contemptuous attention which she was accustomed to mete out to her devotees. Madame Facchino advanced to meet her in a state of considerable excitement. She had promised, she said, to be at the Bavarian consulate at five o'clock precisely that afternoon, and had only just discovered that it was past four now. As they had taken two hours to come here, it was obviously impossible for her to arrive if she remained with the party; her only chance, therefore, was to catch the steamer at Burano: would dear Lady Frances, who was always so kind, allow her to be deposited there? she inquired, clasping her hands with dramatic earnestness. Lady Frances was quite willing to do so, wondering however, rather, that nothing had been heard of this important engage. ment till then. She did not like to inquire whether anything had been seen of her brother. There was an air about the party which put her sisterly pride upon its mettle, and forbade her to utter a word. They returned to the landing-place, and had already taken their places in the gondolas when the colonel appeared. He had been, it seemed, to inspect the monastery. What had they all been thinking of, he wanted to know, not to do so? The ladies, it is true, would only have been allowed to go as far as the cloisters, but the men were free to go over it all, and it was well worth seeing, really uncommonly worth seeing; he didn't know when he had spent a pleasanter half-hour. The monks, too, were capital fellows he should not mind spending a month with them himself in the least. When he heard of Madame Facchino's intention of returning by the steamer, he at once volunteered to accompany her. He, too, had an appointment, it seemed, at Venice; and going back by the gondola, delightful as it was, really took up such a deuced amount of time. Accordingly the two were left upon the shore at Burano, and the gondolas, with their diminished load, proceeded on their homeward way. every one seemed tongue-tied, listless, "dull as the fat weed," which swung its slimy tresses around every projecting point of land, or floated, a mass of brown or yellow putrescence, towards the sea. When, hours as it seemed after they had started, the familiar line of roofs and campanile rose greyly above the face of the lagune, had the party formed some portion of the great Dandolo fleet, returning after its famous but toilsome conquest of the Turks, it could hardly have been hailed by them with a much warmer measure of satisfaction. From The Nineteenth Century. FINLAND: A RISING NATIONALITY. NATIONAL questions are not in vogue now in Europe. After having so much exercised the generation of '48, they seem to be now in neglect. The poor results of a movement which caused so many illusions; the new problems that are coming to the front - the social problem tak ing the precedence of all; the prominence recently given to the ideas of unification and centralization above those of territorial independence and federalism, by the sudden growth of a powerful military State in middle Europe, all these have helped to repel into the background those questions of national independence which seemed to constitute the very essence of the history of Europe during the first half of our century. Faith in national programmes, formerly so firm, has been much shaken by the events of the last few years. Italian unity has not improved the lot of the lower classes of the peninsula, and they have now to bear the burden of a State endeavoring to conquer a place among the great powers. The formerly oppressed Hungary is oppressing in her turn the Sclavonic populations under her rule. The last Polish insurrection was crushed rather by the agrarian measures It was not a particularly cheerful home- of the Russian government than by its coming, less so if anything than the out- armies and scaffolds; and the heroic upgoing had been. There was no attempt risings of the small nationalities of the made this time to sail, and the gondolas Balkan Peninsula have merely made them were not therefore linked together, but tools in the hands of the diplomacy of followed one another at a little distance, their powerful neighbors. Moreover, the with all the regularity, and not a little of nationalist movements which are still in the solemnity, of a pair of mourning progress in Europe, are mostly confined coaches. Lady Frances was in the first to the remoter borders of the continent, one, Mrs. Markham in the second; had to populations which are almost unknown both been together, it is possible that to old Europe and which cannot be realized some more interesting topic might have by the general public otherwise than in been mooted in the other; as it was, the shape of loose agglomerations of shepherds or robbers, unused to political organization. They cannot therefore excite the same interest nor awake the same sympathies as the former uprisings of Greece, of Italy, of Hungary. Notwithstanding all this, national questions are as real in Europe as ever, and it would be as unwise to shut our eyes to them as to deny their importance. Of course we know now that "national problems" are not identical with the "people's problems;" that the acquisition of political independence still leaves unachieved the economical independence of the laboring and wealth-producing classes. We can even say that a national movement which does not include in its platform the demand for an economical change advantageous to the masses has no chance of success unless supported by foreign aid. But both these problems are so closely connected with one another that we are bound to recognize that no serious economical progress can be won, nor is any progressive development possible, until the awakened aspirations for autonomy have been satisfied. Though relegated now from the centre to the periphery, Europe has still to reckon with national movements. Irish "Home Rule," the Schleswig "difficulty," and Norwegian "separatism" are problems which must be resolved; as also the national agitation that is steadily undermining eastern Europe. There is no doubt that (to use the words of a recent English writer) "not only a thorough discontent, but a chronic insurrectionary agitation" is going on among the Serbo-Croats, who are endeavoring to shake off the yoke of Hungary. The Czechs, the Slovaks, the Poles of Austria are struggling, too, for self-government; as also, to some extent, the Slowens, or Wends, and the Little Russians of eastern Galicia; while neither peace nor regular development is possible on the Balkan Peninsula until the Bosnians, the Herzegovinians, the Serbs, the Bulgarians, and others have freed them. selves from Turkish rule, Russian "protection," and Austrian "occupation," and have succeeded in constituting a free South-Slavonian Federation. The Russian Empire, too, has to reckon with the autonomist tendencies of several of its parts. However feeble now, the Ukrainian autonomist movement cannot but take a further development. As to Poland, she cannot much longer submit to the denationalizing policy of her Russian masters; the old Poland of the szlachta is broken down; but a new Poland - that of the peasants and working men - is growing up, with all the strength it has drawn from the abolition of serfdom. It will resume the struggle, and in the interests of her own progressive development Russia will be compelled, one day or the other, to abandon the reputedly rather than really strong "defensive line of the Vistula." Finally, in the north-east we have Finland, where one of the most interesting autonomist movements of our time has been steadily going on for more than sixty years. One hardly hears of it in western Europe. With the perseverance, however, that characterizes the men of the north, and particularly those of Finland, this small yet rising nationality has within a short time achieved results so remarkable that it has ceased to be a Swedish or a Russian province more or less differing from its neighbors: it is a nation. Discussing once this question, "What is a nation?" Ernest Renan set forth in his vivid and graphic style that a nation is not an agglomeration of people speaking the same language a language may disappear; not even an aggregation with dis tinct anthropological features, all nations being products of heterogeneous assimilations; still less a union of economical interests which may be a Zollverein. National unity, he said, is the common inheritance of traditions, of hopes and regrets, of common aspirations and common conceptions, which make of a nation a true organism instead of a loose aggrega tion. The naturalist would add to these essential features of a nation the necessary differentiation from other surrounding organisms, and the geographer, a kind of union between the people and the territory it occupies, from which territory it receives its national character and on which it impresses its own stamp, so as to make an indivisible whole both of men and territory. None of these features is missing in Finland. Its people have their own language, their own anthropological features, their own economical interests; they are strongly differentiated from their neighbors; men and territory cannot be sepa rated one from another. And for the last sixty years the best men of Finland have been working with great success in spreading that precious inheritance of common hopes and regrets, of common aspirations and conceptions, of which Renan spoke. Yksi kieli, yksi mieli (One language, one spirit), — such is precisely the watchword of the Fennomanes. Comparative philology and anthropol- conditions, together with a gravity and a ogy may tell us that the Finns have but kind of melancholy which are so striking lately occupied the country they inhabit, in the features of the people and form one and that during their long migrations of the most marked peculiarities of their from the Altaic steppes they have under- folk-lore. The disasters, the wars, the gone much admixture with other races. bad crops, the famines, from which the None the less do the present inhabitants Finnish peasant has so often had to suf of Finland appear as a quite separate fer, have created his capacity of grave and world, having their own sharply defined uncomplaining submission to fate; but the anthropological and ethnical characters, relative liberty he has always enjoyed has which distinguish them from the popula- prevented him from developing that sad tions by whom they are surrounded. spirit of resignation, that deep_sorrow Their nearest kinsfolk are found only on which too often characterizes his Russian the other shore of the Gulf of Finland, brother. Never having been a personal among the Esthonians, on whom they serf, he is not servile; he always mainalready exercise a kind of attraction. tains his personal dignity and speaks with Their southern brethren, the Magyars, are the same grave intonation and self-respect too distant, too separated, and too distinct to a Russian tsar as to his neighbor. A ever to exercise any influence on Finland. lymphatic temperament, slowness of moveAs to the other members of the same fam- ment and of thought, and sullen indifferily scattered through eastern Russia, the ence have often been imputed to him. In Voguls, the Permians, the Mordovians, fact, when I have entered on a Sunday and so on, science may prove their com- a peasant house in eastern Finland, and mon origin; but their national characters found several men sitting on the benches are being obliterated every day by contact round the wall, dropping only a few words with Russians, and nearly all of them at long intervals, plunged in a mute revhave already lost any chance they may erie as they enjoyed their inseparable ever have had of constituting separate pipes, I could not help remembering this nationalities. Finland has thus no need reproach addressed to the Finnish peasto care about these scattered members of ant. But I soon perceived that though her family. the Finn is always very deliberate in his movement, slowness of thought and indifference are peculiar only to those, unhappily too numerous, village paupers whom long continued want and the struggle for life without hope of improvement have rendered callous. Still, a Finnish peasant family must be reduced to very great destitution before the wife loses her habits of cleanliness, which are not devoid of a certain æsthetical tint. The thrift of the Finn is striking; not only among those who have no choice, for they are compelled to live upon rye bread, baked four times a year and containing an admixture "of the bark of our black pines," as Runeberg says. Simplicity of life is the rule in all classes of society; the unhealthy luxury of the European cities is yet unknown to the Finns; and the Russian tchinovnik cannot but wonder how the Finnish official lives, without stealing, on the scanty allowance granted him by the State. It is true that even the ordinary traveller soon discovers in Finland two different types the Tawastes in the west, and the Karelians in the east; the square face of the former, their pale eyes and yellow hair, their heavy gait, strongly contrasting with the taller and more slender Karelians, with their elongated faces and darker hair, their animated and darker eyes. But the inhabitants of central Finland, the Sawos, partaking of the physical features of both neighbors, are an intermediate link between the two; and all three Karelians, Sawos, and Tawastes speaking the same language, living the same manner of life, and having so much in common as to their national characteristics melt together into one ethnical type the Finnish. Even religion does not separate them, the nearly fifty thousand Orthodox Karelians being as good Finnish as their Protestant kinsfolk. Exceedingly laborious they are all throughout the country: they could not be Contemplativeness if I am permitted otherwise in their Suomenmaa - the coun- to use this ugly word is another distry of marshes-where the arable soil tinctive feature of the Finns: Tawastes, must be won from the forests, moors, and Sawas, and Karelians are alike prone to even lakes, which stretch over nine-tenths it. Contemplation of nature, a meditative, of the land. The perseverance and tenac-mute contemplation, which finds its exity that characterize all northern Finnish pression rather in a song than in words, stems are the natural outcome of these or incites to the reflection about nature's mysteries rather than about the facts, is characteristic as well of the peasant as of the savant. It may be akin to, without being identical with, mystical reverie. It may, in certain circumstances, give rise to mysticism, as it did at the beginning of our century; it produced that tendency towards sorcery and witchcraft for which the Finns were, and are still, renowned among and feared by their Russian neighbors; but actually it gives rise among the instructed classes to a tendency towards a philosophic and pantheistic conception of nature, instead of the childish wonder with which others are satisfied. It also colors the Finnish folk-lore with an idealism which makes it so strongly contrast with the sensualism of the folk-lore of so many other nationalities. In science it causes savants to devote themselves rather to abstract mathematics, to astronomy, to the great problems of the physics of the earth, than to the merely descriptive sciences, these last being, as it seems, rather inherited from the science of Sweden. Everybody loves his own country: with the Finns this love becomes a passion, as powerful as the passion of the Scottish Highlander for his "land of mountain and of flood;" and it has the same source. We can easily understand the nostalgy of the Highlander who yearns for a glimpse of the rocks "where the snowflake reposes," for the "dark frowning beauties "of his native mountains, which, in their everchanging aspects, reflect the moods and phases of the human mind — of life itself. The same is true of dwellers by the sea; it is true again of the inhabitant of lake regions like Finland, where water and soil are inextricably interwoven each with the other; they live for him, and are ever and always assuming new moods and expressions. Finland is a poor country, but it is a fine country, and has a stamp of originality. Its like may be sought for in vain even in the lake district of England or among the inland seas of Canada. Where else, indeed, can the Finns find this network of land and water, this tangled skein of lake, and sea, and shore, so full of contrasts, and yet forming an inseparable and enchanting whole? Where find these millions of islands - of lovely rocks giving footing to a few pines and birches which seem to grow from beneath the water; these thousands and thousands of ever-varying tints spreading over the lakes as the sun slowly moves almost in the horizon, unwilling to go down, or leaving behind it the shining twilight which meets in the north with the aurora of the morning? Nowhere else will the Finn find a country which breathes the same mild and sweet harmony, grave and melancholy, which matches so well with the dreamy pensive. ness of his character. Finland has not, it is true, an exclusively Finnish population.* The coasts of the two gulfs which entangle it are peo pled with nearly three hundred thousand Swedes: thus one-seventh of its popula tion belongs to the once dominant race. In Osterbotten, on the islands of Aland, the Swedes make ninety per cent. of the population, and the laboring classes consist of both nationalities. On the coast of the Gulf of Finland the Swedes number from fifty per cent. of the population in the west to five per cent. in the east. But elsewhere, in the interior of the country, they constitute only the population of the towns, the land-owning class, and the personnel of the administration. The inconveniences, however, which arise from this double character of the population are much less ethnographic than political. The fishermen of Osterbotten are not on bad terms with their Finnish countrymen, and are as much attached to their country as these last; so also are the inhabitants of the south-western corner of Finland. As to those Swedish farmers who are scattered in the interior, and even on the south coast, they really are more Finnish than Swede: one must be born in the country itself to distinguish them from the Finns, with whom they might be confounded by a stranger. They speak Swedish of course, but nevertheless you soon find them to be passionate "Finland patriots," who scorn your attempts to distinguish between Swedes and Finns in their little country. It is not so with the Swedish nobility, Swedish tradesmen, and Swedish officials. Until now they have constituted the dominant element in Finland's political and economical life; they are still landholders in a larger proportion than the Finns; and, by maintaining Swedish as the official language in the administration, they have systematically eliminated from it the Finnish element, which they still regard with contempt. Population of Finland on the 31st of December, fasc. 9): In towns, 173,401; in the country, 1,887,381. 1880 (Suomenmaan Virallinen Tilasto, sixth series, Of these: Finns, 1,756,381 (100,300 in towns); Swedes, 294,876 (65,725 in towns); Russians, 4,195 (821 in towns); Germans, 1,720, mostly in towns; other nationalities, 3,610, of whom 961 are Laponians. Of the than Finland; namely, 3,693 in Sweden, 8,947 in Rusabove population, 14,052 were born in other countries sia, 522 in Germany, and so on. Emigration in 1879, 34,812. Finland has thus the ethnographic cohesion which is the first condition for constituting a nation. Its inhabitants possess also the historic inheritance of common struggles, common glory, and common misfortunes, and they have a common hoard of folk-lore and literature. Moreover, they have so marked an indi Hence, all Finland is divided into two staying in Finland for a longer time, are great parties, the Svekomanes and the quickly Fennicized. In a few years they Fennomanes, continually struggling conform to Finnish customs; and as you against one another in the national repre- see one of them slowly smoking a pipe sentation, in all questions of legislation, and rocking in the rocking chair (an inand in literature. The Fennomanes strug- evitable piece of furniture in a Finnish gle for the recognition of their language household), you would hardly guess that as the equal of Swedish, and strive to in- he is a Russian immigrant. He speaks troduce it into the administration of all little, he has become reserved and conFinnish-speaking Finland, and that the templative. Under the régime of a liberty higher and secondary instruction be given he never knew at home, he feels interested in Finnish; the Svekomanes, in their turn, in Finland and her prosperity. Nay, even strive to maintain Swedish as the official his face has changed. As to his children, language of the country, of the university, their fair heads can hardly be distin and of the secondary school, foreseeing guished from the yellow-haired heads of that they will be eliminated from the ad- the same Tchoukhnys whom their father ministration, which is now in their hands, formerly regarded with so great contempt. so soon as Finnish shall be rendered It is most interesting that, according to a obligatory for the officials, and Finish remark of Herr Max Buch, even the Geryouths have the possibility of receiving mans, who so seldom lose their national higher instruction in their own language. features, are rapidly Swedicized when they Thus the struggle is not one between two stay for some time in Finland. races, it is for the maintenance of class privileges inherited from the Swedish domination. Its issue cannot be doubtful. The Fennomanes obtained last year the recognition by law of the equality of both languages; and they will not fail to expel the Swedes from the administration so soon as the Constitution is modified in a democratic sense. It is also most sig-viduality that they can neither be assiminificant that the majority of young men, even many of those who are born of Swedish parents, associate themselves rather with the Fennomanic than the Svekomanic party. They speak only Finnish, and take an active part in the crusade of the Finnish against the Swedish tongue. Of course there are still plenty of Swedish noblemen who sigh after the past military grandeur of Sweden; plenty of tradesmen who look across the Baltic for better business; and enough Swedish officials who are wroth at the idea of "those Finnish peasants" performing the functions once performed by their forefathers. But those Swedes who do not care for retain ing a privileged position - and they are numerous fully recognize the rights of the Finns. They join the Finnish national movement, and all the Swedes of whose names Finland is proud have been, and are, ardent Finnish patriots. As to the nearly eleven thousand two hundred Russians who live in the country, the seven thousand military of course need not be taken into account; if their stay in Finland is short- and it mostly is, for only Finnish citizens are permitted to occupy official positions in the country -they remain Russians. But the trades men, or farmers, or peasants, who are lated by their Scandinavian neighbors on the one hand, nor by the Russian Empire on the other. Even at the time when Finland was under Swedish dominion, and Sweden regarded the Ostlande as a mere stronghold against Russia, she always looked upon the Finns as a separate “ Finnish nation." And during the nearly seventy years which have elapsed since their separation, Finland has done so much for the development of her own national individuality that she can never again be a mere Swedish province. Besides, Swedish rule bas left such a heritage of unpleasant memories, especially among the peasants, that a union of both States has been rendered most improbable. Those who suppose otherwise ought to read Mr. Yriö Koskinen's "History of Finland." They will then learn the dis like entertained by the lower classes of Finland for Swedish rule, and how that rule is regarded by the best men of Finland. There is no doubt that, united with the Sweden of our times, Finland would enjoy much more liberty and probably would be happier than under Russian rule. But historical sympathies and dislike are not easily dealt with, and Finland now cherishes the hope of becoming an independent State herself. |