one day to be revenged, as the roar of the cannon from the forts protecting the capital sometimes reminds us; and behind us are boundless forests, smiling villages, fertile hills and plains-all the peaceful quiet of rural France, where the never-ending toil of the peasants amid the tranquil beauty of the landscape makes one imagine that the glitter and turmoil of the fairest of cities is as distant as the scene of battle and devastation.-Blackwood's Magazine.

WITH the long course of divisions among nations there would appear to be no little danger that hatreds, prejudices, and national pride should distort. the views and warp the judgment even of educated people on this subject. A few words, therefore, may not be inopportune to investigate in calmness prevalent opinions, in order to see if they coincide with the dictates of common-sense, or are merely figments of the imagination. To do this honestly and temperately can surely be productive of no harm, but possibly may do good. Should there be any danger necessarily attendant on external relations that might warrant the existing impulse to increase armaments, it is as well that we should recognize the fact, and make up our minds to endure what cannot be cured. If, on the contrary, it is found that any departure from the present manner of regulating foreign affairs would put a different face on the

matter, and if it is found that the interests of the several States are not mutually inimical after all, that will be something to encourage a hope of a good time coming.

Sir Walter Scott makes Rob Roy explain in a fatherly way to Frank Osbaldistone that all quarrels arise about "women and gear." By this time we may safely say that the civilized world has outgrown the absurdity of going to war pour les beaux yeux de madame. There remains, then, the single item of "gear," or material interests, as the phrase goes. These interests naturally divide themselves into two main branches-territory and commerce; but the two seem more interwoven than the two classes of property, real and personal, are in domestic affairs. The reason of this is plain. With the advance of representative institutions the masses have acquired greater political power, and they look more and

more to the establishment of colonies as a means of obtaining the advantage of wider markets for the products of their industry, to the exclusion of the products of other nations. This is the case in the colonial policy of all nations, except our own, as regards the exclusion; for England is the only country in Christendom that allows no distinction to be made in its Custom houses between the products of her own subjects and those of foreigners. It might be thought a priori that such a policy would make us popular with our neighbors, but such is very far from the truth. One would naturally think that, importing as we do and have done for generations, more largely from for eign countries than they import from us, and allowing no distinction between their goods and our own, either at home or at the ports of our colonies and dependencies, would satisfy even their very dreams of avarice, and make them our very good friends. Their doctrines of protection, which should logically magnify the benefits so freely offered to them, seem, on the contrary, to inflame their resentment. The explanation appears to be that all this protection, in which they implicitly put their trust, is a mere trammel to them in the commercial race with us.

The theory of protection does not work out in practice as it ought to do if it embodied economic truth; and the protectionists, instead of getting out of temper with their theory, get out of temper with us for underselling them. Accordingly we hear from time to time a good deal of grumbling in France that, notwithstanding all the expense of opening up new colonies, the foreigner reaps the fruit by doing the bulk of the business with them. The fact seems to be that it is so. The share of France in the trade of French Indo-China, for example, is about one fourth. France has only the monopoly of the expense of acquiring the colony and maintaining order there, and, as Adam Smith pointed out, that is the only monopoly possible in the circumstances. The colonies of France are, besides, with the exception of those on the North African coast, quite unsuited for European emigration, so that there is, if possible, less reason to regard them in the light of our self-governing

colonies as great empires in course of making. Now, we have had a larger experience in colonial matters than France or any other country. What does that experience teach us, or rather what ought it to have taught us? A certain class of men are said to get their instruction in the school of experience, but it is to be feared a still larger class attend this school with little profit. We have found out that there is a good deal of fallacy lurking about the term "possession" as applied to colonies. If we look to the fact that those countries offer markets where we can trade on equal terms with our foreign competitors, there may be some advantage in the so-called possession, though the policy only too common among our colonies of protecting their own industries against the mother country reduces even that advantage to the same level as in the case of any foreign country where we compete equally with third parties and unequally with its home producers by reason of the tariff

with this difference, that we are under an obligation to defend the colony in case of war. In a political sense, these colonies have not been of any advantage whatever. We draw neither revenue nor troops from them, and never could. Such a policy was attempted with the old American colonies, and the result is seen in the United States, an empire indeed, if you like, but to us a foreign empire; and in the whole experience of our Foreign Office, perhaps not the least troublesome of the foreign empires with which we have had to deal. The only exceptions, where we have received some assistance from our colonies and India for Imperial purposes are to be found in the Soudan war, and when some Indian troops were ordered to Malta the last time that the Eastern Question was in debate. Some troops from Australia assisted us in our struggle with the Arabs on the Red Sea littoral, and a few Canadian boatmen helped us to pull against the interminable stream in what seems to a layman the extraordinary line of attack on Khartoum. The Australians, the public have been led to understand by one who ought to know them well,'

* Vide Macmillan's Magazine, for July, 1889 article by Mr. Wise, ex Attorney General of New South Wales.

will not repeat that experiment. Indeed, the talk here about Imperial Federation and the burdens of empire to be gloriously shared by these Antipodean brethren with those elsewhere, produced an Australian National party, according to the same authority. Whether it is likely that Canada will follow suit does not appear; but as we are masters in India we may possibly order sepoys to embark for foreign service, should occasion arise.

In trade, New South Wales and the Cape are the only colonies that appear disposed to adopt free trade, or a tariff for revenue only. As far as contributing to defence, they are all more or less willing to share with the Home Government the cost of the defence of their own particular colony-surely not such a large matter as to warrant the grandiloquent talk of Imperial Federationists. But as we have remarked, the colonies of France, Germany, and Holland do not even get this length, being unfit for the most part for white settlement. Nevertheless, there has been quite an exciting time with the scramble for tropical Africa; and indeed few men would have ventured to predict ten or fifteen years ago that, in these circumstances, the peace would have been kept so long. It is possible that the impressions among statesmen, to which Lord Dufferin has alluded, that tropical Africa is not by any means so valuable as is often assumed, may have something to do with this piece of good luck. These impressions are amply justified by the budgets of the Congo Free State, as well as the finances of "Ibea," and the steady expenditure of France on its colonies. People will see surely in the long run that these countries in tropical Africa can only be administered at enormous expense, even after taxing imports and exports as heavily as possible, issuing trade licenses, selling land, and 30 forth. Wider markets are no doubt desirable, chiefly because of the artificial impediments to trade between civilized States; but seeing that the expense of opening new markets in Africa is great, the more likely thing would have been that all should talk much about the doing of it, and each do as little of it as might comport with decency, instead of getNEW SERIES.-VOL. LXIII., No. 3.

ting up heated discussions about not being at liberty to do more. Statesmen are apt to be led whither they would not in these matters in order to satisfy the clamors of their supporters, who, in turn, are pestered by their constituents who trade with these countries, while the public at large have to find the money. The case of Uganda is in point; and surely if King Leopold and the Belgians have had a bad time in the Congo Free State, with its great river system in favor of rapid development, our experience in British East Africa, and especially in Uganda, 800 miles from the coast, is not likely to be as good. It is still less likely to be an advantageous acquisition should quarrels arise with our European neighbors; for we do not hold the happy neutral position of the Congo Free State, but are credited with "deep designs" in

all directions for the extension of our territory, and are treated accordingly.

If

There would not appear to be any solid interest to the public in such extensions of the empire, because, beyond the fact of their unfitness for emigrants, we can neither draw revenue nor troops from them, but, on the contrary, must continually send men and money thither for their defence and the maintenance of order. As far as commerce goes, the experience elsewhere shows that we shall always have at least our share of the trade whether the flag is ours or that of some other State. we were even absolutely excluded from the trade of tropical Africa—a supposition which is absurd-so much more of the capital of the other Powers would probably rush in to fill up the void, that we should certainly gain ground elsewhere. Adam Smith showed that, by our attempted monopoly of the American trade, we lost ground in the more advantageous field of Continental trade in the very way that I am assuming with a supposed attempt by other nations to monopolize the African trade. As for the Cape, it has got more territory than it can well employ. Its interest, therefore, is properly confined to the utilization of what it has got, avoiding everything that might give rise to misapprehensions elsewhere. But there can be very little doubt that the colonies and dependencies of all

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