which is continuously widening the breach between the official Church and the French nation. Apart from all specific occasions of offence on the one side or on the other, the sense of an involuntary and fated alienation divides them increasingly from year to year.

The national life of France is more consciously directed towards the future than that of any other community in what we call Eastern civilization. It may fall short of the standard of energy which is set by the Americans, or the Germans, or the English. But it knows more clearly than they what it aims at, what ideal ends it desires its energy to serve. France is still the great nation of idealists. The French Church is idealist, just as is the French nation. But the Church entertains the ideal of an attained standard of perfection which can be applied almost mechanically, at any rate by a clear process of moral deduction which it is authorized and fully competent to apply, to all possible needs and circumstances of life. The French nation, on the other hand, has realized more clearly than any other the modern conception of life as a struggle towards perfection on terms which can only be discovered in living. It is this hostility between two opposite idealisms which seems insuperable, as the accidental hostility which may accompany rivalry in consentient effort need not be. The only hope for the recovered influence of the Church upon the life of France is that it should learn to abandon an idealism which looks towards the past, and to believe that even that idealism to which it is pledged must be fulfilled through all the hazards of a forward-looking faith and activity. It is just that hope which Modernism in all its phases has espoused, and, in spite of all official rebukes and condemnations, still secretly and patiently cherishes.

III.

What, then, are the prospects of a recovered influence of Catholicism over the mind and life of France. The answer to that question depends on two factors, about neither of which is it possible to form a very conclusive judgment. It depends on the power of Modernism, or shall we say of some definite and adequate manifestation of the spirit which has been condemned under the name of Modernism, to secure an effective foothold within the traditional Church. And in the second place it depends on the degree in which that idealism, which undoubtedly exists in France and colors the whole French attitude towards life, feels the definite need of a religious impulse and sanction. Perhaps, too, it depends upon a third contingency: viz., whether, on the assumption that a favorable verdict can be delivered on both these points, the two forces will find opportunity to act upon each other within a reasonable period of time.

There can be little doubt that chief importance attaches to the answer which may be given to the second question. The continued influence of every Church is bound up with the effective religious demand of its laity. That, of course, ought to be, though it is not always in fact, a commonplace of the religious situation everywhere. The teaching Church cannot, if it would, impose the belief with which it is entrusted on its own terms. That belief is assimilated by a specific phase of living need, and vitally accommodates itself to that phase. The task of the Church at any moment is even more the evocation of this specific type of religious need than its satisfaction. Once it is evoked, there is but little doubt that it will find its own satisfaction, and find it most abundantly, in the treasures of the Church's spiritual virtues. In France, as everywhere else, the effective lay demand, and that

alone, will make the Modernist spirit in the teaching body of the Church an effective reality. The first of our questions can be answered hopefully only on the condition that we are already satisfied about the hopefulness of the answer to the second.

Now it may be whole-heartedly conceded that with regard to this second point the omens are exceedingly favorable. France, like every other Western country, has already passed through, or is at least rapidly passing out of, the stage of materialistic confidence and religious negation which marked the latter half of the last century. The interest in religion, which was not so long ago a target for general ridicule and contempt, is now spreading rapidly among all the educated classes. And the interest it provokes is not at all the languid interest of an idle intellectual curiosity. On the contrary, it represents the serious and often anxious and painful quest of a solution for problems which are felt as involving the whole value of life. The thinkers who are engaged with these problems command an attention which has astonished no one more than themselves. So rapidly and almost unconsciously has the change of attitude come about.

But still more significant is the nature of the thinker's interest in religion and treatment of religious questions.

For it has brought him near to life, to the actual concrete life which his own countrymen are now living. He no longer dwells apart on some barren height of abstraction, but tries to place himself sympathetically in the midst of the actual struggle in order to extract from it, if he may, what of eternal significance and value it suggests. It may safely be asserted that life and thought are at the present moment being brought into richer and more fruitful relation in France than in any other country of the West.

An

The influence of M. Boutroux and the general revival of interest in the work of Jean Marie Guyau, that youthful genius cut off in his prime so long ago as 1888, and entirely neglected in his lifetime, are among the symptoms of this anxious interest in religion. other is the quiet-I had almost said quietistic-fervor with which the men of the "Union pour la Vérité," with M. Paul Desjardins at their head, have sought for more than twenty years to study in detail the contemporary life of France, and to find the means for informing that life with their own high ideals of life and conduct.

Another feature of the peculiarly French interest in religion, which at first sight seems to us to mark it off as vague and indeterminate, may really be significant of its fulness and depth. We take it for granted when we find the Frenchman dismiss lightly the whole question of the origin of Christianity as a chose jugée that he cannot think of laying claim to the title of Christian. But we are frankly dumfounded when we find the Modernist Catholic apparently untroubled by the most revolutionary conclusions to which the critical study of early Christian literature may seem to point. It is upon just those questions that in England and in Germany the most tenacious attempt is made to defend as far and as long as possible traditional positions. To us such jealousy of historical tradition is a point of honor most closely bound up with the reality of our religious faith. But it need not necessarily, I think, be an evidence of superficiality in the French mind that in its dealings with an historical religion it is inclined to found its conviction of the truth of that religion less upon the accuracy of traditional accounts of its origin than upon its actual power of inspiring life to seek and to find the eternal values in its own passing activities.

The conclusion of the whole matter seems to be this. The French mind even at its freest has not consciously abjured Catholicism. At most it sits loosely to the practices of religion mainly on account of what seems to it the negative attitude of the official Church in its dealings with the world of contemporary action. Yet a new sense of religious need is everywhere making itself felt throughout the national life. On the depth and intensity of this need depends the influence it will be able to exercise on the Church. And that in the end must be the measure of the Church's influence upon it. The Modernist spirit already exists abundantly in the teaching Church, but The Contemporary Review.

it will never be effectively released and justified unless it also exists as an urgent irresponsible demand of the spiritual life of the people. If it does exist there, and of its existence there are even more popular and obvious signs than it has been possible to indicate in this article, one of the most illustrious churches in Christendom, a Church which has been distinguished in the past by its sanity, its breadth, its comparative freedom from the sectarian temper, no less than by its higher qualities of spirit, may again renew its youth and even teach the rest of Christendom how the vigor of spiritual youth may be regained.

A. L. Lilley.

CHAPTER III.

Delia sent a telegram to her uncle saying that she had found a travelling companion, that she would arrive on Friday, and that Martha was not to start on her travels. Then she finished her shopping and went back to the Muggendorfer Strasse. She found Frau von Quint and her sister in the dining-room with a big basket of new washed and dried clothes, which they were folding ready for next day's irons.

"Have you had an agreeable day?" they asked her; and Delia, perching on the arm of an easy chair in a manner they secretly thought unladylike, said that she had had an agreeable day, and that she would not require a room next week for her old nurse.

"But how is that?" asked Frau von Quint, "Can she not come?"

"I have told her not to come," said Delia, "I have met some one else with whom I shall travel."

"Some one else?" "Yes," said Delia.

There was a moment's silence, and then the sisters with an injured airwent on folding clothes. But when Delia left the room they spoke.

"Who can it be?"

"Why does she not tell us who it is? She owes us full information as to her plans while she is in our charge."

"We know every one she knows here, and no one is starting for England next week."

"Perhaps she means to travel alone!" "No, Minnaken, she spoke of a travelling companion. We have never known her say what is untrue."

"As she is still in my charge I consider that it is my duty to ask her if her uncle approves of this new arrangement," said Frau von Quint, and when Delia came in to supper she did ask.

"He has only just got my telegram," said Delia. "If I get no reply I

shall take his approval for granted."

She would not tell them with whom she had arranged to travel because she did not want a torrent of words and expostulations. She knew they would disapprove heatedly, but their disapproval did not count with her. She depended entirely on her own judgment in the matter. As it happened it suited her to take Lydia Jordan back to England, and it suited Lydia extremely well to go. When Delia started for the north of England on Friday they would part and probably never meet again. She had seen nothing in the girl to make her think the short alliance would be unpleasant or undesirable; she had probably allowed August von Quint to make love to her, but there would be no one to make love to her in a Damencoupe erster Klasse between Berlin and Calais. Delia meant to spend one night in London at a quiet hotel she often went to with her uncle, and she had asked Lydia to go there with her; but as she looked forward to the journey she did not expect to know the girl much better at the end of it than at the beginning. She never talked more than she could help in a train, she slept at night, and they would only have one day together.

However, in due course, a telegram arrived from Mr. Butler. "Right. Expect you Friday," and this she showed the ladies for their comfort. They had behaved well to her, and she liked them well enough, though she thought them fussy and foolish. But they were parting on good terms, and Delia had promised to send them other English girls if she could who wished to learn German and music.

"Of course, we're all coming to the station to see you off," they said to her dismay just before she started. "August will be there, too, to take your ticket and get your luggage weighed."

Delia had been long enough in Ger

many to know that this was the established order of things, and that it was useless to object. When Wednesday came she accepted a packet of cakes, a bouquet of flowers, and an album of views of Berlin, but her enjoyment of these parting gifts was a little marred by the flurry of her start. The maid who had been sent for a cab did not arrive with one, and when at last she was seen dawdling back beside a friend she said there was no cab to be had. She was not in the least put out, but Delia and her mistresses were. With despairing appeals to the powers above the two ladies ran in different directions, while Delia took a third one, found a cab, got her luggage on it, collected her companions and frightened the cabman into making haste for once in his life. When they got to the station they found August outside dancing with impatience and anxiety.

"You have hardly three minutes," he said to Delia.

Delia put her purse in his hand. "I want two first-class tickets," she said, "and there will be two lots of luggage to weigh."

"But where is it?" shrieked August von Quint, while his mother and aunt dinned into his ears all about the cab and Louisa's bad behavior and their own anger and exhaustion. He could not attend to a word they said, for the moment really was one of hurry and confusion. The station was crowded, the officials were overwhelmed, the passengers were running here and there with the large pieces of hand-luggage people use abroad to avoid paying weight in the van. August charged through everything and every one, followed closely by Delia, and as they reached the ticket office Lydia joined them.

"I'm here," she said, "and here's my porter with my trunk."

Delia could hardly stop to answer her. They pursued August to the

Au

place for weighing luggage, just saw his amazed and sheepish recognition of Lydia, received their luggage tickets, fled to the train, were bundled into the nearest compartment by a grumbling guard, and only looked out of the window to say good-bye as they began to move slowly out of the station. gust was running along the platform offering Delia her forgotten purse, and as she thanked him she saw afar off the scandalized faces of his mother and aunt. One of them still hugged the farewell bouquet and the other waved the album of Berlin views.

"Oh! I'm so sorry," lied Delia. "Tell them how sorry I am. Good-bye, and thank you for seeing me off."

"Gluckliche Reise-to both ladies," said August von Quint, and as the train got further off he deliberately looked at Lydia and kissed his hand.

"Poor young man," said Lydia, with her cool little smile, and settled herself into her corner. Delia, who had pictured her attached to August von Quint, and unkindly separated from him, was obliged to readjust her ideas.

"Did you hear what Frau von Quint said to me?" Lydia asked a moment later.

"Had she time to speak to you?"

"Oh, yes. the platform as far as she could. 'It is not you who are travelling with Miss Middleton! Impossible! Never would I have allowed it. I should have communicated with her uncle. I should have stopped it. Tell me instantly where you are going, and why you are here?'"

She ran beside me along

"I hope you gave no answer," said Delia.

"I did. I said, 'I'm going to England with Miss Middleton. Good-bye, dear! Then she foamed at the mouth, and called me a serpent."

"But why a serpent?"

"I don't know. She said I was a

serpent and you were a serpent-not to have told her."

Two

"Silly woman!" said Delia, and began to nod. She was not interested in Frau von Quint's unpleasant remarks and did not want them dished up again. The journey was uneventful. German ladies travelled with them all the way and talked to each other incessantly. Delia and Lydia talked very little and, as Delia had foreseen, hardly knew more of one another when they reached Charing Cross than they had done when they left Berlin. Delia had found Lydia a quiet and agreeable travelling-companion, and except during dinner in the restaurant-car she had seen nothing in the girl's behavior to justify Frau von Quint's suggestions. At dinner a young man sitting opposite the girls had looked at both with admiration, and had entered into conversation with Lydia. At first she had answered unwillingly, but before long she was chatting so swiftly in German that Delia could hardly follow what she said. As she talked her whole manner and expression changed and vivified, her smile was gayer, and her eyes flashed with pleasure. Delia was reminded of those outlandish plants that look withered till you put them into water and then instantly live and bloom. Lydia was evidenly one of those women who flag when masculine admiration is wanting, and bloom directly it is given. Little as Delia knew of the world, she knew that women of this temperament were not

uncommon.

The only part of her journey that Delia thought at all adventurous was the night in a London hotel. She felt sure that Mr. Butler had not realized this part of her programme, and that any friends meeting her there would be astonished. But she wanted the night's rest. She went to the Warrington, a quiet hotel, where her uncle and she were well known, and to which