emigrating race, and have been so since the Saxons emigrated to this country. They are found in large numbers now in every foreign country and colony. But those Germans who thus emigrate to lands peopled mainly by other nationalities have a great tendency to become absorbed into the population among whom they dwell, to lose their German language and characteristics, and to become denationalised. This does not suit the views of German patriots. Societies have been formed for the Preservation of Germanism abroad, but any thing they can effect will not permanently alter this racial tendency; and the aim the aim of German statesmen is not to Germanise men who have emigrated to countries under other rule and belonging to other races, but to obtain countries of her own as a field for the overflow of her teeming and ever-growing population. Such countries must be suitable for Europeans; they must have fairly temperate climates; and when he surveys the world, the German, Emperor or peasant, sees that the habitable portion of the globe is already divided up among the Powers, and that if we except China, the bulk of it belongs to

to

Great Britain and the United States.

The Germans looked to South Africa falling into German hands; but that hope has been disappointed. Brazil, with a large German population, was a tempting bait; but the Monroe doctrine has barred the route, and the time for a quarrel with the United States is yet far distant. If Germany is to obtain colonies, there is only one nation from whom they can be taken. Great Britain holds Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the best parts of Africa in the East and West. To paraphrase Mr Ellis Barker, Great Britain has all the territory she wants, and she strives only to preserve in peace what she has won by war. But Englishmen must be simple if they believe that Germany will rest satisfied with the fact that Great Britain has practically all the colonies in the world while Germany has none.

Whenever Germany is ready, the British colonies must and will be her aim. And in that day we must rely upon our own right arm alone, and if our navy is not equal to the herculean task that will be imposed upon it, we shall lose colonies and Empire.

THIS was our notion of a man, in Schawfield-that he should look like Captain Cutlass. This was our standard of gentility-a race as old and rare as Captain Cutlass's, a voice like his to kindle and command, and yet so kind for natural incapacity; an eye so brotherly for honest rags, a heart without guile, a hand to scatter, and a passion for home. When we were boys, and reading worldly books on Sabbath, hidden in stable-lofts or crouching in the heather, all the gallant men-at-arms were Captain Cutlasses the knights, the scourgers of buccaneers, the great old sea commanders. When we grew older, and a hat or necktie was to buy, we took our cue from the wear of Captain Cutlass. As lovers with the village girls in evening woods, owl-haunted, rich in secret moonlit groves, we kept us decorous by some influence that came from meetings with the Captain; as men of the world (in our rural way) our mouths were wondrous clean, and often we drank but little, for that, we were told, was the way of Captain Cutlass.

No saint, remember; saints are, for the most part, women, invalids, and elders-the virtues that come to some of us late in life being naught to brag

of, only a moral rheumatism; Captain Cutlass knew himself so well, and the hazards of his place, that all his life he feared the devil and fled temptation. 'Faith! 'tis the only way for some of us; come, good fellows, let us drink one toast to Captain Cutlass,-Non inferiora secutus

following no inferior thingsas his motto went on the white stone over the ashlar pediment of Schawfield House.

It was only behind his back we called him Captain Cutlass

a nickname he had heired at second-hand, like Schawfield itself, from a grandfather who used the weapon woundily in some old sea-fight, when British sea-fights were in fashion. Here, nicknames run in a family like corner-cupboards and curling-stones, and the Schaws of Schawfield are like to be Cutlasses for generations to come, even if they never breed a sailor. His name and dignity were, properly, Sir Andrew Schaw, and to hear of his oddities and exploits made stupid people call him a little daft. I wish his kind of madness was more common.

Yet what was the world to make of such a baronet, who was on terms of gaiety with any random creature he would meet upon the road, played pranks so droll, indulged so

queer a fancy, laughed so heartily at the solemn rituals of society, had the heart of a boy when his hair was grey; never kept a carriage, or went to London; married

Ah! the cat was nearly out of the bag there-just a little prematurely; but, after all, this is not to be the story of that escapade; what I contemplate is the diverting history of his great experiment in training the Ideal Wife.

"He's so easy-osy a man in other things you would think he would take his chance like other men and grab the bonniest," said the wives of Schawfield village, which presented some deplorable results of a fashion of wooing so primitive.

"Mind the man's motto, though, 'Nothing but the best!'' said Mrs Nish of the Schawfield Arms, who bought her napery on that principle, and had a passion for necklets and brooches made of the same material as her parlour mantelshelves and timepieces, so that she sometimes clattered in her movements like a quarry. "It's not every day a laird's in the marriage market, and Sir Andrew's braw enough, and young enough, to pick his lady at his leisure the way I pick my hens. Besides, he's had his lesson, honest man!" and she would sigh profoundly, dewlaps quivering, buttons straining like to burst across her bounteous chest.

There it was, the origin of Sir Andrew's great experiment; he had had his lesson, honest man! and Schawfield

village knew it, as I sometimes think it knew the utmost penny Schawfield paid in interest on his mortgages. There are no secrets of the country mansion hid from the neighbouring village anywhere so long as there are gallant lads and laundrymaids for them to make love to. The odd thing is that odd thing is that my lords and gentlemen should go on believing that high walls and acres of surrounding policy can foil the wings of gossip, -a free wild bird that flies farthest over parks and desert places. I have seen it nest in a charterchest behind an iron door.

For two years he had borne the burden of his error, carrying it gaily like a man, and lost it with a pang. She died, did Lady Jean, without a single look or word or act from him to show he had grieved for anything in their brief time together, except the prospect of her absence. poor little wisp of a thing, to be petted and borne with; she put the lap-dog off her bed for a moment on the day she died, and drew her husband's head beside her on the pillow.

A

"Andy! Andy!" she said waefully, "I've known about you and Luoy all along, and you've been-you've been the very prince of husbands."

"What!" said he abashed. "Who told you?"

"It was Aunt Amelia," said she, "but she meant no harm."

"She never does," said the baronet, "but I wish she could have spared you. As God's in heaven, Jean, I have been happy!"

"Oh, Andy!" she exclaimed -a feckless body-"I must look a fright with my hair out, but I would die with joy if I could think you really loved me."

"Love you, Jean!" he said, with his arms about her; "I have seen you sleeping and have heard you breathe in dreams, and for all those days and nights we have been companions: it would be a bonnylike thing if I did not love you.

She sighed and toyed with a look of his dark hair, and mournfully looked in his eyes. "Ah!" she whispered, "it was not that way I was thinking of. You are a man who loves all things living, and would die to save a dog from hurt, butbut I'm so selfish I would like to think I had not much misled you, and that you prized me a little more than all the rest, and never rued you married me."

"I never rued aught in my life but my sins," said the gallant Captain Cutlass, "and that I was not 8 better husband."

"I could could not have had better," she protested. "Tell me you were happy.'

"As the day was long!" said my brave Sir Andrew, and he lay beside her till the hour of the turn of the tide, when she hung for a moment breathless on the verge of things, and then released herself of life and care in one contented sigh.

Some hours he spent wandering about the farm like a man demented, pained as if he

had lost a limb, feeling soiled as though the slough of despond were veritable mire; then up and saddled the mare, and rode like a fury for the old home. It is ever in the body or the mind to some old home we go with all our triumphs, failures, pains, as the red hind in her travail makes for the hills where she was calved. He swept through the fallen leaves of the winter-time, trampled dock and bracken, tore along the canters through the woods, sought fervently the upper valleys where the winds blew free. It was the spring: the larch was hung with tassels; all the woods were sweet with the tang of pine, the chuckling thrush, and the flurry of honeymoon wings. There had been rain in the early morning; no speck of dust was on the world, as clean as if it had been new created, and the burns ran merrily, merrily, twitching in fun at the lower flounces of the lady ferns that bent adoring over them. Each mossy cliff dropped gems, and every dyke was burning with the pale flame of primroses that surely grow in Schawfield as they grow no otherwhere,so soon, so long, so unmolested, as if a primrose crop were the single aim of nature. Along the hunting roads where the hoofs of the horse sank soundless in the turf, the ooney scuttled and the foumart flashed. A ruddy patch of hide was stirring in the thicket; he saw the dappled fallow nibble leaves in the enchanted clearings; wooddoves murmured; willow-wrens

of song so fine it would have missed the ear of a traveller less observant. Life! Life!Lord, how he felt the sting and splendour of it in his every sense! So had he ridden in the old bold days, capless and young, and this a sample of the glorious world; so had he felt himself a part of the horse between his knees, a part of the turf on which they thudded, a part of the windy pine, of bird and beast, of scent and song, omnipresent and eternal, like the living air!

And then-and then he felt ashamed of his health and his forgetfulness, in that magic air, of her he had left behind in Fancy Farm, remembering she had never shared his sense of wellbeing, and could not realise the wonder and glory of life for soever little a space in the bewildering desert of time. It was not the spoiled and feckless wife he saw, the aimless languid Lady Sohaw, but the girl she was once, pretty as a flower, Jeanie Jardyne, who had been one time happy with her young companions. Her slim, sweet, girlish form he thought of, and the winds of the Indian sea blowing her flowing garments; a way she had of clinging on his arm; evenings with her in the woods while still she had her bridal mystery; peaceful nights when she was lying by his side.

Nobody met him that day in his woods and avenues, for the folk of Schawfield ever evade an eye bereaved, knowing when company is an infliction and condolence a wound;

man when, climbing the brae at Whitfarland, he emerged from a bank of whin upon the prospect of the sea.

For a moment he checked the mare, took off his wide grey hat, and, breathing deep of the landward breeze, stared at the archipelago. Silver and green, with the pillars of birches and their tender plumage, the lesser isles were lying like fairy gardens in the Sound, and far away-far, far away,-sailing among the sunset's gold, were the great isles of the Hebrides. He looked upon them like their first discoverer a lean man, a clean man, smirched by no town reek nor sallowed by greasy foods, late hours, and the breathed atmosphere of herded populations; tan and ruddy, satinskinned, brown-haired; an eye that quested like an eagle's, and swooped on distant things as does the seaman's eye or the old hunter's. No flesh pads spoiled the structure of his shaven countenance, his teeth were drift-white, his ears close on his head and pointed a little like a faun's; his nose looked like one on which a sculptor had spent great care and a memory of antique marbles; his hand in repose was like a woman's, but tightened on the reins raised up cords of steel. The cut of his grey clothes and the fashion of his scarf gave a hint of the dandy.

Below him the sea surged noisily, the leafy banners of the little isles streamed multitudinous; a gannet poised, and tern sloped piping shrilly down