was thus an ugly and a pretty woman in each boat: the men, too, were evenly dis tributed — three to each. The liquid waste around, fretted with myriads of black points, large and small, flecked, too, with flower-like sails a yellow one, a crimson one, a brown with tawny points, a white one glowing steadily upwards into roseate, like an angel's wing; the moun

An ugly, ill-mannered, not even particularly amiable woman! She ought to know her place better - she ought to know how little importance she could by any possibility be to any one! False positions were always cruel ones, and they that had loved her most had therefore, in the end, been the most cruel to her. Well, there was at least no fear that her new sister-inlaw, if she ever did become her sister-in-tains, which began to show stray peaks law, would ever be cruel in this respect! She would have no illusions; no kindly delusions, born of old days and become a sort of family tradition, would ever blind her to the true standing of her husband's sister. She would see the thing in its natural light, and would take care to put her in her proper place! Poor Lady Frances! Her heart, too large for its present setting, stinted of all fresher out growths, driven perforce into one channel, and threatened with assault there, was fast becoming her bane. She was growing morose, bitter, wellnigh misanthropical, and all from pure sisterly love!

The party to the islands met at the Piazzetta, where its straggling ingredients were gradually got together and eventually packed into a couple of gondolas. Their destination, after a good deal of discussion, had been finally fixed for San Francesco in Deserto, where, should the day prove unfavorable, they could lunch at the monastery. The morning had been lovely, but the clouds began to gather before they were well out of Venice, and by the time they were nearing Murano the world of domes and campaniles behind were set in pale relief against a steel-grey background of cloud, darker, denser, more smoke-like masses rolling in from the west, and gathering recruits by the way, until they filled the entire hollow of the sky, down to the furthest most ghostly and worn-away ridge of the Euganeans.

A sail had been hoisted in one gondola, and the two boats were therefore fastened together in order that both might have the benefit of it. The amount of progress, however, was ridiculously small. Slowly they drifted past the point of Murano, whose brown roofs and chimneys seemed to prolong themselves indefinitely. The two awnings were a serious impediment to progress, and now that the sun had gone in, were merely useless encumbrances, their curtains flapping a foolish rhythm against the poles, as the boats swayed from side to side. Lady Frances and Mrs. Markham occupied the places of dignity in one gondola, Madame Facchino and the pretty Miss Fennel in the other. There

above their shroud; the infinite sugges tions of the scene; the stillness, the small bubbling conversational noises of the water, the leisurely flap-flap-flop of the sails, the picturesque attitudes of the boatmen as they lay about or stretched an indolent hand to adjust a rope, all the elements of enjoyment, of intelligent satis. faction, were surely there; yet none of the party seemed to be very industriously employed in enjoying themselves. Mrs. Markham was nearly absolutely silent, contenting herself with an occasional halfmurmured observation to the man nearest to her, with leaning one elbow upon the arm-rests, and looking between her finely chiselled eyelids across the waste of waters. Her rôle was certainly not to be amusing, and no one apparently ever thought of requiring her to be so. Even the colonel a social sheet-anchor generally to his friends- was not in his usual spirits. Although in the right boat, he had, unfortunately, been placed, probably from a mistaken regard to his years, in one of the two-armed chairs at the side of the gondola, which, if several degrees less uncomfortable than the other benches, were also, in this case, naturally several degrees further from the prevailing divinity. It was a relief to every one, when somebody suggested that Madame Facchino should sing one of her amusing French songs, which that obliging little person at once proceeded to do, the shrill little voice, so brimful of chic, so absolutely devoid of charm, pealing like some small metal alarum across the dreamy stillness, where an occasional fish. erman, knee deep in the shallows, lifted his head in mild astonishment to see from whence the unaccountable sound proceeded.

After a great deal of futile tacking, the useless sail was at last dropped, and the men took to their oars, but the tide was very low, and it was therefore necessary to make the entire circuit of the piles set to mark the deeper channels, and which took them in a long succession of snakelike divagations, the advanced boat being often full broadside to the island while

From The Nineteenth Century.

FINLAND: A RISING NATIONALITY.

contemptuous attention which she was ac- | every one seemed tongue-tied, listless, customed to mete out to her devotees. "dull as the fat weed," which swung its Madame Facchino advanced to meet slimy tresses around every projecting her in a state of considerable excitement. point of land, or floated, a mass of brown She had promised, she said, to be at the or yellow putrescence, towards the sea. Bavarian consulate at five o'clock pre- When, hours as it seemed after they had cisely that afternoon, and had only just started, the familiar line of roofs and camdiscovered that it was past four now. As panile rose greyly above the face of the they had taken two hours to come here, it lagune, had the party formed some portion was obviously impossible for her to arrive of the great Dandolo fleet, returning after if she remained with the party; her only its famous but toilsome conquest of the chance, therefore, was to catch the steamer Turks, it could hardly have been hailed at Burano: would dear Lady Frances, by them with a much warmer measure of who was always so kind, allow her to be satisfaction. deposited there? she inquired, clasping her hands with dramatic earnestness. Lady Frances was quite willing to do so, wondering however, rather, that nothing had been heard of this important engagement till then. She did not like to inquire whether anything had been seen of her brother. There was an air about the party which put her sisterly pride upon its mettle, and forbade her to utter a word. They returned to the landing-place, and had already taken their places in the gondolas when the colonel appeared. He had been, it seemed, to inspect the monastery. What had they all been thinking of, he wanted to know, not to do so? The ladies, it is true, would only have been allowed to go as far as the cloisters, but the men were free to go over it all, and it was well worth seeing, really uncommonly worth seeing; he didn't know when he had spent a pleasanter half-hour. The monks, too, were capital fellows he should not mind spending a month with them himself in the least. When he heard of Madame Facchino's intention of returning by the steamer, he at once volunteered to accompany her. He, too, had an appointment, it seemed, at Venice; and going back by the gondola, delightful as it was, really took up such a deuced amount of time. Accordingly the two were left upon the shore at Burano, and the gondolas, with their diminished load, proceeded on their homeward way.

It was not a particularly cheerful homecoming, less so if anything than the outgoing had been. There was no attempt made this time to sail, and the gondolas were not therefore linked together, but followed one another at a little distance, with all the regularity, and not a little of the solemnity, of a pair of mourning coaches. Lady Frances was in the first one, Mrs. Markham in the second; had both been together, it is possible that some more interesting topic might have been mooted in the other; as it was,

NATIONAL questions are not in vogue now in Europe. After having so much exercised the generation of '48, they seem to be now in neglect. The poor results of a movement which caused so many illusions; the new problems that are coming to the front the social problem tak. ing the precedence of all; the prominence recently given to the ideas of unification and centralization above those of territorial independence and federalism, by the sudden growth of a powerful military State in middle Europe, all these have helped to repel into the background those questions of national independence which seemed to constitute the very essence of the history of Europe during the first half of our century. Faith in national programmes, formerly so firm, has been much shaken by the events of the last few years. Italian unity has not improved the lot of the lower classes of the peninsula, and they have now to bear the burden of a State endeavoring to conquer a place among the great powers. The formerly oppressed Hungary is oppressing in her turn the Sclavonic populations under her rule. The last Polish insurrection was crushed rather by the agrarian measures of the Russian government than by its armies and scaffolds; and the heroic uprisings of the small nationalities of the Balkan Peninsula have merely made them tools in the hands of the diplomacy of their powerful neighbors. Moreover, the nationalist movements which are still in progress in Europe, are mostly confined to the remoter borders of the continent, to populations which are almost unknown to old Europe and which cannot be realized by the general public otherwise than in the shape of loose agglomerations of

shepherds or robbers, unused to political | peasants and working men - is growing organization. They cannot therefore ex- up, with all the strength it has drawn from cite the same interest nor awake the same the abolition of serfdom. It will resume sympathies as the former uprisings of the struggle, and in the interests of her Greece, of Italy, of Hungary. own progressive development Russia will be compelled, one day or the other, to abandon the reputedly rather than really strong "defensive line of the Vistula." Finally, in the north-east we have Finland, where one of the most interesting autonomist movements of our time has been steadily going on for more than sixty years.

Notwithstanding all this, national questions are as real in Europe as ever, and it would be as unwise to shut our eyes to them as to deny their importance. Of course we know now that "national problems" are not identical with the "people's problems; " that the acquisition of political independence still leaves unachieved the economical independence of the laboring One hardly hears of it in western Eu and wealth-producing classes. We can rope. With the perseverance, however, even say that a national movement which that characterizes the men of the north, does not include in its platform the de- and particularly those of Finland, this mand for an economical change advan- small yet rising nationality has within a tageous to the masses has no chance of short time achieved results so remarkable success unless supported by foreign aid. that it has ceased to be a Swedish or a But both these problems are so closely Russian province more or less differing connected with one another that we are from its neighbors: it is a nation. Disbound to recognize that no serious eco-cussing once this question, “What is a nomical progress can be won, nor is any nation?" Ernest Renan set forth in his progressive development possible, until vivid and graphic style that a nation is not the awakened aspirations for autonomy an agglomeration of people speaking the have been satisfied. Though relegated same language — a language may disapnow from the centre to the periphery, pear; not even an aggregation with disEurope has still to reckon with national tinct anthropological features, all nations movements. Irish "Home Rule," the Schleswig "difficulty," and Norwegian separatism" are problems which must be resolved; as also the national agitation that is steadily undermining eastern Europe. There is no doubt that (to use the words of a recent English writer) "not only a thorough discontent, but a chronic insurrectionary agitation" is going on among the Serbo-Croats, who are endeav. oring to shake off the yoke of Hungary. The Czechs, the Slovaks, the Poles of Austria are struggling, too, for self-government; as also, to some extent, the Slowens, or Wends, and the Little Russians of eastern Galicia; while neither peace nor regular development is possible on the Balkan Peninsula until the Bosnians, the Herzegovinians, the Serbs, the Bulgarians, and others have freed themselves from Turkish rule, Russian "protection," and Austrian "occupation," and have succeeded in constituting a free South-Slavonian Federation. The Russian Empire, too, has to reckon with the autonomist tendencies of several of its parts. However feeble now, the Ukrainian autonomist movement cannot but take a further development. As to Poland, she cannot much longer submit to the denationalizing policy of her Russian masters; the old Poland of the szlachta is broken down; but a new Poland that of the

being products of heterogeneous assimila. tions; still less a union of economical interests which may be a Zollverein. National unity, he said, is the common inheritance of traditions, of hopes and regrets, of common aspirations and common conceptions, which make of a nation a true organism instead of a loose aggrega tion. The naturalist would add to these essential features of a nation the necessary differentiation from other surrounding organisms, and the geographer, a kind of union between the people and the territory it occupies, from which territory it receives its national character and on which it impresses its own stamp, so as to make an indivisible whole both of men and territory.

None of these features is missing in Finland. Its people have their own language, their own anthropological features, their own economical interests; they are strongly differentiated from their neighbors; men and territory cannot be separated one from another. And for the last sixty years the best men of Finland have been working with great success in spreading that precious inheritance of common hopes and regrets, of common aspirations and conceptions, of which Renan spoke. Yksi kieli, yksi mieli (One language, one spirit), — such is precisely the watchword of the Fennomanes.

Comparative philology and anthropol- | conditions, together with a gravity and a ogy may tell us that the Finns have but kind of melancholy which are so striking lately occupied the country they inhabit, in the features of the people and form one and that during their long migrations of the most marked peculiarities of their from the Altaic steppes they have under- folk-lore. The disasters, the wars, the gone much admixture with other races. bad crops, the famines, from which the None the less do the present inhabitants Finnish peasant has so often had to suf of Finland appear as a quite separate fer, have created his capacity of grave and world, having their own sharply defined uncomplaining submission to fate; but the anthropological and ethnical characters, relative liberty he has always enjoyed has which distinguish them from the popula- prevented him from developing that sad tions by whom they are surrounded. spirit of resignation, that deep sorrow Their nearest kinsfolk are found only on which too often characterizes his Russian the other shore of the Gulf of Finland, brother. Never having been a personal among the Esthonians, on whom they serf, he is not servile; he always mainalready exercise a kind of attraction. tains his personal dignity and speaks with Their southern brethren, the Magyars, are the same grave intonation and self-respect too distant, too separated, and too distinct to a Russian tsar as to his neighbor. A ever to exercise any influence on Finland. lymphatic temperament, slowness of moveAs to the other members of the same fam- ment and of thought, and sullen indifferily scattered through eastern Russia, the ence have often been imputed to him. In Voguls, the Permians, the Mordovians, fact, when I have entered on a Sunday and so on, science may prove their com a peasant house in eastern Finland, and mon origin; but their national characters found several men sitting on the benches are being obliterated every day by contact round the wall, dropping only a few words with Russians, and nearly all of them at long intervals, plunged in a mute revhave already lost any chance they may erie as they enjoyed their inseparable ever have had of constituting separate pipes, I could not help remembering this nationalities. Finland has thus no need reproach addressed to the Finnish peas. to care about these scattered members of ant. But I soon perceived that though her family. the Finn is always very deliberate in his movement, slowness of thought and indif ference are peculiar only to those, unhappily too numerous, village paupers whom long continued want and the struggle for life without hope of improvement have rendered callous. Still, a Finnish peasant family must be reduced to very great destitution before the wife loses her habits of cleanliness, which are not devoid of a certain æsthetical tint. The thrift of the Finn is striking; not only among those who have no choice, for they are compelled to live upon rye bread, baked four times a year and containing an admixture "of the bark of our black pines," as Runeberg says. Simplicity of life is the rule in all classes of society; the unhealthy luxury of the European cities is yet unknown to the Finns; and the Russian tchinovnik cannot but wonder how the Finnish official lives, without stealing, on the scanty allowance granted him by the State.

It is true that even the ordinary traveller soon discovers in Finland two different types the Tawastes in the west, and the Karelians in the east; the square face of the former, their pale eyes and yellow hair, their heavy gait, strongly contrasting with the taller and more slender Karelians, with their elongated faces and darker hair, their animated and darker eyes. But the inhabitants of central Finland, the Sawos, partaking of the physical features of both neighbors, are an intermediate link between the two; and all three Karelians, Sawos, and Tawastes-speaking the same language, living the same manner of life, and having so much in common as to their national characteristics

melt together into one ethnical type -the Finnish. Even religion does not separate them, the nearly fifty thousand Orthodox Karelians being as good Finnish as their Protestant kinsfolk.

Exceedingly laborious they are all throughout the country: they could not be Contemplativeness if I am permitted otherwise in their Suomenmaa · the coun- to use this ugly word is another distry of marshes where the arable soil tinctive feature of the Finns: Tawastes, must be won from the forests, moors, and Sawas, and Karelians are alike prone to even lakes, which stretch over nine-tenths it. Contemplation of nature, a meditative, of the land. The perseverance and tenac-mute contemplation, which finds its exity that characterize all northern Finnish pression rather in a song than in words, stems are the natural outcome of these or incites to the reflection about nature's