thread of imagination runs somewhere in London. The school-children were through it, and these old people have still busy "catching their deaths" in their full share of the shining web. the stream, carrying out Locke's preTheir life has been a hard one. Mr. cept that children should always be Flowde invested his little savings in a wet-shod with as much precision as friendly society, which broke. The though they were his disciples. Every manager, as Mr. Flowde explains, with now and again some mother would fetch unconscious irony, took the money "to in a band of them, with shrill denunmake a gentleman of himself." So the ciations helping along some reluctant old people must still work for their liv- little boy by the hair of his head. The ing. Mr. Flowde is a jobbing gardener; wind had dropped and the country or, rather, I should say, on the strength seemed very still. Here and there were of having been once at some remote a few laborers coming home in silence period spade-man at the Hall gardens, across the fields, with their tools and he feels himself qualified to dig your their dinner-baskets on their backs. borders and slice your flower-roots as The shepherd in his brown smock was remorsely as any man alive. He also preparing for his night's work in the scratches and rolls your gravel to very sheltered lambing-pen, where his little slow music, and will spread what he hut like a bathing-machine was standadmiringly calls "the best o' muck" ing. Over everything the quiet night upon the roots of your rose-trees. was falling, wrapping the distant line of woods and the brown fields and the village in a cloudy darkness that seemed as soft and as vague as sleep.

It was dusk when I left the cottage; the symptoms took so long to describe, and there was a letter to be read" that come yesterday morn " from the son

C. F.

THE ENGLISH SPEAKERS OF THE WORLD. In a conversation with Döllinger shortly before his last illness, Professor True, cf Rochester University, New England, reports that the venerable doctor spoke with much anxiety about the tone of modern English literature. He explained his anxiety by expressing his belief that at no distant time the English tongue would be pre-eminently the language of all civilized nations. The greatest works of English literature were worthy of being ever popular. From a German, this opinion about the spread of the English tongue was full of interest. It is computed that at the opening of the present century there were about 21,000,000 people who spoke the English tongue. The French-speaking people at that time numbered about 31,500,000, and the Germans exceeded 30,000,000. The Russian tongue was spoken by nearly 31,000,000, and the Spanish by more than 26,000,000. Even the Italian had threefourths as large a constituency as the English, and the Portuguese three-eighths. Of the 162,000,000 people, or thereabouts,

who are estimated to have been using these seven languages in the year 1801, the English speakers were less than 13 per cent., while the Spanish were 16, the Germans 18 4, the Russians 18.9, and the French 19'6. This aggregate population has now grown to 400,000,000, of which the English-speaking people number close upon 125,000,000. From 13 per cent. we have advanced to 31 per cent. The French speech is now used by 50,000,000 people, the German by about 70,000,000, the Spanish by 40,000,000, the Russian by 70,000,000, the Italian by about 30,000,000, and the Portuguese by about 13,000,000. The English language is now used by nearly twice as many people as any of the others, and this relative growth is almost sure to continue. English has taken as its own the North American Continent, and nearly the whole of Australasia. North America alone will soon have 100,000,000 of English-speaking people, while there are 40,000,000 in Great Britain and Ireland. In South Africa and India also the language is vastly extending.

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"HOW DARE WE KEEP OUR CHRISTMAS | I answered, "Nay, let me remain

EVE?"

At our old pastimes in the hall

We gambol'd, making vain pretence
Of gladness, with an awful sense
Of one mute Shadow watching all.
In Memoriam.

SPIRITS of Yule, the feast returns, but we
Feast not to-night! How oft on Christ-
mas day,

For me, a child, ye bade the sunbeams play

Without the door; I fain would wait
For one I loved on earth in vain,

To join me here, I would not be
In heaven, while he is yet below."
The angel answered, "Be it so.
Thou hast thy choice, thy love is great,
I will pray God to turn to thee
That soul for which thou here dost wait.”
His voice then ceased; and others came

Heaven's Christmas hymn on frozen shrub And passed within those portals wide.

or tree,

Or marshalled foamy pageants by the sea, Where passed the faces, crowned with glittering spray,

Of Yule-tide poets, lords of Christmas lay,

I patient waited there outside,
Waited to enter heaven with you;
For love must always be the same,
How could you doubt such love was true?

At length you came unto the gate; From Shakespeare down to Keats, who I spoke your name; you turned aside. Why should I think because I died,

smiled on me!

file,

If I grew sad for poets dead and gone From Christmas joy, ye straightway showed me one

And, whilst ye made that glorious band de- That you would deem my love was true?
I had my choice, I chose to wait,
I longed to enter heaven with you.
Then spake the angel, "Never pain
May enter in this golden door,
May ever cross this threshold o'er;
Thou lovest this soul, and thou wouldst
wait,

"Whose footfalls make (said ye) a magic

isle

Of England still the others come and smile
Because they hear the feet of Tennyson."

Christmas Eve, 1892.

THEODORE WATTS.
Athenæum.

OUTSIDE THE GATE.
To England. H.

I DREAMT last night that I was dead,
And passed beyond the bounds of sight,
Into that glorious land of light.
But still my heart remained with you,
And it was false that you had said,
And all that I had told you true.

My love was stronger far than death,
Though you had deemed it little worth,
It had outlasted time and earth.
You cast it carelessly aside,

It was not worth a moment's breath,
And I that would have gladly died
To know that you had trusted me,
Had done with earthly care and strife,
Had passed away from out your life,
And now upon the heavenly shore,
I watched until the time should be
When I might clasp your hand once more.

I stood without the golden gate,
And one came forth and bade me in,
"From thee hath pass'd away all sin."

And thy long waiting is in vain,
And now, alas! it is too late.

I may not let thee enter in.

If he had taken thee by the hand,

And smiled on thee, thou now wouldst.

From The Contemporary Review.
THE CZAR ALEXANDER III.

"Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow."

and waxeth wroth with them that write such. He longeth to have the needs of his people laid bare before him, if so be that he may relieve them in his mercy; and he banished Madame Tsebrikova and a host of others who would fain make known to him

THE Czar Alexander III. is probably the least known monarch in Europe. Like certain stupendous masses of matter that move afar off in the heav-out wise counsellors with diligence and un

the wants of their brethren. He searcheth

be upon his head.

derstanding; and he hath made friends of enly void, his influence is gauged by liars and false witnesses who drink iniquity the disturbances felt in our own system, like water, and to them he giveth heed. while his character, movements, and And death and life are in the power of their affinities are matters of mere conjec- tongues, wherefore their evil-doings should ture, rather than subjects of positive not be reckoned among his transgressions, knowledge. Under these circumstances, nor the innocent blood which they shed He knoweth in his every ray of light let in upon his life should be welcomed with gratitude; and, as a sketch of him appeared some time ago in a popular periodical, I owe it, perhaps, to my readers to lay before them, in brief outline, the salient fea-"There is no God, neither should there be tures of the portrait. Stripped of the ornate eloquence of the enthusiastic artist, they are as follows:

heart that there is no power but of God,

and the enemies of God are an abomination in his sight; and he made a covenant with the seed of Beelzebub in the land of the

Gaul, with them which said in their hearts,

with the owners thereof the spoils of their iniquity. Verily, the czar is a just man; and English Puritans should rejoice with exceeding joy that he hath been anointed with the oil of gladness over his fellows.1

any king." He charged all his people, saying, "Walk ye in the way of the Lord;" and against the Stundists and the Baptists, and all them that do what seemeth good to The czar feareth God and loveth his the Lord is his anger kindled, and he casteth people, and he chastiseth with a rod of iron them into outer darkness, where there is a multitude of his servants who do likewise. weeping and gnashing of teeth. In like In the days before his kingship he could not manner he executeth fury upon Lutherans, say unto Wisdom, "Thou art my sister," and bendeth his bow against Buddhists; nor unto Understanding, "Thou art my the temples of Catholics he hath razed to kinswoman;" but he might have truly said, the ground, and Baptist prayer-houses he "Be thou my wife," for there was no rela-hath demolished; but theatres and dens of tionship betwixt them. Since he was iniquity he openeth on the Sabbath, sharing anointed king he is become as a shining light to all his people; and his kingdom containeth many millions of men and women who cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and much cattle. His power extendeth to the uttermost ends of the land, and his nod is obeyed with fear and trembling; and he cannot accomplish the good that he hath conceived in his heart, and must needs do the evil that he loatheth as hateful in the sight of God. His bowels yearn upon all his people alike, even as the sun shineth upon the evil and the good, and rain falleth on the just and on the unjust; and he smiteth sorely the children of Judah, for that they were injudicious in the choice of their parents, and were born of the seed which brought forth the Saviour of mankind; and likewise on the Poles and Ruthenians, the Finns and the Baltic Germans, his hand lieth heavy. As the hart panteth after water-brooks, so thirsteth his soul after truth; and he suppressed the books and the writings which are records thereof,

In reading this sketch, the subject of it might well have exclaimed with Job, "Have pity upon me, O ye, my friends!" For a long number of years I have enjoyed innumerable opportunities of observing the czar, and verifying my observations in the light of the personal experience of those near and dear to him, and my impression is that he is neither a knave nor a fool, a criminal nor a hero, but a well-meaning unit of one of the innumerable crowds that do not dress in fustian, one to whom nature has denied the rich mental equipment of the average Russian, and upon whom education has failed to be

1 Cf. Review of Reviews.

cement that knits together the fragments of this curious psychological mosaic, is a mistaken religious sense of duty based upon an exaggerated sense of importance.

stow the compensating accomplishments | missions of men and women, in modof a constitutional monarch. To com- ern prophecies, miracles, voices, and pare him to an intelligent English gen- visions; and his belief in his own spetleman, and then to shriek over the cial mission as God's vicegerent is of most consistent of his actions for which the nature of Tertullian's faith, which, an English gentleman would be sent to having fed upon all accessible impossia lunatic asylum or a prison, is scarcely bilities, waxed stronger and craved for logical, and certainly not artistic, for more. And this is the real clue to his instead of a portrait it gives us a carica- character, the source of his strength and ture. The emperor of Russia is not a weakness. In other words, the unity double personality composed of an un- in this bewildering multiplicity, the bending Puritan and an easy-going Russian; he is a harmonious whole whose disposition and character have their root in the psychological peculiarities of the race and the individual. He has committed one, and only one, car- Alexander Alexandrovitch, not havdinal mistake, more disastrous to his ing become heir-apparent to the throne people than any crime. A firm believer before his twenty-first year, was not in the miraculous, he confidently ex- brought up to the calling of monarch pected to be regenerated by the Sacra- any more than he was trained to the ment of Coronation, as Faust was profession of surgery. The role for metamorphosed by the magical draught which nature, grace, and education had of Mephistopheles, and fancied that the fitted him could be equally well played dull-plodding officer of yesterday would by any one of a million " supers on find himself endowed to-day with all the world's stage, and his consciousness the qualities of mind and heart needed of his shortcomings, before his coronaby one whose irresponsible will was to tion, was as keen as that of the inebribecome the sole law of one hundred ated Irishman who declared himself millions of men. It was as if the ten- sober enough to know that he was not der Polydoros, buckling on his brother sober. His elder brother's death, which Hector's armor, and having quaffed a the nation viewed as the finger of cruel draught of the water of Xanthus, should fate, he regarded with awe as that of a have set out single-handed to encounter paternal Providence shaping his desthe mighty Achilles. To accuse him of tiny; and bowing before the inscrutable any specific mistake in the art of gov-decree which thus marked him out as erning is as reasonable as it would be the pope of a vast empire and the to set an honest village blacksmith to autocrat of a national Church, he wisely repair a lady's chronometer, and then give technical names to the simple process by which he shatters it into fragments; or to attribute the failure of a town tailor to succeed as a farmer in Australia to his fondness for certain erroneous theories of the "science of geoponics."

The czar, like the bulk of his countrymen, is a believer in the continuous interference of Providence with the course of human events, in the divine

left the puzzling question of ways and means to be worked out by omnipotence, which alone could grapple with the insoluble problem.

In person the czar is powerfully built, strong and muscular; in his younger days he was able to bend a bar of iron across his knees, or to burst in a strong door with his shoulder. He possesses one of those heavy unwieldy figures whose awkward movements, resulting largely from morbid self-consciousness and consequent shyness, no callisthenics could subdue to the easy bearing which characterizes the ordinary man of the world. His usual manner is cold, constrained, abrupt, and so sug