start agencies in London and Paris; he'll travel to America or anywhere else you like where there's an industrial exhibition, and he'll arrange for the things to be shown; he'll buy her machinery and come between her and the many people in the world who will think her Ladyship's industrial fad something arranged by Providence to put money in their pockets. There's no end to the things Hugh will do for her. Upon my word, I'm not sure that she can have Hugh. I believe I want him myself. I've a cute American acting as my agent, but, now I come to think of it, Hugh would be worth twenty of him. Hugh has imagination. He'll see the thing as you and I and her Ladyship see it as a matter of hard cash, and nothing more. He'll go about with that new young man, Mr. Yeats', poems in one pocket and a drawing-book in the other. I believe the poetry helps him with the designs for carpets and embroideries and laces and damasks. After all, I don't think I can let you have Hugh."

"He sounds an ideal person. A judicious mixture of the romantic and the practical. You must give him to us, Mother Patrick."

"If I must, I must"; Mother Patrick fell to considering again. "Lady Anne must make it worth his while. He supports a mother and widowed sister and three small children belonging to the latter, by his shop, and he's engaged as well." "He has a shop?"

"Didn't I say so? A tailor's shop in Ardnagowan. If her Ladyship made it worth his while he might get some one to manage the shop for him and devote himself to her interests."

"If he is all you say, he sounds very promising. Engaged too. That is a guarantee of steadiness. I hope he doesn't contemplate an immediate marriage. It would be against his doing all those fine things for Anne."

"Now, how can I tell you? Sure what have I to do with. marrying and giving in marriage? I am sure Hugh will do the sensible thing. She's a little girl he had in as bookkeeper. Not a penny to bless herself with, of course. It's just like Hugh."

"I'd better get Lady Anne to come to see him. What's the address? 43 Castle Street? Thank you very much, Mother Patrick. I hope she will see it in a sensible way and consent

to give herself up to the world a bit more than she has done. You're not more out of it yourself."

"Indeed, then, I've often been told I'm a woman of the world," the nun said humorously. "And those who said it meant it for a compliment, too. I wonder whether it's the right thing for a nun to be?"

"You've the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove," Mrs. Massey said laughing. "That's why poor business men have no chance against you."

(TO BE CONTINUED)

VOX SCIENTIÆ.

BY M. T. WAGGAMAN.

I rule reality. At my desire

Mad forces meet, coeval powers disband;
Creation's secrets lie within my hand.
The dark dissolves and time and space retire,
Meek vassals unto me are ice and fire;
Unleashed the lightnings leap at my command;
Suns I have measured and star arches spanned,
And yet to unreached realms my feet aspire.
O dream-spent spirits of a yearning world!
Come, follow me whose forward course is strown
With triumphs, and whose heart is quick with youth;
Beyond the days a challenge I have hurled-

Courage! Though moveless stands the dumb unknown,
The silence is the shadow of God's Truth.

THE FOUNDER OF MODERN CROATIA.

BY BEN HURST.

MONG the various nationalities of conglomerate Austria, Croatia ranks foremost as a country of peace and loyalty, industry and conservatism. If one were asked to characterize briefly the distinctive feature of this Slav people, one could hardly fail to designate it as intense Catholicity. In an empire ostensibly Catholic, but including also Semitism, Calvinism, and Eastern schism, Croatia is the greatest stronghold of the Catholic faith. Like the Irish and the Bretons, the Croats have never allowed their national ambition to weaken the bonds that unite them to St. Peter's Chair.

The Serbs and the Croats are one race; their traditions and are identical; their language and their literature are the same. But the Croats use the Latin alphabet, while the Serbs retain the Cyrillic. The division between these neighboring and kindred peoples is less of creed than of allegiance. Doctrines are no barrier, say the Serbs, but they cannot submit to the jurisdiction of Rome. And they are distrustful of those who do; styling them traitors to the great cause of Panslavism, and foes to the Muscovite Mother of all Slav states, their natural protectress, Holy Russia.

No more thorough refutation of this, and its kindred charge of bigotry and fanaticism, can be found than the life of Croatia's greatest son, the late Bishop Strossmayer. His favorite motto, "All for Faith and Fatherland," in no wise hindered his adherence to the Croat proverb: "a brother is a brother, of whatever creed." His political policy tended to nothing less than the reunion of all Southern Slavs; and if the movement known as Illyrism-meaning the adoption of the name Illyria by all the Slav races between the Adriatic and the Black Seas, from the Alps to the Balkans-was finally abandoned, this was certainly not due to any want of energy or enthusiasm on the part of the Croats.

The ancient state of Croatia has always succeeded in pre

One is

serving its autonomy and its national characteristics. apt to forget that the Crown of St. Stephen includes Croatia as well as Hungary, and that the former is a potent factor in Transleithania. But if Cisleithania, with its numerous states of Austria, Bohemia, Galicia, Tyrol, Styria, Carinthia, Dalmatia, and others, presents a uniform spectacle of united interests working pacifically on the whole, it is otherwise with the dual kingdom of Transleithania, where the antagonism of Magyar and Croat bids fair to rival that which threatens to dissolve the union of Austria and Hungary. A prominent Croat has informed me that if Hungary persists in her unreasonable demands, and separation results, Croatia will at once range herself on the side of Austria and abandon her consort of centuries.

The Chrovates or Hrvats, as they style themselves, who first settled on the Illyrian coast, in the seventh century, never forget that their union with Hungary was not the result of conquest, but of a matrimonial alliance between the two reigning houses. Although they did not play a part in European history equal to that of their Slav cousins, the Czechs and the Poles, their independent state comprised a vast extent of territory from Zara to Bosna-Serai and, in the tenth century, they were masters of the Adriatic. Their union with Hungary at the end of the eleventh century, through the marriage of a Croat princess with King Ladislas' eldest son, was entered into on terms of perfect equality, and all attempts to treat Croatia as a province of Hungary have hitherto met with failure. In the heroic struggle against the invading Turks, Croatia was the outpost of Christian Europe, and as such bravely bore the brunt. Napoleon the Insatiable counted Croatia among the lands of his ephemeral empire under the name of the Duchy of Ragusa; but after his fall it was once more reintegrated with the Crown of St. Stephen, and shared Hungary's allegiance to the House of Hapsburg. In the terrible upheaval of 1848 Croatia ranged herself loyally on the side of Austria, and it was the timely aid of the Croatian troops, led by the Ban (Chief) of Croatia, Yellatchitch, that enabled Prince WindishGraetz to repulse the Hungarian attack on Vienna. When peace was restored Croatia retained its parliament, while rebel Hungary was subjected to a dictatorship; but the disaster of Sadowa forced Austria to yield to the reclamations of the

Magyars, and the "Ausgleich Ausgleich" or Arrangement of 1867, seemingly favorable to the Croat nation, has proved quite the contrary.

When Croatia was called on by this Arrangement to resume her union with Hungary, the famous Deak presented a sheet of white paper to Bishop Strossmayer, chief of the Croat delegates, and said: "Bishop, write your conditions. They shall be final." The Bishop did so, in all good faith; but his confidence, and that of the millions for whom he signed, was misplaced. Fierce Magyarizing tendencies soon showed themselves, and the contract which, in so far as it was possible, guaranteed the rights of Croatia, was trampled upon. True, the parliament at Agram preserved its privileges with regard to the administration of justice, the control of public worship, and education; but through its retention of the railway communications, post and telegraph, the Magyar government exercises a vexatious pressure on the Croat population, forcing it to adopt the Magyar language, and refusing to employ any but Magyar officials throughout the provinces of Croatia. The Croatian delegates to the parliament in Budapest are too few to remedy matters, but a revision of the "Ausgleich," in 1873, obtained for Croatia a greater control of her finances, and the nomination of her Ban by the king instead of by the Hungarian ministry.

In spite of all adverse circumstances the little country, during the last half century, has advanced in intellectual culture and material prosperity to an unprecedented degree. The success of her endeavor to develop and advance without becoming absorbed in either the German or Magyar elements which predominate in the empire to which she belongs, has been mainly due to the extraordinary abilities and patriotism of one man. Indeed, the history of modern Croatia in her struggle for political freedom, for fair play, for the cultivation of her language, and the right to preserve untainted the traditional customs interwoven with her faith, is so closely connected with that of him whose death she mourns, calling him "her Moses and her Chrysostom, her Pericles and her Mæcenas, her Thomas à Kempis and her Michelangelo," that a sketch of the life of this Father of his Country, the late Bishop Strossmayer, will suffice to make us acquainted with the Croat nation, its attainments, and its aims.