and the steersman, wildly gesticulating, those were not the sounds of sobs which now shouted encouragement to the swimmer, now urged on his willing crew with frantic cries. The widow's heart sank and became like lead. To be so near relief from danger and annoyance, and the pangs of jealous love, and to miss it as though by a hair's breadth, seemed too hard. In her agony of disappointment, she called upon the Blessed Virgin, “Star of the Sea," herself a mother, to aid her, and as it were in answer to her prayer, when the boat reached within one hundred yards of the drowning man, and the steersman was already leaning over to clutch him, he threw up his hands with a despairing cry-sank, and was seen no more. The widow gave a great sigh of relief, and prepared to descend from her "bad eminence," when to her measureless surprise another boat shot round the point, manned this time by a single rower, and to her rage and horror she saw the hated soldier alive and sound. and pulling with all his might for the fatal spot. The widow breathed no prayer this time, but a heavy curse upon the soldier, in which I fear the Blessed Virgin was included, for having deceived her instead of answering her prayer. At any rate, she retracted the promise of twelve pounds of the best wax candles which she had vowed to her shrine in her first ecstasy of joy. But who, then, was the drowned? Some unoffending "boy of the neighbors," no doubt. What a pity! She might have called her men if she had only known, and there would have been ample time to save him. Well, it could not be helped. It was the will of God. The boat's crew were picking up the drowned man's hat in silence-a brown wideawake, which seemed strangely familiar to her eyes. The current and the light air had drifted them shorewards, and their features could now be distinguished even by her failing eyes. The terrible soldier had taken the hat from the men, and No, surely. she heard coming from that hardened, unfeeling reprobate? A horrible fear seized her. She ran down the narrow stairs and through the open door like one distracted, and down to the beach, where the men were sadly landing, and the soldier, crying like a child, handed her Johnny's-her child's-hat. The story was soon told. The other uncle and the boy, seeing the soldier go off fishing alone, determined to try their luck also, but on a bank in front of the house, and nearer home. They launched the old yawl, and the uncle was proceeding to step the mast, when his foot went through a rotten plank, from which he was unable to withdraw it (as was proved when the wreck was washed ashore some days afterwards). The boat filled rapidly and went down. It was his cries which the men had heard. When the boat sank, the boy, who was a good swimmer for his years, struck out for the shore; and we know the rest. No wonder the house bore an evil name. The widow fled from it, never to return, and passed the rest of her life in the neighborhood of the convent (which she endowed with all her worldly goods) in ceaseless penance and prayer. No man knew her dreadful story for certain, except the priest, and to him it came sub sigillo; but the neighbors could put two and two together. They collated the statements of the laborers and that of the servant-girl, who had seen her creeping up the stairs, and combined them with certain wild words which she let fall in her first rage of grief and horror; and they passed sentence upon her, and condemned her, and held her and her house accursed. S. T. HEARD. From The Economist. SPAIN AS A COLONIAL POWER. The latest news from the Philippines considerably increases the difficulties of Spain. The stories of the immedi ate success of the government of Manilla are obviously false, and it may be taken as certain that the government of Spain has to reconquer the colony as completely as it has to reconquer Cuba. That is an even more difficult task. The inhabitants of the Philippines number probably six millions, or three times the number of the citizens of Cuba. They are distributed over an immense number of islands, covering in the aggregate an area greater than that of Great Britain and Ireland, and the majority of them are Malays by origin-that is, are persons capable, if they are excited, of most resolute fighting. They have never been really subjugated by the Spaniards, who have paid expenses from the revenues of Luzon and Mindanao, and have for the most part contented themselves with "converting" the people, and leaving them to the management of the Catholic clergy. This management has not been very successful, as is evident from the fact that the fury of the people in this uprising has been mainly directed against them; and we believe it will be found, when the merchants of Manilla have the courage to write letters, that the Spaniards govern nothing but the area-comparatively a very small one -which their garrisons can traverse. They are themselves aware of this, and they are, we fear, meeting their difficulties by exercising an extreme severity, executing or banishing all leaders of the revolt, and when it is possible, massacring all insurgents. The total result is that they have to subdue the whole population, which will take an army, and that they are creating in Cuba and throughout America an impression that they are hopeless as a governing power, that they cannot in that capacity be regarded as civilized, and that it is a sort of duty in all other white men to rescue their unfortunate subjects from their dominion. We regret this conclusion very greatly. No European power wishes for the dominion of the Philippines, which it would cost any power millions to subjugate, and the world would gain nothing from their subjection to the Japanese, who if Europe did not interfere, would probably be the successors of the Spaniards. It would be much better that Spain should regain her position and govern the islands well, not conceding autonomy, but governing as we believe she does in the Balearic isles, that is absolutely, but according to modern and reasonable principles. Unfortunately, there is, we fear, little reason to believe that this will be so much as attempted. When Spain possessed the most magnificent empire in the world she never swerved in her misgovernment of her colonies, and now that she has so few left, she appears to adhere to her principles even more tenaciously than when she governed a great part of two continents. No historian has ever completely explained her failure, for upon points she has been singularly successful; but she appears in every region, in the Philippines, for example, as much as in Mexico or Peru, to have made three cardinal mistakes which she refuses to acknowledge or correct. 1. Spain has governed her colonies entirely for her own advantage. She has always insisted on a tribute; she has so managed her fiscal arrangements that her colonies could deal only with Spain, and she has conferred all profitable appointments upon her own children. The result has been that her colonies have been sucked, that they have gradually become aware of being sucked, and that they have furiously resented their loss of economic prosperity, and their inability to use their own revenue to their own advantage. This was the first charge brought by intelligent colonists in Spanish-America against the mother country; it is the first charge brought by the Cubans, and though the body of the people in all the colonies can have hardly understood it, it undoubtedly helped to foster the vague but effectual sympathy which they gave to the insurgent section of the colonists. The Spaniards have never repudiated this policy, and there is little hope that they will abandon it either in Cuba or the Philippines. Their real opinion, indeed, is that it would be silly to abandon it; that colonies are estates, and that to give up direct profit-rent, in factfrom estates is to give up their only value to their owners. They will no more do it than Irish landlords will give up rental, or the hope of rental, from their farms, and so much of the hostility to their rule as arises from economic conditions will, therefore, whatever the result of the insurrection, continue. If our readers will remember the force of the objection to the Bourbons derived from the idea of the French peasantry that a "Legitimist" government would restore tithes and the seignorial dues, they will understand the depth of this feeling, and its effect in rendering the reconquest of Spanish colonies impossible. 2. The Spaniards from Spain are in all the Spanish colonies a very offensive caste. They not only monopolize all power, all high offices, and a great deal of the revenues, but they create in the minds of the colonists an impression, probably true, that they are socially despised. No race in close contact with its rulers can endure that, and the hatred of Creoles, of halfcastes, and even of negroes or Indians, towards the old Spaniards is often as bitter as that of Parisians during the Revolution to the noblesse, that is, it is a hatred which rather than remain ungratified would not stick at extirpation. The English would excite it in India, but that they do not come into real contact with the people, who, again, are accustomed by their system of castes to see governing classes separate themselves from them in all the incidents of social life. An Englishman, for example, does not stand more aloof from an Indian peasant than a Brahmin does, and mere aloofness is, therefore, not a cause of irritation. It is in the Spanish colonies, where the pride of the white people and the vanity of the colored races is offended and even outraged at every turn. There is no remedy for this, which is in the very blood of both Spaniards and colonists, and it has, more than any other grievance, cost Spain her colonies, and will, even in the Philippines, alienate all who might be her defenders. It is undoubtedly one cause of the cruelty which distinguishes the local governments, which, when resisted, put down resistance very much as the whites of Alabama put down a local black rising that is, by death and the infliction of torture. They are absolutely determined to put it down, and any approach to compromise offends a pride which is insuperable, and which makes them say and feel that, on the whole, rather than admit that all in the colony are equal, they would prefer to disappear. At this moment Spain could crush the insurrection in Cuba by granting autonomy, but that would be conceding equality, and true Spaniards will not do it. 3. There is some deeply rooted religious difficulty. This does not appear to exist in Cuba, where all alike are Catholics more or less sincere; but it was a grand cause of discontent in Spanish America, and is a grand cause of discontent throughout the Philippines. We cannot say that we know accurately or minutely how it arises, but we believe that, speaking broadly, it is in this way. The Spaniards leave a large measure of authority to the district clergy, who are a good deal controlled or influenced by orders from the great congregations in Rome. These clergy are lenient enough upon every point but one; they will not bear what they consider a reversion to Paganism among their people. When they see that they persecute, either by the use of their own religious influence, or by appealing to the secular arm which, upon this subject, is always at their disposal. Unfortunately for them their people, whether in Spanish America or the Philippines, Egyptian pyramid, dark and blind; believe both the Catholic faith and even the family-pictures cannot light their old superstitions, with a leaning up its countenance when books are when the two clash towards the latter. wanting. And they must be genuine There is, therefore, a perpetual friction antiques; none of your late-born gaudy which ends in a bitterness so savage volumes that may rival the tulip in that in Spanish America the real ultiwealth of insistent color, but have no mate division of parties has always scent; the books we mean should be been between the clericals and Lib reverend in age and aspect, russiaerals, and that in the Philippines the bound, tall, and solemn, to be opened moment the people rose with an effort and laid out on a chantthey began er's lectern-a whole ritual of observputting many curas and all monks to death with horrible tortures. This difance awakening you to the sense of what you are about to undertake in ficulty could be easily remedied by the rearing them. For it is the service of adoption of the theory upon which we the spirit, not idle pastime; not, by any govern India; that we have nothing to means, amusement-which do, either socially or civilly, with the signifies religious ideas or practices of any man; rather a devout incantation and callturning away from the Muses-but but the Spanish people refuse to act ing upon this principle, even Liberal jour- maids, to whom the keys of knowlupon these gracious Olympian nalists declaring that the authority of edge and all the delights of memory, the Church must be restored by force. as of invention, were given long ago. And to enter into their world except through the ivory gate of dreams will be always forbidden. But an old mansion, with its trees and its lawns about it, and its library in a secluded yet sunny corner, the summer stillness draping it as with long flowing curtains-this, we say, is the secret Mouseion, a world of magic, asleep but full of divine imaginings, that to some of us makes manifest how deep and strange, after all, life is, and how potent still the long vanished past. The total result, therefore, is that the only plan by which Spain can hope to restore order, viz., the appointment of a wise and tolerant statesman or soldier as absolute viceroy, is impeded by the fact that however wide his mind or however great his powers, he will not be permitted to abolish the evils which are at the root of discontent. He can only "conquer," and conquering in islands like the Philippines is terribly expensive, slow, and exhausting work, while it involves in the very nature of things an increase, not a decrease, in popular hostility and savage ness. From The Speaker. THE WORLD OF BOOKS. What can be pleasanter than staying in an old English country-house, far from trains and telegraph, when your host the squire is away, and you, a meditative person, careless of partridge or pheasant, are left to your own devices? Provided there be a library -yes, for an old house without books of its own is like the interior of an In such a library it chanced, on those rainy April-like days of last August, that we found ourselves, not so much imprisoned as roaming at large; the long bookshelves, and presses high and dark, crowded with the spoils of ages. Our squire, indeed, went back through named ancestors some nine hundred years, to piratical Danes and Normans; neither had his people moved ever since from this spot which, in the good old way of robbery, had become their own. But, one could not help saying how great a loss to the world it was that, keeping the estate, they took so little note of what was done upon it; for their records and family literature did not now lead one into the past beyond Charles I. and the Great Rebellion. Had these knights in mail but written up their ledgers, or the heroines of Edward I.'s time made a point of noting in the very briefest fashion how they talked gossip and paid morning calls when the Crusades were ending, should we not look upon them now almost as contemporaries? Whereas they have grown to be like the ghosts of Ossian, spectral, cloudy, more distant from us far than Greeks that lived two thousand years before them, and ancients even when compared to Cicero and his friends, with Horace and the Augustan coteries. So much can a few pages of vellum or papyrus achieve! There never was art-magic more wonderful than a book which eyes and mind between them have contrived to produce-seeing eyes and a thoughtful mind. Such gaps we lamented, yet how much was left! For in our still library we found a hall of echoes, a market-place brimming over with movement, groups jostling groups, and the centuries elbowing one another unceremoniously; a pantomime of all costumes, creeds, practices; the comic and the tragic mixing their dialogue without regard for Aristotle's unities; systems lying topsy-turvy across systems, the old looking shamefully new, and the new so ancient that when it appeared again every one had forgotten it and thought it original. As in Clarence's dream, things rich and lovely-"wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl"were scattered about in the midst of dead bones, precious only by reason of their age. "Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels!" Ay, indeed; for sometimes the balance itself in which they could have been weighed was wanting -dead scholasticisms, and history turned since to legend in wise men's eyes; a chemistry that was but the romance of the gold-cook, or the passionate fool in search of the Absolute; herbals of necromancy in which not even the spiritualist would now put faith; travels more incredible (if that may be) than yesterday's advertisements; geographies abounding in myths and Herodotean hearsay, innocent, guileless, and beguiling; the first commencements of modern thought, stammering, incoherent, overlaid like a mummer's dress with symbols which it knew not how to tear away; the still half-Catholic Luther; the mediæval Protestant; the superstitious iconoclast; the revolutionary hazarding a commonplace of to-day; and, trickling through forests of tradition, the infant stream which, a hundred years lower down, was to sweep into the sea monarchies and chivalries and a universe of sacred custom. All these powers and dominations, dead but once alive, or rising out of tiniest germs till they overshadowed the earth, seemed to pass by as in review. What a Darwinian struggle among them, for existence, for victory! and the issues, how heart subduing in the havoc which they have wrought, while they were so unexpected that one hung upon the catastrophe breathless-could this insignificant stone, cut without hands, smite the golden image and bring it down to the ground? Meanwhile, here was our friend the squire unmoved amid the shock of worlds, thanks to entail and primogeniture, looking forth calmly upon it all as at an entertainment given for his pleasure, with some reminiscence of that Lucretian tag, "How sweet, when safe on shore, to behold the gallant ship buffeted by wave and storm, and to know that one is not on board!" Even as the thought crossed our mind, fancy, or a presaging sentiment. appeared for one passing flash to rock the old mansion, which reeled and recovered itself. These books in their serried ranks had explosives among them, capable of blowing the house and family skyward; there was danger in their very confusion of ideas and silent juxtaposition. That peaceful library was a battlefield. And was the battle over? It could not be, unless judgment had been given, and the mighty winnowing of the false from the true had taken place. But who was to pass what judgment? By standard? Science could show the |