hoped, no petty national jealousy on the part of any other European State will prevent her from carrying out equally well in Marocco. But any unprejudiced observer who looks at the marvellous result the French have already obtained in little more than fifty years in Algeria cannot help admitting that their conquest of north Africa has been a real boon to the civilized world cannot help seeing that from Algiers as a centre civilized habits and modes of action are gradually filtering through to the very desert, and winning back to Europe for the common good this long-lost province of Roman Christendom. The whole Barbary coast, in fact, is fast becoming once more Europe. Marocco, of course, still holds aloof, doing the "awful example " for Islam generally; but in Algeria and Tunis the change is rapid, and if France is not artificially cramped by the action of other nationalities she will no doubt win back Marocco, too, for European civilization. Already one branch of the great north-African railway system has been pushed back rapidly in the rear of Oran, along the Marocco frontier, to tap the Alfa trade, and to the district of the Tafilat dates, and to spread the region of French influence inland and southward. It is earnestly to be hoped that that influence will not be interfered with. The Great Atlas in Marocco rises to a very considerable height, and gathers in the winter a thick coating of snow, whose melting supplies several miniature Niles that run down to water the desert outskirts and the high plateau region. The country back of the Atlas, irrigated by these streams, is the home of the best and most productive date-palms. A line from Oran runs back just within the French territory, and approaches the outskirts of the Tafilat date country from the flank. It is understood that the French government contemplates its future extension. In this way the thin end of the wedge has been inserted for French influence at the back of Marocco, and whenever the inevitable overthrow of his Shereefian Majesty can no longer be put off, France may, perhaps, step into the vacant inheritance if Europe permits her. It will be a great misfortune for the civilized world if she is not allowed, quietly and without any partition difficulties, to extend in this direction her natural sphere. The French, it is commonly said, are bad colonizers. That is true, if by the phrase is meant that France is not a teeming mother of colonists. French people do not recklessly over-stock themselves. Swarms come only from full hives. But all that France lacks is the raw material; for energy, thoroughness, and organizing ability, nothing like Algeria is to be seen in any British colony. If one compares the country for ten miles round Algiers with the country for ten miles round Montreal or Toronto, the comparison is, indeed, anything but flattering to our self-complacent colonizing British intelligence. Here you are simply and solely in pure Europe; no wooden shams, no flimsy makeshifts; everything has a European solidity and completeness; the vineyards remind one of the Côte d'Or or the Gironde; the roads are the magnificent hard French highways; the walls and bridges, the houses and engineering works, have a French neatness and perfection of workmanship. No town in any English colony that I know of is half so much like England as Algiers, with its stately boulevards and splendid warehouses, is like Marocco is the finest province in north Marseilles or Toulon. For most practical Africa. It stands nearest to the Atlantic, purposes, indeed, Algeria may be looked and catches first the fertilizing rainfall. upon just as three departments of France, Its mountains are highest, its rivers largaccidentally cut off from the rest of the est, its harvests richest. It has a warmer republic by the Mediterranean; and Tunis winter and a less arid summer than Algeria is rapidly assuming a similar character. and Tunis. But it is given over still, with Yet here the French had to contend, not the consent of Europe, to every possible only with a rugged and trackless country, abuse and abomination. The jealousy of very unlike that unbroken Canadian plain, Spain alone prevents the French from rebut also with a hostile race, an alien reli- placing the barbaric government of its gion, a lower civilization, and inferior present masters by a firm, just, and prosocial order. And in spite of it all, to-gressive administration. To leave this day in Algeria, among palms and aloes, country under its existing rulers is little mosques and Arabs, squalid villages and Oriental beggars, one constantly forgets, in the smoothness and ease of every-day life, one is not in France itself; one remembers with a start that this is still Africa. short of wicked; to hand it over, or any part of it, to Spanish administration would, so far as the interests of civilization are concerned, be much the same as to commit it still to the tender mercies of the Mulai Hassan of the moment. Quiet people nowadays are no lovers of European annexation of filibustering aggression, the carpet-bagging colonist, the beachcomber, the trekker, the belligerent missionary. They do not admire the "extension of British interests" by men, and calico, and Martini-Henry rifles. But there is all the difference in the world between such annexations as, say, the English landgrabbing of Zululand and such annexations as the French conquest and settlement of Algeria. France, driven by outrage, seized upon a nest of pirates, enemies of civilization, of commerce, of Christendom, and turned their land from a "chaos of anarchy" into a quiet home of agriculturists and manufacturers. For this task, more than half ac-ization have upon the indigenous races and complished, she deserves the thanks and gratitude of the nations; for its completion she requires their co-operation and their capital. vines on the slopes of the Sahel. But, apart from any such adventitious circumstances, the country can hold its own in the long run with any other. Though Africa will never again be the granary of Europe (for in the matter of cereals India and America have cut the ground from under her feet), she has oranges and dates to supply the world, tobacco and wine, Alfa and esparto grass, minerals and marbles, all sub-tropical and almost all temperate products. Capital and population cannot long remain away from a land within twenty-eight hours of Marseilles, and still as rich in virgin soil and undeveloped capabilities as western America. What effect will this coming Europeanthe rest of Africa? And how will Islam stand or fall before the face of conquering Christianity? Well, I think, so far as the three provinces themselves are concerned, Algeria has now already been Euro- that in the end the real underlying Europeanized; Tunis is fast following suit. A pean element in the population alone will magnificent railway system extends at survive, and will once more become truly present in unbroken line from the frontier European. The Kabyles and other Berof Marocco to the sea at the Goletta, a ber or semi-Berber peoples, accustomed distance of about seven hundred miles. always to steady industry, are spreading It will ultimately, no doubt, extend to the themselves as laborers over the country town of Marocco, and on to the Atlantic everywhere. They take to the new ways at Mogador and Safi. From this grand readily. They will remain and increase trunk line, branches or looplines touch on before the face of civilization, while the the sea at Bone, Philippeville, Bougie, nomad Arab retreats or dies out, or fails Algiers, Arzeu, and Oran. One subsidiary slowly by imperceptible degrees in the railway now reaches the desert itself at struggle for existence. The Jews, of Biskra; another runs back through the course, will also remain; they grow rich, little Sahara as far as Mecheria. The and thrive under French institutions. French engineers even hope ultimately to The Moors of the towns, mongrel Mahomextend this last, not only to Figuig, but medans, half Berber to start with, and across the sands to the banks of the much intermixed no doubt with the blood Niger, in which case Sahara, like the Py- of their Turkish masters and their Chrisrenees, will have ceased to exist. Every-tian slaves, will likewise remain and keep thing is thus already provided for the opening out and complete Europeanization of north Africa, except the colonists; the harvest, indeed, is ready, but the workers as yet are far too few. It is a fine country, few in the world are finer or richer. "The colonization of Algeria," says Sir R. Lambert Playfair, who knows it well, "is a splendid work, still far from completion. A long extent of seaboard, rich soil, boundless material wealth, a fine climate, magnificent scenery, the most favorable geographical position conceivable - all these ought to secure for it a brilliant future." Just at present there is a "boom" in vines going on. France's extremity is Algeria's opportunity; and the phylloxera which impoverishes Bordeaux is enriching Algiers. The wine-growers, exiled by that microscopic enemy, are planting their up their actual, though not I fancy their proportional, numbers. But all this will only mean that the land will be inhabited by Europeans or quasi-Europeans, French colonists, Alsatian refugees, Maltese settlers, Italian peasants, Gibraltar Spaniards, on the one hand; and Kabyles, Berbers, Moors, Jews, on the other. The intrusive barbaric Asiatic and African element must go; the civilized and civilizable will persist and inherit. But will the remnant of the indigenous population exchange Islam for Christianity? Within any measurable distance of time, it is by no means easy to say yes. The crescent dies hard. As yet, the two streams of life, Mahommedan and European, run on independently side by side throughout Algeria and Tunis, neither seeming very much to influence or affect the other. They touch but do not mix. | only as the desert; beyond it, will lie the The difficulty of intercourse, due to the separate spheres of English and Belgian, seclusion of women and the privacy of perhaps also of German and Italian, influthe Mahommedan family system, seems ence. Nevertheless, even so, France will effectually to prevent any free interchange no doubt contribute her share, directly or of ideas or customs. It has been the indirectly, to the opening out of the vast dream of Cardinal Lavigerie's life, indeed, block of solid land in the rear. French to bring back the old Roman provinces to ideas and French goods penetrate already the fold of Christendom; and if any man far inland by caravan and camel, railways could do it, that ardent soul would surely reach to the borders of the desert; faint have accomplished the superhuman task. echoes of what passes to the north of the For the cardinal is emphatically a man of barren barrier must reverberate as far ideas; and when Frenchmen have ideas south as Timbuctoo and the Niger. After they have them very badly indeed. He what we have seen in our own lifetime, it is a perfect De Lesseps in the colossal is not impossible that winter stations may grandeur and faith of his conceptions. arise beyond the desert within the days His chief ambition has been to re-erect of men now living, and that communicathe metropolitan cathedral of recovered tions may spread away inland across the north Africa on the site of Carthage, and almost impassable region closed to traffic to raise again the capital of a Christian for innumerable ages. province over the scanty ruins of the ancient city. The cathedral, indeed, is well under way, but the conversion of Africa still hangs fire. Brick and stone are far more plastic than flesh and blood. The White Fathers, who wear the Arab burnous, speak the Arabic language, adopt the native customs, and go as missionaries among the people themselves, have not as yet succeeded in proselytizing any large body of the indigenous population to Christianity, as the Arabs proselytize the negroes beyond the desert en bloc, to the faith of Islam. So far, the Catholic Church has merely scratched the top soil of Mahommedan Africa, Nevertheless, it is quite possible that when European influence extends uninterruptedly along the whole region, of which the Atlas is the central axis-when colonists spread among the upland valleys, when the Arab has retired or slowly died out, when Christians form the largest element in the population, when Jew and Berber have learned to use the French language - Christianity too may slowly supervene. This, however, is a mere stray conjecture for the remote future. Islam has deep roots in the human mind. If it ever gets rooted out at all, it will get rooted out slowly by insensible stages. And what will be the ultimate effect of the Europeanization of the north upon the great mass of Africa-that is to say, of Negroland? Very little, I imagine. Sahara forms, and has always formed, a great barrier. I think it will continue to form an almost equal barrier in future. North Africa will simply become Europe once more; the Dark Continent will begin at the Sahara. The "sphere of French influence" will extend southward, as far That is the dream. It is to be hoped that diplomacy will not rudely shatter it by severing Marocco from its natural alliance with the rest of the unbroken Atlas range, and by building up again in Africa those false frontiers and artificial divisions which have burdened Europe with kings, and wars, and tariffs, and conscriptions. But all these things lie on the knees of the gods and the financiers; the Bismarcks and the Rothschilds hold us in the hollow of their hands. As they pronounce, so are the destinies of the world meted out. May they spare Marocco the fate of separation from the rest of Europe beyond the sea, and build up one single compact recovered State, with one great trunk line of consistent communications, from the Dra and the Atlantic to the Syrtis and Tripoli. GRANT ALlen. From The Nineteenth Century. SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. No truer saying was ever uttered than that "one half the world does not know how the other half lives." And yet I am continually contradicted by wiseacres of the streets and squares when I meekly but firmly maintain that it is actually possible to live a happy, intelligent, useful, and progressive life in an out-of-the-way country parish - "far from the madding crowd and literally (as I happen to know at this moment) three miles from a lemon. "Don't tell me!" says one of my agnostic friends who knows everything, as agnostics always do, and who is absolutely certain, as agnostics always are, that they know all about you" don't tell me! You may make the best of it as you do, and you put a good face upon it, which I dare say is all right; but to try and make me believe you like being buried alive is more than you can do. Stuff, man! You might as well try and persuade me you like being snowed up!" But he calls himself, which is only Greek for "The only thing that can be said for your pitiful life," said Nathan to us once, "is that you have no interruptions. But there is not much in that, where there's nothing to interrupt." Nathan, the wise youth, is a type of his class. He's so delicate in his little innuendos, so sympa. thetically candid, so tender to "the things you call your feelings, you know." Do these people always wear hobnailed boots, prepared at any moment for a wrestlingmatch, where kicking is part of the game? No interruptions !" Oh, Lady Shepherd, think of that! "No interruptions! Now it so happened that, a few days after my bouncing and aggressive friend had delivered himself of this delicate little protest against any and every assertion I might venture to make in the conversation which had arisen between us, I was awaked at the usual hour of 7 A.M. by Jemima knocking at the door; and when Mr. Bob had growled his usual growl, and I had declared myself to be awake in a surly monosyllable, Jemima cried aloud, saying, "It's awful snow, sir -drifts emend. jous!" I drew the curtains open, pulled up the blinds, and lo! there was snow indeed. Not on the trees- that was well, at any rate-but all the air was full of You observe that our day begins at snow. Not coming down from the clouds, eight. When we came first to Arcady we but driving across the fields in billows of said we would breakfast at half past eight. white dust-piling itself up against every We tried the plan for a month. It was a obstacle pollard stump or gatepost, dead failure. Jemima never kept true to hedgerow, or wall, or farmstead-rolling, the minutes. We found ourselves slipeddying, scudding along before the cruel ping into nine o'clock; that meant ruin. north-easter, that was lashing the earth It must either be eight o'clock, or the with his freezing scourge of bitterness. financial bottom of the establishment At about the distance of a pistol-shot from would inevitably drop out. So eight my window the highroad runs straight as o'clock it is and shall be. a ruler between low banks and thin hedges, and we can see it far half a mile or so till some rising ground blocks the view. This morning there was no road!-only a long broad stripe of snow that seemed a trifle higher than the ploughed lands that lay to the northward, and which were almost swept bare by the gale. To the southward there were huge drifts packed up against every little copse or plantation, and far as the eye could see not a human creature or sheep or head of cattle to lessen the impression of utter desolation. By the time we got down to breakfast the wind had lulled, and fresh snow was falling. That was, at any rate, an improvement upon the accursed north-easter. But it was plain that there were to be no ante. jantacular or post-prandial peregrinations, as Jeremy Bentham used to phrase it, for us this day. 'My dear," I said, “I'm afraid we are really snowed up!" Now, what do you suppose was the reply I received from her Royal Highness the Lady Shepherd? Neither more nor less than this, What a jolly day we will have! We needn't go out, need we?" Nathan, the wise youth―agnostic, as At eight o'clock, accordingly, on this particular morning we went down as usual to the library-and, I am bound to say, we were just a little depressed, because we had made up our minds that no postman in England could bring us our bag this morning. To our immense surprise and joy, there were the letters and papers lying on the table as if it were midsummer day. The man had left the road, tramped along the fields which the howling wind had made passable. There were nine letters. When I see what these country postmen go through, the pluck and endurance they exhibit, the downright suffering (ie., it would be to you and me) which they take all as a part of the day's work, and how they go on at it, and retire at last, after years of stubborn jog-trotting, to enjoy a pension of ten shillings a week and the repose of acute rheumatism consequent upon sudden cessation from phys ical exertion, I find myself frequently exclaiming with the poet, πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κ' οὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει. Now it will be a surprise, perhaps a * On this particular morning we had adjourned from the library to the breakfastroom, and were opening our letters in high spirits, spite of Nathan the wise, and notwithstanding the bitter wind and the snow, when a hideous sound startled us. There, under the window, the snow steadily falling, drawn up in single file, were four human creatures, two males and two females, arrayed in outlandish attire, and every one of them playing hideously out of tune. It was a German band! very great surprise, to some of my genuine | the Times. Without it "the appetite is town friends, to learn that even a country distracted by the variety of objects, and parson who after all is a man and a tantalized by the restlessness of perpetual brother gets pretty much the same sort solicitation," till, when the day is done, of letters that other people do. He gets the mind wearies under "a feeling of saoffers to assign to him shares in gold tiety without satisfaction, and of repletion mines; offers of three dozen and four, without sustenance." positively all that is left, of that transcendental sherry; offers to make him a life governor of the new college for criminals; invitations to be a steward at a public dinner of the Society for Diminishing Felony; above all, he gets some very elegant letters from gentlemen in very high positions in society offering to lend him money. I do verily believe these scoundrels, who invariably write a good hand on crested paper and express themselves in a style which is above all praise, are in league with one of my banker's clerks. How else does it happen that as sure as ever my account is very low, and that I am in mortal terror lest my last cheque should be returned dishonored, so sure am I to hear from one of these diabolical tempters? There's one scarlet Mephistopheles who must know all about my financial position. How else could he have thought of sending me two of his gilt-edged seductions in a single week just when my bank ing account was overdrawn? It is absurd to pretend that he keeps a medium. A more lugubrious spectacle than is presented by a German band, droning forth "Herz, mein Herz" in front of your window in a snowstorm it would be diffi cult to imagine. We suffer much from German bands, but we have only ourselves to thank. I love music, and I am possessed by the delusion that it is my duty to encourage the practice of instrumental execution. Five or six years ago there was a band of eight or nine performers who perambulated Norfolk, and they came to me at least once a month. Whenever Moreover, proof sheets come by post they appeared I went out to them and gave even in this wilderness, and they have to them a shilling, airing my small modicum be corrected, too; and real letters that are of German periodically, and receiving flatnot begging letters come, some kind and tering compliments upon my pronunciacomforting, some stern and uncompromis- tion, which gratified me exceedingly. ing, some with the oddest inquiries and These people disappeared at last, but they criticisms. Sometimes, too, anonymous were succeeded by another band, and a letters come. What a queer state of mind very inferior one, and I took but little noa man must have got himself into before tice of them. There were seven of these he can sit down to write an anonymous performers, a cornet and two clarionets letter! Does any man in his senses ever being prominent very. However, they read an anonymous letter of four pages? got their shilling, and vanished. Three If he does, the writer gets no fun out of days after their departure came another it. I am inclined to think that the prac- band; this time there were only four. I tice of writing anonymous letters is dying thought that rather shabby, but I was out now that the schoolmaster is abroad; busy, did not take much notice of them, and yet, they tell me, insanity is not de- and again gave them a shilling. The corcreasing. Then, too, there are the news-net-player was really quite respectable. papers. I could live without butter I shouldn't like it, but I could submit to it; or without eggs, though I dislike snow pancakes; or without sugar- and there are some solids and some liquids that are insipid without that; but there is one thing I could not do without — I could not do without the Times. We have tried again and again to economize by having a penny paper, but it has always ended in the same way. As entremets they are all delightful, but for a square meal give me Next day came four more, and there was no cornet, only the abominable clarionet. It was insufferable. I said I really must restrict myself to sixpence, and that was fourpence more than they were worth. Two days after their departure came a single solitary performer; he had a pan Why will not the printers' readers let me use this word? I do use it every day of my life in talk; why may I not write it and print it? It is very short, and something bad in Finnish or some other strange tongue, it is perfectly harmless. I am afraid it must mean for the reader always draws my attention to it. |