their past history,

their affections, their very selves. If that is not what their rulers aim at—it is what they have made the Alsatians believe that they intend. After twenty years, surely some relaxation might have been made, some advance should have been prac ticable, some beginning of a show of trust there ought to be.

sired to retain, not to estrange, sympa- | hitherto worshipped
thies. They are very good hands at
keeping political accounts, these Alsa-
tians. You can find no one now among
them to say a good word for Napoleon
III. "who has betrayed us.' Even the
empress does not escape reproach. "The
empress," said a thoroughly patriotic Al-
sacienne to me, “must be a downright
bad woman." I protested against this
sweeping indictment. No, we know
very well, it was she who caused the war,
which brought us into servitude."

I must just say a few words about the material losses which the conquered prov. ince has suffered, and, in justice, about the efforts which the German government is honestly making to provide some repa

But of all the measures calculated to keep alive sore feelings without accom-ration. plishing any useful effect, the provision Of course, annexation dealt a very serelating to passports, coupled with the vere blow to that wonderfully developed barring of the frontiers against "optants industrial prosperity which made Alsace is about the most effective. Its hardship so rich. For its wares were designed for is felt in almost every hamlet. And it the French market; they excelled in seems such a senseless measure, so de- quality, for which Germans do not pay as liberately cruel! I know it is relaxed one dearly as French people do. Twenty little jot from time to time-on paper. years have not nearly sufficed to repair But kreisdirectors and gendarmes are al- this loss. The German authorities say it lowed a considerable latitude in the appli- is because Alsatian industry will not act cation. "Optants " forbidden to visit their upon their advice, and adapt itself to the properties (which are much depreciated in German market. That may be. The loss consequence), sons prohibited from seeing is beyond dispute. The trade of Metz I their dying mothers, helpless old men, found ruined, and Metz was a thriving with nobody left above ground to care for, town once. "The old Messins," said a turned back when they ask leave to visit commercial traveller from German Rhinetheir wives' and children's graves - even land to me- under the shadow of that a poor old negress has been sent some cathedral which Quicherat places in the thousands of miles home to her colony same category with St. Ouen "hate us. when coming to visit a family with whom And they are right. I say it as a German. she had been as nurse the cases are We have all but ruined them." Among plentiful, and they are just of the nature the minor industries more or less damwhich appeals most to human sympathy. aged, the manufacture of woollen socks, "Is old So-and-so likely to do mischief? to be worn in sabots, may serve as an and poor So-and-so? Unfortunately, example. That industry used to employ German bureaucrats reck not of reasons. about twelve thousand hands. It is now The letter is the god they swear by. The all but extinct. Another interest very letter says: "Thou shalt not " with the hardly hit is that of innkeepers and the objects of the prohibition they have noth-liquor trade generally. The hotels have. ing to do. That is just where the French suffered severely. It takes no particularly rule, with all its defects, sat so much large hotel to be still £600, £800, or lighter upon the country. It was tempered by human feeling.

It seems as if the German government was bent upon wholly breaking the will of the Alsatians, as a trainer breaks the will of a dog. It is not enough that they accept the new state of things. Many of them would do that now, and might easily be led up to a kinder feeling. It is as if they were to be made to feel the full weight of the German power of worrying, in order to be thoroughly cowed. It is not enough that, like Chlodwig, they bow their neck, and agree to worship what they have burnt. They are not to be trusted till they have utterly burnt what they have

£1,000 a year short in its takings. I have heard the same complaint in the Black Forest. The French came and spent money. The Germans do things "on the cheap." The liquor interest has been hurt chiefly by new taxation. M. About makes out that Germany is paying the Alsatians a bribe by taxing them lightly. Never was partisan assertion less founded. "They have taken off no old tax; but they have added more than one new one." The liquor tax payable formerly out of profits, is now collected in advance. There is a new license tax, a new tax on the removal of liquor from one place to another, and a door and window tax.

And

private distilling for home consumption, | empire, and bid fair to make that property formerly free, is made taxable. That is an worth half as much again in a compara. unpopular measure, because the Alsatians tively short time. They have made £4,dearly love their marc de raisins. To 000,000 available a most acceptable the cultivator, the abolition of the tobacco boon - for loans to small tradesmen, monopoly is a serious blow. That mo- peasants, and the like, who were previously nopoly, whatever its economic defects, at the mercy of the village Jews, a thorwas a veritable god-send to the peasants. oughly objectionable class in Alsace. They got a good price for their produce; They are doing much for agriculture and they knew beforehand by the government viticulture. By a new law they have en. tariff what they would get, and they got abled small proprietors to combine for it just at the time when they most wanted purposes of subsoil drainage and imit. The government officers held a regular provements, both of which were sadly tobacco audit in the autumn, when they needed, but were quite impossible under took over the leaves and paid the money French rule. down. Of course the bargain was duly wetted at a convivial gathering. In consequence of the abolition, the land under tobacco in Alsace-Lorraine has shrunk by more than half, and is still dwindling. To the landed proprietors annexation has proved a ruinous business. Property continues depreciated. At Gérardmer, I sat at dinner next to a lady whose uncle had, in 1854 or thereabouts at his marriage-bought for a round million of francs an estate in Lorraine which the German emperor the other day, I am told, secured for a hundred thousand. While I was at Colmar, a gentleman there bought for his sister an entire convent (secularized)-large buildings, vineyards, and extensive grounds - very accessible, and capable, he told me, of maintaining from its produce a family of fair social position for not more than eleven thousand francs, that is, a little more than £400.

So much for the losses. The catalogue is, of course, far from complete. As regards new measures for the development of local resources, I must do the Germans the justice to say that they are most active and judicious, even under discour agement. They would gladly do more. But Alsatian industry, they say, will not be helped. So they have had to content themselves, in respect of industry, with constructing water reservoirs, on a large scale and a great cost, to the undoubted benefit of the country. But they have spent something like twenty-five millions sterling on railways, besides most unfairly diverting traffic to Alsace from Baden. They have made capital roads, sadly needed, all over the country. They are spending £450,000 on widening and deep. ening canals. They have opened their purses freely to popular education. Among other things, they cause girls to receive instruction in domestic work. They have greatly improved the administration of the forests, neglected under the

I might tell of more. No charge can be preferred against the government on the score of remissness in respect of material improvements. But what are they- the tithing of mint, anise, and cummin - in comparison with the weightier matters of government? Constructing water reservoirs is one thing, according civil rights and winning hearts is quite another. In this matter the government has sadly failed, and the consequence is, that we see what we do see — à law distrusted, bearing on the whole of its face the stamp of conquest, of subjugation, of practically martial law, and, therefore, discontent and disaffection. If

It is impossible for us to frown
On those who smile upon us,

as impossible is it to smile on those who
never relax their features from a scowling
frown.

The fatal mistake was made when it was decided that Alsace-Lorraine should be governed directly from Berlin. That meant placing it under Prussia. And with all their rather overpowering efficiency the Prussians are the last nation in the world to accommodate themselves to other people's ways. To the ways of the Alsatians they can accommodate themselves as little as a dog can to the ways of a cat. With the military uniform into which their government puts them, they don a military spirit, which is exceedingly effective in maintaining discipline, but not by any means a quality to propitiate people with. Their own king, the late Emperor William, volunteered the statement published in his correspondence with General Natzmer: Our officers have a curious knack of making themselves disliked. Certainly with the Alsatians they have succeeded in this admirably.

Under the old empire what would have been done with Alsace-Lorraine is this. It would have been assigned a regular,

66

man paper some years ago, "but we are not perfectly united. Were we perfectly united, we should be like the English, one people with one crown." There has been mediatizing of German princes ere now, why should there not be mediatizing again?

constitutional, and recognized place in the craft, by suzerainty claimed over vassals, empire, as a State, or part of a State, which vassals were afterwards cleared out having its own prince on the spot, who of the way, both have by degrees built up would have governed it by means of its a solid, powerful- and not a federated own men and in its own way - always empire. And both of course are, or were, subject to the supremacy of the empire. military, conquering powers. Normandy, It makes a great difference whether a Brittany, Provence, and so on-in Ger country has its own prince, whose interest many have all been captured. Aquiis identified with that of the people, who taine has not yet been incorporated, but it is a permanent, accessible chief or a is not beyond the reach of imagination to deputy, sent with limited powers from picture the Bretigny of Nicolsburg folsomewhere else. Personal feeling is lowed in due course by a capitulation of bound to claim a place in a prince's rela- Bordeaux." The German States still have tions with his subjects. The mere glitter their vassal princes. But that arrangeof his court and presence of his person ment need not be designed forever. Aldoes something. We know how devoted ready people are asking "cui bono?" If were the Lorrains to their dukes, and what the larger half of Saxony, annexed in 1815, a happy effect the reign of their mere can be satisfactorily governed by a Pruswarming-pan sovereign, King Stanislas, sian" president," why should the smaller bad in bridging over the gulf of political half, half annexed in 1866, permanently transition. Had Prince Bismarck even require a king? If Hanover and the only sent a warming-pan Stanislas to Hessian electorate can be governed from Strassburg, such as Louis Quinze had the Berlin, why not the other Hesse and the wisdom to send to Nancy! The most Thuringian duchies? It would be much natural proceeding of course would have cheaper to do without these princes. And been for Alsace to be incorporated with it would materially consolidate the union. the country of nos bons voisins of Ba-“We are united," argued a leading Gerden. The two peoples are one bone and one flesh; their language, their manners, their ideas are identical. And the grand duke is almost as popular in Alsace as he is in Baden. But to this natural solution Berlin raised objections. Alsace-Lorraine had been won by the whole empire. The whole empire accordingly must share in the prize. The same scruples were allowed no place a few months ago, when Heligoland was acquired likewise by all Germany, and in exchange for claims in Africa which, whether good or bad, were the claims of all Germany. Nothing was said then about "reichsland." Heligoland was tacked on to Schleswig-Holstein, which Schleswig-Holstein is part of Prussia. Under the influence of Prussia's objection, Alsace was in 1871 not handed over to Baden, but was, with a striking depart ure from the spirit of the old empire, employed for the creation of an entirely new species of political body, a nondescript thing, termed "reichsland." But the spirit of the old empire has in reality very little to do with the new. For on the shoulders of the ruler of the latter has evidently not fallen the mantle of the Charleses and the Henrys, but of acquisitive and aggrandizing France. It is curious to follow the parallel between the growth of little Carolingia and of little Brandenburg. It may all be for the best; I merely note the fact. By force, by

What is felt is, that in Alsace-Lorraine a political experiment is being made, not at all to the liking or profit of Alsatians and Lotharingians, but of very important bearing on the future destinies of Germany. The object seems to be, to demonstrate that a country may be governed, and effectually governed, without the intervention of a local sovereign. What is possible in Alsace ought to be possible also in Baden, and Wuerttemberg, and Saxony, though time may have to be left for its application.

If this suggestion is correct, the AlsatoLotharingians have doubly cause to complain of the hardships inflicted on them. They have been made needlessly to suffer, and the result is what might have been expected. Though twenty years have passed since their annexation, thanks to a rule which, with all its good intentions, all its excellent work in detail, has wholly failed to appeal to their affections, has given them absolutely nothing to be German for, they are at heart aliens still. And aliens in spirit they are likely to remain while that rule is persisted in. Thanks to this, we have Germany still in

HENRY W. WOLFF.

From The Sunday Magazine.
THE FLIGHT OF THE SHADOW.
BY GEORGE MACDONALD, LL.D.
AUTHOR OF "ALEC FORBES," ROBERT FALCONER,"
ETC., ETC.
CHAPTER I.

MRS. DAY BEGINS THE STORY.

arms- more so than before — and appre- ment as what the Prussians have practised hensive of war. Count Moltke startled in Alsace-Lorraine can draw but very Europe, when he spoke of Germany hav- scanty encouragement from what may be ing to defend her conquests during fifteen regarded as its test application. years. That was a sad reverse side to the boast, that what it had taken France seven generations to wrest from Germany, Germany had recovered in seven months. But fifteen years proves to have been a ridicu lously low estimate. Twenty years have passed, and, instead of disarming, we see Germany arming more, and instead of relieving Alsace of its garrison, we see her adding to it. In spite of all these armaments, Alsace, disaffected, remains a source of danger. Of course it may be so trodden down as to yield a final submission. Some despondent Alsatians, despairing now a little of a better fate, put the time at I AM old, else, I think, I should not which this may be expected to happen at have the courage to tell the story I am fifty years hence - that is, when all the going to tell. All those concerned in it present generation will have passed away, about whose feelings I am careful, are and a new generation will have risen up, gone where, thank God, there are no sethoroughly cowed. At best that is not a crets. If they know what I am doing, I cheering outlook. And something so know they do not mind. If they were much better was within reach! I do not alive to read as I record, they might perbelieve that the Alsatians are so irrecon-haps now and again look a little paler and cilably French as is made out. They know that they are Germans. And if allowed to be full Germans they would in course of time become so. Even now their complaint is less that they have been made Germans, than that they are deprived of citizen rights and treated as a subject caste. They are not insusceptible of kindness. General Manteuffel's rule was not perfection. But General Manteuffel had too big guns to allow himself to be categorically dictated to by ministers at Berlin. He came of all governors nearest to the position of a local prince. He showed some consideration. And the Alsatians talk of his rule with something of gratitude and almost affection. Had that spirit been persevered in and allowed to expand, Alsace would, there can be no doubt, present a different picture now from what it does.

To sum up, German rule has, with all its little successes, failed in Alsace, just to the extent that it has been "firm and resolute "domineering and despotic, that is, disregarding the rights, the legitimate claims, the natural wishes of the people. It has bowed necks, it has not won hearts. It has failed to accomplish the main part of its task. Although first impressions count for a great deal, it is not too late to change from coercion to confidence. Let us hope that that will be tried. But certainly, those politicians who are in favor of the same kind of govern.

wish the leaf turned, but to see the things
set down would not make them unhappy;
they do not love secrecy. Half the mis-
ery in the world comes from trying to
look, instead of trying to be, what one is
not. I would that not God only but all
good men and women might see me
through and through. They would not be
pleased with everything they saw, but
then neither am I, and I would have no
coals of fire in my soul's pockets.
my whole nature would shudder at the
thought of letting one person that loved a
secret see into it. Such a one never sees
things as they are would not indeed see
what was there, but something shaped
and colored after his own likeness. No
one who loves and chooses a secret, can
be of the pure in heart that shall see God.

But

Yet how shall I tell even who I am? Which of us is other than a secret to all but God! Which of us can tell, with poorest approximation, what he or she is! Not to touch the mystery of life - that one who is not myself has made me able to say I, how little can any of us tell about even those ancestors whose names we know, while yet the nature, and still more the character, of hundreds of them, have shared in determining what I means_to him every time one of us says it. myself, I remember neither father nor mother, nor one of their fathers or mothers, how little then can I say as to what I am. But I will tell as much as most of

For

my readers, if ever I have any, will care | houses to know.

things that could not have been invented by God, though he made the man that made them. It is not the fashionable only that love the town and not the country; the men and women who live in dirt and squalor their counterparts in this and worse things far more than they think are afraid of loneliness, and hate God's lovely dark.

CHAPTER 11.

MISS MARTHA MOON.

I come of a long yeoman-line of the name of Whichcote. In Scotland the Whichcotes would have been called lairds; in England they were not called squires. Repeatedly had younger sons of it risen to rank and honor, and in several generations would his property have entitled the head of the family to rank as a squire, but at the time when I began to be aware of existence, the family possession had dwindled to one large farm, on which I found myself. Naturally, while some of the family had risen, others had sunk in the social scale; of the latter was All about my uncle first; but I keep Miss Martha Moon, far more to my life him to the last. Next all about Rover, than can appear in my story. I should the dog-though for roving I hardly reimagine there are few families in England member him away from my side! Alas, covering a larger range of social difference he did not live to come into the story, but than ours. But I begin to think the chief | I must mention him here, for I shall not difficulty in writing a book must be to keep out what does not belong to it.

I may mention, however, my conviction, that I owe many special delights to the gradual development of my race in certain special relations to the natural ways of the world. That I was myself brought up in such relations, appears not quite enough to account for the intensity of my pleasure in things belonging to simplest life-in everything of the open air, in animals of all kinds, in the economy of field and meadow and moor. I can no more understand my delight in the sweet breath of a cow, than I can explain the process by which, that day in the garden - but I must not forestall, and will say rather than I can account for the tears which, now I am an old woman, fill my eyes just as they used when I was a child, at sight of the year's first primrose. A harebell, much as I have always loved harebells, never moved me that way. Some will say the cause, whatever it be, lies in my nature, not in my ancestry; that, anyhow, it must have come first to some one -and why not to me? I answer, Everything lies in every one of us, but has to be brought to the surface. It grows a little in one, more in that one's child, more in that child's child, and so on and onwith curious breaks as of a river which every now and then takes to an underground course. One thing I am sure of that, however it came, I did not make it; I can only be glad and thankful that in me it came to the surface, to tell me how beautiful must he be who thought of it, and made it in me. Surely one is nearer, if not to God himself, yet to the things God loves, in the country than amid ugly

LET me look back and see what first things I first remember.

write another book, and in the briefest summary of my childhood, to make no allusion to him would be disloyalty. I almost believe that at one period, had I been set to say who I was, I should have included Rover as an essential part of myself. His tail was my tail; his legs were my legs; his tongue was my tongue

so much more did I, as we gambolled together, seem conscious of his joy than of my own. Surely, among other and greater mercies, I shall find him again!

The next person I see busy about the place, now here now there in the house, and seldom outside it, is Miss Martha Moon. The house is large, built at a time when the family was one of consequence, and there was always much to be done in it. The largest room in it is now called the kitchen, but was doubtless called the hall when first it was built. This was Miss Martha Moon's headquarters.

She was my uncle's second cousin, and as he always called her Martha, so did I, without rebuke; every one else about the place called her Miss Martha.

Of far greater worth and far more gen. uine refinement than tens of thousands the world calls ladies, she never dreamed of claiming such a distinction. Indeed she strongly objected to it. If you had said or implied she was a lady, she would have shrunk as from a covert reflection on the quality of her work. Had she known certain of such as nowadays call themselves lady-helps, I could have understood her objection. I think, however, it came from a stern adherence to the factness - if I may coin the word of things. She never called a lie a fib.