See a most interesting essay, "Le Petit Poucet " (Tom Thumb), by Guston Paris. never to disappear, yet they can no longer is but a sister dialect of Greek, Latin, of be allowed to narrow or intercept our German, Celtic, and Slavonic, and that if view. How much the student of Aryan the Greek says es-ti, he is, if the Roman mythology and ethnology may gain for his says est, the German ist, the Slave yesté, own progress by allowing himself a wider the Hindu said three thousand years ago, survey over the traditions and customs of as-ti, he is. This as-ti is a compound of a the whole human race, is best known to root as, to be, and the pronoun ti. The those who have studied the works of root meant originally to breathe, and dwinKlemm, Waitz, Bastian, Sir John Lubbock, dled down after a time to the meaning of Mr. Tylor, and Dr. Callaway. What is to be. All this must have happened before prehistoric in language among the Aryan a single Greek or German reached the nations, is frequently found as still historic shores of Europe, and before a single among Turanian races. The same applies Brahman descended into the plains of with regard to religions, myths, legends, India. At that distant time we must and customs. Among Finns and Lapps, place the gradual growth of language and among Zulus and Maoris, among Khonds ideas, of a language which we are still and Karens, we sometimes find the most speaking, of ideas which we are still thinkstartling analogies to Aryan traditions, ing, and at the same time only can we exand we certainly learn, again and again, plain the framing of those names which this one important lesson, that as in lan- were the first attempts at grasping superguage, so in mythology, there is nothing natural powers, which became in time the which had not originally a meaning, that names of the deities of the ancient world, every name of the gods and heroes had a the heroes of mythology, the chief actors beginning, a purpose, and a history. Jupi- in many a legend, nay, some of which ter was no more called Jupiter by accident, have survived in the nursery tales of our than the Polynesian Maui, the Samoyede own time.* Num, or the Chinese Tien.* If we can discover the original meaning of these names, we have reached the first ground of their later growth. I do not say that we have solved the whole riddle of mythology if we can explain the first purpose of the mythological names, but I maintain that we have gained firm ground; I maintain that every true etymology gives us an historical fact, because the first giving of a name was an historical fact, and an historical fact of the greatest importance for the later development of ancient ideas. Think only of this one fact, which no one would now venture to doubt, that the supreme deity of the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, is called by the same name as the supreme deity of the earliest Aryan settlers in India. Does not this one fact draw away the curtain from the dark ages of antiquity, and open before our eyes an horizon which we can hardly measure by years? The Greek Zeus is the same word as the Latin Ju in Jupiter, as the German Tiu; and all these were merely dialectic varieties of the Vedic Dyaus.† Now dyaus in Sanskrit is the name of the sky, if used as a feminine; if used as a masculine, as it is still in the Veda, it is the sky as a man or as a god-it is Zeus, the father of gods and men. You know, of course, that the whole language of ancient India TOLD From The Cornhill Magazine. STORY OF THE PLEBISCITE. BY ONE OF THE SEVEN MILLION FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND WHO VOTED "YES. BY M. M. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN I. I AM writing this history for sensible people. It is my own story during the calamitous war we have just gone through. I write it to show those who shall come after us how many evil-minded people there are in the world, and how little we ought to trust fair words; for we have been deceived in this village of ours after a most abominable fashion; we have been deceived by all sorts of people - by the sous-préfets, by the préfet and by the ministers; by the curé, by the official gazettes; in a word, by each and all. Could any one have imagined that there are so many deceivers in this world? No, indeed; it requires to be seen with one's own eyes to be believed. In the end we have had to pay dearly. We have given up our hay, our straw, our corn, our flour, our cattle; and that was • See M.M's "Lectures on the Science of Religfon," p. 41, seq. + See M.M.'s Lectures on the Science of Lan-not enough. Finally, they gave up us, our own selves. They said to us: " guage" (6th ed.), vol. ii., p. 468. You are no longer Frenchmen: you are Prus-[quick eye, at last he married a rich widow sians! We have taken your young men without children, Madame Marie Anne to fight in the war; they are dead, they Finck, who was keeping an inn in that are prisoners now settle with Bismarck neighbourhood. They became rich. They any way you like; your business is none bought land in our part of the country of ours!" through the agency of Monsieur Fingado, the solicitor, to whom he sent regularly the price of every piece of land. At last, on the death of the old carpenter, Joseph Briou, he became the purchaser of his house, to live there with his wife, and to keep a public-house on the road to Metting. But these things must be told plainly; so I will begin at the beginning, without gecting angry. You must know, in the first place, that I am a miller in the village of Rothalp, in the valley of Metting, at Dosenheim, between Lorraine and Alsace. It is a large and fine village of 130 houses, wanting This took place last year, during the neither its curé Daniel, nor its schoolmas-time of the Plébiscite, and cousin George ter Adam Fix, nor principal inhabitants of came to visit his house before taking his every kind wheelwrights, blacksmiths, wife, Marie Anne, to it. shoemakers, tailors, publicans, brewers, dealers in eggs, butter, and poultry; we even have two Jews, Solomon Kaan, a pedlar, and David Hertz, cattie-dealer. This will show you what was our state of prosperity before this war; for the wealthier a village is the more strangers it draws: every man finds a livelihood there, and works at his trade. As for me, I was mayor; I had received orders from M. le Sous-Préfet to give public notice of the Plébiscite, and to request all well-disposed persons to vote Yes" if they desired to preserve peace ; because all the ruffians in the country were going to vote No, to have war. This is exactly what I did, making everybody promise to come without fail, and sending the bangard Martin Kapp to carry the voting tickets to the very farthest cottages up the mountains. We had not even occasion to fetch our butchers'-meat from town. David killed a cow now and then, and retailed all we wanted for Sundays and holidays. Cousin George arrived the evening beI, Christian Weber, have never been fur-fore the Plébiscite. I received him very ther than thirty leagues from this com- kindly, as one ought to receive a rich relamune. I inherited my mill from my grand- tion who has no children. He seemed father, Marcel Desjardins, a Frenchman quite pleased to see us, and dined with us from the neighbourhood of Metz, who had in the best of tempers. He carried with built it in the time of the Swedish war, him in a small leathern trunk clothes, when our village was but a miserable ham- shoes, shirts - everything that he required. let. Twenty-six years ago I married He wanted nothing. That day everything Catherine Amos, daughter of the old for- went on well; but the next day, hearing est-ranger. She brought me a hundred the notices cried by the rural policeman, he louis for her dowry. We have two child- went off to Reibell's brewery, which was rena daughter, Grédel and a son Jacob, full of people, and began to preach against who are still with us at home. the Plebiscite. I was just then at the mayorality-house with my official scarf on, receiving the tickets, when suddenly my deputy Placiard came to tell me, in high indignation, that certain miserable wretches were attacking order; that one of them was at the Cruchon d'Or, and that half the village were very nearly murdering him. You must know besides that I have a cousin, George Weber, who went off more than thirty years ago to serve in the Marines in Guadaloupe. He has even been in active service there. It was he who beat the drum on the forecastle of the ship Boussole, as he has told me a hundred times, whilst the fleet was bombarding St. John d'Ulloa. Afterwards he was promoted to be sergeant; then he sailed to North America, for the cod-fisheries; and into the Baltic, on board a small Danish vessel engaged in the coal-trade. George was always intent upon making a fortune. About 1850 he returned to Paris, and established a manufactory of matches in the Rue Mouffetard in Paris; and as he is really a very handsome tall man, with a I, from the passage, could already hear dark complexion, bold looking, and with a 'him shouting these things in a terrible Immediately I went down, and ran to the public-house where my cousin was calling them all asses, affirming that the Plébiscite was for war; that the Emperor, the ministers, the prefects, the generals and the bishops were deceiving the people; that all those men were acting a part to get our money from us, and much besides to the same purpose. voice, and I said to myself, "The poor fellow has been drinking." If George had not been my cousin; if he had not been quite capable some day of disinheriting my children, I should certainly have arrested him at once, and had him conveyed under safe-keeping to Sarrebourg; but, on giving due weight to these considerations, I resolved to put an end to this bad business, and I cried to the people who were crowding the passage, "Make room, you fellows, make room! Those enraged creatures, seeing the scarf, gave way in all directions; and then discovering my cousin, seated at a table in the right-hand corner, I said, "Cousin! what are you thinking of, to create such a scandal? He, too, was overcome at the sight of the scarf, having served in the navy, and knowing that there is no man who claims more respect than a mayor; that he has a right to lay hands upon you, and send you to the lock-up-and, if you resist, to send you as far as Sarreboug and Nancy. Reflecting upon this, he calmed down in a moment, for he had not been drinking at all, as I supposed at first, and he was say ing these things without bitterness, without anger, conscientiously, and through regard for his fellow-citizens. and there was not a single No in the box. If my cousin had not had the large meadow above the mill, and the finest acres in the country, he would have been an object of contempt for the rest of his days; but a rich man, who has just bought a house, an orchard, a garden, and has paid ready-money for everything, may say whatever he pleases, especially when he is not listened to and the people go and do the very opposite of what he has been advising them. Well, this is the way with the elections for the Plébiscite with us, and just the same thing went on throughout our canton: at Phalsbourg, which has been abundantly placarded against the Plébiscite, and where they carried their audacity even to watching the mayor and the ballotbox- out of fifteen hundred electors, military and civil, there were only thirtytwo Noes. It is quite clear that things were making favourable progress, and that M. le SousPréfet could not but be perfectly satisfied with our behaviour. I must also mention that we were in want of a parish road to Hangeviller; that we had been promised a pair of churchbells, and the glandée, or right of feeding Therefore, he replied to me quietly: our hogs upon the adorns in autumn; and "Mr. Mayor, look after your elections! that we were aware that all the villages See that certain rogues up there-as there which voted the wrong way got nothing, are rogues everywhere - don't stuff into whilst the others-in consideration of the the ballot-box handfuls of Yeses instead of good councillors they had sent up, either Noes while your back is turned. This has to the arrondissement or the department often happened! And then pray don't-might always reckon upon a little money trouble yourself about me. In the Gazette from the tax-collector for the necessities of the Government, it is declared that every man shall be free to maintain his own opinions, and to vote as he pleases; if my mouth is stopped, I shall protest in the newspapers." Hearing that he would protest, to avoid a worse scandal I answered him: Say what you please: no one shall declare that we have put any constraint upon the elections; but, you men, you know what you have to do." "Yes, yes," shouted all the people in the room and down the passage, lifting their hats. 46 Yes, Monsieur le Maire; we will listen to nothing at all. Whether they talk all day or say nothing, it is all the of their parish. Monsieur le Sous-Préfet I remember that that very day of the Plébiscite, when it was already known that we had all voted right, and that we should get our two bells with the parish road-I remember that my cousin and I had, after supper, a great quarrel, and that I should certainly have put him out, if it had not been he. We were taking our petit verre of kirch, smoking our pipes, with our elbows on the table; my wife and Grédel had already gone to bed, when all at once he said to me: "Listen to me, Christian. Save the respect I owe you as mayor, you are all a set of geese in this village, and it is a very fortunate thing that I am come here, that you may have at least one sensible man among you." 66 Then he shrugged his shoulders, and answered: "You are not sharp, Christian; it is not so difficult to present accounts to the Chambers. So many chassepots which have no existence! So much munition of war, of which no one knows anything. So much for retiring pensions; so much for the substitutes' fund; so much for changes of uniform. The uniforms are changed every year; that is good for business. Do the deputies inquire into these matters? Who checks the Ministers' budgets? And the deputies whom the Minis you, whom you have appointed like fools, and whom the Emperor would throw up at the very first election, if those gentlemen breathed a syllable about visiting the arsenals and examining into the accounts what a farce! Why, yesterday, passing through Phalsbourg, I got upon the ramparts, and I saw there guns of the time of Herod, upon gun-carriages eaten up by worms and painted over to conceal the rottenness. These very guns, I do believe are recast every third or fourth year. upon paper- with your money. Ah, my poor Christian, you are not very sharp, nor the other people in our village either. But the men you send as deputies to Paris - they are sharp, too sharp." He broke out into a laugh, and I could have sent him back to Paris. I was going to get angry, but he said: Just let me finish; if you had butter of the Interior has recommended to spent a couple of years at Paris, you would see things a little plainer: but at this moment, you are like a nest of hungry jays, blind and unfeathered; they open their bills, and they cry 'Jaques,' to call down food from heaven. Those who hear them climb up the tree, twist their necks, and put them into the pot laughing. That is your position. You have confidence in your enemies, and you give them power to pluck you just as they please. If you appointed upright men in your districts as deputies, councillors-general, instead of taking whoever the prefecture recommends, would not the Emperor and the other honourable men above be obliged then to leave you the money which the tax-collector makes you pay in excess? Could all those people then enrich themselves at your expense, and amass immense "Do you know what you want?" said fortunes in a few years? Would you then he then, filling his pipe and lighting it, for see old baskets with their bottoms out, I made no reply, being too much annoyed; fellows to whom you would not have "what you want is not good sense, it is trusted a halfpenny before the coup-d'état -would you see them become millionaires, rolling in gold-gliding along in carriages with their wives, their children, their servants and their ballet-dancers? The préfets, the sous-préfets say to you: 'Go on voting right you shall have this -you shall have that'things which you have a right to demand in virtue of the taxes you pay, but which are granted to you as favours, roads, washhouses, schools, &c. Would you not have them in your own right, if the money which is taken from you were left in the commune? What does the Emperor do for you? He plunders you- that is all. Your money, he shows it to you before each election, as they show a child a stick of sugar-candy to make it laugh; and when the election is over he puts it back into his pocket. The trick is played." "How can he put that money into his pocket?" I asked, full of indignation. Are not the accounts presented every year in the Chambers?' 66 " not honesty. All of us peasants, we still possess some good sense and honesty. And we believe, moreover, in the honesty of others, which proves that we ourselves have a little left! No, what you want is education; you have asked for bells, and bells you will get; but all the school you have is a miserable shed, and your only schoolmaster is old Adam Fix, who can teach his children nothing, by reason that he knows nothing himself. Well now, if you were to ask for a really good school, there would be no money in the public fund. There is money enough for bells, but for a good schoolmaster, for a large well-ventilated room, for deal benches and tables, for pictures, slates, maps and books there is nothing; for if you had good schools, your children could read, write, keep accounts; they would soon be able to look into the ministers' accounts, and that is exactly what his Majesty wishes to avoid. You understand now, cousin; this is the reason why you have no school aud you have bells." - me." "Oh, I don't want to grieve you," said I angrily; "I have quite as much sense as you." "What!" said he, "you the mayor of Rothalp, in daily communication with the sous-préfet, you believe that the object of this Plébiscite is to confirm peace?" 66 Yes, I do." Then he looked knowingly at me; "And, the Emperor has not bought enough in do you know," said he, after a few mo- foreign countries; well, it will say with ments' thought, "do you know how much this Plébiscite, Go on, pray go on — we all the schools in France cost? I am not are quite satisfied.' Does that suit your referring to the great schools of medicine, | ideas?" and law, and chemistry, the colleges, and "Yes. I had rather that than war," the lyceums, which are schools for wealthy said I, in a very bad temper. 66 The Emyoung men, able to keep themselves in pire is peace; I vote for peace." large cities, and to pay for their own main- Then George himself rose up, emptying tenance. I am speaking of schools for the his pipe on the edge of the table, and said: people, elementary schools, where reading" Christian, you are right. Let us go to and writing are taught, the two first bed. I repent having bought old Briou's things which a man must know, and which house: decidedly the people in these distinguish him from the savages who parts are too stupid. You quite grieve roam naked in the American forests? Well, the deputies whom the people themselves send to protect their interests at Paris, and whose first thought, if they are not altogether thieves, ought to be to discharge their duty towards their constituenciesthese deputies have never voted for the schools of the people a larger sum than seventy-five millions. The state contributes ten millions as its share; the commune, the departments, the fathers and mothers do the rest. Seventy-five millions to educate the people in a great country like onrs it is a disgrace. The United States spend six times the amount. But, on the other hand, for the War budget we pay five hundred millions; even that would not be too much if we had five hundred thousand men under arms, according to the calculation which has been made of what it costs per diem for each man; but for an army of two hundred and fifty thousand men, it is too much by half. What becomes of the other three hundred millions? If they were made available to build schools, to pay able masters, to furnish retreats for workmen in their declining days, I should have nothing to say against it; but to ring in the pockets of MM. the senators and the bells of MM. the curés, I consider that too dear." "What, you believe that? Come now. Have we not peace at the present moment? Do we want a Plébiscite to preserve it? Do you suppose that the Germans are taken in by it? Our peasants, to be sure, they are misled; they are indoctrinated at the curé's house, at the mayoralty-house, at the sous-préfecture; but not a single workman in Paris is a dupe of this pernicious scheming. They all know that the Emperor and the Ministers want war; that the generals and the superior officers demand it. Peace is a good thing for tradesmen, for artisans, for peasants; but the officers are tired of being cramped up in the same ranks. Already the inferior officers have been disgusted with the profession through the crowds of nobles, Jesuits, and canting hypocrites of all sorts who are thrust into the army. The troops are not animated with a good spirit; they want promotion, or they will end by rousing themselves into a passion, especially when they see the Prussians under our As cousin George bothered my mind with all his arguments, I felt a wish to go to bed, and I said to him, "All that, cous-noses helping themselves to anything they in, is very fine, but it is getting late, and besides it has nothing to do with the Plébiscite." please without asking our leave. You don't understand that! There," said he, "I am sleepy. Let us go to bed." I had risen; but he laid his hand upon Then I began to understand that my my arm and said, Let us talk a little cousin had learnt many things at Paris, longer let me finish my pipe. You say and that he knew more of politics than that this has nothing to do with the Plé- I did. But that did not prevent me from biscite; but that Plébiscite is for all this being in a great rage with him; for the nice arrangement of things to go on. If whole of that day he had done nothing the nation believes that all is right, that but cause trouble, and I said to myself enough money is left to it, and that even that it was impossible to live with such a it can spare a little more; that the minis- brute. ters, the senators and the princes are not yet sufficiently fat and flourishing; that My wife, at the top of the landing, had heard us disputing; but as we were go |