1

Greek by his feminine auditor. One rare | Such was the verdict of the Sister Supe-
characteristic belonged to her which gave | rior of St. Lazare on Louise Michel be-
a peculiar charm to her conversation. fore she went to New Caledonia; and
She had no petty egotism, no spirit of the sister was right. Louise Michel is a
contradiction: she never talked for effect. saint who has lost her way. She has all
A happy thought well expressed filled her the fervor, the enthusiasm, and the unhesi-
with delight; in a moment she would tating self-sacrifice of the greatest of the
seize the point and improve upon it so saints of the Church. She is one of the
that common people began to feel them- saints of the social revolution - a pétro-
selves wise in her presence, and perhaps leuse of the pétroleuses. Although she
years after she would remind them, to proclaims herself the ally of all those who
their pride and surprise, of the good with spade, mine, or fire attack the cursed
things they had said.
edifice of our old society, she is personally
irreproachable: her bitterest enemies
have never charged against her any pri-
vate offences against the social laws.
She is one of the remarkable women of
Paris-and in some respects she is the
most interesting of the trio. Sarah Bern-
hardt is one, Mme. Adam is the other,
and Louise Michel is the third. Sarah
Bernhardt is the queen of the stage, Mme.
Adam of the salon, and Louise Michel
finds her throne among the suffering and
discontented poor. So say her votaries.

It was during her residence in Foles-
hill, almost within a stone's throw of the
quaint old city of Coventry, that she
translated the "Leben Jesu." This work
she undertook at the instigation of Mrs.
Bray's brother, the late Charles Hennell,
a writer now remembered only by the few,
but whose "Inquiry concerning the Origin
of Christianity" (1838) was recognized in
England and Germany as a signal service
to the cause of Liberal thought. The
labor of rendering Strauss's masterpiece
into clear, idiomatic English was by no Louise Michel was born half a century
means light, and her intimate friends of since in a humble home in the department
that time well remember the strain it en- of the Marne. Her mother was a farm-
tailed upon her. She completed her task yard maid at the château of a noble fam-
(1846) in scarcely more than a year, and ily; and Louise, when a child, was the
had the satisfaction of being compli-pet and plaything of the ladies of the
mented by Strauss upon the success that château. She received a good education,
had attended her efforts. Such an under- and being frequently at the château she
taking by a young woman of twenty-five acquired a cultivated taste and a few ac-
inay certainly be ranked among the mar-complishments. She excelled in garden-
vels of literature; its real significance will ing, and became learned in all the simple
be best appreciated by those who know lore of country life. Her intelligence so
not only English and German but much impressed the son of the owner of the
more besides.
château that during his vacations he
amused himself by teaching the little
Louise to write rhymes and French com-
position. Her rhymes, it is said, were
excellent, and she has never lost the art
of versifying; but of late years the effu-
sions of her lyre have been veritable
poems of a pétroleuse-sanguinary invo-
cations of social revolution. Not in that
strain did she write when as a simple
peasant girl she first essayed to express
herself in prose and verse; nor could any
one have dreamed that the intelligent
little damsel with the well-kept flower-bed
and attractive manners would ever develop
into the mænad whose passionate dia-
tribes stir the blood of the fierce democ-
racy of Belleville and Montmartre. It is
said that she was peculiarly distinguished
for her proficiency in religious knowledge,
and she took the best position in the cate-
chism class. How or when she became
"SHE would have been a great saint if dissatisfied with her tranquil provincial
she had only been turned the right way." | life is not stated; but one fine day an

Miss Evans's father died in 1849, and in the summer of that year she accompanied her friends the Brays on a Continental tour, and by her own choice was left behind at Geneva, where she stayed till the following spring. On her return to England she made her home with the same family until 1851, when she was persuaded by Dr. Chapman to take up her residence in the Strand and assist him in the conduct of the Westminster Review. Thus ended her connection with her native county, to which, however, she afterwards paid many visits.

From The Pall Mall Gazette.

AN APOSTLE OF THE SOCIAL REVOLU

TION.

uncontrollable desire to leave the dull shade of the silent château took possession of the young lady, then apparently in her teens, and, packing her wardrobe in a parcel, she started for Paris. On arriving at the capital she was befriended by the family at whose house she had been reared, and they secured for her a situation as assistant mistress in a school at Montmartre. There she taught for many years, retaining her position in fact until the Communal rising in 1871.

poor, deserted children of Montmartre, even during the worst agonies of the second siege, the sentence was commuted to transportation to New Caledonia, she lost her self-control and burst out into a passionate imprecation upon the court which denied her even the right to die. She declared she would not accept her reprieve, and despatched an indignant epistle to the court demanding that they should recognize her right to be shot like a man. As they turned a deaf ear to her pleadings, she poured out her soul in a passionate letter to Victor Hugo-"My poet and my master" - imploring him to save her from the disgrace of being reprieved like a woman after she had so heroically earned the right to be shot like a man. Victor Hugo could do nothing, and in due time Louise was removed to the prison of Aubernie, pending her transportation to the South Seas. She appears to have subdued her fury at being condemned to live, and to have accepted the reprieve as a sign that there was still work for her to do. When the sister superior went to bid her farewell, she was startled by the light of triumph that gleamed in Louise's eye. "I shall come back,” she said. "You will see us all back again soon; we shall do better next time." "How absurd!" said the sister; "the Commune is utterly crushed, and you are going to the antipodes for life." "You are mistaken," replied the pétroleuse; au revoir, ma sœur. When the fires are lighted again in Paris I will be a friend to you."

Of her life during all these years there is no record. She labored at her vocation in silence and in sorrow, brooding much over the miseries of the world, and meditating gloomily over a social system which crushed almost out of all semblance of humanity the miserable wretches who crowded the slums and alleys of the lowest quarter of Paris. A woman of marvellous will and extraordinary strength of character, with intense sympathies and a spirit that flamed with unquenchable indignation against all the oppression and injustice and hypocrisy of this evil world, she appears to have rid herself of the last vestige of the faith in which she was reared and to have embraced in its stead with all the passionate ardor of her nature the gospel of the social revolution. Hence, when the Commune revolted against Versailles, Louise Michel hailed the insurrection as the dawn of a new and a better day. Woman though she was, she joined the ranks of the insurgents, and fought with many other women who were prompt to follow her leading against the hated Versaillese. In the On the long and weary voyage to New streets and at the council table she was Caledonia Louise Michel showed herself ever at the front; and when the Com- a ministering angel to the poor wretches mune fell, it was Louise Michel who dis- who were sent out with her in the ship. tributed cans of petroleum to those who She taught them to read and write. She were willing to make a funeral pyre of instructed them in morality. In sickness the capital which witnessed its fall. So she was their nurse, in trouble their comat least it is said. There is less doubt forter. In the penal settlements, as in about the part which she played in de- the prison, her conduct was irreproach fending the heights of Montmartre. able. She worked and waited, biding her When the insurgents turned to fly, Louise time. When at last she was amnestied, Michel taunted them as cowards, and, she refused to leave Noumea unless her hastening to the cannon, fired round after fellow-exiles were released. It is no won round upon the advancing troops, until at der that such a woman should have been last, standing alone by her guns, she was received with almost royal honors on her made prisoner by the Versaillese. The return to Paris by the population of Montgreat stroke had failed. Versailles had martre. Nor is it strange that her meettriumphed; the social revolution was ings are crowded, and that the vehemence drowned in blood. Louise was tried by of her invectives is occasioning some uncourt-martial and condemned to death. easiness to the government. Fierce and While awaiting trial her conduct was uncompromising, with a spirit unbroken exemplary. She was obedient, docile, by suffering and a faith unquenched by silent, and respectful. But when, in con- defeat, she ceases not day and night to sideration of her sex, and of the moth-lift up her voice in prophecy that the trierly care which she had shown to the umph of the people is at hand.

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From Fraser's Magazine.

EMPEROR ALEXANDER'S REFORMS.

brothers could die, there seemed no hope that their sacrifice could save our country from fresh disasters. Hope had gone out amongst us, and the courage of despair alone remained to us in the end.

"SERVE your country!" was the dying command of Emperor Nicholas to his son Alexander. "Serve your country! Whether we looked at home or abroad, All my care, all my efforts, have been everything was in ruins. Our military directed to the good of Russia. I de- system had broken down; the adminsired to take upon myself all the difficul-istrative machinery of the State had alties, all the dangers, so that I might leave most collapsed. Emperor Nicholas, "the to you an empire tranquil, well organized, Quixote of Autocracy," could not survive and happy. Providence has decided the catastrophe which overwhelmed the otherwise. For at what a time and under régime to which he had devoted the arduwhat circumstances I am dying! You ous labors of thirty years; his hopes will find your way difficult.” all blighted, his ideal forever unrealized. Dying with a heart broken by the sight of the miseries of his people, the emperor delivered over his realm to his son and successor with the command worthy of a Russian to devote his life to the service of his country.

How fully that parting injunction was fulfilled must be told by other pens than mine. In these pages I make no pretence of writing the history of the present reign, or even of attempting to detail minutely the reforms by which Emperor Alexander II. has served his country and earned her affection. I merely put together as well as I can the views which the majority of Russians take of the reforms of the present reign. I would never dream of attempting to write a scientific treatise on so vast a theme. This is, par excellence, "a short study of a

This last message of Emperor Nicholas, reproduced on Count Bludoff's authority in the excellent periodical, The Annals of Old Times, was no idle phrase, nor can it be read by any true Russian without emotion. In spite of his noble efforts, of his devotion to his country, his constant anxiety to do only what was just and useful, the dying emperor left to his son a heritage of woe. The realm, exhausted by a tremendous war, was morally, as materially, a wreck. Russia at that epoch was filled with antiquated ideas and absurd traditions, strange and opposing prejudices, conflicting interests. She had millions of serfs, but no schools and no roads. Her treasury was empty, the Russian seas were covered with hostile cruisers, and Sebastopol was yet stained with torrents of Russian blood. I was then only a child, but I remember as viv-great subject." I dare say some English idly as if it were but yesterday the horror critics will object at once, that Russian of great darkness of that terrible time. anarchists, or Nihilists, are at variance Everywhere one heard the words of agony with the opinions professed in this paper; and distress; young and old, rich and but, fortunately, the anarchists are anypoor, the highly placed and the lowliest of thing but numerous, and, besides, the the low, shared alike the universal sense greater part of them do not belong to our of poignant shame. The gloom was un-nationality. They are Poles, Jews, Gerbroken, or relieved only by those dis- mans, and only occasionally Russians, plays of moral heroism in which Russia and they are out of harmony with the has never failed even in the darkest hour of her destinies. Boys of fifteen eagerly prepared themselves to serve their country in the field, and the mother's love for her son yielded to the voice of supreme patriotism; sacrifices of life, of income, of all that is most cherished, were willingly made. With Russians patriotism is a passion and a religion. But although our

whole stream of Russian thought, Russian traditions, and Russian faith. Fenians do not represent England, Communards do not represent France, and Camorrists do not represent Italy.

But the infamous attempts on the life of our emperor no more prove that he has not served his country than the execution of martyrs that they were not true