fallen at God's feet imploring mercy. And yet, apart from its scriptural instances, what is the passage I have quoted but a fervid appeal to the common humanity of every one of us, "Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics" as well as Christians of churches old and new, state and free,-an appeal grounded on the nature of Him who is the Father of all,-a cry to the heart, in the name of Him who is the Lord of the hearts of all? Indeed, if I might characterise the "Heavenly Horizons" in two words, I would say that the essential beauty of the book, as well as its distinctive characteristic, consists in its passionate humanity. So much broader, thank God, is the spirit of man than the systems in which it seeks to inclose itself, that the world is filled with such contradictions, whether in the writings or in the lives of men. Feelings perpetually overlap dogmas. The large heart and the narrow doctrine often quaintly meet in one. A man will damn you Sunday after Sunday from his pulpit, who will treat you as the best of friends when he comes down from it. And so Madame de Gasparin, professing only to address "the redeemed," has illustrated a truth which she ignores, by speaking to the hearts of all.

And now I need hardly point out how these books, written by the mistress of a Parisian household, are yet essentially Swiss-French books,-how they illustrate, though with a fervour and a poetry of style of which Switzerland has supplied no instances since Rousseau,that proud and vigorous individualism of the Swiss race. Here again, then, we may recognise the influence of that Swiss element in French thought on which I have dwelt. Western Switzerland is indeed essentially married to France, as the mountain to the plain; bracing her with crisp airs, feeding her streams with snows. But the marriage, to be healthy and prolific, must be one not of violence and slavery, but of free love. There could be few greater moral curses for France than the trampling out of that nest of Protestant faith, free thought, self-reliant manhood, which lies

now on her eastern border, in a fold of the great central mountain-chain of Europe.

Nor would the mischief, I suspect, be less great materially than morally. Despotism shuts a country more and more up within itself. Freedom always overbrims in blessings. The trade and

industry of free Switzerland have accumulated within her narrow limits a vast amount both of capital and of acquired skill, by which her neighbours, France especially, largely profit. Not only is her industrial ability such, that out of cotton bought at Liverpool, charged with all the cost of transit thence, by rail or river, to the very heart of the continent, she is able to manufacture certain fabrics which undersell our own in neighbouring markets; but she actually supplies capital to the factories of Eastern France. Thus, it is well known that, thanks to commandite, Bâle has created Mulhouse. The same superiority exists, as we pass into the sphere of handicrafts. Districts, which in France would send forth only workers in the coarser kinds of labour, send them forth in Switzerland in the finer; a village which in France would breed stone-cutters or carpenters, trains in French Switzerland its watchmakers or confectioners; who, if afterwards they go forth throughout all the world, yet above all take up their sojourn in France, and even if not, yet under their French names generally give France the credit of their success. No physical peculiarities of the country suffice to explain these facts; they are above all the fruits of freedom; they must perish if that be rooted out. May Switzerland long retain her own! May the powers of Europe, true to their long-pledged word, suffer no imperial ambition to invade or paralyze it! May Switzerland be ever more true to herself, and strong in the consciousness of her rights, of her worth in the political fabric, as one of the very corner-stones of European peace, remember always that, as the French proverb says, God helps those who help themselves!

But helping herself, let her seek help from God. Let her learn that true

democracy does not consist in abuse of momiers, and needs other representatives than a James Fazy. True it is, that the God whom her pious men have chiefly shown to her, is not the one whom she blindly gropes for. Excessive religious individualism has too much obscured for

her the divine breadth of the Church. What Switzerland needs, is to see the God of Israel, the God of the nation, behind the God of the single believer. If the crisis of her independence-as many signs indicate-is nigh, in that Name only will she stand,-will she conquer.

My friend, John Penruddock, over in Ireland, with whom I spent a month last summer, made a deeper impression on me than I can tell. For years I had not seen such a man. There was a reality and honest stuff in him, which, in living with him and watching his daily goings on, revealed itself hour by hour, quite new to me. The people I had been accustomed to meet, talk with, live with, were so different. The tendency of each of these was towards art in one form or other; and there was a certain sadness somehow in the contemplation of them. They fought and strove bravely, but like the Old Guard at Waterloo, it was brave fighting on a lost field. After years of toil there were irremediable defects in that man's picture; fatal flaws in that man's book. In all their efforts were failure and repulse, apparent to some extent to themselves, plain enough to me, the passionless looker-on. That resolute, hopeless climbing of heaven of theirs, was, according to the mood, a thing to laugh at or a thing to weep over. With Penruddock, all was different. What he strove after he accomplished. He had a cheerful mastery over circumstances. All things went well with him. His horses ploughed for him, his servants reaped for him, his mills ground for him successfully. The very winds and dews were to him helps and aids. Year after year his crops grew, yellowed, were eut down, and gathered into barns, and men fed thereupon; and year after year there

lay an increased balance at his banker's. This continual, ever-victorious activity of his seemed strange to me. We usually think that poets, painters, and the like, are finer, more heroical than cultivators of the ground. But does the production of a questionable book really surpass in merit the production of a field of unquestionable turnips? Perhaps, in the severe eyes of the gods, the production of a wooden porringer, watertight and fit for household uses, is of more account than the rearing of a tower of Babel, meant to reach to heaven. Alas! that so many must work on these Babel towers; cannot help toiling on them to the very death, though every stone is heaved into its place with weariness and mortal pain; though, when the life of the builder is wasted out on it, it is fit habitation for no creature, can shelter no one from rain or winter snow, towering in the eyes of men a Folly (as the Scotch phrase it) after all.

Penruddock had promised to take me to see the fair at Keady a fortnight before it came off; but was obliged on the day immediately preceding that event to leave his farm at Arran-More on matter of important business. It was a wretched day of rain, and I began to tremble for the morrow. After dinner the storm abated, and the dull dripping afternoon set in. While a distem pered sunset flushed the west, the heavy carts from the fields came rolling into the court-yard, the horses' fetlock deep in clay, and steaming like ovens. Then,

at the sound of the bell, the labourers came, wet, weary, sickles hanging over their arms, yet with spirits merry enough. These the capacious kitchen received, where they found supper spread. It grew dark earlier than usual, and more silent. The mill-wheel rushed louder in the swollen stream, and lights began to glimmer here and there in the dusty windows. Penruddock had not yet come. He was not due for a couple of hours. The time began to hang heavily; so, slipping to my bed, I solved every difficulty by falling asleep.

The lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep, the barking of dogs, and the loud voices of men in the court-yard beneath, awoke me shortly after dawn. In the silence that ensued I again fell asleep, and was roused at last by the clangour of the breakfast-bell. When I got up, the sun was streaming gloriously through the latticed window; heaven was all the gayer and brighter now for yesterday's gloom and sulky tears, and the rooks were cawing and flapping cheerfully in the trees above. When I entered the breakfast-room, Penruddock was already there, nothing the worse for his journey; and the tea-urn was bubbling on the table.

At the close of the meal, Tim brought the dog-cart to the door. Pen glanced at his watch. "We have hit the time exactly, and will arrive as soon as Mick and the cattle." There was an encouraging chir-r-r, a flick of the whip, and in a trice we were across the bridge, and pegging along the highway at a great pace.

After proceeding about a mile, we turned into a narrow path which gradually led us up into a wild irregular country. Corn-fields, flax-tanks, and sunny pasture lands, dotted with sheep, were left behind as up hill we tugged, and reached at last a level stretch of purple moor and black peat bog. Sometimes for a mile the ground was black with pyramids of peat; at other times the road wriggled before us through a dark olive morass, enlivened here and there with patches of treacherous green; the sound of our wheels startling into

flight the shy and solitary birds native to the region. Ever and anon, too, when we gained sufficient elevation, we could see the great waves of the landscape rolling in clear morning light away to the horizon; each wave crested with farms and belts of woodland, and here and there wreaths of smoke rising up from hollows where towns and villages lay hid. After a while the road grew smoother, and afar the little town of Keady sparkled in the sun, backed by a range of smelting furnaces, the flames tamed by the sunlight, making a restless shimmer in the air, and blotting out everything beyond. Beneath us the high road was covered with sheep and cows, and vehicles of every description, pushing forward to one point; the hill paths also which led down to it were moving threads of life. On the brow of the hill, just before we began to descend, John pulled up for a moment.

It was

a pretty sight! A few minutes' drive brought us into Keady, and such a busy scene I had never before witnessed. The narrow streets and open spaces were crowded with stalls, cattle, and people, and the press and confusion were so great that our passage to the inn where our machine was to be put up was matter of considerable difficulty. Men, stripped to trousers and shirt, with red hair streaming in the wind, rushed backwards and forwards with horses, giving vent at the same time to the wildest vociferations, while clumps of sporting gentlemen, with straws in their mouths, were inspecting with critical eyes the points of the animals. Travelling auctioneers set up their little carts in the streets, and with astonishing effrontery and power of lung harangued the crowd on the worth and cheapness of the articles which they held in their hands. Beggars were very plentiful, disease and deformity their stock-in-trade. Fragments of humanity crawled about upon crutches. Women stretched out shrunken arms. Blind men rolled sightless eyeballs, blessing the passenger when a copper tinkled in their iron jugs; cursing yet more fervently when disappointed in their expectation. In one place a melan

choly acrobat in dirty tights and faded tinsel, was performing evolutions with a crazy chair on a bit of ragged carpet; he threw somersaults over it, he stood upon his head on it, he embraced it firmly and began spinning along the ground like a wheel, in which performance man and chair seemed to lose their individuality and become one as it were; and at the close of every feat he stood erect with that indescribable curve of the right hand which should always be followed by thunders of applause, the clown meanwhile rolling in ecstasies of admiration in the sawdust. Alas! no applause followed the exertions of the artist. The tights were getting more threadbare and dingy. His hollow face was covered with perspiration, and there was but the sparsest sprinkling of halfpence. I threw him half-a-crown, but it rolled among the spectators' feet, and was lost in the dust. He groped about in search of it for some little time, and then came back to his carpet and his crazy chair. Poor fellow! he looked as if he were used to that kind of thing. There were many pretty faces among the girls, and scores of them were walking about in holiday dresses. Rosy-faced lasses with black hair and blue eyes shadowed by long, dark eyelashes. How they laughed, and how sweetly the brogue melted from their lips in reply to the ardent blarney of their sweethearts! At last we reached an open square, or cross as it would be called in Scotland, more crowded, if possible, than the narrow streets. Hordes of cattle bellowed here. Here were sheep from the large farms standing in clusters of fifties and hundreds; there a clump of five or six with the widow in her clean cap sitting beside them. Many an hour ago she and they started from the turf hut and the pasture beyond the hills. Heaven send her a ready sale and good prices! In the centre of this open space great benches were erected, heaped with eggs, butter, cheeses, the proprietors standing behind anxiously awaiting the advances of customers. One section was crowded with sweetmeat stalls, much frequented by girls and their sweethearts. Many a

rustic compliment there had for reply a quick glance or a scarlet cheek. Another was devoted to poultry; geese stood about in flocks, bunches of hens were scattered on the ground, their legs tied together; and turkeys, inclosed in wicker baskets, surveyed the scene with quick eyes, their wattles all the while burning with indignation. On reaching the inn, which displayed for ensign a swan with two heads afloat on an azure stream, we ordered dinner at three o'clock, and thereafter started on foot to where Penruddock's stock was stationed. It was no easy matter to force a path; cows and sheep were always getting in the way. Now and then an escaped hen would come clucking and flapping among our feet; and once a huge bull, with horns levelled to the charge, came dashing down the street, scattering everything before him. Finally, we reached the spot where Mick and his dogs were keeping watch over the cows and sheep.

"Got here all safe, Mick, I see."

"All safe, sir, not a quarter o' an hour ago."

"Well, Burdett, I have opened my shop. We'll see how we get on."

By this time the dealers had gathered about, and were closely examining the sheep, and holding whispered consultations. At length, an excited-looking man came running forward; plunging his hand into his breeches pocket,, he produced therefrom half-a-crown, which he slapped into Penruddock's hand, at the same time crying out "Ten-and-six a head." "Fifteen," said John, returning the coin. "Twelve shillings," said the man, bringing down the coin with tremendous energy; "an' may I niver stir if I'll give another farthin' for the best sheep in Keady." "Fifteen," said John, flinging the half-crown on the ground; " and I don't care whether you stir again or not." By this time a crowd had gathered about, and the chorus began. "There isn't a dacenter man than Mr. Penruddock in the market. I've known him iver since he came to the counthry." "Shure an' he is," began another; "he's a jintleman every inch. He always gives to the poor man a bit o' baccy, or

a glass. Ach, Mr. Loney, he's not the one to ax you too high a price. Shure, Mr. Penruddock, you'll come down a sixpence jist to make a bargain." "Is't Mr. Loney that's goin' to buy?" cried a lame man from the opposite side, and in the opposite interest. "There isn't sich a dealer in county Monaghan as Mr. Loney. Of coorse you'll come down something, Mr. Penruddock." "He's a rich one, too, is Mr. Loney," said the lame man, sidling up to John, and winking in a knowing manner, "an' a power o' notes he has in his pocket-book." Mr. Loney, who had been whispering with his group a little apart, and who had again made an inspection of the stock, returned the second time to the charge. "Twelve-an'-six," cried he, and again the half-crown was slapped into Penruddock's palm. "Twelve-an'-six, an' not another farthin' to save my sowl." "Fifteen," said John, returning the half-crown with equal emphasis; "you know my price, and if you won't take it you can let it stand." The dealer disappeared in huge wrath, and the chorus broke out in praises of both. By this time Mr. Loney was again among the sheep; it was plain his heart was set upon the purchase. Every now and then he caught one, got it between his legs, examined the markings on its face, and tested the depth and quality of its wool. He appeared for the third time, while the lame man and the leader of the opposing chorus seemed coming to blows, so zealous were they in the praises of their respective heroes. "Fourteen," said Mr. Loney, again producing the half-crown, spitting into his hand at the same time, as much as to say, he would do the business now. "Fourteen," he cried, crushing the half-crown into Penruddock's hand, and holding it there.

"Fourteen, an' divil a rap more I'll give." "Fourteen," said John, as if considering, then throwing back the coin, "Fourteen-and-six, and let it be a bargain."

"Didn't I say," quoth John's chorusleader, looking round him with an air of triumph, "didn't I say that Mr. Penruddock's a jintleman? Ye see how he

drops the sixpence. I niver saw him do a mane thing yet. Ach, he's the jintleman ivery inch, an' that's saying a dale, considerin' his size."

"Fourteen-an'-six be it then," said the dealer, bringing down the coin for the last time. "An' if I take the lot you'll give me two pounds in t' myself?"

"Well, Loney, I don't care, although I do," said Penruddock, pocketing the coin at last. A roll of notes was produced, the sum counted out, and the bargain concluded. The next moment Loney was among the sheep, scoring some mark or other on their backs with a piece of red chalk. Penruddock scattered what spare coppers he possessed among the bystanders, and away they went to sing the praises of the next bargain-maker.

Pen turned to me, laughing. "This is a nice occupation for a gentleman of respectable birth and liberal education, is it not?"

"Odd. It is amusing to watch the process by which your sheep are converted into bank-notes. Does your friend, Mr. Loney, buy the animals for himself?"

"Oh, dear no. We must have middlemen of one kind or another in this country. Loney is commissioned to purchase, and is allowed so much on the transaction."

By this time a young handsome fellow pushed his horse through the crowd and approached us. "Good morning," cried he to Penruddock. "Any business doing?"

"I have just sold my sheep."
"Good price?"

"Fair. Fourteen-and-six." "Ah, not so bad. These cattle, I suppose, are yours? We must try if we can't come to a bargain about them." Dismounting, he gave his horse in keeping to a lad, and he and John went off to inspect the stock.

Business was proceeding briskly on all sides. There was great higgling as to prices, and shillings and half-crowns were tossed in a wonderful manner from palm to palm. Apparently, no trans