Now, who and what are these stipendiary magistrates? Mr. T. Harrington electrified the House of Commons with some interesting details. Here is one application and no and no attempt has been made to prove that it is not literal and correct. "My brother, Stephen Fitzgerald," writes the Knight of Kerry to the Lord-Lieutenant," continues to lead an idle life at home, and has fallen into habits injurious to himself and his family. Under these circumstances I venture to ask your excellency's kind

When we talk of ourselves as "the British People" we are too apt to forget what vastness and variety is included in the term. It is in the same vague and misleading way that we talk of ancient Greece, and confound in one hazy mass the citizen of Athens with the citizen of Sparta. Yet, the strength of Greece, the sun-like glory which still shines and floods the ages with its brightness, came from the variety and individuality of the Greek states, some of them hardly larger than an English market town. Nature abhors uniformity. We know better than Nature. We make our streets, our houses, our clothes uniform in dulness and deadness, and, worst of all, we seek to apply the cramping iron to human bodies and human souls. The heaven of false economics is a place where every man is exactly like every other man, and lives in exactly the

same way.

But if England has her faults, she has her virtues. And one of these is an honest wish to see her own errors, and to correct them. Thus, she has begun to see that what suits England, what has been especially and particularly made by the action of the English mind, will not always or often suit other peoples.

In Ireland she is beginning to seek out what is her duty, and she will soon do it. But the Irish people are only one part of that Britain which is Celtic and not English. The Highlands of Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall are inhabited by men who are of the same blood,

instincts, and manners as the Celtic Irish, and indeed are almost of the same language.

Now, these people have, in their degree, been treated as bad, or worse than the Irish. Indeed it is doubtful whether it is not the English blood which mingles with the Celtic in Ireland that has made the Irish so loudly protestant against their oppressors. The Celt has been noted as the bravest soldier who ever dashed himself against the all-vanquishing Roman legions. But the Celt once subdued had a tendency to sink into gloomy and hopeless despair. Not so the Saxon; he never knew when he was defeated. After that archrogue, William the Conqueror, and those minor rogues, the founders of our old nobility, had landed in England, the Saxons warred against them with a pertinacity, and by methods, that strongly remind us of the Irish as they fight now against their oppressors. Men like Robin Hood rose, each with a Plan of Campaign that bothered fat foreign priests and bloodthirsty barons out of all their poor wits. The only difference between the starving English and the starving Irish was the many murders and outrages committed by the former and the comparatively few committed by the latter.

But Ireland has been several times overrun. Each of these times has been marked by ferocious massacres that make St. Bartholomew's, in comparison, like some little grief of a child when seen side by side with the tragedy that wrecks a human life,

Monday, the 11th day of April, 1887, will be entered in red and conspicuous letters upon the chronicles of Freedom. It is a day to rank with those in which were fought Marathon and Baunockburn. Then, too, a battle was fought, not with flashing steel or flying bullet, but with the keener, brighter weapons of reason. London protested against coercion. The generous heart of the English people was touched with pity for a suffering and struggling Ireland about to be given over to the cruel fangs of Theft and Anarchy, calling themselves Law and Order. The town that hailed Garibaldi with a delirium of enthusiasm, and which has responded to every impulse of liberty in every country, at last recognised the claims of Michael Davitt, and of Landlord-oppressed Ireland.

The process of opening the heart and mind of London has been slow, but it has been sure. If forty years ago anyone had prophesied such things and such a day, he would have been lucky to have escaped the treatment of a lunatic. Yet, as I passed along Fleet Street, with the church bells sounding out on that fair Easter Monday, and filling the whole air with their melody, it seemed to me that they took voice and sang

So we'll bide our time, our banner yet
And motto shall be seen,
And voices shout the chorus out,
"The wearing of the green."

It

Literally, London was "a-wearing of the green." The green was everywhere. seemed a nation of Irishmen. Young maidens wore it in coquetish knots upon their heaving bosoms, or buried it in the gold of their hair; old men, white with the snows of many winters, and wrinkled with the cares of many a reform battle, stood stern and erect as in their first youth, when in '32, England stood on the verge and coast of revolution, and bore their green with martial pride; and workmen crowded in their thronging thousands, proud to march beneath the flag of Erin.

Truly, it was a great day. The anti-Irish Press has tried to sneer away its triumphs. According to it, the caucus commanded, and the men came, careless and unenthusiastic. There is but one answer to such assertions, an answer too little given in this age of timid compromise the anti-Irish Press lied. We do not suppose that one of the men who wrote those articles was present at the demonstration;

very likely the articles had been written day's before the event, and the writers were enjoying Easter in some of those lordly country seats, the owners of which make a point of "cultivating the Press." The day was begun, continued, and ended with enthusiasm. All London echoed its enthusiastic cheers.

Easter Monday is hardly a day favourable to a great demonstration. London workmen have few holidays, and these are far between. When they have a day that they can call their own, it is but natural they should seek the open country, and enjoy the scene and scent of green fields smiling amidst the woodlands, or that they should fleet the merry hours amidst the harmless dissipations of the Crystal Palace and those other institutions of a like kind that shed a little brightness on the London life. All honour to the working men for having given up their holiday, and for having undertaken a day's hard work when they might have enjoyed a day's pleasure.

Almost as interesting as the long-drawn-out procession, with their music and their flags, were the crowds that lined the streets. The meaning of these crowds was plainly evident, and only to be mistaken by those who were determined to see nothing but what they wanted to see. The spectators were with the movement. Everywhere was the green, everywhere the cordial welcome to those who marched past, on their way to the Reformers' Tree.

A

One incident of the way struck me deeply and painfully. I had kept moving pretty much on the line of one of the great processions, passing here and there, from one point to another, watching with eager interest every detail of the march. At last we came to a point where some carriages had been stopped by the passing crowd. I was particularly struck by the occupant of one of these. haughty-looking lady was watching the crowd with evident scorn and dislike, with that dangerous look in her eyes that the Roman ladies must have had when they held up their white, small hands and decreed the death of the vanquished gladiator. If ever eyes spoke, her eyes expressed a wish to drive her fiery horses through the compact crowd. By her side was seated a lovely boy, who laughed and clapped his hands to the sounding music and the gay and fluttering banners. Suddenly his young, fine face became downcast,

"Look, Mamma," he said, "what is that poor woman crying for?"

"She is probably drunk," said the lady, and sank back into her carriage as it began at last to glide easily away.

I looked in the direction towards which the little boy had pointed. An old woman, with a thin, pale face and white hair, cleanly, but very, very poorly clad, was silently weeping. Going up to her, I asked the reason of her tears. She replied to me, in a voice that was sweetly enough, but unmistakably Irish"Ah, sir, it's for joy I'm crying. It's never meself that expected to see this day."

"Do you love Ireland so much?" I asked. "Ah, sir, me husband died for it, and me sons had to cross the seas for it." And again she began to weep. I respected her grief, and silently left her.

My lady would not understand this grief. A poor woman; a poor, old, ignorant Irishwoman weeping for anything else than whisky: weeping for her country! That my lady could not by any possibility understand.

Passing the Carlton Club, the bands played the Dead March in Saul. Alas, the power represented by the Carlton Club is not dead yet, is, indeed, far from dead, and is operative to oppose every good and great plan that may be urged by those who love the poor, and seek to improve their cheerless lot. All that is dead in the Carlton Club is human feeling, and that is dead and rotten. The wish for mischief and the power to do it are terribly and grimly alive.

At last the Park was reached. To watch the crowd passing through the massive gateways like a huge and rapid river emptying itself into a sea, was a sight to awe, and yet elate, those who believe in the power and desire of man to advance man's welfare. Hyde Park that Monday was one vast reply to the cynicism of the wealthy and leisured classes who, having run riot amidst all the good things of life, at last adopt as their own the doctrine which asks the question, "Is life worth living?"

I said a sea of people; it would be more correct to say an ocean. From the eminence of one of the platforms, I looked far and wide over the scene. A bright sky, a fresh wind, and people wandering in their tens of thousands: that day the sun on his journey round the world beheld no more remarkable spectacle. When the crowd broke up and began to wend away in various directions to the various points from which it came, then the sight was almost sublime. Few large towns have more inhabitants than were moving there. When America

had as many people she was considered an important colony; when Australia reached a population so great she began to be considered crowded.

I went from platform to platform, and listened to many speakers. Most spoke well; all spoke with enthusiasm; and each hal a large audience. It pleases certain papers to talk of mob orators addressing only a handful, who listened, partly because they were there by command of their local caucuses to be an audience, and they were an audience. The audiences were only limited by the range of the speakers' voices. To get within that, in almost every case, needed enthusiasm and broad shoulders.

At last I left the Park, deeply impressed by two things: the greatness of the occasion and the order, method, and intelligence of those who took part in it. And, as I entered the Park with one verse ringing in my ear, I left it with another sounding to me from Shelley

"Let a great assembly be
Of the fearless and the free,
On some spot of English ground
Where the plains stretch wide around;
Let the blue sky overhead,
The green earth on which you tread,
All that must eternal be
Witness this solemnity.

Let a vast assembly be
And with great solemnity
Declare with twice said words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free!

A SCOTTISH PRESSMAN.

-:0:

THE Standard says that "the British farmer is struggling hard with difficulties through which he scarcely sees a ray of light." The difficulty in the way of the British farmer is landlordism. In spite farmers have to pay to landlords sixty millions of lower prices and increased competition, British sterling per annum for the right of employing capital and labour on the land which Nature has provided for their use.

MR. JOHN LOVELL AND THE LAND QUESTION.A most ingenious little book-re-published from the Halfpenny Weekly-is written by Mr. John Lovell on the Land Question. He treats it with great liveliness and much intelligence. In telling the story of how land became what it is he is mainly right; but in advocating free trade in land for all the evils of the system he is altogether all the land-evils that have appeared here are rewrong. America has free trade in land, and yet appearing there. What free trade in land does is to increase the number of the monopolists-it does not destroy the monopoly.

There is no more stupid blunder than to suppose When they that a good education spoils servants. are taught to think, to use their eyes, to see the common sense of things, does it not stand to reason that they will do their work far better? "Mix your colours with brains," Sir Joshua Reynolds said. I am sure a servant ought to work and dust and wait at table with brains.-" Until the Day Break," a novel by Miss Emily Spender.

How vainly seek
The selfish for that happiness denied
To aught but virtue.

Shelley.

In Ireland you know our priests are most of them men of the people, mere peasants' sons sometimes. And so they still believe in "Blessed are the poor," and religion with us means what you English call revolution.-Miss Emily Spender.