TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 8990, 1 January 1895, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

" In Ballades things always The contrive+6 get lost," says Iron Mask. Mr Augustus Moore, and the refrain of his poem is supposed to be the type of all unanswerable questions—" Who was the man in J tho Iron Mask ?' " It seems that no one need trouble to ask the question any more, for nobody, cared about him except as an object ! of ingenious cariosiby, and now, as a famous J essayist says " conjecture may cease." The I facts of the case were simple enough. ' From 1693 to 1703 there was in the Bastile i a prisoner, who was always treated by the ! governor of the prison with great respect, | but who was always 'masked, and was never allowed to communicate with anyone. He 1 was 'brought from Sainte Marguerite — i dear to lovers . of Dumas — and his I identity was ' so successfully conce „ed that even in his own day the wildest stories were circulated about him. He was the sou of Louis XIV. and tbe Duchesne de 'la Valliere —he was the son of Mazarin and Anne of Austria—(this suggestion ia due to the malignant skill of Voltaire) —he was the illegitimate elder brother of Louis XIV.— he was even the true heir to the throne to which the great King had no right. AU such tales found ah' eager audience, and during the Revolution it was widely believed that the captive*Priuce had secretly married his gaoler's dat-gflteif'and that then.* infant son was being' smuggttd off to Corsica, and being reputed, to be debonne part, of good family, was called Buonaparte.' This is perhaps the mosfc'jstartling genealogy ever devised. Bnt in any case the man in the Iron Mask has always been a tragic mystery. Sixty, years ago Mr Weibore Ellis hit upon a cine to. the and now Mr Gabriel Monod, tbe French literary critic, has produced evidence that really solves the di_.c"s_£y' altogether.-' He was only an Italian Count after all; and anybody who owns a few acres and a ruin.is a Count'in Italy. His name was Mattioli, and as secretary to the Duke of Mantua he. was secret agent in an attempted sale of an important' Italian fortress to Louis XIV. Bnt Mattioli revealed the scheme to Austria, and Louis bad to-suppress him. To kill him would have suspicious, so that fey°tfae royal. c<_nuu__d he was merely removed, out ot tbe wor_l till his death. Even the warrant for his arre-t, signed by Louis in 1673. has been discovered, and the.death register feives his name in fuSL It is a very tame eadiug to all this romance. His mere name has been enough to transport ns back to the ways of the great Cardinal and the wicked Queen, and the atmosphere of the Conrt whereVho Three Musketeers and their friends liipod aild played their parts. After alt, historical raearoi. has its disadvantages; and wf *uiy

think that wejhave paid too high a price for accurate knowledge when we find that we have hardly/anything left to exercise our iinagination/upon- The Man in the Iron Mask mustfgo where the dead dreams go; hut we muF bo allowed t0 lamen:i his los 3.

f We are glad to hear that sn TheF#ily attempt is being made to of assist the family of Major Le Osfon. Le Carou. Readers of his fc wonderfully impressive "Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service," unless they happen to be Land Leaguers, will fljWally agree that if ever man deaervedwell of his country it was Henri le Caros For something over a quarter of a he carried his life in his hand through the nibs't desperate peril. 'And.no one who rends his story fairly Tjan deny his , gjfcim to be regarded as a brave and honest gfr_. Mr Heinemann, who published his book, has started a subscription list, and on this subject a very noticeable letter lately appeared in St. James's Gazette. We will qaote a few lines. "He was one of the .pluckiest men I have ever seen; and much of my life has been spent among men whose business it was to be plucky. 1 am but a poor man; but I willgivfeaguiuea if Sir William Harcourt —who I believe first employed him—will gj.ve five. If he dare not, I will give a guinea anyhow." It will be interesting to discover whether the Liberal statesman will think it worth his while to answer this challenge in the face of the discussion about the notorious cheques. In the Special Commission's report it was Bhown that from 1883 to 1837 the Irish National Land League of America was " controlled; and directed" by the Clan-ua-Gael; that the Clan-na-Gael was "a body actually engaged in promoting the use of dynamite for the destruction of life and property in England,'* and that " the two organisations concurrently collected more than £60,000 for a fund called the Parliamentary fund." It was to this, or a similar fund, that Mr Gladstone and Lord Tweedmouth Prime Minister and Lord Privy Seal— —sent their famous cheques. Le Caron's evidence and his book and the revelations before the Commission proved conclusively the close connection for those years between the Laud League and the Clan-na-Gael. It was not necessary for eminent statesmen to be in the dark at such a time about the destination of their subscriptions. Mr Gladstone aud his fellowMinisters stand convicted of having, for political ends, aided murderers and other miscellaneous rufSaus to proceed with their infamous work. When the history of this century comes to be written ie is to be hoped that a fair balance will be struck and justice will be meted out in an impartial way. It is. true that the "TimesParnell "-trial cleared the Land League and its leaders from legal guilt, but the moral stain is ineffaceable.

"They only said ' intimidate' and talked and went away. By God, the boys that did the work were braver men than they." They only took the Judas-gold from rebels out of jail— They only fawned for dollars on the blooddyed Clan-na-Gael; If # blaok is black, or white is white, in black and white it's down; ! , They're only traitors to the Queen and rebels to the Crown."

And the guilt in some part must attach to those who knowingly upheld and supported a system of organised violence and crime. " We are not ruled by murderers, but only —by their friends."

It was.true, when these words were written. With the philanthropic theologian, the statesman to whom the fortunes of England were entrusted, and who gave his hundred pounds to ba spent in dynamite, we may safely let history deal, meanwhile it would be well to Bhow some regard, however late, to the man who bravely,fulfilled jhis trust, and all unrecognised did his best "to save his country, from treachery, and his innocent fellow citizens from murder.

The work of the Hon. G. Women Curzon on the problems of Missionaries. the East is interesting, as In the being written by One of East. the few Englishmen who

know the lauds of which he writes, and can speak authoritatively about the people. There is much incidental information that may suggest a good deal to the Western reader. We were much struck by his opinions on the popular view of Oriental mission work for women. Like most western ideas, it is based on absolute irnorance of the Great East. The mere position of the women is a great disadvantage to them iv their self-imposed task. "Iv an Eastern country where women are secluded and subject—it -is difficult for men to believe that unmarried women who lead independent lives and thrust themselves on publio notice are respectable." In China, moreover, they run great personal risks, at the hands of a barbarous population which is always ready to rise and torture or murder "foreign devils." " Yet scores of young girls, with all the innocence and enthusiasm of the schoolroom and seminary upon them, are annually Bent from Europe and America to convert the Chinese, who /won't be converted." Mr Curzon refers specially to a colony of about twenty Swedish girls, who live in an up-country Chinese village, protected by only one missionary. ' They get £27 a year salary, which is far'top little for decency in China, and their method of preaching is, as Professor Huxley would say, corybautic—mostly cymbals and tambourines. It is helplessly ahsurd, this sort of thing, but it is very deplorable and dangerous too. It is quite hopeless to attempt to make any impression upon the, Oriental till one has begun to understand him. And the chief characteristic of the East is its impassibility and lack of desire for change. Many enthusiastic people, have tried to reform the East off-hand, and have not even turned it into a feeble imitation of the West..

"It is not good for the Christian's health to , vhostle the Aryan brown, For the! Christian,rites, and the Aryan smiles, and. he weareth the Christian down ;' And the end ol the fight is a'tombstone , white, with the name of the late deceased, '• And the epitaph drear—«A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.' '*. This was . written originally - about the Zonana mission work in India, but 1 it is quite generally true for all the vast Orient. It is a pity, that Mr Curzon and those-who sympathise, with him have -not reprinted " the Naulaaka" in cheap form, aud oironlated it widely among the women who seem likely to be taken with the desire for reforming : the East. By all" means let us do what we I can for tho barbarian ; but. do,not let us j expect too much or too soon; and never be j surprised to find the original man reappear- | ing through the thin veneer of civilisation. ' " The Naulahka" is not> exactly a work of . genius; but there ia no possible answer to the protest that the hero makes to the mis- , sionary heroine—" you can call it duty, or you can call it woman's sphere, or you can call it carrying lijght to them that sit in darkness. I've no doubt you've got a halo to put to it—But you've .got a call to stay ' at; home." Th if is the strongest point of all. Lat us do whnt we can for those around us; the West can put up with a great deal of reforming and christianising yet, and so can our own Sunny South.