in all things that he can, would if allowed, German than French, his domestic habits become the most loyal and long-suffering are German, by origin he belongs to the of his subjects. While the Red Indian fights to the death, and the Hindoo looks on his conqueror with half-amused irritation, the negro is ready to stand and die by the white man's side. The relation is the more extraordinary, because under the same circumstances the negro did not maintain it either with Frenchmen or with Spaniards. The moment he had the chance, he killed his masters in St. Domingo, while the great war of American emancipation was unmarked by a single massacre, or indeed by a single rising of any but the smallest importance. German people, but his imagination is with the French. Theirs is the only kind of liberty he has ever had, theirs the only glory he has ever shared, theirs the only administration which has seemed to him efficient, and he cannot consent to be robbed of his ideal. This generation may be enriched by the transfer, or made happier, or become more enlightened; but Germany will never be to them what France is, an ideal possession, rather than lose which a man may be content to die, something which so satisfies his imagination that merely to possess it sweetens We know of no more perplexing cir- life. The regard of the Irishman and the cumstance in the whole history of race Pole for France is inspired by the same than the relation of the Negro to the cause. Something in the history of American, and are half inclined to suspect France, in her national character, in her that in it must be sought the general ex- ideal of life, satisfies the Irishman and the planation of the attractiveness of races. Pole as no other form of greatness ever Is it not this, that men, whatever their does, and he turns from England or Ras ia origin, or their language, or their circum- to France with the feeling with which men stances, are attracted towards any nation who hate mountains turn to the far less picwhose character or attitude in the world turesque plains, with a feeling of content or ideal of life satisfies their imagina- and relief. They are great races, these tion? The Hindoo does not like or ad- English and Russ, but their greatness is mire the British ideal, does not wish, if he not the greatness which entices, or awe, may choose for himself, to become an Eng- or excites him, and he turns away with his lishman, and while yielding at every turn longing still unsatisfied. Three races as to his power, and on many subjects to his different from one another in race, habits, influence, never acknowledges, consciously and language as it is possible for races to or unconsciously, his attractiveness, never be, are linked together by a tie which we quite gets rid of the sense that he is bow- can only describe as a sympathy of the ing before a barbarian. If Hindostan imagination. It is because the Teutonic were like England, it would be a very imagination, and therefore his ideal of life, detestable place, that is his feeling, is so special, so separate, and to an outavowed or secret, and he can therefore at sider so unintelligible, that he alone among best be quiescent under English rule. mankind, unless, indeed, the Spaniard The negro, on the contrary, would give shares his unenviable isolation, attracts the world to be a white man, is as proud no affection from any other race; that, as the white of his citizenship, thinks the ruling all races, and incessantly in interStates the finest country on earth, and course with all, he has never throughout shares to an almost comic degree in the his long history found a devoted ally. In prejudices of his former master. He con- Poland, in Ireland, in India, in the semiceives of no state of society more satis- Spanish States of America, the very men factory than a free South would be, and is who serve him are potential rebels, and he ready therefore, if fairly treated to be- has found but one follower, the negro come a loyal citizen. The Irishman, on whom he oppresses, and who with every the contrary, is not ready. He is haunted race but the Anglo-Saxon has isolated by an ideal which no Anglo-Saxon people himself by arms. can satisfy, and which therefore makes him consider loyalty to them, and still more absorption in them, as degradation. The kind of goodness he appreciates, the kind of greatness he admires, the kind of destiny he seeks is not the Anglo-Saxon, and no amount of justice, or kindliness, or equality ever completely reconciles him to his fate. The Alsatian, again, is reconciled. His language is more akin to From The Saturday Review. GREAT GIRLS. NOTHING is women than the between them. number of years more distinctive among difference of relative age Two women of the same will be substantially of different epochs of life-the one faded in | of manner a little less persistent. But person, wearied in mind, fossilized in sym- even now, with a big boy at Eton, and a pathy; the other fresh both in face and daughter whose presentation is not so far feeling, with sympathies as broad and keen off, she is younger than her staid and melas they were when she was in her first ancholy sister, her junior by many years, youth, and perhaps even more so; with a who has gone in for the Immensities and brain still as receptive, a temper still as the Worship of Sorrow, who thinks laugheasy to be amused, as ready to love, as ter the sign of a vacant mind, and that to quick to learn, as when she emerged from be interesting and picturesque a woman the school-room to the drawing-room. The must be mournful and have à defective dione you suspect of understating her age gestion. Her sister looks as if all that by half-a-dozen years or more when she makes life worth living for lay behind her, tells you she is not over forty, the other and only the grave beyond; she, the great makes you wonder if she has not over- girl, with her bright face and even temper, stated hers by just so much when she believes that her future will be as joyous laughingly confesses to the same age. as her present, as innocent as her past, The one is an old woman who seems as if as full of love, and as purely happy. she had never been young, the other "just She has known some sorrows truly, a great girl yet," who seems as if she and she has gained experience such as would never grow old; and nothing is comes only through the rending of the equal between them but the number of heart-strings; but nothing that she has days each has lived. passed through has seared or soured her, and if it has taken off just the lighter edge of her girlishness it has left the core as bright and cheery as ever. She is generally of the style called "elegant," and wonderfully young in mere physical appearance. Perhaps sharp eyes might spy out here and there a little silver thread among the soft brown hair; and when fatigued or set in a cross light, lines not quite belonging to the teens might be traced about her eyes and mouth; but in favourable conditions, with her graceful figure advantageously draped, and her fair face flushed and animated, she looks just a great girl, no more, and she feels as she looks. It is well for her if her husband is a wise man, and more proud of her than jealous, for he must submit to see her admired by all the men who know her, according to their individual manner of expressing admiration; but as purity of nature and singleness of heart belong to her qualification for great girlishness, he has no cause for alarm, and she is as safe with Don Juan as with St. Anthony. This kind of woman, so fresh and active, so intellectually as well as emotionally alive, is never anything but a girl; never loses some of the sweetest characteristics of girlhood. You see her first as a young wife and mother, and you imagine she has left the school-room for about as many months as she has been married years. Her face has none of that untranslatable expression, that look of robbed bloom, which experience gives; in her manner is none of the preoccupation so observable in most young mothers, whose attention never seems wholly given to the thing on hand, and whose hearts seem always full of a secret care or an unimparted joy. Brisk and airy, braving all weathers, ready for any amusement, interested in the current questions of history or society, by some wonderful faculty of organizing seeming to have all her time to herself as if she had no house cares and no nursery duties, yet these somehow not neglected, she is the very ideal of a happy girl roving through life as through a daisy field, on whom sorrow has not yet laid its hand, and to whose lot has fallen no Dead Sea apple. And when one hears her name and style for the first time as a matron, and sees her with two or three sturdy little fellows hanging about her slender neck and calling her mamma, one feels as if nature had somehow made a mistake, and our slim and simple-mannered damsel had only made-believe to have taken up the serious burdens of life, and was nothing but a great girl after all. Grown older she is still the great girl she was ten years ago, if her type of girlishness is a little changed and her gaiety These great girls, being middle-aged matrons, are often seen in the country; and one of the things which most strike a Londoner is the abiding youthfulness of this kind of matron. She has a large family, the elders of which are grown up, but she has lost none of the beauty for which her youth was noted, though it is now a different kind of beauty; and she has still the air and manners of a girl. She blushes easily, is shy and sometimes apt to be a little awkward, though always sweet and gentle; she knows very little of real life and less of its vices; she is pitiful to sorrow, affectionate to her friends, who how ever are few in number, and strongly at-lations. She is romantic too, and has her tached to her own family; she has no the- dreams and memories of early days; when ological doubts, no scientific proclivities, her eyes grow moist as she looks at her and the conditions of society and the husband, the first and only man she ever family do not perplex her; she thinks loved, and the past seems to be only part Darwinism and the protoplasm dangerous of the present. The experience which she innovations, and the doctrine of Free Love must needs have had serves only to make with Mrs. Cady Stanton's development is her more gentle, more pitiful, than the orsomething too shocking for her to talk dinary girl, who is naturally inclined to be about; she lifts her calm clear eyes in a little hard; and of all her household she wonder at the wild proceedings of the is the kindest and the most intrinsically shrieking sisterhood, and cannot for the sympathetic. She keeps up her youth for life of her make out what all this tumult the children's sake she says, and they love means, and what the women want. For her more like an elder sister than the traherself, she has no doubts whatever, no ditional mother. They never think of her moral uncertainties. The path of duty is a old, for she is their constant companion, as plain to her as the words of the Bible, and can do all that they do. She is fond and she loves her husband too well to wish of exercise, is a good walker, an active to be his rival, or to desire an individual- climber, a bold horsewoman, and a great ized existence. She is his wife, she says; promoter of picnics and open-air amuseand that seems more satisfactory to her ments. She looks almost as young as her than to be herself a somebody in the full eldest daughter in a cap and with covered light of notoriety, with him in the shade shoulders; and her sons have a certain as her appendage. If she is inclined to be playfulness in their pride and love for her intolerant to any one, it is to those who which makes them more her brothers than seek to disturb the existing state of things, her sons. Some of them are elderly men or whose speculations unsettle men's before she has ceased to be a great girl; minds; those who, as she thinks, entangle for she keeps her youth to the last by virthe sense of that which is clear and tue of a clear conscience, a pure mind, and straightforward enough if they would but a loving nature. She is wise too in her leave it alone, and by their love of icono-generation, and takes care of her health clasm run the risk of destroying more than idols. But she is intolerant only because she believes that when men put forth false doctrines they put them forth for a bad purpose, and to do intentional mischief. Had she not this simple faith, which no philosophic questionings have either enlarged or disturbed, she would not be the great girl she is; and what she would have gained in catholicity she would have lost Then there are great girls of another in freshness. For herself, she has no self-kind- women who, losing the sweetness asserting power, and would shrink from of youth, do not get in its stead the digany kind of public action; but she likes to nity of maturity; who are fretful, impavisit the poor, and is sedulous in the mat-tient, undisciplined, knowing no more of ter of tracts and flannel-petticoats, vexing themselves or human nature than they did the souls of the sterner, if wiser, guardians and magistrates by her generosity, which they affirm only encourages idleness and creates pauperism. She cannot see it in that light. Charity is one of the cardinal virtues of Christianity, and accordingly These are the women who charitable she will be, in spite of all that will not get old, and who consequently do political economists may say. She be- not keep young; who, when they are fifty, longs to her family, they do not belong to dress themselves in gauze and rosebuds, her; and you seldom hear her say "I and think to conceal their years by a judiwent," or "I did," it is always "we";cious use of many paint-pots and the libwhich, though a small point, is a signifi- erality of the hairdresser; who are jealcant one, showing how little she holds to ous of their daughters, whom they keep anything like an isolated individuality, and back as much and as long as they can, and how entirely she feels a woman's life to terribly aggrieved at their irrepressible belong to and be bound up in her home re-six feet of sonship; women who have a by means of active habits, fresh air, cold water, and a sparing use of medicines and stimulants; and if the dear soul is proud of anything it is of her figure, which she keeps trim and elastic to the last, and of the clearness of her skin, which no heated rooms have soddened, no accustomed strong waters have rendered clouded or bloated. when they were nineteen, yet retaining nothing of that innocent simplicity, that single-hearted freshness and joyousness of nature, which one does not wish to see disturbed even for the sake of a deeper knowledge. spoiling their pretty faces in the schoolroom a couple of years beyond their time, that mamma may still believe the world takes her to be under thirty yet - and young at that. From The Economist. THE POLITICAL RESULT OF THE ELECTIONS TO THE METROPOLITAN SCHOOL BOARD. trick of putting up their fans before their the reason why so many daughters of faces as if they were blushing, who give great girls of this type make such notoriyou the impression of flounces and ring- ously early- and bad-matches; and lets, and who flirt by means of much why, when once married, they are never laughter and a long-sustained giggle; who seen in society again. Grandmaternity talk incessantly, yet have said nothing to and girlishness scarcely fit in well tothe purpose when they have done; and gether, and rosebuds are a little out of who simper and confess they are not place when a nursery of the second degree strong-minded but only "an awfully silly is established. There are scores of wolittle thing" when you try to lead the con- men fluttering through society at this moversation into anything graver than fash-ment whose elder daughters have been ion and flirting. They are women who socially burked by the friendly agency of never learn repose of mind or dignity of a marriage almost as soon as, or even bemanner; who never lose their taste for fore, they were introduced, and who are mindless amusements, and never acquire therefore no longer witnesses against the one for nature or quiet happiness; and hairdresser and the paint-pots; and there who like to have lovers always hanging are scores of these same marriageable about them -men for the most part daughters eating out their hearts and younger than themselves, whom they call naughty boys, and tap playfully by way of rebuke. They are women unable to give young girls any kind of advice on prudence or conduct, mothers who know nothing of children, mistresses ignorant of the alphabet of housekeeping, wives whose husbands are merely the bankers, and most probably the bugbears, of the establishment; women who think it horrible to get old, and who resent the idea as a personal injury, and to whom, when you talk of spiritual peace or intellectual pleasures, you are as unintelligible as if you were THE general result of the great experidiscoursing in the Hebrew tongue. As a ment tried in the election of the Metropoliclass they are wonderfully inept, and their tan School Board must be highly satisfachands are practically useless, save as ring-tory to its authors. It has settled several stands and glove-stretchers. For they very dubious questions, and settled them can do nothing with them, not even frivo- in favour of the opinions which they enterlous fancy-work; they read only novels, and one of the marvels of their existence is what they do with themselves in those hours when they are not dressing, flirting, or paying visits. If they are of a querulous and nervous type, their children fly from them to the furthest corners of the house; if they are molluscous and goodnatured, they let themselves be manipulated, up to a certain point, but always on the understanding that they are only a few years older than their daughters; almost all these women, by some fatality peculiar to themselves, having married when they were about fifteen, and having given birth to progeny with the uncomfortable property of looking about half a dozen years older than they are. This accounts for the phenomenon of a girlish matron of this kind, dressed to represent first youth, with a sturdy black-browed débutante by her side, looking, you would swear to it, of full majority if a day. Her only chance is to get that black-browed tell-tale married out of hand; and this is can tain, or rather which they think may outside London - who offered himself | much religious and sectarian feeling, alor herself was elected. The Board, as a though it was protracted through long whole, is as much superior to any ordinary hours of darkness, and although those who Vestry or Board of Guardians as the House voted were at least as much interested as of Commons is to any considerable Town they are in a metropolitan contest, no Council is possibly better than it would election has ever been so peaceful. There have been had Mr. Forster or the Premier was neither rioting, confusion, nor drinknominated its members. Every grade in society, from the peer to the stonemason, is represented-every creed, from the Catholic to the secularist, both sexes, and nearly every form of thought upon the immediate work in hand. The Board, at the same time, is not a mere group of notabilities, who would have attempted to try plans a little too intellectual to content a community always unwilling to like anything it does not clearly understand. At least thirty members of the Board are average citizens of the better class, sharing most of the opinions of those around them, but more ready to receive new ideas, and less unwilling to be led by the few men of decided eminence among them. Such a Board is sure not to get quite out of relation with its constituents, and yet sure to be a little in advance of them, which is just the position a wise Minister of Education would desire such a Board to occupy. On religion it is sure to be unsectarian, while sure not to offend the majority by avowed secularism, and to allow a fair hearing to crochets without permitting them to interfere with the daily work of the department. Of business capacity of all kinds the Board has sufficient, though we could have wished it had not lost the aid of Sir Sydney Waterlow, while it includes five or six minds of striking and original power. If we could get such a Board for the general government of London, we might safely relieve Parliament of that oppressive task; while it has become clear that the best device to secure such a Board is to throw London into one, to change the "Metropolitan District" into the Metropolis. Considering the enormous importance and at the same time the inevitableness of that change, it is most advantageous to have obtained such light as is furnished by the election of the common School Board. It is clear that the heterogenous and disconnected masses of persons who inhabit the London districts" can, if sufficiently interested, discover and elect persons competent to represent their interests and their convictions. ing. No one knew how the election was going, and consequently no one felt any interest in drawing or coaxing away electors who, for aught they knew, might be intending to vote upon their side. So perfect was the order that thousands of female ratepayers of all classes voted in perfect comfort, and the election was marked by a most unequal attendance of citizens of the best class, and of the élite of the working men-two sets of persons whose votes are most desirable, who are unusually competent to vote, but who are apt to a blameworthy degree to avoid scenes of violence or confusion. On the other hand, the result of the contest will do wonders to remove a secret fear which has greatly impeded the adoption of the ballot. We venture to say that two out of three of the opponents of that method of voting oppose it under an impression that it would bring out the secret grudges of the community - that the "masses," relieved of all pressure, even from opinions, would indulge a secret spite by voting down all candidates more prosperous than themselves. The very reverse has been the case. Of the two peers who offered themselves, one, Lord Lawrence, was safe from the first; and the other, although a Catholic, was within an ace of election. And of the two peers' sons, one was returned by a heavy vote, and the other rejected, we believe, only from a defect of organization in his party. Almost all members who stood were elected, Lord E. Fitzmaurice being the only exception. The typical professor, Mr. Huxley, a man recommended only by his scientific reputation, stood high on the list. Clergymen of all denominations were readily returned; and there seems to have been a positive burst of enthusiasm in favour of two lady candidates, both of whom belong decidedly to the cultivated class. The extraordinary position of Miss Garrett, who heads the poll not only in Marylebone, but in London, she having received 20,000 more votes than the next highest candidate throughout the Metropolis, is due, no doubt, in part to the cumulative The next subject of experiment was the vote, and the remarkable interest taken in working of the ballot, and on this point the her personal career; but it must also in working of the experiment is satisfactory. part be due to an honest desire for justice, The use of the ballot decidedly promoted a distinct feeling, as one worthy voter reorder. Although the election excited marked, that, "as half the critturs were 66 |