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of Baden against his people. I could hardly believe that this was the same peaceful and friendly city which I had known in better times. Every other man in the streets was a soldier; the beautiful walks about the old castle were full of soldiers; in the evening they were reeling through the streets. "This invention," said a German who had been a member of the Diet of the Confederation lately broken up, "this invention of declaring a city, which has unconditionally submitted, to be still in a state of siege, is but a device to practice the most unbounded oppression. Any man who is suspected, or feared, or disliked, or supposed not to approve of the proceedings of the victorious party, is arrested and imprisoned at pleasure. He may be guiltless of any offense which could be made a pretext for condemning him, but his trial is arbitrarily postponed, and when at last he is released. he has suffered the penalty of a long confinement, and is taught how dangerous it is to become obnoxious to the government."

At Heilbronn we took the railway for Stuttgart, the capital of Würtemberg. There was considerable proportion of men in military trappings among the passengers, but at one of the stations they came upon us like a cloud, and we entered Stuttgart with a little army. That city, too, looked as if in a state of siege, so numerous were the soldiery, though the vine-covered hills, among which it is situated, could have given them a better occupation. The railway beyond Stuttgart wound through a deep valley and ended at Geisslingen, an ancient Swabian town, in a gorge of the mountains, with tall old houses, not one of which, I might safely affirm, had been built within the last two hundred years. From this place to Ulm, on the Danube, the road was fairly lined with soldiers walking or resting by the wayside, or closely packed in the peasants' wagons, which they had hired to carry them short distances. At Ulm we were obliged to content ourselves with straitened accommodations, the hotels being occupied by the gentry in epaulets.

I hoped to see fewer of this class at the capital of Bavaria, but it was not so; they were everywhere placed in sight as if to keep the people in awe. "These fellows," said a German to me, «< are always too numerous, but in ordinary times they are kept in the capitals and barracks, and the nuisance is out of sight. Now, however, the occasion is supposed to make their presence necessary in the midst of the people, and they swarm every

where." Another, it was our host of the "Goldener Hirsch," said to my friend, "I think I shall emigrate to America, I am tired of living under the bayonet."

From "Letters » published in 1850.

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THE LIFE OF WOMEN IN CUBA

N WALKING through the streets of the towns in Cuba, I have been entertained by the glimpses I had through the ample windows, of what was going on in the parlors. Sometimes a curtain hanging before them allowed me only a sight of the small hands which clasped the bars of the grate, and the dusky faces and dark eyes peeping into the street and scanning the passers-by. At other times the whole room was seen, with its furniture, and its female forms sitting in languid postures, courting the breeze as it entered from without. In the evening, as I passed along the narrow sidewalk of the narrow streets, I have been startled at finding myself almost in the midst of a merry party gathered about the window of a brilliantly lighted room, and chattering the soft Spanish of the island in voices that sounded strangely near to me. I have spoken of their languid postures; they love to recline on sofas; their houses are filled with rocking-chairs imported from the United States; they are fond of sitting in chairs tilted against the wall, as we sometimes do at home. Indeed, they go beyond us in this respect; for in Cuba they have invented a kind of chair which, by lowering the back and raising the knees, places the sitter precisely in the posture he would take if he sat in a chair leaning backward against a wall. It is a luxurious attitude, I must own, and I do not wonder that it is a favorite with lazy people, for it relieves one of all the trouble of keeping the body upright.

It is the women who form the large majority of the worshipers in the churches. I landed here in Passion Week; and the next day was Holy Thursday, when not a vehicle on wheels of any sort is allowed to be seen in the streets; and the ladies, contrary to their custom during the rest of the year, are obliged to resort to the churches on foot. Negro servants of both sexes were seen passing to and fro, carrying mats on which their mistresses were to kneel in the morning service. All the white female population, young and old, were dressed in black, with

black lace veils. In the afternoon, three wooden or waxen images of the size of life, representing Christ in the different stages of his passion, were placed in the spacious Church of St. Catharine, which was so thronged that I found it difficult to enter. Near the door was a figure of the Savior sinking under the weight of his cross, and the worshipers were kneeling to kiss his feet. Aged negro men and women, half-naked negro children, ladies richly attired, little girls in Parisian dresses, with lustrous black eyes and a profusion of ringlets, cast themselves down before the image, and pressed their lips to its feet in a passion of devotion. Mothers led up their little ones, and showed them how to perform this act of adoration. I saw matrons and young women rise from it with their eyes red with tears.

JAMES BRYCE

(1838-)

HE American Commonwealth," published by James Bryce in 1888, was accepted at once as the most important study of American institutions made since the publication of De Tocqueville's Democracy in America." His "Holy Roman Empire,» published in 1864, passed through seven editions in ten years, but it was not until the appearance of "The American Commonwealth » that his genius was fully recognized. It shows that he has been a deep student of the whole movement of the civilization which resulted in the surprising social, industrial, and political changes of his generation. His essays, as yet uncollected, show the same intellectual traits which account for the success of "The American Commonwealth." He is tolerant enough to understand all sides of every question with which he deals, but is fundamentally conservative in his intellectual habits and is often much less radical in dealing with the principles of social organization than were Chatham, Burke, and the great Whigs of the eighteenth century.

He was born at Belfast, Ireland, May 10th, 1838, and educated at Glasgow, Cambridge, and Heidelberg. From 1870 to 1893, he was regius professor of civil law at Oxford. In Parliament, where since 1880 he has served with distinction, he has been since the death of Gladstone one of the chief supports of the Liberal party. He served under Gladstone as under-secretary for foreign affairs, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and president of the board of trade.

SOM

DEMOCRACY AND CIVIC DUTY

OME years ago in a lonely mountain valley of the canton of Glarus in Switzerland, I was conversing with a peasant landowner about the Landesgemeinde (popular primary assembly) which regulates the affairs of the canton. After he had given me some details, I asked him whether it was not the fact that all citizens had the right of attending and voting in this assembly. "It is not so much their Right," he replied, "as their Duty."

This is the spirit by which free governments live. One would like to see more of it here in London, where parliamentary and county council elections often bring little more than half of the voters to the polls. One would like to see more of it in the United States, where in many places a large proportion of the voters take no trouble to inform themselves as to the merits of the candidates or the political issues submitted to them, but vote blindly at the bidding of their party organizations.

This little anecdote of my Swiss friend illustrates what I mean in speaking of patriotism as the basis of the sense of civic duty. If people learn to love their country, if their vision is raised beyond the petty circle of their personal and family interests to appreciate the true width and splendor of national life, as a thing which not only embraces all of us who are now living here and grouped in a great body seeking common ends, but reaches back into the immemorial past and forward into the mysterious future, it elevates the conception of citizenship, it fills the sheath of empty words with a keen-edged sword, it helps men to rise above mere party views and to feel their exercise of voting power to be a solemn trust.

"Love thou thy land with love far brought
From out the storied Past and used

Within the Present, but transfused
Through future time by power of thought."

Into these feelings even the poorest citizen may now enter. Our British institutions have been widened to admit him: the practice of using the powers intrusted to him ought to form in him not only knowledge, but the sense of duty itself. So, at any rate, we have all hoped; so the more sanguine have predicted. And as this feeling grows under the influence of free institutions, it becomes itself a further means of developing new and possibly better institutions, such as the needs of the time may demand. Let me take an illustration from a question which has been much discussed of late, but still remains in what may be called a fluid condition. The masses of the British people in these isles, and probably to a larger extent also the masses of the people in our colonies, are still imperfectly familiar with the idea of a great English-speaking race over the world, and of all which the existence of that race imports. Till we have created more of an imperial spirit—by which I do not mean a spirit of

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