ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI.

THE STORY OF HIS CONVERSION AND CONSECRATION. THE sketch of the life of this famous saint which M. Arvède Barine contributes to the Revue des Deux Mondes for the 15th of June has a strong human interest which can hardly fail to attract readers of the most different habits of mind. It is not the Catholic, it is not the Italian, it is the man we meet who holds and draws our thoughts with a sense of personal sympathy.

HIS YOUTH.

M. Barine gives us a picture of him first as a young man in his father's home, a young man such as most of, us, if we think, can remember to have met at least once in replica among our friends, beloved of every one, talented, fascinating, gay and loving, with a deeply earnest and also a most socially frivolous side to his character. His father, Pietro Bernardone, was a rich merchant or draper of Assisi. Francis was his spoilt darling, and everything that money could buy was at the young man's disposal. The rest, which money could not buy, was also his by virtue of his natural endowments. Everywhere that he appeared he was the leader—behind his father's counter, in young men's frolics, in study in the arts and athletic exercises of the place, above all perhaps in appreciation and enjoyment of all the lively sights and sounds of nature. He had at first no higher aspirations than to love and live, and perhaps a little fight. The last he did as well as he did all the rest, and his proud and jovial father was at all times willing to bear the expense and take the consequences. The young fellow was extremely particular about his clothes and his food; he liked to take pleasure and to give it; when misfortune came he was scarcely less gay than he was in the height of success. tured in a defeat of the Assisi militia, and carried off to the dungeon of a neighbouring town, he arrived and remained there in overwhelmingly good spirits, brimming so with laughter and good stories, that his fellow-captives were almost shocked. Peace was made. He got home to Assisi, and instantaneously, of course, enrolled himself again. Probably the secret of his universal charm, as of his subsequently universal influence, lay in a power of almost universal sympathy.

HIS STRUGGLE.

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The earliest indications which have been preserved of his sense of a more serious aim are indications of this. It was not grief nor disappointment which impelled him to the service of his fellows, but simply the loving sense of their claim upon him. One day, when he was only twenty, a poor man came into his father's shop at a moment when it was full and Francis busy. The young fellow could not be bothered with him, and sent him roughly about his business. But afterwards a gentler instinct caused him to dwell with regret upon the incident. He compared the condition of the beggar and his greater need with that of the rich man to whom, in spite of pressure, he had found means to attend. The thought that he, renowned as he was in Assisi for his courtesy, could so act without discredit caused him to ponder on the claims of the poor and unprotected to consideration. It was the point of departure of his championship of poverty. But the recognition of his own vocation did not come upon him all at once. He began only to open his

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ears to the manifold cries of earthly sorrow. He looked out from the complacent happiness of his father's home to the suffering of the medieval world. The faction fights of the day began to have a meaning deeper than that which lay in a cheerful exercise of his athletic gifts. Military glory on a larger scale might, he thought, ease the longings of which he was conscious. lord of Assisi was starting for distant fields of battle. Young Francis enrolled himself in the train, and entered with all the old animation into the necessary preliminaries. The old life, but more of it, was what he imagined that he needed. He prepared an elaborate costume. Heroic deeds, he chose to fancy, required a suitable setting. His dress was richer than that of his chief himself. All preparations were made with the same care for detail. He told his friends that he intended to return a king. He could neither eat nor sleep for excitement till the day of departure came. But on that very day there was a typical victory of the real over the unreal in his nature. As he pranced on horseback through the streets he noticed a poor knight so badly dressed and accoutred that impulsively he him his own best costume, and left the gave town himself in his ordinary garb. Whether, indeed, the dream of military glory was involved in the trappings the chronicle does not say, but the next thing that is heard of him is that he fell ill of fever within twenty-four hours at Spoleto, where, as he lay on his bed, he heard a voice warning him that the path he was pursuing was but leading him astray, and the next that, in obedience to the voice, he returned on the third day to Assisi and gave a great banquet to his friends at which he announced that he had renounced the hope of a kingdom gained by arms. At this banquet it was observed that he was strangely unlike himself, absent-minded and silent, and unmoved by the songs, the dancing, and the rollicking in which he had been accustomed to take a prominent part. His friends mocked at him. He answered with a smile, he had never been so happy. It was his farewell to the material pleasures of the world.

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HIS VOCATION.

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He had recognised that he was not dependent upon external circumstances. He had found himself within his trappings, and dimly discerned that there was something ahead for him to do. But what? He had still fierce struggles to pass through, an anguish of the soul, in which, for all his prayers and yearnings, he could not discover his appointed task. At last, in the ever-present thought of the poor, he found his work. And before he could efficiently help them he felt that he must be one of them. He renounced all that he had once enjoyed. He became a mendicant, and through many of anguish, doubt, self-conquest, brought to the supreme and celebrated scene in which he was brought by his own father before the justice of the town and prosecuted for having given away what did not belong to him. The bishops exhorted him to return to his father all that was rightly his. St. Francis instantly stripped himself naked, and laying his clothes and his money in a little heap before the bishop, he cried to the surrounding crowd, "Listen and understand! Up to this moment I have called Pietro Bernardone my father. I now return to him his money and the garments I have received from him, and from this day I will only say, our Father which art in heaven." Individual love was to be no more his than any other individual possession. The personal was henceforth entirely merged in the universal, and the Franciscan Order was there and then founded by one naked man.

REMINISCENCES OF CHARLES BRADLAUGH.

BY MR. THOMAS BURT.

IN the Primitive Methodist Quarterly Review there is a very interesting paper by Mr. Thomas Burt, which contains reminiscences and an estimate of his friend Charles Bradlaugh. It is twenty-three years since Mr. Burt first met Mr. Bradlaugh. It was at Blyth, when the muchabused iconoclast paid his first visit to that Northumbrian seaport, where the hotels refused to afford him lodging, or even to supply him with a cup of tea. Mr. Burt brought him home to supper, and he well remembers the flutter in his little dovecote when he introduced Mr. Bradlaugh to his wife and father. But for that invitation Mr. Bradlaugh would have had to walk four or five miles in order to get something to eat. The friendship thus begun ripened in later years, and lasted until his death. Mr. Burt declares that Mr. Bradlaugh was far the best speaker in mass meetings for workmen that he ever heard; he was unequalled and unapproached:

He was an accomplished debater, a powerful reasoner, but his logic was not based upon the cold formal rules of the schools; it was fused, fired, set ablaze by the deep convictions and the passionate earnestness of the man, Mr. Bradlaugh's addresses to the northern pitmen were always memorable. He loved the rough, horny-handed toiler. Long and deeply he had studied labour questions. Impassioned, eloquent, impressive, his speeches were at the same time measured, temperate, thoughtful, well-reasoned.

Mr. Burt tells an amusing story of the estimate which Mr. Bradlaugh and Alexander Macdonald formed of each other on their first meeting. The sole weakness of these two men was their egotism, says Mr. Burt, and the curious thing was that each impressed the other as being the most egotistic man he ever knew. Mr. Bradlaugh's egotism, however, was on the surface frank and undisguised. It was not the selfish conceit of a small fussy nature; it had in it something of the lofty imperial bearing of Milton's pride or of Burke's. It was not the egotism of the heart, but the belief of a strong, brave man in himself, in his rectitude and power. In the struggle for his seat he bore himself like a hero. In the quiet intervals of the fray, his forbearance, his patience and gentleness astonished everybody. Only once did he murmur, when in answer to some words of sympathy he spoke confidently of his ultimate triumph, but added, "there is so much for me to do, and I am growing old." Of Mr. Gladstone's speech on the Oaths question, Mr. Burt says it completely reconciled Mr. Wendell Phillips to the Liberal leader. Mr. Burt was in America at the time, and he found Mr. Phillips in raptures over Mr. Gladstone's speech.

One of the finest speeches I ever read. It strikes the same high note of religious equality and freedom of thought as Milton's "Areopagitica," and John Stuart Mill's "Liberty," and is not unworthy to rank with these great efforts of the human intellect. That, or something like it, was Wendell Phillips's verdict.

Another anecdote in Mr. Burt's paper is the statement that Mr. John Bright told him that he would gladly have accompanied Dr. Kenealy up the floor of the House had he known that the Doctor had no friends to introduce him. As a member of Parliament, Mr. Burt gives Mr. Bradlaugh the highest praise. He says he was the most industrious and painstaking of members.

No man ever did his parliamentary work more thoroughly and conscientiously; no unofficial member ever in the same space of time made such an indelible mark on the statute book by carrying useful measures; no man in the same period so powerfully and so beneficially influenced the Government departments of the country.

The workmen never had a truer, abler or more judicious friend than he.

Nothing touched Mr. Bradlaugh so much as the prayers which were offered up for him when he was at death's door two years ago. On his recovery, says Mr. Burt,—

He told me how kind everybody had been. "My own people," he said, speaking like a sort of Secular bishop, "were loving and helpful. That was not strange or unexpected. But that those who so utterly disagree with me, who think me so terribly wrong, should have shown sympathy, kindness, and appreciation is surprisingly wonderful." Mr. Bradlaugh was not only one of the most generous, but he was one of the kindest and most tender-hearted men I have ever known. Mr. Bradlaugh's lack of faith in personal immortality did not blunt his sympathies, or slacken his endeavours. He was neither a fatalist nor a sensualist. He did not say, "There is no life beyond the grave, therefore let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die; on the contrary, he said with Professor Clifford, "Let us take hands and help, for this day we are alive together." He acted on the admonitory text of a greater Teacher still, which men of strong and of weak faith, and those of no faith at all, would do well to take to heart"Work while it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work."

A POET ON MODERN POETRY.

A PROPHECY BY MR. LEWIS MORRIS.

IN Murray's Magazine for July Mr. Lewis Morris has an article upon modern poetry, in which he speaks his mind pretty freely upon the poets of the century. He admits the improved technical workmanship in verse of the present day, and he speaks appreciatively of the emancipatron from all rules that embarrass the flow of the writer's inspiration, for which the supreme example is Walt Whitman. The initial defect of most of our poetry is that our poets do not consider whether or not they have got a good subject with which they are adequate to deal. Another defect is its tendency to extraordinary prolixity; akin to this there is the cultivation of obscurity and the copying of the artificialities of the French verse. Mr. Morris concludes his paper as follows:

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When we have got rid of the devastating pests of obscurity and triviality, when our poems are made lucid and not immensely long, when our poems have some human interest and pedantry has been rooted out, and we follow Greek models in the spirit and not the letter, and rely more upon metrical harmonies than upon the mere jingling of sound,when all this is done, will the English poet of the future, the poet long overdue, who will be, perhaps, wholly the poet of the twentieth century, turn his eyes exclusively, or even mainly, to the past? A great reward of fame awaits the writer of verse who shall so reproduce the emotional features of our modern life, its doubts and its faith, its trials and aspirations, as to transfigure it into a story more real and more touching than any story of a remote past. The great drama of human life is constantly being played on a wider stage, to larger and more critical audiences, with more complicated springs of action, with finer insight, with deeper and more subtle psychological problems to solve, than were possible in old times. It is from these that real and new springs of poetry must flow. It is only in this direction that real progress can be made. All the varied impulses and wants of our modern life should find treatment by the poet of the future-the great gains of science should not be ignored by him, nor the insoluble but ever recurring problems of the relations of the Human to the Divine. Great as is the wealth of English poetry, I confess that to me the great bulk of it-and indeed, of the poetry of the world-even when it is not mere caterwauling, seems trivial, insincere, and ineffectual to the last degree. Worthier interests and wider knowledge will inevitably generate a higher poetical type, which will be poetry and not prose, though it may throw aside much that to-day seems to differentiate the one from the other.

SOME TRIBUTES TO MADAME BLAVATSKY.

BY THEOSOPHISTS.

Lucifer for June 15th is almost entirely devoted to tributes to Madame Blavatsky by those whom she has left behind her. Mrs. Besant succeeds to the sole editorship of Lucifer, over which she has been for some time co-editor with Madame Blavatsky. There are no fewer than sixteen articles devoted to this remarkable woman, all of them couched in the most exalted strain of loving reverence. Emily Killingsbury gives the following anecdote of Madame Blavatsky's occult powers:

One morning at breakfast she told us that she had while asleep seen her nephew killed in the war then going on between Russia and Turkey. She described the manner of his death-blow, how he was wounded, the fall from his horse, and other details. She requested Col. Olcott and myself to make a note of it, as well as the date, and before I left New York full confirmation of the event was received in a letter from Russia, all the circumstances corresponding with H. P. B.'s dream or vision.

Countess Wachtmeister declares that Madame Blavatsky was the noblest and grandest woman this century has produced. Mr. Sinnett indulges in the expectation that her followers may recognise Madame Blavatsky in her new incarnation, for he speaks of the possibility that

the new personality she may now have been clothed with, if already mature, may in the progress of events be identified by some of us now living before we in turn are called upon or permitted-to use whichever phrase best suits our internal condition of mind-to pass through the great change ourselves.

Mr. Charles Johnston says that with unparalleled force she asserted the soul, with transcendent strength she taught the reality of the spirit, by living the life and manifesting the energies of an immortal:

And this dominant power and this clear interior light were united to a nature of wonderful kindness, wonderful gentleness, and absolute self-forgetfulness and forgiveness of wrong.

She has left us the great lesson of her life, a life true to itself, true to its spirit, true to its God. Mrs. Besant says that the most salient of her characteristics was strength, sturdy strength, unyielding as a rock. She asserts in the most unqualified manner the absolute rectitude of Mme. Blavatsky:

She was rigidity itself in the weighter matters of the law; and had it not been for the injury the writers were doing themselves by the foulnesses they flung at her, I could often have almost laughed at the very absurdity of the contrast between the fraudulent charlatan and profligate they pictured, and the H. P. B. I lived beside, with honour as sensitive as that of the 66 very gentil parfait knyghte," truth flawless as a diamond, purity which had in it much of a child's candour mingled with the sternness which could hold it scatheless against attack. Apart from all questions of moral obligation, H. P. B. was far too proud a woman, in her personality, to tell a lie.

Looking at her generally, she was much more of a man than a woman. Outspoken, decided, prompt, strong-willed, genial, humorous, free from pettiness and without malignity, she was wholly different from the average female type. She judged always on large lines, with wide tolerance for diversities of character and of thought, indifferent to outward appearances if the inner man were just and true.

The most interesting paper is Mr. Herbert Burrows', who writes of what Madame Blavatsky was to him :

Two years ago Annie Besant and I saw H. P. B. for the first time, and now it is not many days since I stood by her lily-covered coffin and took my last lingering look at the personality of the marvellous woman who had revolutionised the lives of my colleague and myself. Two years are but little as men count time, but these two have been so pregnant with soul-life that the old days before them seem ages. away. If it be true that life should be counted by epochs of the mind, then life, from the day that I first clasped H. P. B.'s. hand to the moment when, majestic in her death sleep, I helped to wreathe around her body the palms from that far-off East which she loved so well, was richer, fuller, longer "to me than a generation of the outward turmoil which has its little day and then is gone.

He recalls the fact that Mrs. Besant and he first went to Madame Blavatsky's with an introduction from me. Mr. Burrows, after seeing her several times, began to see light:

I caught glimpses of a lofty morality, of a self-sacrificing zeal, of a coherent philosophy of life, of a clear and definite science of man and his relation to a spiritual universe. These it was which attracted me-not phenomena, for I saw none. For the first time in my mental history I had found a teacher who could pick up the loose threads of my thought and. satisfactorily weave them together, and the unerring skill, the vast knowledge, the loving patience of that teacher grew on me hour by hour. Quickly I learned that the so-called charlatan and trickster was a noble soul, whose every day was spent in unselfish work, whose whole life was pure and simple as a child's, who counted never the cost of pain or toil if these could advance the great cause to which her every energy was consecrated.

In addition to these articles, ten of the Theosophists publish a manifesto staking their honour upon the statement that Madame Blavatsky's character was of a lofty and noble type; that her life was pure and her integrity spotless.

A WORD FROM THE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH SOCIETY.

I regret to learn that some expressions in last month's article on Madame Blavatsky seem to the officials of the Psychical Research Society to reflect an unjustifiable harshness upon Mr. Hodgson, who conducted their research into the "phenomena " in India. The following letter from Mr. F. W. Myers explains itself :

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Leckhampton House, Cambridge, June 22, 1891. SIR, I should not have troubled you with any reply to Mr. Sinnett's paper, in the REVIEW OF REVIEWS for June, upon Madame Blavatsky and the Society for Psychical Research, had it not been for one sentence in that paper which suggested an inference at variance with fact, an inference which, on Mr. Hodgson's behalf, I am bound to repudiate.

"At first," says Mr. Sinnett, "the leaders of the S.P.R. undoubtedly accepted Mr. Hodgson's views." If it is intended to suggest that the members of the Committee who inquired into those alleged marvels have since that date in any way modified their condemnatory judgment, that suggestion is absolutely without foundation.

I have not, indeed, encountered any member of our Society who, having studied the evidence contained in Part IX. of our Proceedings (published by Trübner in 1885, and to be had of any bookseller), has found his judgment in any degree affected by any of the so-called replies, or protestations of innocence, which have as yet been given to the public.

I would beg the insertion of these few lines in justice to Mr. Hodgson, whom Mr. Sinnett has attacked in your columns, and who is now the secretary of the American branch of the S. P. R.-I am, sir, faithfully yours,

FREDERIC W. H. MYERS, Hon. Sec. S.P.R.

A MOTHER AND HER BOY.

BY HER MAJESTY NATHALIE, QUEEN OF SERVIA.

In the double holiday number of the Gentlewoman, a solid mass of printed and illustrated matter, which, although it weighs a pound and a half, the Post Office carries from one end of the country to the other for a halfpenny, there are many attractive features, but the most interesting is a contribution from Queen Nathalie of Servia, to which we are very glad to give the more extended publicity of our pages. In this story Queen Nathalie tells in a parable the troubles through which she has gone in the attempt to secure her maternal rights over her unfortunate child, who is now the boyking of Servia. It begins as follows:

NATHALIE AND HER SON.

Once upon a time the good God gave to a woman a darling child. This child grew and developed in the arms of its mother, like a rosebud that is well cared for. The mother tended and loved it, for her sole happiness was bound up in the life of this child.

The pleasant days passed quickly, one succeeding the other rapidly, without the mother taking note how quickly they came and passed. In the boundless love which she had for her son, she looked on him as an angel which God had sent her to watch over.

An Evil Spirit, whose only call was to thwart and make wretched persons who seemed contented and kindly, learned that there was in this world a mother, whose supreme happiness infinitely surpassed all the ill-doings which the Evil Spirit had hitherto been able to effect.

This made the dame angry, and from that date she began to cogitate what could be done to destroy the happiness of this proud mother.

At length she decided to consult her most intimate friend, a black-browed creature named Intrigue, so she flew rapidly to the home of the latter, who was seated in her hammock, her grizzly hair floating over her brooding, threatening countenance.

A PARABLE OF EX-KING MILAN.

Evil and Intrigue then decide to summon up three black imps, who decide to kidnap the child, as they cannot endure to witness the happiness of any human being. What follows is simply the recent Servian history written in the form of a fairy tale :

In the interval Intrigue had thought of something which she whispered in the ear of Evil, and they then disappeared.

At that same hour the Mother was dreaming that she and her son were in a pleasant garden, surrounded by sweetsmelling flowers and the songs of birds. She gathered flowers to form a crown for her child, and interleaved therein with roseleaves the words Goodness, Pity, Sympathy, Love, Pardon, while the child ran along before his mother, clapping his hands with joy at being in such a charming place. Suddenly there came a change-all was dark. The song of birds, the scent of flowers disappeared, and they were led to another country altogether strange to her. A powerful hand seized hold of the boy. With a cry of agony the Mother awoke, to find her boy sleeping calmly by her side, a smile illuminating his face, as if brought there by a dream. Two days later, early in the morning, Intrigue went, staff in hand, from neighbour to neighbour, with crocodile tears in her eyes, saying it was rumoured that the child was to be torn from his happy mother.

The neighbours hurried to the Mother, begging of her to be on the watch, for that there were evil men in the town who had been instigated to rob her of her son.

The Mother, alarmed, called to mind her dream, but quickly took courage, and replied, "It is impossible that such a thing can be contemplated! No power, be it ever so great, could steal a child from its own mother. No woman ever brought into the world a son so wicked as to take from me my only joy!"

THE KIDNAPPING AT WIESBADEN.

Poor Mother! She did not know t hat Intrigue was spreading this false news so as to induce her to withdraw herself from the protection of her friendso and to go to a far-off country where the capture of her s n would be more easily effected.

Evil and Intrigue suceeded in inducing the Mother to leave the place where she had lived so long, and to seek refuge in another country with her child.

On

Soon the evil spirits had matured their plan. While the Mother slept, strange hands carried away her son. awaking she was desperate; like a wounded lioness she ran from chamber to chamber, calling, "My son, my son!" but only echo answered through the deserted rooms. She raised her arms imploringly to heaven, but only to hear the cry of Evil, who was floating in the air—

"Ha ha! Now, where is your boasted happiness? Never again shall you look on the face of your child."

"Oh! mercy, mercy!" cried the Mother. "Why have you separated me from my son? Who will care for him? Who will inspire him with the love of gentleness and goodness, those things which only a mother knows how to teach? Have mercy, Spirit of Evil, and give me back my child."

With a mocking laugh, Evil flew away, leaving the despairing mother weeping and tearing her hair.

After a while the distraught mother arouses herself and sets off in the quest after her son. She wandered wearily from town to town for weeks and months, crossing rivers and mountains and passing over vast plains of snow until at last she comes back to a place which she recognises, and which of course stands for Belgrade under the new dispensation. The rest of the story ends more happily than it did, unfortunately, in real life.

▲ FALSIFIED PROPHECY, ALAS!

There was an immense rampart erected, which could not be surmounted in any way, Seeing a traveller approaching, she said, "Friend, can you tell me who has put this barrier here?"

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That is the work of the black spirits," said he; "they have constructed it to prevent your from reaching your son." She sighed when she heard that her son was on the other side of this mighty barricade, and endeavoured to scale it, but the traveller prevented her efforts. Then she tried with all her strength to push aside the barrier, but all in vain. Weeping, she appealed to passers-by, but not one would give her any help, so alone she continued to force her way.

Neither Evil nor Intrigue could prevent her doing this, and while she was resting from her labour, Hope appeared with his bright blue eyes, and gave her a passing smile of encouragement.

When Evil and Intrigue, who were on the alert, watching her unsuccessful efforts, saw the rampart begin to bend they called upon the three imps, and bade them hold the barrier fast.

The rampart fell asunder, and the Mother and son were in each other's arms.

"No power can separate us now, my angel," cried she. "But the three black imps-where are they?" cried the boy.

"Do not be afraid of them; they are chained for ever, they can no longer harm us."

Evil and Intrigue spread their wings and flew away in despair.

"What shall we do with these evil ones? 'asked the child. The Mother answered. "Our happiness will be their punishment. When demons weep, men are happy."

PARIS THE TYPICAL MODERN CITY.

BY DR. ALBERT SHAW.

WHEN Dr. Albert Shaw was on this side the Atlantic last Christmas fixing up the arrangements for taking over the American editorship of the REVIEW OF REVIEWS, he spent a week in Paris to finally revise the facts and figures which he had collected on a previous visit in order to describe the salient features of the government of Paris. His paper appears in the July number of the Century, and is as full of solid information as his other municipal studies which we have from time to time quoted in these pages. He regards Paris as the typical modern city which has sacrificed everything to the modern ideas of symmetry and regularity and has built an opera house as a central feature and suggestive symbol of the new spirit.

ITS ADMINISTRATION.

Dr. Shaw regards the adminstration of French municipal government as admirable for its simplicity. Counsellors are elected for three or four years at a time, and all retire simultaneously. The council elects the mayor and his executive assistants, who in some places number ten or twelve. The mayor is a fully-armed executive officer and the council is limited cheifly to deliberation. Instead of administrating the town by a municipal council, a French town is administered by the mayor and his adjuncts. The American system is a futile attempt to combine both these systems, and the result is conflict, dissipation, and degradation of public municipal life. In Paris there

After describing the police and the proposed scheme for reforming the administration, Dr. Shaw devotes three or four pages to the explanation of the scientific system which has resulted in making Paris the best lighted city in the world. She was the best lighted city even when she only used gas, but now she is on the point of being completely supplied with electric light better than in any other large city in the world. Dr. Shaw speaks very severely of the comparative barbarism of the electric lighting appliances in America. Instead of leading the van America is between ten and fifteen years behind Europe in all the matters. He thinks that Paris requires a very great extension of street railways and omnibus lines, and the introduction of small and rapid vehicles as well as a metropolitan system of railway. The underground electric road is destined to be in Dr. Shaw's opinion the permanent rapid transit system of the world's greatest cities, and in this matter Paris is likely to resume her place in the forefront by securing the Nord-Eiffel system of underground lines.

WHAT PARIS DOES FOR HER CITIZENS.

The following is Dr. Shaw's conclusion as to what Paris does for her citizens and what it all costs :

Paris, within its present limits, covers thirty square miles, ten of which are occupied by streets, waterways, and parks.

Two and a half million people dwell upon the remaining twenty square miles. They live in a remarkable condition of order and apparent thrift and comfort. It requires an ordinary expenditure of from 250,000,000 to 300,000,000 francs every year to defray the expenses of the city government - $25 for each man, woman, and child. This sum is more than twice as great as the average corresponding figure for the other great cities of Europe, such as Berlin and Vienna. The great public improvements and transformations of Paris have imposed a debt upon the municipality of nearly $400,000,000, upon which the annual interest charge is about $20,000,000. This is a vastly greater debt than any other city carries; but it is steadily shrinking under a system of terminable annuities by which the yearly interest payments gradually extinguish the principal.

HOW THE MONEY IS SPENT.

Assuming the annual cost of the city government per inhabitant to be 125 francs, it may be instructive to show where the money is expended. Twelve francs go to the maintenance of the police department with all its various services, three are paid for the cleansing and sprinkling of the streets, three and a half are paid for public lighting, half a franc goes for protection against fire, ten francs are expended for the maintenance of the schools, ten more go for the support of hospitals and the relief of the poor, from eight to ten are spent in maintaining the ways of communication; a sum that varies greatly from year to year, but which we may assume to call five francs, is paid out on new construction of streets and means of communication; and forty francs are required to meet interest and other payments on account of the municipal debt. The expenses of the general offices and city council, with a large salary list, and of various minor departments and services that need not be specified, easily account for the remainder of the 125 francs.

The expense of public education in Paris will not be seriously criticised in any quarter. Probably no other city in the world secures equally advantageous results from the outlay upon schools. But Paris does not stop with elementary education in reading, writing, and numbers. It maintains a marvellous system of industrial and trade schools for both sexes, in which almost everything that pertains to the production and traffic of Paris is taught and encouraged. I need not refer to the higher schools of science, of classics and literature, of engineering, and of fine art. All the flowers of civilisation are encouraged by the Paris municipality.

The city's care for its poorer population, as shown in the famous Mont de Piété and in the great system of savings banks, as well as in the various kinds of hospitals and retreats, seems fully justified by the facts of Paris life. The municipal savings bank is another great establishment that represents the thrifty side, just as the Mont de Piété suggests the unfortunate side, of the life of the common people of Paris.

HOW THE REVENUE IS RAISED.

Having given the cost of Paris government, I must not omit in a summary way to explain how the 250,000,000 francs or more a year come into the treasury. More than 140,000,000 francs accrue from the octroi taxes-levied as local customs dues upon foods, wines, fuel, building materials, and certain other articles brought into the city-and are therefore indirect taxation. Some 35,000,000 francs are obtained by direct forms of taxation, chiefly upon rental values and house occupancy. From 30,000,000 to 40,000,000 francs are gained by the profits of the city's various enterprises such as markets and abattoirs, and from its relations with the gas, water, street-railway, cab, and other profitable monopolies. The rest comes in large part from the national treasury, which pays its considerable proportion towards the cost of police, of paving, and of some other services in which the country as a whole is concerned. If Paris spends vast sums in her municipal housekeeping, she has diverse, magnificent, and permanent results to show, and her people are, as I believe, enriched rather than impoverished by their common investments as a municipality.