years, and by this means much electioneering business is saved. On the occasion of the election of deputies, which may occur two or three times in the course of three years, it is only necessary for the three proxies from each arrondissement of 750 original voters (urwähler) alone to proceed to the district town, where the voting takes place. Schroda, a small town twenty miles south of Posen, was fixed upon as the polling place on the occasion at which I was present. The district is Polish to the backbone, and the Germans, knowing they would have no chance of success, did not even propose candidate. Besides the Landrath, there were but two Germans in the room during any part of the proceedings, and all day I heard nothing but Polish spoken. In fact, but for the orderly nature of the proceedings, had I not been acquainted with the historical fact of the partition of Poland, I should have supposed, from the thoroughly Polish costumes and faces with which I was surrounded, that an election of deputies to the Diet at Warsaw and not to the Chamber at Berlin was taking place. After the polling was finished, the whole company of voters adjourned to the church, and the hymn, "Boze cos Polska," to which I suppose no one ever listened unmoved, was sung by a thousand voices. the words of the refrain, "To Thy altars we bring our prayers; Lord, give us back our country and our freedom," a man's heart must have been made of steel to have gone on beating as before.

At

I fancy that, had I visited Poland in its days of prosperity, I should have found the Sejmiki, or electors, otherwise occupied than in singing hymns. Indeed, I was often led to think that I might not have found

more to sympathize with in unpartitioned Poland than Mr. Carlyle. In the Poland of to-day I found no resemblance to the picture with which the author of the "Life of Frederick the Great" endeavours to frighten people out of their sympathy for the Poles.

If the insurrection had owed its rise and progress to the influence of Mr. Carlyle's turbulent nobles, it would never have gained the sympathy of Europe.

CHAPTER XXIII.

POSEN TO CRACOW.

IN the beginning of February I set out once more for Cracow. It was still pitch dark as my carriage rolled under the bomb-proof covered way, and over the drawbridge, out of Posen, to the railway-station, which lies some way without the fortifications.

For the last time I beheld the little sentinel, whose appearance had so often amused me. As he stood shivering there, wrapped up in his swaddling clothes, for such was the appearance of his great-coat and comforter, he looked as near as possible round, and if by any accident the wind had blown him over, I would have defied him to get up again. In his musket and bayonet, which together were at least twice as tall as himself, he carried so much sail that I sometimes trembled for his safety. Contrast him, with his blue face, trying to warm his hands, encased in their black, fingerless gloves, by rubbing them together, with the dignified bearing of the Polish peasant, as he strides past him with his long snow-white sheepskin, and picturesque four-cornered fur cap, with its jaunty tassel hanging down over his shoulder, and I would defy you to decide in favour of German civilization over Polish barbarism.

While Posen was garrisoned by purely German troops, the Polish regiments drawn from the Grand Duchy of Posen were bearing the brunt of the fighting in Schleswig-Holstein, where Poles, Hungarians, Venetians, and Croats were doing the work of Germans, under Prussian and Austrian officers.

Even at that early hour-it wanted an hour of daybreak the peasants, in their bright holiday dresses, were beginning to stream into Posen to celebrate the first day of their carnival-for Poland has its carnival as well as Italy, though only the peasantry were equal to the effort of merry-making. As the flickering lamplight half discovered their gay costumes, it would have been more natural to suppose that one was looking on a company of revellers returning home from the dance than about to begin their festivities with the opening light of day. Wishing them much joy of their holiday, which to the peasants in their blessed ignorance of ennui can never be too long, we continued on our way, and took our places in the Breslau train. To get from Posen to Cracow a distance of 250 English miles, or thereabouts-the traveller must pass through Silesia, a country which for many centuries formed part of the kingdom of Poland. To this day Polish is the language spoken by the people in that part of the Prussian monarchy called Ober-Schlesien, of which Oppeln, fifty miles beyond Breslau, southwards, is the chief town and seat of the Government.

However, there was far too much of interest in the country between Posen and Breslau to justify one in rushing through it in the train; so descending at a smail station, called Moszina, lying near the banks of the

Warthe, I made for the little village of Krosno, where, I understood, I should meet with a favourable specimen of a German colony of Protestant Hauländer. I had already enjoyed many opportunities of visiting the villages of the Bambri, or Catholic German colonists, and was curious to compare the two. The position of the village, in a clearance in the forest, at once explained the meaning of the name Hauländer, or dweller in a spot which he has hewn (German hauen) out for himself. The little settlement, with its prim church, smithy, and straight poplars, was highly suggestive of the idea Longfellow gives one of a New England village; and I was constantly reminded of his "Evangeline." Evangeline." I had purposely chosen Sunday for my visit, and as I looked round the church at the purely Saxon faces with which I was surrounded, I could with difficulty believe that I was in Poland. The pastor seemed a good, sensible man, and more bent on looking after the wants of his own flock than on the propagation of Germanism in the neighbourhood. These Hauländer were imported into the country when Poland was yet independent, and received the perpetual usufruct of a portion of the land recovered from the forest by their labour, on condition of cultivating the rest for the benefit of the lord. In the year 1823,—the date of the emancipation of the serfs in Prussia,—the right of perpetual usufruct or possession, enjoyed by the Hauländer in common with the rest of the peasants throughout the Prussian monarchy, was changed into the right of property, which they now enjoy on the condition of paying a temporary tax of five per cent. to the Government.

The Catholic Bamberger, on the other hand, never