French diplomats prevented my building, I opened the college in the buildings of the Bebek Seminary-that institution having been transferred to Marsovan. The government absolutely refused to disturb me there.* The seven years' restriction upon building was caused wholly by French and Russian interference. The visit of Admiral Farragut changed the tone of things, and leave was magnificently given. Since then seven other colleges have been established, under the authority chiefly of Abdul Aziz, the predecessor of the present Sultan Hamid.

More than forty seminaries or normal schools and young women's boarding schools have also had the full approbation of government. Many unmarried ladies have been teachers in these schools, and have safely gone back and forth into the distant interior, under the protection of the Turkish government. I plead, therefore, not guilty to the charge of entering a semi-civilized country bitterly opposed to us and leaving members of my family there where our government is under no obligation to secure the rights of American citizens. On the contrary, it was an exceptionally safe and inviting field of labor. More than 400 missionaries, men and women, have given their lives to that work during the past 75 years, and many are buried in Turkish soil.

Another point in your utterance is worthy of remark: "Any act of war would be accompanied not only by the murder of the missionaries, but of their converts and sympathizers."

By "an act of war" you evidently mean the shedding of blood. But when, in all this century, has this been necessary, or been resorted to, in defending the rights of foreigners in Turkey? All the nations of Europe protect their citizens in that Empire without any such "act of war"! They have often made a show of war, by ordering up a war ship, or ships of some kind; and this has always been sufficient. Many years ago, England had a case against Athens which was not attended to; and she sent some of her warships to close the Piræus; and the affair was immediately settled. England sent two of her warships into the Gulf of Smyrna to settle a local dispute between English and Turkish interests. The Turks immediately took the English view of the case, and there was no further trouble. Turkey has many exposed points, such as Smyrna, Mersin, Alexandretta, Crete above all; and she would do almost anything rather than have any one of

*See "My Life and Times," 433-437.

these ports occupied by foreign war vessels with a demand. She keeps her own navy up at anchor in the farthest practicable interior of the Golden Horn, where alone her ships can rest and rust in safety.

Had our country defended the treaty rights of her citizens, as all the nations of Europe have defended theirs, the massacres that blot with innocent blood the last pages of the century would never have been perpetrated, as I shall briefly show.

The present Sultan, Hamid, came to the throne with an inveterate dislike to all Armenians who would not apostatize and thus follow his mother's example. He began his career by displacing them from office. Many hundreds of them were in various offices of government. He next began to oppress their schools with new and vexatious requirements and to spoil their school books by an absurd censorship. Many schools were closed, many school-books destroyed for containing forbidden words, such as "courage," "patience," "patriotism," " progress." In this work he encountered our schools, school-books, and teachers, and began cautiously his war upon them. He has destroyed our school-books printed and issued by the authority of his government and owned by Americans, an invasion of rights perpetrated upon Americans alone. Our government was often appealed to for redress, which was generally promised in the sweetest and most gracious words, of which our diplomats have been very proud. But no penalty was ever exacted, no promise was ever fulfilled, excepting the case of Mr. Bartlett's house, in which the moving force was the threat of an ironclad. Now every outrage thus treated during the last few years has been a distinct permission to go on to greater outrages upon property and personal rights. The Sultan has seen that it is a safe thing to perpetrate every indignity upon Americans and their property, until now the destruction of American property has amounted to nearly $200,000. Not one dollar would have been destroyed had our government from the beginning protected our rights as all the governments of Europe protect their citizens.

It must be remembered that the destruction and the looting of the buildings at Harpoot, Marash, and other places were done in the presence of government officials and troops, and the plea" done by a mob" cannot be accepted.

It must also be remembered that every building destroyed had

been built in strict accordance with all the laws of building; their plans, measurements and proposed uses had all been laid before the proper authorities and received their sanctions. The government in destroying such buildings and looting them of all their contents of furniture, food and clothing has gone back upon itself in its eagerness to show "its contempt of America and Americans." In all this the Sultan is backed up by Russia. No indemnity has been exacted, or if any demand has been made it is understood that some high Russian diplomat whispers that now is not the proper time to enforce it, and it is dropped. Thus the "Great Republic" is justly the derision of other nations and cowers before a poor Sultan who cannot pay a piastre of his public debt, nor make the smallest loan in the money markets of Europe.

No Turk has yet been punished for robbery, pillage, murder, rape, rapine, torture unto death of women and children, and the horrid work still goes on. Why should it not? The nations, our own nation especially, have for two years been giving the Sultan carte-blanche to do as he pleases; and his pleasure is the extermination of all Armenians who will not Islamize, the expulsion of the American missionaries, the destruction of their property, and the showing of himself as superior to all treaties and to all the claims of truth, justice, and humanity towards all men of the Christian faith.

Having now vindicated myself, as I believe, and also my associates in Turkey, from the suspicion of having done anything to sacrifice our right to the protection of our government, I would most earnestly appeal to you to use your great influence to right wrong which our government has done us, to rescue us from impending destruction. We claim only the treaty rights of

the

American citizens. The missionaries in the field have shown their readiness, if need be, to suffer unto death rather than forsake, in these scenes of blood and torture, the people to whom they have given their lives. Lead, we pray you, the Great Republic, to stretch out her arm for their protection. Secure from the Sultan the rights accorded to other nations, and the blessing of those who are ready to perish will descend upon you.

I remain, with profound respect and admiration, the humblest of your fellow citizens,

CYRUS HAMLIN.

WOMAN'S BATTLE IN GREAT BRITAIN.

BY THE REV. PROF. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D., LL.D., F. R.S. E.

THE great advance in the position of women that has taken place in the British islands within the last few years is due to two great causes, which may be distinguished by a recent parliamentary phrase as non-contentious and contentious. In some departments women have risen without noise or struggle; in other departments they have made good their progress only by war à outrance. But in both cases the progress has been made mainly through the same cause; through individual women of rare gifts and courage showing what they are capable of, what gifts they have, and what power to use them; this being followed by the double result of cutting off from opponents their chief ground of objection, and of encouraging less courageous women to venture into the arena, show their capacity, and claim their due.

It is to the contentious department-the region of opposition and struggle that we wish chiefly to draw attention; but a glance at the more silent and unopposed line of progress will fitly introduce the other.

Foremost in the department of quiet progress, we place literature and kindred arts. A century ago, there was hardly a distinguished female name in all English literature. Hannah More was one of the first to venture into print. Among her contemporaries were Joanna Baillie, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Frances Burney, and Mary Wollstonecraft, whose Rights of Woman made her doubly a pioneer. But to the class of literary ladies before the Victorian era one might apply the famous line of Virgil, with the necessary change of gender:

"Apparent rarae nantes in gurgite vasto."

Within the last fifty years, however, female writers have become thick as leaves in Vallombrosa. It is in the lighter departments of literature that they chiefly appear-poetry, fiction, stories for children, essays, letters, and sketches; and here they probably equal in number the whole array of contemporary male writers. And some of the names are stars of the first magnitude. Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Browning, Christina Rossetti, Mrs. Alexander, George Eliot, Miss Braddon, Mrs. Oliphant, Miss Martineau, the Brontës, Miss Carpenter, Mrs. Jameson, Mrs. Charles, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Edna Lyall, and others form a constellation as brilliant as the Pleiades. Nor is light literature their only field. In science Mrs. Somerville led the way, commanding universal respect for the grasp and fulness of her scientific purview. More recently, Miss Ormerod's contributions to natural history have gained her the post of Entomologist to the Board of Trade. Miss Giberne's Sun, Moon, and Stars, with the imprimatur of Professor Pritchard, of Cambridge, has been received with remarkable favor, and reached a circulation of between twenty and thirty thousand copies. Miss Buckley's Short History of Natural Science takes a kind of encyclopedic grasp of modern scientific progress. Even in the border land of philosophy and theology, Miss Caillard's Progressive Revelation shows an interesting mastery of modern speculation without the sacrifice of steadfast faith. As travellers, some ladies have shown wonderful courage and capacity, notably Isabella L. Bird, now Mrs. Bishop, who began her literary career many years ago with The English Woman in America, and her fame as a traveller with her Six months in the Sandwich Islands and Letters from the Rocky Mountains. There is every reason to believe that when Girton and Newnham have reached maturity, the contributions of women to the higher departments of literature and kindred arts will become more and more numerous and important.

It would be an interesting inquiry: What has been the net result of the thousand and one contributions to our literature that have recently flowed from female pens? Have they in any way modified the tone of English literature? Have they given it more grace and purity? Or have any specific results arisen from works having a definite practical aim? Upon that wide and somewhat difficult inquiry we cannot enter now, but all would readily allow that by far the most remarkable case of lit