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She could say no more; her voice failed. She grew very pale and rushed out of the room.

Fifteen minutes after Perekatoff, with the affability instilled into him accompanied Lutschkoff to the anteroom, pressed his hand cordially, and entreated him "not to forget" him and his family. After having thus dismissed his guest, he remarked majestically to one of the servants that he wouldn't do amiss to have his hair cut, and without waiting for an answer he returned with a troubled face to his room, lay down on a sofa, sfill with the same anxious expression, and instantly fell asleep like an innocent child.

"You look rather pale to-day," said Nenila to her daughter that evening. "Don't you feel well?"

"Perfectly well, mamma."

after a short silence. "I know you will not try to conceal anything from me?" "No, mamma."

But a faint flush mounted into Marja's face at the same moment.

"That is noble in you. It would be wicked if you wished to hide anything from me. Surely, Marja, you know how much I love you."

"Certainly, mamma."

And Marja nestled closely to her mother.

"Well, enough, enough." (Nenila was moving towards her room.)

"Tell me," she continued carelessly, as if her question had no special significance, "what have you been talking about with Captain Lutschkoff to-day?"

"With Captain Lutschkoff?" replied Marja quietly. "Why, about all sorts of things."

"So you like him?"

"What do you mean?"

"Don't you remember how much you

Nenila drew the shawl closer around desired to make his acquaintance? her neck.

"You are really very pale. Look at me," she continued with the same motherly solicitude, in which, however, mingled a tone of parental authority; "why, your eyes, too, are not very clear to-day. Marja, you are ill."

"My head aches a little," replied Marja in order to say something.

"You see, I knew it." Nenila laid her hand on Marja's forehead. "But you are not feverish."

Marja stooped and picked up a pin. The mother's hands gently clasped the daughter's slender waist.

"Should you not tell me something?" she asked tenderly, without removing her hands.

Marja trembled.

"I? No mamma."

Marja's sudden embarrassment had not escaped her mother's eyes.

"Yet I believe Think again." But Marja had already recovered her self-command; instead of answering, she kissed her mother's hand.

"Have you really nothing to tell me?" "No, really I haven't."

How uneasy you were?"

Marja turned away and began to laugh.

"He is such a singular man!" remarked Nenila, in an artless tone. Marja wanted to defend Lutschkoff. but bit her tongue just in time.

"Yes, he really is a singular person, a perfect original," she replied, in a tolerably indifferent tone; "but a very brave man."

"Of course. Why didn't the cornet come with him?"

"He was ill. Ah, yes! By the way, he wanted to send me a puppy. Will you allow it?"

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"That you would tell me at once if

"I believe you," Nenila answered you ever fell in love."

"Of course."

"Well? Has not the time come?" Marja burst into a loud laugh. "Look at me."

with the tints of western light. Lecky has spoken to you of the political value of history in expanding the range of our vision, and teaching us,

The girl looked her mother boldly in judging the true interests of naand steadily in the eyes.

"It is impossible!" thought Nenila, regaining her confidence. "How should she be able to deceive me? How did I even get such an idea! is still a perfect child."

She went away.

She

tions, to look beyond the immediate future. Mr. Lecky declared, and I yield him an enthusiastic assent, that "history is never more valuable than when it enables us, standing as on a height, to look beyond the turmoil of our petty quarrels and to detect in

"It's really very wrong in me," the slow development of the past the thought Marja.

From The London Times. INTERNATIONAL PREJUDICE.1

The fields of knowledge explored by the students to whom I have just presented certificates of merit cover so vast an area that it may be deemed strange if, as temporary president of this institute, I should, nevertheless, invite you to-night to the contemplation of a totally different set of phenomena from those which figure in any of the syllabuses which guide your usual studies. The addresses of my predecessors in this chair have been as varied in their choice of topics as the subjects which you here pursue. Sometimes physicists have revealed to you some of the latest secrets of the material world. The

currents, the ebb and flow, the rising tide of new social forces have been explained to you on other occasions in stirring periods by eloquent lips. The volume of your presidential addresses contains precious mementoes of Froude and Lowell, who have both presented to you studies on democracy-the one, a friendly warning appealing to the past, buttressed with stones cut from the quarries of classical times; the other, a picture of brightness, hopeful, buoyant, colored

1 An address in the Birmingham town hall, given by the Hon. George J. Goschen, as president for the year, of the Birmingham and Midland Institute.

great permanent forces which are steadily bearing nations onwards towards improvement or decay." The study of history to my mind is an indispensable element in the education of enlightened citizenship, and especially of such citizenship as aspires to take part in the guidance of an empire such as ours.

But to-night it is to a different form of history, if history it can rightly be called, that I desire to draw your attention. I wish you to reflect on some of those contemporary forces which the past, as Lecky says, is to help us to judge, but about which, as about many events of recent occurrence, too little is known and too little is thought. Ladies and gentlemen, students of the past, you who pass brilliant examinations in the history of the ancient republics, or who could paint in glowing periods the glories of mediæval times, the stories of the makers of empires, or of the champions of Churches, you who have saturated yourselves with the chronicles of various nations, what is the latest date, may I ask, down to which, as a rule, you have conducted your studies? There is, I fear, in the case of every generation a gap in their knowledge between the events chronicled by the latest historical text books which are supplied for their educational use and the events of which they themselves have been eye-witnesses. It must, I fear, necessarily be so. There is an interval too late to be taught by books, too early to be known by experience. This immediate past is too little a past to have

of

as a sub-
syllabus
any other

those

yourselves acquainted with
great events, either national or inter-
national, of which you have not been
living witnesses, yet which are too re-
cent to have entered formally and offi-
cially into the recognized courses of
historical study. I need not urge the
importance, the solemn importance, of
the course which I thus recommend.
Some of you already, some
of you
will by and by, contribute to form that
mighty force, public opinion-public
opinion, which is sometimes, as
the saying goes, to be
be employed
in strengthening the hands of a
government, sometimes to control it,
always to play a tremendous part in
the destinies of a nation. A general
ignorance or very imperfect knowl-
edge of what has gone before in the
recent development of contemporary
international conditions is a real dan-
ger to a State. In the absence of
knowledge, impulse too little ame-
nable to forethought and wisdom, may
play too important a part. The atti-
tude of nations towards each other-
a matter of such vital importance to
each one of the European family-
cannot be understood or appreciated,
much less foreseen, unless there is
some knowledge of the crisis through
which each may have passed, of
growths of sentiment, of the creation
of interests, of the origin of antipa-
thies, of the grounds of prejudice, if
prejudice there be.

been studied scientifically, and to have been written upon in a spirit free from the heat of partisanship or from the glaring colors of prejudice. Causes and effects have not yet been apprehended and separated. The winnowing fan of time has not yet sifted the grain from the chaff. No professional chairs can be founded for what really might almost still be called contemporary history. I should not be surprised if, among the students of history, there are many who, for instance, have not even a glimmering of the causes and effects of the French Revolution of 1848, who are not half as well acquainted with the wars which gave Italy freedom and consolidation in the sixties of this century as with such wars as were chronicled by Livy or by Tacitus. The remodelling of the map of Europe during the last forty years probably appears ject of study in no this institute or of institute in the kingdom. I am speaking now to the younger generation. We older folks, perhaps, in the innocence of old age, fancy that events which stirred our deepest feeling or excited our intensest interest must be of necessity, as a matter of course, by intuition or otherwise, we reflect not by what means, equally familiar to our sons and daughters. We who lived through the Indian Mutiny fancy that the Lawrences and the Havelocks must be names more familiar to you than that of the Black Prince or of Marlborough; that the process of the making of the German Empire under William I, must in its broad lines stand out to you in nearer and clearer light than the cloud-wrapped proceedings of our William the Conqueror. But my experience is that it is not so. My first appeal to you, then, tonight shall be in your private studies, in that education of self by which you supplement what you learn from professors, or from such books as are privileged to form part of the regular educational curriculum, by no means to neglect any opportunity of making sume I am speaking to an audience

And this brings me to my second appeal to you, to the one which I specially wish to impress on you to-night. I would urge you not only to bestow some thought on actual great eventswhich I would almost call contemporary events had they not happened before many of my listeners here tonight were born-but to extend your attention to the acquirement of some knowledge, whenever you have the means of attaining it, of the present situation, the present conditions, the temper, the prejudices, the sentiments, the modes of thought, the currents of opinion, of nations other than your own. Ladies and gentlemen, I pre

which is fairly cultivated, fairly instructed, fairly conversant with what is going on in the world. Do not. therefore, unless you choose, take what I am about to say to yourselves But you may share my fear that in the country at large there is a most deplorable absence of knowledge as to what our neighbors think and feelan ignorance which, however, I hasten to say is entirely reciprocal. We know the commercial-the statistical side. We know about exports and imports; we know a few of us, perhaps-something of foreign systems of taxation; a few know something of foreign institutions; but as to what stirs the masses, or, indeed, the classes, in this or that quarter of Europe-as to what are the sentiments, the national character of this or that people-the most extravagant mistakes are mutually and reciprocally made. International prejudice, I fear, plays almost as prominent and sad a part in these days of enlightenment, of easy access, of railways and steamers, of cosmopolitan and metropole hotels, of international currency conferences, telegraph conferences, sanitary conferences, labor conferences, as in those darker and less talkative times when travels were still adventures, and when the word "international" itself had not yet been coined. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, international prejudice is, I fear, still a force which the resources of civilization have hitherto been powerless to quell. I am think ing, not of hatred, not of fierce passions, not of sudden resentments, not of temporary estrangements, but of the simple inability, of which we have sometimes glaring examples, to understand the conduct and the motives, the sentiments and the opinions of each other. Perhaps it is in itself a prejudice on my part if I modestly suggest that England is not the greatest sinner in the development of international prejudice, though no doubt we are not free from guilt. It is not so easy to know the nature of our own errors about other nations as the er rors of other nations about us; and I

naturally find greater facility in illustrating my argument by examples drawn from prejudice against us than by examples the other way. Yet I shall have something to say on both. What stupendous ignorance reigns abroad, I fancy almost in every country, as to the present character of the British nation-about what we care for, strive for, live for; about what stimulates us, angers us, or depresses us. The conception of the British people which still is held abroad by the masses of the people, aye, and by men of light and leading too, is still based to an astonishing extent on the prejudices of a century ago. Of course you all know Napoleon's phrase, that we are a "nation of shopkeepers"--a veiled compliment to the immensity of our commerce, but intended to be a direct attack on our character as that of a nation influenced by nothing but considerations of gain and material prosperity. The idea of our being, not in the sense which might be fairly attributed to any nation, eager for commercial and territorial aggrandizement, but in some special exceptional sense addicted to the most materialistic conception of national life, became SO deep rooted that neither time nor a vast change of circumstances has been able to eradicate it. Is it true? Has it ever been true? Have Englishmen as a nation been more actuated by selfish considerations than our neighbors? Is it true now? No; it is absolutely false. On this point our national conscience is not pricked. Has it been true? I cannot find that it has ever been proved. For, mind you, it is not suf ficient to prove that in various stages of our checkered international history we have been influenced solely by considerations of our own advantage. It would have to be shown that the degree in which Great Britain has exhibited that tendency has been greater than what has prevailed among the other members of the European family. I expect that this prejudice has in large measure arisen from the prosperity which has attended our shop

keeping-from the degree to which the English have been successful international merchants, international bankers, and manufacturers for foreign countries. The insane attempt of the first Napoleon to exclude British goods from the whole of the continent revealed, through the privations and losses incurred by that continent in consequence of that act, the degree to which British industry-the industry of a so-called nation of shopkeepers had swamped the Continental world. It is not uncharitable to say that our wealth, increasing decade by decade, has stimulated the notion abroad that, more than other races, we were absorbed-unduly, wickedly absorbed in the pursuit of gain at our neighbors' expense. Does a parauel feeling not sometimes come to the surface in the midst of our own people? Does not the sight of a successful industry, of accumulating wealth, excite in certain breasts a kind of prejudice against those whose careers have reaped rich rewards? The foolish prejudice is created that success in trade must be accompanied by, or result from, some abnormal devotion to selfish considerations, and spring from some blameworthy and ignoble appetite for merely material gains. Be that as it may, in the past as in the present, a peculiar exceptional selfishness, a hardness of tone, an ignoble pursuit of narrow ends, has been attributed to the English as a distinctly national characteristic. And yet in the past this country has given noble examples of disinterested policy, of sympathy with the causes which simple humanity called into being, of sacrifices made for principle, of national movements on behalf of an idea. If our more sober-minded people did not inscribe liberty, fraternity, and equality in flaring letters on flags and porticos, the history of our dealings with inferior races during the last fifty years will show to the world that, better than most governing nations, we have understood the deeper significance of those words. Notwithstanding occasional lapses, notwith

standing mistakes which have been made, aye, notwithstanding some crimes which in the earlier part of this period have stained our records here and there, the treatment by Great Britain of inferior and subject races has been incomparably superior in respect of liberty and fraternity and equality than what has been accorded in similar circumstances by any people of the universe.

One striking incident of our career as a nation will occur to most of you at once, unless indeed the achievements of Clarkson and Wilberforce and the act by which emancipation was finally accomplished belong to the gap in history which is left too much unexplored. The emancipation of slaves in the West Indies, accompanied by a stupendous pecuniary sacrifice and the ruin of much British property in Jamaica, the whole attitude of the country towards the question of slavery, the awakening of the national conscience in this respect, an awakening which has not, like SO many emotions, been followed by a careless reaction, should have testified to carping Europe that England could be moved by a noble, a fraternal, a liberating idea. But it was not so, and it is not so. What was due to as sympathetic a movement, as divine an inspiration, if I may use the term, as ever stirred a people's heart, was ascribed by Continental opinion to a mercenary calculating of the respective losses which would be incurred by other nations as compared with ourselves, and to the belief that the emancipation of the slave in the West Indies would cause so much irretrievable ruin to our competitors in sugar growing that, with some advantages on our side of which we were well aware, the net result would be lucrative to ourselves. Not humanitarianism but selfish Machiavellian policy, such was the predominating motive in the eyes of some of our neighbors of the action which Great Britain took. How any students of the movement itself, with all the splendid characters who played a part in that

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