tion; the Bourbon throne was once more set up, and a Bourbon king put upon it; and Germany then went to reforming her laws after the example set by the French Revolution. England poured out her treasure and her blood to check the spread of French principles; and she seemed to have succeeded. Yet England, after a while, grew ashamed of her code, changed her labor laws, her school laws, her poor laws, drifting to State socialism, to the Gladstone Land Act which lends money to tenants to buy farms, and to the Chamberlain programme which pensions worn-out workmen and aids labourers to purchase homes. "Society owes a sacred duty to those who have served it, those who do serve it, and those who may serve it"-thus spoke the Jacobin to a world which was not ready to hear him. It killed him first, and heard him afterwards. Imperial England, having suppressed the Indian Mutiny with a wholesale barbarity which would have made Danton shudder, and sent Robespierre to one of his days of seclusion in the Duplay attic, copies Danton, follows Robespierre, and cautiously, but steadily, advances along the road they blazed a hundred years ago.

And so the world moves on in God's mysterious way. The sound of the rifle which shoots down the reformer may advertise the reform and carry it far beyond the limits it otherwise would have passed. The potter turns his wheel, the weaver's shuttle flies back and forth, the statesman moulds his laws and what the finished product in any case may be, the workman himself cannot know.

Cambon, the honest republican, helped to kill Robespierre, and dragged the lengthening chain of regret all the days of his after life. Billaud, the stern democrat, helped to kill Robespierre, and bitterly rued it as he crouched for home and protection among the blacks the Jacobins had freed. "I am the Resurrection and the Life!"—the pæan of Truth for all times, among all peoples; and wherever the valiant soldiers of progress wage battle for humanity's sake, there the better spirit of the Jacobin strives; there the heroic Frenchmen who are dead live again, bracing the courage and guiding the feet of the armies of Right, as they go marching into the dawn.

JOAN OF ARC

From The Story of France.' Copyright, The Macmillan Company, and used here by permission of the author and the publishers.

THEREFORE Solemn judgment is rendered in Joan's favor. She is unanimously acquitted of the charges made against her. The verdict of guilty is quashed and Joan is declared “rehabilitated."

Joan's family feel gratified.

The people feel gratified.

The Church feels gratified.

The king, especially, feels gratified.

Joan, only, feels nothing. Joan is dead.

Twenty-five years have passed away since the fires at Rouen burned out and died; since the ashes of the brave and tender girl were cast into the Seine and were carried forth to sublime burial in the sad and solemn sea, where only the mourning waves could chant her dirge, the silent stars light her funeral and the great God mark her grave.

Joan of Arc is one of the Mystics—one of those strangely endowed and inspired people, who, with the slenderest human support, alter the course of the world's history.

Like Mohammed, Peter the Hermit, and Ignatius Loyola, there seemed to be nothing supernatural about her, save her intense concentration of purpose and the vivid imagination which made her fancies appear realities.

The world cannot comprehend such characters, nor resist them, nor forget them.

Joan lives as truly to-day as when she laid flowers upon the altars, or when she led the wavering lines of battle back to victory.

Possessing no relic of her, no painting, no full description, the minds of after generations have tried earnestly to realize the face and the form of this "country girl who overthrew the power of England."

Poets have sung of her in immortal verse; painters have dreamed of her on imperishable canvas; sculptors, in the purity and strength of marble, have made her appear in the lovely shape she took in their own ideals.

Splendid monuments commemorate her at Orleans and at Paris. Every year at Orleans a festival is held in her honour, as it has been, with few intervals, ever since her death.

The French have loved many kings, warriors, statesmen, poets, and philosophers; but it may be safely said that in those sacred national archives, where veneration and love and profound respect guard the priceless heritage of great names and glorious examples, no king, no chieftain, no statesman, poet or philosopher disputes the place held by the shepherd girl, who was to France what the shepherd boy was to Israel.

THE FALL OF PARIS

From 'Napoleon.' Copyright, The Macmillan Company, and used here by permission of the author and the publishers.

IN the movements which followed, the Bonaparte of the Italian campaign was seen again, and for the last time. He was everywhere, he was tireless, he was inspiring, he was faultless, he was a terror to his foes. We see him heading charges with reckless dash, see him aiming cannon in the batteries, see him showing his recruits how to build bridges, see him check a panic by spurring his own horse up to a live shell and holding him there till the bomb exploded, see him rallying fugitives, on foot, and sword in hand. We hear him appeal to his tardy marshals to "Pull on the boots and the resolution of 1793"; we hear him address the people and the troops with the military eloquence of his best days; we see him writing all night after marching or fighting all day—his care and his efforts embracing everything, and achieving all that was possible to man.

That was a pretty picture at the crossing of the river Aube, where Napoleon was making a hasty bridge out of ladders spliced together, floored with blinds taken from the houses near by. Balls were tearing up the ground where the Emperor stood; but yet when he was about to quench his extreme thirst by dipping up in his hands the water of the river, a little girl of the village, seeing his need, ran to him with a glass of wine. Empire was slipping away from him, and his mind must have been weighed down by a thousand

cares; but he was so touched by the gallantry of the little maid that he smiled down upon her, as he gratefully drank, and he said:

"Mademoiselle, you would make a brave soldier!"

Then he added playfully, "Will you take the epaulets? Will you be my aide-de-camp?" He gave her his hand, which she kissed, and as she turned to go he added, "Come to Paris when the war is over, and remind me of what you did to-day; you will feel my gratitude."

He was no gentleman; he had not a spark of generosity in his nature; he was mean and cruel; he was a superlatively bad man. So his enemies say, beginning at Lewis Goldsmith and ending at Viscount Wolseley. It may be so; but it is a little hard on the average citizen who would like to love the good men and hate the bad ones that a "superlatively evil man" like Napoleon Bonaparte should be endowed by Providence with qualities which make such men as Wellington, Metternich, Talleyrand, Czar Alexander, Emperor Francis, Bourbon Louis seem small, seem paltry, seem prosaic and sordid beside him.

or

Napoleon, with twenty-five thousand, hurried to the support of his marshals, and was in Blücher's rear by March 1. Once more the Prussian seemed doomed. His only line of retreat lay through Soissons and across the Aisne. With Napoleon hot upon his track, and in his rear a French fortress, how was he to escape destruction? A French weakling, or traitor, had opened the way by surrendering Soissons. Had he but held the town for a day longer, the war might have ended by a brilliant triumph of the French. Moreau was the name of the commandant at Soissons-a name of ill-omen to Napoleon, whose fury was extreme.

"Have that wretch arrested," he wrote, "and also the members of the council of defence; have them arraigned before a military commission composed of general officers, and, in God's name, see that they are shot in twenty-four hours." Here was lost the most splendid opportunity which came to the French during the campaign. Blücher safely crossed the Aisne (March 3) in the night, and was attacked by Marmont on March 9. During the day the French were successful; but Blücher launched at the unwary Marmont a

night attack which was completely successful. The French lost forty-five guns and twenty-five hundred prisoners. In a sort of desperation, Napoleon gave battle at Laon, but was so heavily outnumbered that he was forced to retreat.

Almost immediately, however, he fell upon the Russians at Rheims, March 13, killed their general, St. Priest, and destroyed their force. It was at this time that Langeron, one of Blücher's high officers, wrote: "We expect to see this terrible man everywhere. He has beaten us all, one after anOther; we dread the audacity of his enterprises, the swiftness of his movements, and the ability of his combinations. One has scarcely conceived any scheme of operations before he has destroyed it."

This tribute from an enemy is very significant of what "this terrible man" might have accomplished had he been seconded. Suppose Murat and Eugène had been operating on the allied line of communications! Or suppose Augereau had done his duty in Switzerland, in the rear of the Allies! Spite of the odds, it seems certain that Napoleon would have beaten the entire array had he not been shamefully betrayed-abandoned by creatures of his own making.

Did ever a tragedy show darker lines than this? All Europe marching against one man, his people divided, his lieutenants mutinous and inclining to treason, his senators ready to depose him, a sister and a brother-in-law stabbing him to the vitals, members of his Council of Regency in communication with the enemy, nobles whom he had restored and enriched plotting his destruction, and his favorite brother, his Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, using the opportunity which the trust afforded to debauch his wife!

Is it any wonder that even this indomitable spirit sometimes bent under the strain? .

After the Emperor's repulse at Laon, Schwarzenberg took heart and advanced toward Paris; but Napoleon, leaving Rheims, marched to Epernay, and the Austrians fell back, pursued by the French. The allied armies, however, concentrated at Arcis on the Aube, and, with one thousand men, beat off the Emperor when he attacked them with thirty thousand.

Napoleon now made his fatal mistake-fatal because he could count on no one but himself. He moved his army to the