all of which is under cultivation, and little of it given up to pasturage. She has established, at vast expense, a national school system; has erected school-houses in every city and village, in which a new generation has been taught loyally to love the republic. She has hamstrung the disloyalty of the Catholic hierarchy, and destroyed the Concordat. Her eighth legislative election has just occurred, and the enemies of the republic, whether reactionaries or communists, have been ignominiously defeated. Nor is she now, if she ever really was, the France which Dumas, Zola and the prurient novelists have painted. How these fictionmongers have maligned their countrymen! What a pity it is that so many of our popular notions about these people should have been learned from these sensationalists!

Italy is drawing nearer England at this table of the nations. Nor is this the Italy of 1870, which the Hapsburgs and Bourbons had kicked and strangled, harassed, robbed, brow-beaten and ground beneath their heels for so many generations. It is another and a united Italy, a monarchy in name, but a republic in reality. The House of Savoy are not Italians, and the Italians know it. Nor has Victor Emanuel failed to hear the voice of the great minority in the recent elections. Italy is shaking off her lethargy, sloughing off her poverty and awakening from her enforced sleep. She is better governed now than she was in the days when she wore swaddling-clothes. All of Northern Italy is a beehive of industry. Rome is forgetting the traditions of the Church and becoming a modern city. The hordes of travellers, hundreds of thousands yearly, unlike the hordes which once invaded her, are helping to make the eternal city an Italian Paris. And Southern Italy, too, and even Sicily, is beginning to feel the touch of the wand of prosperity. Many of their sons are going to America. We find them thrifty, temperate, industrious, patient and good citizens. They are gradually lifting from their countrymen the veil of prejudice which has enveloped them. They come, as all immigrants do, to better themselves and doubtless succeed. But they are only bricks from the same kilns as those who remain at home. These sometimes seem to us idle and lazy; but let us not forget their narrow circumstances and poor opportunities. Were they but given a chance to work most of them would improve it as eagerly as those who have come to us.

It was Gladstone's bugle-call which apprised his countrymen of the horrors of the Neapolitan prisons and the wrongs perpetrated upon that struggling people. It was England that furnished a home for Mazzini and for the noble band of patriots who preached the gospel of a united Italy. It was English philanthropists, too, who fed them for years with the rations for their propagandist war and with much of the money which equipped Garibaldi's "one

thousand." And it was to England that he came for some of the delights of appreciation. Is it strange then that the sons of free Italy turned their grateful eyes towards the people who helped their fathers expel their oppressors ?

Under Bismarck's persuasion Italy entered the Triple Alliance. And doubtless it has been a benefit; and if it has been no especial protection, it is because she has needed none. But the impulse and example of Germany have helped her to make an army, and an army which, under a good commander, will be a terror to her enemies. It has impelled her to make a good navy, for Germany, if a silent, has been a watchful partner. She has seen to it that her ally, if her help should ever be needed, would be of some benefit to her. But the alliance is not a perpetual league. Both France and England seem beckoning her to come with them, and her footsteps seem to be turned in their direction. It now looks, notwithstanding official assurances, as if the Triple Alliance would soon become a rope of sand. Public opinion seems to be against it in Italy.

In interpreting the recent royal telegrams we must not forget that neither Victor Emanuel nor the Austrian Emperor controls the foreign policy of his country. The people in fact control them by their suffrages. The habitual ferment in Hungary has diminished the Emperor's prestige, and there are powerful influences, political as well as popular, drawing Italy towards the Western Powers.

Spain and Portugal sit near England at this table. Nor is Spain unmindful of the debt she owes the country which spent her blood and treasure without stint to help her expel the legions of Napoleon from her soil. It was here that the great conqueror of Europe met his first reverses. It was Wellington who drove his armies from Lisbon back across Spain into France, and inspired that wonderful uprising of the Spanish people, which is one of the noblest chapters in the history of that century. Can the Spaniard ever forget his deliverer ?

Spain has been for long, long years trying to keep the lands which Columbus discovered. The struggle has been a desolating one. Her sons and her treasure have been spent in vain; the energies which should have been used in developing her own fair land have been wasted. Her country has been left without improvements, and her children without education. Only one in three of them can even read, a task which a year's good schooling might have accomplished. But the waste is over now. The young eagles have left their mother's nest and built nests for themselves throughout South America. Even Cuba and the Philippines are hers no longer.

But the Spaniard is a noble fellow. He is honest. His word is as good as his bond. He is brave, he is truthful, he is temperate,

thrifty, prudent, and fairly industrious. He is sometimes called proud. He may have been once, but this folly has all been crushed out of him. He has little to be proud of except his sterling character. He is dignified in manner and grave by temperament; he has not the vivacity of his French or Italian cousin. It is this which has been sometimes mistaken for pride. His country, in this year of our Lord at least, is a succession of green fields, villages and hillsides from Algeciras to the Bay of Biscay. Its roads are bad, in fact it has few roads which the Frenchman would dignify by that name. Its railroads are slow and poorly managed, and too much of its produce is still carried upon the backs of donkeys. Think of it! Donkeys, in this enlightened century! But this is not altogether the Spaniard's fault. It is largely the fault of his rulers; they would not encourage road-building. There are some parts of his country in need of irrigation. This again is not his fault, not wholly so at least, for his energies have been wasted elsewhere. But a new star seems to be dawning over Spain. If the country can only have a long peace; if it can also have a wise king and half a dozen wise rulers, who love their country and its people better than themselves, and would encourage the building of good roads, the opening of good schools, and the adoption anew of the system of irrigation the Moors introduced; if they will only help the Spaniard to help himself, Spain, with its twenty millions of people, may in a generation become once more a great country. May not something be expected from the English marriage and the impulse and opportunities it may bring?

Denmark, Sweden and Norway are sympathetic observers of this new alignment of the Powers. They are small countries and not powerful, as the great nations count strength in these days, and are incapable alone of resisting the aggression of any one of these, or else Schleswig-Holstein would not have been sliced from the map of Denmark. But they all have representative governments, and the genius of no one of them sits upon a stack of bayonets. Norway, a constitutional monarchy in name, is in reality a republic. Sweden, likewise a constitutional monarchy, and possessing a nobility, has no sympathy with autocratic tendencies, and seems to be on the point of adopting universal suffrage. Denmark is also a government by the people and for the people. England, who re

fused so recently to sit still and allow France to become the prey of Germany, could hardly afford to sit with folded hands while any great Power pushed further westward under her nose in either the Baltic or the North Sea.

Austria rendered some slack allegiance to Germany at Algeciras. She did not exactly enact the part of a duelling second, as has been suggested, but rather that of an independent, self-respecting friend of peace. Austria is busy now with her own affairs. The Hun

garians are struggling to preserve and increase their own power. The battle for universal suffrage is still in progress in both countries. And Europe is waiting with bated breath to see what will happen upon the demise of the Austrian Emperor, now at the age of seventysix, to see if there will be any disruption of the Empire, any attempt of the Germans to join their namesakes in the North, any attempt of the New Germany to stretch out its arms towards Trieste and the Mediterranean.

There are not a few well-informed people who believe that the Emperor is expecting that day will make Germany a real Mediterranean Power, and will neglect no opening which promises this result. Are not some of the promoters of the new policy among them?

And what of Russia? With whom does she affiliate the most cordially? She too is occupied at present with her own affairs. She who so often has been either the arbiter or disturber of Europe, is now trying to preserve her own peace. And unless she is more fortunate in establishing legislative government than most countries have been, than England and France and Spain for instance were, it will be a generation at least before the machinery works smoothly enough to trust it upon the sea of political aggression. Russia and England have been for a long while political rivals. It was England who did so much to keep Russia away from Constantinople and out of the Mediterranean; to prevent her route to India from being endangered; and it was Russia who was always creeping a little nearer to Northern India. She has been for years the nightmare of English statesmen. But now they can sleep as sweetly as a sailor on a summer sea. Nor is there any present danger that Russia will reach Asiatic waters by the Yellow Sea. Japan has closed that avenue of approach.

But will England and Russia be for the years immediately to come patient enemies or sympathetic friends? This question is now under discussion. Will they settle their present differences and agree for a while to stifle their rivalries? The friendliness recently shown in relation to matters in Egypt, Tibet and Persia, shows that the period of mutual distrust has passed. If we are to believe what we read, this question may soon be progressing towards a happy solution, When nations, like individuals, meet each other face to face and talk over their differences, instead of standing apart and bombarding each other with subtle disquisitions upon their respective rights and pugnacious expositions of their points of view-how much more can be accomplished. This is businesslike. Commercial questions are vastly important nowadays. And why can they not be settled best by the usual commercial methods? Two business men would eliminate their unimportant grievances; would settle as many important ones as possible, and leave the rest to the judgment of arbitrators. A liberal apprecia

tion goes further than a narrow pugnacity in settling disputes. It is by following such methods that avenues of trade are broadened, and ships which have been heretofore stopped in the offing, are permitted to sail into foreign ports under full steam. English examples and precedents occupy a unique and important position in guiding the political changes which are now occurring in Russia. The leading members of the Duma seem to have read thoroughly the history of her struggles to establish parliamentary government.

What a change has occurred in the foreign policy of England since the close of the Boer War! Then she was isolated, she stood alone. And she thought herself fortunate in her position. Lord Salisbury used sometimes to pride himself upon this splendid isolation. But whether it was a wise policy or not, no sooner was it put to the test in that war than it was given up. England became tired of being friendless. She suffered so much criticism at home and in other countries, especially in Germany and France, that she began to pine for friendships. The death of Queen Victoria brought King Edward to the throne; and he seems to have realised at once the value of international friendships. Whether he was the Columbus of this discovery or only the Sebastian Cabot may never be generally known.

But friendships, whether they are personal or national, are seldom formed without the seekers for them are willing to show themselves friendly. An iceberg can make no friends. Where did England first turn for a friend? To whom did she first extend her hand? She turned towards America. She had been friendly towards us during our little war with Spain. She had declined to accept Austria's invitation to embarrass us with interference or offers of mediation. Some other countries had not been so backward, and we were touched by her gracious act of kindness. We appreciated it. We were even grateful. We had not been especially good friends with her for a long while, perhaps had never been since the days before the Revolution. The war of 1812 and the letting loose of the Alabama to prey upon our commerce had left bruises which the Irish were always rubbing into open sores. But the Irish had now lost much of their power to exasperate and create dissension. The older men to whom these grievances were a living memory were passing away. A younger generation was ruling the country. They said the Alabama differences had been settled by the award of arbitration, and that that trouble had become history. They said that blood was thicker than water, that we were both children of the same mother, spoke the same language, possessed the same history, the same religion, the same idols, the same ideals, the same heroes, had similar laws, courts, tastes, purposes, ambitions and forms of