Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 21, 18 September 1885, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

An article in the Edinburgh Review, for July enthe Jesuits titled " The French in North America," and which IN CANADA, deals with certain books lately published at Boston

by Mr. Francis Parkman, contains a good deal that it interesting from a Catholic point of view — although much in it also must be taken, as the saying is, with a grain of salt. The writer is evidently one who has no sympathy whatever with the Catholic Church, her religions Orders, or her members as such, while varions time-honoured prejudices and calumnies hold & chief place in his mind, and, therefore, any favourable witness borne by him to the characters or actions of devout adherents to the Catholic religion way be accepted as that which has been won from an enemy. There is a large part of his article at variance which the great Protestant Tradition, in accordance with which, nevertheless, he clearly desires to write. It is for example, out of character with the tradition in question, to find justice done to the memory of Da Champlain, founder of the Colony of Acadia, who had taken his part in the wars of the League as an enthusiastic Catholic, and of whom we are notwithstanding told that " his life testified to the reality of his piety ; the purity of his morals nmde a lasting impression on the Hurons." The account we are given, moreover, of De Champlain, an enthusiastic Catholic who had taken part in the wara of religion, bringing out among others to found his Colony certain Huguenot ministers, is not in keeping the narrow, and persecuting spirit with which all men of hW 1 experiences have commonly been accredited. And, if, afterwards, it was agreed that Huguenots should be excluded from the French settlements, that was not until settlers of the new religion had had a full opportunity to prove how mischievous they could make themselves. — This however, the reviewer does not tell us. — But he at least acquaints us with the nature of the Huguenots when he narrates how, on the passing of this law of exclusion, they endeavoured to persuade the English Government to take possession of the French territory. — It is also interesting to learn concerning De Champlain, as an instance of the spirit of progress present among the Catholics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that he waa the first to perceive the advantages of cutting a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, and to advocate its being done. — It is, however, to the missions of the Jesuits in Canada that the writer bears the highest testimony. We quote him as follows :— " If heroic courage and unselfish zeal could command success, the Jesuits would have Christianised North America. The missionary annals rival in deeds of chivalrous daring, the tales of knight errantry or the legends of the saints with which Ignatius Loyola solaced his sickness. Fervent in their master's cause, strong in religious enthusiasm, they laboured in North America with all-embracing activity to advance the interests of their order, of the Papacy, and of France. Directed, disciplined, impelled, restrained, by one master-hand, yielding obedience as complete and unresisting as that of a corpse, they impressed on the world the tremendous power of their organisation. If Xavier alone has become the canonised saint of Christendom, many of bis brethren were heroes of no common stamp. In China, Japan, Thibet, Brazil, California, Abyssinia, and Caffreland, they performed miracles of self-denying devotion. Above all in North America, men like Le Jeune, Jogues, Brebeuf, Gamier, Chaumont braved famine, solitude, insult, persecution, defied intolerable and inexpressible torture, tasted day after day the prolonged bitterness of death in its most appalling forms. At first the labours of the Jesuits lay among the Algonquin children. . . . But no permanent results could be obtained among the wandering Algonquin hordes. Le Jeune determined to establish missions among the numerous Huron tribes who lived in stationary settle' ments on the shores of the western lake?. In 1 634 Brebeuf, Daniel, and Davost left Trois Rivieres for Lake Huron. The hardships of the voyage which lasted thirty days, were so severe that even the iron frame of Brebeuf almost succumbed. . . . Partly from curiosity, partly from fear of offending the French at Quebec, partly from euperstitioas awe the Jesuits were permitted to nettle and build

houses in the Huron towns. In France ths utmost enthusiasm wa 8 aroused for the missions ; Bre'beuf s ' Relation ' produced a prodigious effect ; as time wore on, more Jesuits crossed the sea to aid the work of conversion. The central mission-bouse, near Lake Huron, served as residence, hospital, magazine, and refuge in case of need. The Huron towns, all named after saicts, were divided in districts, to each of which two priests were assigned. The missionaries journeyed singly or in pairs from village to village, till every Huron settlement had heard the new doctrine, Their circuits were made in the depth of winter, for it was not till November or December that the Jesuits settled in their villages. The Jesuits paid for their lodgings with needles, beads, awls, and other small articles. They taught the Hurocs to fortify their towns, doctored the sick, instructed children, preached to the adults. Bat converts were hard to make, and harder still to retain. . . . But if the Jesuits converted few of the savages they gained personal influence. Their disinterestedness, intrepidity, and blameless lives gradually told npon the Indians. Their patience and tact were never at fault.

. . . . Their most determined enemies were the sorcerers, medicine* men, and diviners, who swarmed in every village. To the Hurons the priests appeared as rival magicians. They looted upon the black-robed strangers as ' Okies,' or supernatural beings, masters of life and death, controlling the sun and the moon and the seasons. They attributed to them the changes in the weather, the scantiness or abundance of their crops ; they came to them for spells to destroy their enemies, for charms to kill grass-hoppers. Brebeuf foretold an eclipse, and his prophecy was fulfilled ; the native sorcerers failed to obtain rain ; nine Masses to St. Joseph broke up the obstinate drought. But the triumph was not an unmixed advantage. Pestilence and small-pox decimated the people ; the medicine-men, unable to check its ravages, whispered that the Jesuits themselves caused the pest. ' Some said that that they concealed in their houses a corpse which infected the country — a perverted notion derived from some half-instructed neophyte concerning the body of Christ in the Eucharist. The lives of the fathers hung upon a thread. Again and again nothing saved them but their unflinching courage. They could not leave their houses without danger of being brained. Chaumont was once actually struck down. So hopeless were they of escape, that they wrote a farewell letter to ths Father Superior, and entrusted it to a faithful convert. Even when the immediate danger had passed away, they were exposed to every sort of insult. It was many years before their persecution as sorcerers ceased. Surrounded by frightful dangers, hedged in by the gloom of pathless forests, isolated from their fellow-countrymen, and often from each other, the perpetual tension of their nerves combined with the ecstatic exaltation of their faith to bring heaven and hell very near to their lives. ... Id the winter of 1640, Brebeuf saw a great cross slowly approaching the mission of Ste. Marie from the country of the Iroquois. The ominous vision was fearfully realised. Up to this time, though the lives of the missionaries were living martyrdoms, no priest had been put to death. But, if the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church, the harvest should have been great in North America. With the next ten years De Nouc, Goupil, Jogues, Lalande, Daniel, Buteux, Gamier, Lalemant, Brebeuf, fell victims to their heroic enterprise. The five confederate nations of the Iroquois tribe . . . had never forgotten the assistance which Champlain rendered to the Hurons. War raged uninterruptedly between them and the French and their Indian allies. The Iroquois hovered round the French settlements, cut off stragglers, lured parties into ambuscades, harassed the colonists by day and night. . . . ' I had as lief, 1 writes Father Vimont, 'be beset by goblins as by the Iroquoie. The one are about as invisible as the other. Our people on the Richelieu and at Montreal are kept in a closer confinement than ever were monks or nuns in our smallest convents in Fiance.' Tracking the slightest trails with unerring sagacity and untiring patience, skulking in ambush for days and weeks, coming and going with the stealthiness and rapidity of wild animals, they kept the whole colony in a perpetual fever of anxiety, destroyed the furtrade, and for three years severed all communication with the Huron mission. In 1642 the priests were without clothes ; they had no vessels for the altars, or sacrificial wine ; they had exhausted their writing materials. Father Jogues volunteered to accompany the Huron fur-traders on a voyage to Quebec to procure supplies. On the return march the Iroquoia eurprised the Huron canoes and

carried off Jogues, with two young donnis of the mission as prisoners' They beat him senseless with their clubs, and, when he revived, tore away his finger-nails with their teeth and gnawed his hands like famished dogs. After an eight days' march under a blazing sun, his captors reached their first camp. There he was made to run the gauntlet : his hands were again mangled ; file was applied to every part of bis body ; and when at night he tried lo rest, ' the young warriors came to lacerate his wounds and pull out his hair and beard.' The march was resumed for five days longer, till the band reached the Mohawk town which was their goal. There for the second time Jogues passed ' through the narrow road of Paradise,' was unmercifully beaten, and then tortured with such exquisite ingenuity that the greatest suffering was inflicted without endangering life. At night he was ' stretched on his back, with his hands extended, aud ankles and wrists bound fast to stakes driven into the earthen floor. The children now profited by the example of their parents and amused themselves by placing live coals on the naked bodies of their prisoners, who, bound fast and covered with wounds and bruises, which made every movement a torture, were sometimes unable to shake them off,' For three consecutive days the torture continued ; in t«ro other Mohawk towns they subsequently endured a repetition of their sufferings. Yet throughout Jogues encouraged his fellowcountrymen, converted some of the Huron prisoners, and baptised them with his mangled hands. The sequel of his story and his ultimate escape to France are well told by Mr. Parkman. Still Jogues had the heroism to return to Canada. Four years later negotiations were opened with the Iroquois. He was chosen as the French emissary, to act as political agent, and to found a mission, prophetically called the ' Mission of the Martyrs.' For a moment he recoiled, but the weakness was transient. He set out with a presentiment of his death. ' Ibo et non redibo,' he wrote in a farewell letter to a friend. His foreboding was realised. After once more undergoing torture he was mercifully brained with a hatchet. In the heroism of his life and death he was before three years had passed equalled by more than one of his brethren." The writer gives still more horrible details of the torture and death of Fathers Lalemant and Brebeufi The narrative, as we said, is that of one unfriendly towards all that is Catholic, and the traces of this may be found even in what we have quoted. The testimony, however, is all the more valuable, and may be reckoned among the tribute so often unwillingly paid to the Catholic Church and her missionaries by those who are hostile to them,

Historians tell ts that before Adam Smith pubhistory lished his great work, and while as yet the first BEpK AT s principles of political economy were unknown, ITSELF ? commercial jealousy was a frequent cause of

quarrels among nations. It was then believed that a people's wealth consisted in their gold, and the object of every country was that its neighbours should be obliged so to deal with it as to increase the riches it coveted — or at least not to deprive it of them — and hence statesmen not nnfrequently proposed a declaration of war. It is al-o noted that, the true principle of barter being once established, commerce has been conducive to peace. We. however Bee tbat in many instances history repeats itself, and it is not altogether impossible for speculative minds to believe that this in question may be among them. We do not mean that the old mistaken notion shall be revived and men once more suppose that all their wealth consists in their gold, but there seems to be some indication that a time is approaching at which commercial jealousy may once more become a prominent cause of discord. Nations, in fact, appear to be in some danger of rivalling one another in similar productions, so i hat the difficulty of finding a market may produce all the evil results that of old were occasioned by the determination to prevent the emission of gold or to secure its coming in. Mr. Goschen, for example, in an address delivered by him at Manchester described very strikingly certain changes that have taken place and which have placed England in a different relationship towards the markets of the world from that formerly occupied by her. " Take our coal Bupply," he said, for example. " I ask myeelf how is the supply in foreign countries proceeding ? 1 know that there was a considerable increase of coal-mining in Germany. " I examined the figures, and what did I find ? That in 1861 the production of coal in Germany was 18,000,000 tons. In this country it was, I think, 80,000,000 tons in that year. The German production has now increased to 72,000,000 tons, while the production in England has increased to 160,000,000 tons. We have, therefore, doubled our output of coal, while Germany has quadrupled hers. These are serious figures which it is right should be put before the public. Why, indeed, should they be concealed 1 We have thus lost something of our supremacy, something of the advantage we owed to coal, and we also find it out in the iron trade. Continental competition abroad is shown by the fact tbat between 1880 and 1883 the total exports from Germany have increased from 992,000 tons to 1,233,000 tons, or 25 per cent, and the exports of steel have increased from 62,000 tons to 203,000 tons. I will not push this argument, as I have already detained you

go long, but you see that both in coal and iron the Continent has been gaining on us. And I believe you are aware that, as regards your own industry, while you have been increasing in the consumption of cotton, while you have increased your production of cotton, that increase has been relatively much larger both in Germany and the United States (hear, hear). Supposing yon are doing well, other countries have been in some branches of trade making more progress, and why should they not ? That is a point which this country ought to understand. You can beat the foreigner to a certain extent, but you will not have the same advantages if be increases in intelligence and in the command over coal," There are, therefore, the manifest signs of a rivalry that mast prove more or less dangerous as the nature of mankind shall be found to have, or not to have, improved since those days when commercial jealousy was the common cause of war. And, indeed, according to some authorities, it is jealousy that is, in truth, at the bottom of the advance of Russia towards the frontiers of India with all the menace that it involves. Prince Krapotkine, for instance, assures us that it is the desire to secure a port on the Indian Ocean, whence the trade to which Russia aspires may be briskly carried on, that has more than anything else been her actuating motive, and he adds that she will surely pursue her object to the end.— Germany's aggressive movements, moreover, in Africa and the Pacific have had no other object than that of providing for the markets that her commercial future will demand, and already we have seen that she is not inclined to stick at trifles in accomplishing her designs.— We may also take as ominous Lord Rosebery's recent allusion to the earth, hunger that now possesses nations, and against which he warns Anstralian statesmen especially to be on their guard . Mr. Goschea's hope, meantime, for English trade lies principally in the Britieh colonies. — He bids his countrymen persevere in their attempt to maintain their commercial supremacy, and gives them some grounds to expect that they may maintain an advantage over foreign countries, particularly as arising from the protective policy of certain of those countries. He, however, does not place very much reliance on this, but looks chiefly to the teeming millions, that are to be, of the colonies, to consume the goods produced by the millions in Great Britain. — But what, of our colonial industries ? Are these to remain wholly in abeyance, or must they languish in order that we may afford a market to the British producer? — One of Mr, Forster's arguments indeed, for federation with the old Country would seem also to imply as much, and he even hints at the possibility of the Imperial Government's forbidding colonial legislatures to impose protection tariffs, although he admits that the exercise of such a power is hardly to be thought of. The fact remains nevertheless, that without industries the Colonies will never arrive at their full development, and we may doubt as to whether even consideration for the interests of Great Britain will finally avail to check the enterprise of these communities. We see meantime, how other causes besides a mistaken Motion as to the nature of wealth may give rise to commercial jealousy, and, perhaps, we shall find in the long run that the world and the character of mankind have not altered so much for the better as some philosophers would have us to believe.

The march of secularism on the continent of A Belgian Europe seems to be exciting alarm in the minds of LiBEfiAL men of all parties and degree— even those who condemns might be supposed most indifferent as to the interests secularism, of religion generally, as, for example, M. Jules

Simon, or those of moat pronounced partisanship against the Catholic Cnurch as M. Emile de Laveleye, can no longer conceal their sense of the evil. — M. de Laveleye, especially, the constant opponent of everything Catholic, and a member of the Belgian Liberal party, deserves the attention of the Protestant and Free* thinking world. He writes as follows in the Revue Chrltienne, an Evangelical organ published in Paris, and we owe our extract to our contemporary V Eclio de la France Catholique of Noumea. — " The Liberal writer describes in these terms the consequences of the laicisation of the schools. ' Morality without roots in the belief in God and the immortality of the soul, the vague and vacillating sentiment of gijod and evil, without any practice to awaken in us the concioosness of our imperfection and the aspiration towards an ideal of the True and the Just, in a word human nature given up, in an irremediable isolation, to its earthly instincts, can it walk straight and accomplish its high destinies ? Doubtless the animal Bpecies, directed by instinct, subsist and perpetuate themselves, while they pursue the gratification of their appetites. Savages live almost in the same way without the ideas of duty, and of another life exercising a great influence over their actions ; but their existence also is that of the brute ; they fight unceasingly for the prey, and the strongest is the best offWhat would become of our communities which rest upon respect for law, if the feeling of duty and the idea of justice were to disappear? Would not atheism, become universal, conscious, publicly avowed and taught everywhere, bring us back inevitably to the barbarism of prehistoric times ? 'M. de Laveleye avows besides, that, ' in fact, to-day, for the great mass of men it is by the teaching of rtligion

that that of morality is given. Ihe ministers of the forms of worship are those alone who speak to the people of duty and morality.' M. de Leveleye ends his article by bringing the liberals face to face with this inevitable alternative : ' Proscribe religious instruction, and you will meet with the invincible resistance of the majority of families, and if you were completely to succeed, you would kill religion, and consequently yon would weaken the moral sentiment, and in consequence of that, th e aptitude of the nation to live free.' " But let us add for our own part, that in New Zealand the majority of families, to their shame, accept the proscription of religions instruction without any resistance and even willingly. M. de Leveleye, however, although a Protestant and a Liberal has been accustomed to countries where the majority of families are Catholic, and it is of them he speaks.

We have been frequently told, and Lord Harting-

FOOLISH ton has lately repeated the tale once more, that, in MENACES, event of its being found impossible to overcome

the Irish Parliamentary party in any other way, a combination would be formed against them by the other sections in the House The threat, nevertheless, has been a transparent one, and has hardly deserved defiance or contradiction. We find its worth well explained, for example, in a review of the situation given by Macmillan's Magazine for July. It runs as follows :—": — " A second point that cannot escape attention in the crisis, is the peremptory dissipation of favourite illusions as to the Irish vote • not counting.' The notion that two English parties should establish an agreement that, if either of them should chance to be beaten by a majority due to Irish auxiliaries, the victors should act as if they had lost the division, has been cherished by some who are not exactly simpletons in politics. We now see what such a notion is worth. It has proved to be worth just as much as might have been expected by any onlooker who knows the excitement of the players, the fierceness of the game and the irresistible glitter of the prizes. When it suits their own purpose, the two English parties will unite to baffle or to crush the Irish, but neither of them will ever scruple to use the Irish in order to baffle or to crush their own rivals. This fancy must be banished to the same limbo as the similar dream that Ireland could be disfranchised and reduced to the rank of a Crown colony. Three years ago, when Ireland was violently disturbed, and the Irish members were extremely troublesome, this fine project of governing Ireland like India was a favourite consolation, even to some Liberals who might have been expected to know better. The absurdity of the design, and the shallowness of those who were captivated by it, were swiftly exposed. A few months after they had been consoling themselves with the idea of taking away the franchise from Ireland, they all voted for a measure which extended the franchise to several hundreds of thousands of the inhabitants of Ireland who had not possessed it before, and who are not at all likely to employ their new power in the direction of Crown colonies, or martial law, or any of the other random panaceas of thoughtless and incontinent politicians. As for the new Government, sharp critics — and some of the sharpest are to be found on their own benches do not shrink from declaring that they came into power as Mr. Parnell's lieutenants. His vote has installed them, it can displace them ; it has its price and the price will be paid. In the whole transaction, the Irish not only count ; they almost count for everything." But as to the justification of the work that has been undertaken and is being 60 well done by the Irish party, the writer speaks in this suggestive manner. " The present crisis has brought into view a far more arnaiing example of the political levity with which we handla Irish difficulties. A fortnight ago the imperative necessity of renewing the Crimes Act or some portions of it was one of the firmest articles of belief among Conservative peers and members of Parliament, and for that matter, among the bulk of Liberal peers and members too. With the exception of a few members on the extreme left, and Lord Randolph Churchill and one or two of his band, the whole of the English and Scotch parties were intent on renewing exceptional legislation. Mr. Gladstone had announced a Bill reviving some ' valuable and equitable provisions' of the Crimes Act. When he fell, it was almost universally expected that Lord Salisbury would make the renewal of the Crimes Act one of the subjects on which he would require assurances of support from his predecessors. In a few hours it became known that, if he should come into power, he would let the Crimes Act drop, and trust to the vigorous execution of the ordinary law. The decision, if it be acted upon , is a very sensible one. But what are we to say of the motive that had notoriously and undeniably prompted it ? If the Gladstone Government bad failed to propose a revival of this exceptional legislation, it is notorious and undeniable that they would have provoked the most energetic and persistent declaration that their policy meant nothing less than a winter of murder and outrage in Ireland. We may assume that the gentlemen who talked in this way were, and would have been, sincere. Then what are we to think of the political morality which deliberately accepts a policy that avowedly, in their judgment, leads to a winter of murder and outrage ? The levity of

all this matches the levity of 1846. In January 1846, the Peelite Government declared the necessity for a Coercion Bill to be urgent. But they took no steps whatever to secure the measure that was so urgently needed nntil June. Then in Jnne the Whigs turned Peel out, on the principle of Non-Coercion. Having thus triumphantly established the principle, and got themselves into office on the strength of it, they straightway forgot what manner of men they were, and before they had been a month in power brought in a Coercion Bill of their own. So consistently is Ireland made the shuttle-cock of English parties." — The country, however, that should consent to be made such a shuttle-cock must be one of slaves, and of men deserving to continue as slaves. To the honour of Ireland be it recorded that she has never given her consent to any such condition, but has all along resisted it strongly. Her most hopeful resistance being that in which she is now engaged, and against which all the efforts made so far have proved in Tain, as all the threat! have proved, and as we believe are destined to prove, empty and absurd. .

Hebe is a paragraph belonging to the great ProA suspicious, testant Tradition which we have clipped from out statement, contemporary the Otago Daily Times :— " It it said

that one-fourth of all" the property ia Ecuador belongs to the church. There is a Catholio church for every 150 of the inhabitants, and 10 per cent, of the population of the country are pries+s, monks, or nuns. Besides this, 272 of the 365 days of the year are observed as feast or fast days. The priests control the Government in all its branches. Seventy-five per cent of the people can neither read nor write." We are not told by whom all this is said, but certain of its sentences seem to have proceeded out of the

lips of those members of the secret societies who also abound at Quito, who a few years ago murdered in broad daylight the Catholic President Garcia Moreno, and who certainly do not reckon among any of the divisions of 150 inhabitants each for whom church-room is required. There may. nevertheless, be that number stated of priests and monks and nuns, and, if so, the fact is hopeful for the ultimate fortune of the State and the defeat of Freemasonry that is so much to be desired. There can hardly be so many fast days and feast days observed, for such a number is quite out of proportion with that en. joined by the Church, and it is not likely that any marked departure

from the general rule is made in Ecuador. The sting of the paragraph is, however, and is intended to be, where it is asserted that under the control of the priests so large a per centaga of the people are illiterate. The fact is that since it is no longer possible without effectual contradiction to make statements of the kind concerning Catholic countries that are more prominent, those who desire to calumniate the priesthood with regard to education are obliged to bring forward the examples of remote places concerning which very

little is known. — We confess that for our part we know very little of Ecuador, beyond the fact that like all the South American republics it is a hot bed of infidelity and Freemasonry, which, however, fortunately did not succeed as they attempted in gaining the upper hand com" pletely and subjecting everything to their sway by the assassination of Moreno. But we have the authority of Humboldt for denying that the country is notably illiterate — " It appeared to me," he says* " that a strong tendency to the study of science prevailed at Mexico and Santa Fe da Bogota ; more taste for literature and whatever can charm an ardent and lively imagination at Quito and Lima." We may, moreover, quote the same authority as suggesting that the ecclesiastics of South America are not a class of men necessarily to be looked upon as tha patrons of ignorance or intolerance. Take the following for instance : " We were received with great hospitality by the monks of Caripe ... I was lodged in the cell of the Superior which contained a pretty good collection of books. . . . It seemed as if the progress of knowledge advanced even in the forests of America. The youngest of the capuchin monks of the last mission had brought with him a Spanish translation of Chaptal'a Treatise on Chemistry and he intended to study this work in the solitude where he was destined to pass the remainder of his days. — During our long abode in the missions of South America we never perceived any signs of intolerance. The monks of Caripe were not ignorant that I was born in the Protestant part of Germany. Furnished as I was with orders from) the Court of Spain I had no motives to conceal from them this fact ; nevertheless no mark of distrust, no indiscreet queition, no attempt at controversy, ever diminished the value of the hospitality they exercised with so much liberality and frankness." These statements then of so renowned a traveller are

out of keeping with that contained in the paragraph we have alluded

to, and might serve to discredit it, even were it not palpably the testimony of an enemy, and probably of an enemy speaking whollj at random concerning a subject of which he knew nothing whatever.

We perceive that the members of the Dunedin GIVE hub ALL Parliamentary Union are engaged in a debate as to HBB DUE. conferring upon woman her rights with regard to

the franchise. Why is it denied, however, that where physical strength it required woman is also capable of

holding her own with man ? One of the hon. members makes such a denial while he asserts that in every other case woman has excelled. We have, it seems, female poets who are superior to Shakespeare and Milton ; female philosophers, who put to shame Plato, Locke, and Berkeley ; female orators, who out-do Demosthenes, or Burke, or G rattan ; female historians who cast into the shade Gibbon, or Arnold, or Grote ; and we may expect to have physicians who shall stultify Abernethy's memory ; engineers who shall dwarf the records of Lesseps ; lawyers who shall obliterate all traces of those who have followed their calling, from Papinian to Tim Healy, and so on. Far be it from us to deny anything of the kind, and we shall content ourselves with confessing our ignorance of the names of any of those fair ones who have hitherto so distinguished themselves. — put is it not stopping a little short of the goal to deny to woman the power of also distancing man in those professions that are commonly considered to demand physical strength. Is not the profession of arms, for example, such a profession, and has not woman already distinguished herself in that — nay, does sh e not continue to so distinguish herself daily. Is there not present with us the memory of Penthesilea, " Penthesilea f urens," who was only overcome at the hands of Achilles, the greatest of all the heroes of antiquity, and who so beset her foe in the conflict that as the legend gives U9 to understand, he had not time to remark her beauty until he had slain her. The beauty of a woman in conflict, however, is frequently overlooked. Had there not been before Penthesilea's time the brave Hippolyte, who, as we know, combined the dove with the vulture, and could stoop her martial mind to pity the loving folly of Pyramus. Was there not also Semiramis, who took chief part in many warlike expeditions, and on one notable occasion gave full proof of the spirit that was in her by leaving her toilet halfperformed, and refusing to have her hair completely dressed, until, in such a state of deshabille, she had witnessed the termination of a fray. Here was indeed an illustration of the female spirit of war at its highest pitch— and its greatest effort of devotion. Was there not, again, in later times Boadicea whose indignation accompanied her even to the altars of her country's god 9 ? We shrink from speaking of Joan of Arc, because her case savours, in the nostrils of the period, of superstition, and the woman of progress would scorn to accept her as a model. But why should we linger among the ancients ? Is not lovely woman foremost in the fight— at this very day. It is but a few months since an Indian prince offered to place at the disposal of the British Government for service in the threatened war with Russia his body-guard of Amazons, and he was as fully persuaded of their formidable powers as if every one of them had been his better half. And, then what shall be said of the favourite troops of Dahomey? " These female warriors," the correspondent of a London newspaper says, " are more ferocious than their military brethren." — Why, if there is one thing more than another proved beyond the possibility of contradiction it is the admirable qualificacations for the military life that lovely woman possesses, And if physical strength be among these qualifications as shown by the barbarian or the savage, it will certainly be found to qualify the woman of civilisation, for the civilised being is known to be physically superior to the uncivilised. We propose, then, that the advocates of woman's rights should refraia from cutting short their advocacy. Let them no longer describe her as in any respect inferior to man. Physically as mentally ehe is sure to excel if only the trial be made and until it is made she is restricted ia her just privileges.