don't want European influence or European political methods here. We intend to keep America for the Americans, and make all the peoples of the continent work up to the standard set by ourselves. Therefore no fresh European powers are to get a hand in, and those that are in already are to be cleared out as soon as convenient." Mr. Olney does not quite say this, but it is what his arguments really mean. And if the end could be attained, if it were possible to keep the New World free from the strife, the ambitions, the wearing intrigues, the jealous rivalries, the burden of armaments, the constant dread, and sometimes the awful reality, of war, which have saddened the Old-what Englishman would seek to put obstacles in the way of realizing the comfortable dream? By all means, he would say, let the Americans try the experiment. Only, from the depth of an Old-World experience that ranges over two thousand years of fierce conflict among the nations, he may be permitted to remind Americans that the experiment is no cheap and easy one. It will need something more than large words and elevated sentiments to carry it to a succesful conclusion.

Even in embarking upon the modified form of this enterprise which I take to be implied in the Olney Doctrine, the United States has saddled itself with a vast addition to its burdens and its duties. It has asserted-successfully asserted-for itself a claim to be the general protector and arbiter of the American continent. The responsibility thus assumed is a heavy one. Nothing like it has existed in the world since the downfall of the Roman Empire. Many powerful modern States have exercised a hegemony, or supremacy, over independent, civilized neighbors; but no other has yet attempted to regulate the affairs of a whole quarter of the habitable globe, or to make itself answerable for a large number of separate States, many of them of enormous extent, and some of them hun

They believe it to be for the healing of all nations, and that civilization must either advance or retrograde according as its supremacy is extended or curtailed.”—Mr. Olney's Despatch.

dreds or even thousands of miles distant from its own frontiers. The continent of America is not like Africa. It is not a no-man's land, inhabited by masterless savages. Except the white desolate wastes of the far North, where the continent breaks up among the Polar seas, and a comparatively insignificant tract in the extreme South, all America-North, Central, and South-is, nominally at least, subject to the rule of some organized government recognized by the family of nations, and administered by men of European blood, professing the Christian religion. Whatever may be the actual facts, in theory, and in the view of international law, the other governments of the Americas have as much right to call themselves civilized, and to claim all the immunities and prerogatives of civilization, as that of Washington itself; and some at least of their States have existed, under settled rule, as dependencies of European powers, as long as the United States or longer. Nor are these groups of countries, which are henceforth to consider themselves under the tutelage of the republic, insignificant in resources, or in the possibilities of future wealth and greatness. The Union, it is true, is a mighty realm, with its seventy millions of people, its vast area of fertile and temperate land, its abounding prosperity, and its magnificent industrial development. Few Englishmen would be inclined to underrate the power and the splendor of the noblest of the daughter States which have sprung from the womb of the Mother of Nations. But the tall shadow of the republic has perhaps unduly dwarfed the proportions of others who share with it the heritage of the Western world. We need not forget that alongside the United States there lies a country, still under the imperial crown of Britain, which may also be called great, in all the elements that make for greatness, except an abundant population; and even that may come before long. In thirty years' time the Dominion of Canada may have grown into a nation with ten or fifteen millions of people, mostly of British descent: a nation large enough to claim its right to be treated

on terms of political equality with any neighbor, however populous and powerful. And if we leave Canada out of account, the republics of South America and Central America are not so unimportant that their political control can be easy, even for a country so vigorous and powerful as the United States. Mismanaged as it has been by bad government, and retarded in its material development by war, bankruptcy, slavery, and revolution, there is the possibility of a great future before Spanish and Portuguese America. Great, in certain ways, it is already. Mexico has a population of ten millions, and an area equal to all the countries of western Europe together; Brazil is larger than Europe, and larger than the United States, excluding Alaska; the Argentine Republic has fertile land enough to support the combined population of England, France, and Germany; and even the smaller republics of the North are larger than most European monarchies. These States are not merely huge tracts of uninhabitable desert, like that immense blank area of "light soil" which makes French Africa fill so much space on the map. Nearly the whole of South and Central America is well watered, and it is lavishly endowed by nature with vegetable and mineral wealth; a considerable portion has a climate which does not forbid settlement by men of the Caucasian race. Of this splendid slice of the earth's surface much is still almost virgin to the foot of man. The immense dominion which is called Brazil has only fourteen millions of inhabitants, including negroes and Indians. The Argentine is less populous than Belgium. Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, even Peru and Chili, are still only half-explored lands. Who can doubt that these vast expanses of fruitful soil cannot be left forever to a handful of traders and political adventurers in a few ports and capitals, and to sparse agricultural settlements round the rim of the coast and along the lower course of the great rivers? And who can fail to believe that as South America fills up its haphazard political arrangements, its accidental and unnatural geographical distribution

will be altered? The future history of the continent is likely to be more adventurous than its past. New states will be created; the old ones will fall to pieces; there must be convulsions and cataclysms, and probably a struggle for territory, which cannot well be otherwise than violent. There is another point worth considering, though strangely little attention has been bestowed on it in this country. When the reconstruction of South America begins, it will be difficult to exclude the European nations rom a share in the scramble. Some of them may be drawn into it by the natural evolution of events and probably very much against their will. But then the countries of Europe are full, and over full; their surplus population is brimming over into the other quarters of the world; cupidity, industrial enterprise, the desire to gain the necessaries of life on easier terms than they can be got in comparatively poor countries not fitted to sustain a large population from their own resources, are driving them to the outermost parts of the world, in numbers larger than ever.

Rhene or the Danaw from their populous

sands

poured upon the fields of Italy. The problem is really less interesting for us than for some others. Within the limits of the empire there is good land enough to hold the increase of the British Isles for a hundred years to come. But the German, the Belgian, the Austrian, the Italian, the Alsatian, the Sclavonian, the Scandinavian, pressed abroad by ambition or sheer hunger-where are they to go? At present they go mostly to the United States; but the United States is not anxious to have them, and will not take them much longer. There is Africa; but Africa is already a failure, since it begins to be plain that the amount of land suited for settlement is strictly limited and a very large part of all that is worth having is in the possession of a power which cannot be deprived of its dependencies till the strongest navy in the world has been mastered. What every European State wants is a colony capable of sustaining

in comfort a rew millions of its own people. It is not at all improbable that Germany, for instance, will find such a colony in southern Brazil, and Italy on the Rio Plata. Let us suppose-not an extravagant supposition- that some time in the early part of the next century a couple of millions of Germans find themselves living in southern Brazil, and that they also find the government of a gang of half-caste attorneys and political adventurers at Rio Janeiro no longer tolerable. The Uitlanders revolt and are beaten; they appeal to their own government for protection and annexation. What will the United States do? It might annex South Brazil, or all Brazil, itself; or it might merely signify that the Monroe Doctrine, with its authorized glosses, required it to warn off Germany, and leave the inhabitants of Brazil to fight out the question among themselves. In the former case it would have acquired a Territory or a new State, of enormous extent, inhabited by an alien race, separated from the rest of the Union by hundreds of miles of sea and land, and needing a military force, much larger than the whole of the present United States army, to police and protect it. In the other case, the civilizing mission of the United States, of which Mr. Olney speaks, might be fulfilled by consigning a nobly fertile region and an industrious population to some such welter of anarchy and murderously savage warfare as that which devastated Paraguay and almost exterminated its male inhabitants thirty years ago. There is another alternative. It is conceivable that even the prestige of the United States might not be sufficient to induce a powerful European monarchy to abandon a large population of its own subjects without a struggle; and if the United States declined to annex Brazil, Germany might take some forcible action which would effectually impede that American State from "shaping for itself its own political fortunes and destinies." But this would be "antagonizing the interests and inviting the opposition of the United States," and according to the Olney Doctrine would have to be opposed by

the forces of the Union. Whichever alternative is taken the result would involve an addition to the external responsibilities, and an increase of the warlike resources, of the United States.

This last result seems to be inevitable. No nation can expect to take over the political control of an entire continent, to make itself answerable for permanently maintaining the existing geographical divisions of a group of States so large and (in some cases) so distant as those of the two Americas, and to secure the integrity against colonization, annexation, or other forcible intrusion, of territories at once so tempting, so weak, and in such a condition of economic and industrial infancy, without being in a position to give effect to its wishes. If the scramble for South America once begins, neither the latent resources nor the moral influence of the United States will avail to protect its clients without the display of effective material strength. The republic will be compelled to provide itself with some of those burdensome appendages to political predominance, under which the peoples of this continent have suffered. Amateur diplomatists may contrive to conduct the external affairs of a nation which is seldom called upon to concern itself with what happens beyond its own borders; they will require to be replaced by an elaborately (and expensively) trained staff of experts. Both the army and the navy must be brought a good deal closer to the European standard. A levy of militiamen and civilian volunteers can no more be relied upon to furnish a completely equipped army corps for service in South America than a fleet of cruisers can be safely left to face a squadron of battleships. President Cleveland has at last provided the United States with a definite and positive foreign policy. It will remain for President Cleveland's successors to supply the country with the means of adequately discharging the responsibilities which this policy necessarily involves. The old Monroe Doctrine was one of self-centred isolation. A country, which aimed as far as possible at having no political relations with foreign States, could almost dis

pense with the luxury of fleets and armies. But the New Monroe Doctrine (which in some respects is rather the antithesis than the legitimate development of its predecessor) cannot assuredly be maintained unless the citizens of the republic are prepared to endure burdens and incur obligations from which hitherto they have been enviably free.

SIDNEY Low.

From Temple Bar.

A FREAK OF CUPID.

CHAPTER V.

Courthope had struck across to the main road at right angles to the poplar avenue. The poplars stood slim, upright, more like a stiff and regular formation of feathery seaweed growing out of a frozen ocean than like trees upon a plain. He was nearing a grove of elm and birch which he had not seen the evening before; by the almost hidden rails of the fence there were half-buried shrubs. So dry, so hard, so absolutely without bud or sere leaf was the interlacing outline of the trees and shrubs, that they too seemed to be some strange product of this new sort of ocean; they did not remind him of verdant glades. Not that beauty was absent, nor charm, but the scene was strange, very strange; the domain of the laughing princess, on whom he had turned his back, was, in the daylight, more than ever an enchanted land which he could fancy to be unknown in story and until now unexplored by man. Such ideas only came to him by snatches; the rest of him, mind and body, was summed up in a fierce determination to catch the thief and bring back his spoils. Whether by this he would prove himself honest or guilty, he neither knew nor felt that he cared.

Gradually, as he thought less about his snow-shoes, he found that the wide lateral swing which he had been giving to his leg was unneeded. Strange as it seemed, the large rackets did not inter

fere when he took an ordinary step. Having made this pleasant discovery he quickened speed. He did not know whether the girl had stopped laughing and had gone into the house again, but he knew that the falling snow and the branches of the trees must now hinder her from seeing him distinctly.

In a moment he was glad of this, for, becoming incautious, he fell.

Both arms, put out to save himself, were embedded to the very shoulder straight down in the snow that offered no bottom to his touch; when his next impulse was to move knees and feet he found that the points of his snowshoes were dug deep, and his toes, tied to them, held the soles of his feet in the same position.

What cursed temerity had made him confess to a criminal act in order to be allowed to come on this fool's errand? Fool, indeed, had he been to suppose that he could walk upon a frozen cloud without falling through! Such were Courthope's reflections.

By degrees he got himself up, but only by curling himself round and taking off his snow-shoes. By degrees he got the snow-shoes put on again, and mounted out of the hole which he had made, with snow adhering to all his garments and snow melting adown his neck and wrists. He now realized that he had spent nearly half an hour in walking not a quarter of a mile. With this cheerless reflection as a companion he went doggedly on, choosing now the drifted main road for a path.

Having left behind him the skeleton forms of the trees, he was trudging across an open plain, flat almost as the surface of the lake which he had traversed yesterday. Sometimes the fences at the side of the road were wholly hidden, more often they showed the top of their posts or upper bar; sometimes he could see cross-fences, as if outlining fields, so that he supposed he still walked through lands farmed from the lonely stone house, that he was still upon his lady's domain. He meditated upon her, judging that she was sweet beyond compare, although why he thought so, after her mistrust and

derision, was one of those secrets which the dimpled Cupid only could explain. He was forced to acknowledge the fact that thus he did think, and that here he was walking, whither be hardly knew, battling with the gale, hustled roughly by its white wings, in danger at every turn of falling off the two small moving rafts of his shoes into a sea in which no man could swim very long. He wondered, should his snow-shoes break, if he would be able to flounder to the rim of the fence? How long could he sit there? Certainly it would seem, looking north and south, and east and west, that he would need to sit as long as the life in him might endure the frost.

At length a shed or small barn met his eye. His own approach seemed to ave been heard and answered from within; the neigh of a horse greeted him. At first he supposed that some horses belonging to the house were stabled here, and neglected because the roads were impassable; then he judged that so slight a shed could not be intended for a stable.

He answered the animal's cry by seeking the door. Against it the drift was not deep, for, as it opened on the sheltered side, he had only the snowfall to scrape away. The door, which had very recently been freed from its crust of frost, yielded easily. He found a brown shaggy horse tied within, and beside it a sleigh, such as he had frequently seen, a mere platform of wood upon runners. Otherwise the shed was empty. Courthope was quickly struck by the recognition of something which set his memory working. The old buffalo-skin on the sleigh was such as was common, but the way it was stretched upon a heap of sacks made him remember the sleigh that he had yesterday passed upon the river, and the keen, sinister face of the driver, which had ill contrasted with his apparent sleep and stupidity.

Courthope tossed aside the skin with a jerk. A rum bottle, a small hoard of frozen bread and bacon, a heavy blanket folded beneath, all seemed to

prove that the driver had made provision for a longer journey. The horse had no food before it; no blanket was upon its back. Probably its driver had not intended to leave it here so long. Where was the driver? This quickly became in Courthope's mind the all important question. Why had he been skulking on the most lonely part of the lake? And now, recalling again the man's face, he believed that he had an evil design.

Courthope pursued his way; for, whether the thief had gone farther or remained in this vicinity, it was evidently desirable to have help from the nearest neighbors to seek and capture him. Courthope soon reached what seemed to be a dip or hollow in the plain; in this the wind had been very busy levelling the surface with the higher ground. At first he supposed that, for some reason, road and fences had come to an abrupt ending; then he discovered that he merely walked higher above the natural level. The thought came to him that if here he should break his snow-shoes there would not even be the neighboring fence-top on which to perch and freeze.

Suddenly all his attention was concentrated upon a dark something, like a bit of cloth fallen in the snow. As he came close and touched the cloth he found it to be the covering of a basket almost buried; pushing away the snowcrusted covering and feeling with eager fingers among the icy contents, he quickly knew that this was no other than the stolen silver of which he was in quest. A thrill of gratitude to Fortune for so kindly a freak had hardly passed through his mind before his eye sought a depression in the snow just beyond. He saw now that a man was lying there. The head resting upon an arm was but slightly covered with snow; the whole form had sunk by its own heat into a cavity like a grave.

Courthope lifted the head; the face was that of the man whom he had seen yesterday upon the river. The arms, when he raised them, fell again to the snow like lead, yet he perceived that