gave them 2l. a week to feed themselves as they chose, but they were welcome to come to our meals when they liked. To my surprise, although professing abhorrence of a vegetarian diet, they all came to take dinner and tea with us. My sisters were without watches or jewellery of any kind, and begged me to supply them. This I did, at a cost of about 40l. My other sisters living at home, as well as those married and away, hearing of these gifts, wrote to me and demanded similar presents almost as a matter of right. I complied, although it cost me 12ol. more. I began to be weary of my family connections; they were no comfort to me, and my elder daughters began to be impertinent in consequence of the example of their aunts. My wife and I, when they left, resolved to drop all intercourse with them, lest the evil association might impair the discipline of our house.

'After staying six months, instead of a few weeks, my sisters and little brother left, saying they would probably come again about the same time next year. True to their promise they appeared the next year, and asked me to take a lodging for them as before. As they had come without any invitation, I thought that I would now for the first time read them a moral lecture, which, for the sake of the other members of the family, I put in the form of a letter, which was a good deal to the following effect. I have a copy of it in my letterbook at home. It began:

Dear Mary Ann, and my Sisters and Brothers,-After some prayer, I consider it my solemn duty to write to you, and warn you of your dangerous position. There is not one of you that fears God: you all are steeped in self-indulgence of one kind or another. I won't mention names, but I put it to your consciences whether any of you has ever denied him or her self to do any good action, whether or not you have not lived lives purely selfish. You wrangled and quarrelled like vultures at your meals, each demanding the largest share. You girls esteemed it degrading to make your

own clothes when your milliner's rags were worn out, and adopted a style of dress which to my mind seemed a burlesque. You were at good schools, but you were too indolent to make good use of them; and your brothers have spent a small fortune on stimulants. Your marriages have all been contemptible. Finally, let me say, I have no respect for any of you, but, as I fear God, I will not see you want. Those

of you, married and single, who will become vegetarians and renounce stimulants, I will endeavour to assist in life, provided you bring up your children as vegetarians. But I shall renounce all connection with those relatives who do not in six months

become vegetarians. I feel impelled to do so by a sense of duty.

'I had this letter printed, and sent a copy to all my brothers and sisters; most of them replied, and said they would consider the proposal. Of my numerous brothers and sisters, none were at this time in prosperous circumstances, and yet they had all had a much better chance than I; more money had been spent on their education, and all of them had some legacies left them by an uncle, who left me nothing, as I was supposed to be separated from the rest.

'After spending about 15,000l. on endeavouring to benefit my brothers and sisters and their children, I have determined to spend no more money on them, as they are incorrigibly self-indulgent, reckless, and vainglorious, but keep all my money for my own offspring and those whom I can morally respect. Do you not think I am right, Mr. Napier?

'I will now tell you the state of my family. They are all healthy and well formed, luxuriant in hair, sound in teeth, and much better proportioned in feature and figure than usual. I confess, sir, that I take no small pleasure in my family. Even my married children do nothing of importance without consulting me. I share my income liberally with them, but they with commendable prudence live plainly and economically, and save much; some are better at it than others, but I cannot complain of any of

them; they are liberal too. My grown-up sons spend a tenth of their incomes on moral and religious purposes. I do not devote much time to business now-not much more than three hours daily; literary, scientific, and other intellectual pursuits fill up the rest of my time.'

The vegetarian's wife described their mansion in the country as containing thirty rooms, among which is a fine picture gallery ninety feet long; about twenty conservatories and thirty gardeners are attached to the house. By the sale of early fruits and vegetables, and the rearing of certain orchids, the great expense of this wholesale gardening is reduced to about 1,000l. a year, which her husband does not wish this hobby to

exceed. He grows grapes throughout the greater part of the year, and pineapples also, SO that the dessert fruit on his table is scarcely to be surpassed. His entire living expenses do not exceed 3,000l. a year, although his income is something like six times that amount. Sometimes he will spend 3,000l. a year in relieving distress, as he did at the time of the cotton famine. His wife said he is so shy and reserved with people in general that he avoids society; but rich people are sought after, and he sometimes receives a thousand begging letters in the year. He thought his life ought to be written, and added as an appendix to Mr. Smiles's Self-Help; and so I have sent this sketch of it for publication.

BY

the waters of the Vistula we sat down and talked of the historic wrongs of Warsaw. It was a beautiful evening in last autumn, and the rays of the setting sun gilded the stately lines of the palace, once that of King Poniatowski, which stands from fifty to a hundred feet above the level of the river, on the left side of the bridge. On the other side, the queer old houses of the most ancient part of Warsaw are scattered on the slope, and the background is filled with yet higher objects, the lofty roofs, and towers, and spires of Polish churches, and the five golden cupolas of the Russian cathedral. Rafts of pine timber, cargoes of ruddy apples and dark green melons, float before us. The stream has nearly the width of the Thames at Putney, but nowhere the beauty of our metropolitan river; it comes to where we sit, visible afar in its course through bare and sandy plains, and as mount the rising grounds into the town, we can trace its flow, burnished by the dying sunlight, passing away through a country equally destitute of charm or of high cultivation.

we

able shopkeepers at once inform any stranger. It is likely that thousands of people in Warsaw would be glad to see the defeat of Sedan and the annexation of Metz and Strasburg avenged and reversed. There is an air and natural gaiety in the manner of the people which make one liable to forget that the broad expanse of the German Empire lies between the city and France, to which, of all foreign lands, the Polish sympathies are given. There are some nations which it seems impossible to fancy as living in apparent happiness and gaiety in the condition of a conquered people. For my own part, I can imagine the Battle of Dorking a reality, and conceive the occupation of London by a foreign soldiery; but I cannot picture to myself laughing crowds of holiday-making Londoners visiting the Tower by permission of alien sentries, nor merry parties on the hills of Hampstead, and Sydenham, and Muswell, cracking nuts and jokes as they looked down upon London the prey of a foreign foe. I can better frame for the mind's eye the debonair populace of Paris disporting in the Bois, under the guardianship of Germans, than Berliners happy in the Thiergarten while the Unter den Linden was patrolled by French. The Italians would be lighter-hearted under similar circumstances, and the Poles appear to exhibit their affinity of race by all that one sees in Warsaw.

The partition of Poland is the

L

fundamental bond of union drawing together the alliance of the three Imperial Courts,' who, in the language of the Berlin Memorandum, 'believe themselves called upon to concert among themselves measures for averting the dangers of the situation' in Turkey; who, when united, are absolute masters of that situation, and can be subject to the interference of other great Powers only in their dissenThe three Emperors, who, if they agree, can, without reference to any other Power, impose their own solution of the Eastern Question upon the world, are first of all united in that transaction which gave to Prussia her Roman Catholic provinces upon the Baltic; to Russia the central district of which Warsaw is the chief city; and to Austria, Cracow and Galicia. No more effectual mode of insuring the extinction of Poland, as a separate State, could have been devised; and, in fact, Poland has ceased to exist. There is not even a quiver in the divided limbs. Poles must be Prussian, Russian, or Austrian, if they wish for a successful career. He who climbs to the prizes must wear the colours of the sovereignty, and so it usually happens that acquiescence and content ment follow conquest. This was manifest even in the shortlived annexations of the First Napoleon. It has been said of Garibaldi that he, an Italian of Italians, was in fact born a Frenchman; that in Nice, under the First Empire, it was the wish of prudent parents that their children should talk French, and that the tongue of Molière, rather than that of Dante, was the language in which the patriot hero of Italy first learnt to speak.

Poland is dismembered, but in religion she is united. Austria has always had a hold on Polish sympathy, which neither Russia nor Prussia can attain, in the fact that both turn to Rome as the fountain

of their religious faith. Perhaps it is owing to this communion in religion that the rule of Austria in her Polish dominions has been milder than that of the Northern Powers. The Austrian Poles have neither Falck laws nor a schismatic Church connected with the Govern ment to which they are subject; and in a conglomerate empire in which there is unavoidably some confusion of tongues, the Government is not impelled by that irritating desire to impose the official language which marks the rule of Russia and of Prussia. The Tsaris doubtless aware of the leaning of some among his Polish subjects to his Austrian brother, who is to a certain extent protected in his ambition on the Danube by the probability that he could raise revolt in Warsaw by promising to Poland autonomy like that of Hungary. Indeed, the more we examine the condition of Poland the more convinced shall we become that it is the centre upon which reposes the concord of the three Imperial Courts.

་

There has been no disposition, at least not until the last few years, to conceal the character of the claim by right of which Russia rules in Warsaw. The insolence of conquest could not look more grim than in the ugly stunted obelisk, supported on lions, which was erected in 1841 upon the Saski Place in memory of the loyal Poles who fell victims to their fidelity to their sovereign.' We have lived in Paris and in Rome in a state of siege; but when the Germans were at St. Denis, and the Army of Versailles at Neuilly, when Garibaldi was in arms at Mentana, and the Chassepot had fait merveille' upon the bodies of men which were yet unburied, it was more easy to enter or quit those cities than it is to find acceptance as a visitor in Warsaw. The penalties are dire for those who receive a stranger without at once giving notice to the

not

police of his country and his quality. No hotel exists without a passport bureau, and travellers are 'ushered,' as reporters say, into their apartments, but are rather 'interned,' to await, on Polish food, the pleasure of the Russian police, as to their liberty within the city, and the time of their departure. If their passports do not bear the visé of the Russian Legation in their country, they will pass a good deal of time in a shuttlecock existence between the police-office and their hotel, in the execution of formalities, which of course no well-informed conspirator would be so foolish as to encounter. In fact, the inhabitants, temporary and resident, of Warsaw live in a fortress under special licence from the police and the governor-general. One notices in the streets that not only for convenience, but by order,' every shopkeeper must inscribe in Russian whatever announcement he chooses to set up in the native tongue. If on the right-hand side of his shopwindow he writes in the letters which are common to most of the languages of Europe, Konicz, Tailleur, Chapeaux de Paris; La Dernière Mode; Style Elégante,' he must on the left side or elsewhere communicate to all whom it may concern the same information in the semibarbarous characters of the Russian language. One is everywhere reminded that Warsaw is Russian, not Polish, that Russian soldiers form the garrison, that Russian is the official language, that the Russo-Greek Church imparts the official religion. There would be little perhaps to recall the fact that here is a suppressed nationality were not the difference of creed ever present to remind the stranger of the history of this part of Europe. Standing beside the open door of the Roman Catholic cathedral of Warsaw, I noticed that all who were neither Jews nor Russian soldiers uncovered as they passed, while not a few prostrated them

selves upon the damp and dirty pave-
ment, making humblest obeisance
to the distant altar. A droschky
driver, whose restive horse and ner-
vous fare' demanded all his atten-
tion, would not pass but with bare
head; the country carter doffed his
cap, the porter dropped his load,
even the schoolboy paused to make
the customary mark of homage; some
kissed the sacred threshold of the
door; all who had leisure seemed to
enter. Quite a common sight in
the Roman Catholic churches of
Poland is a prostration like that of
Moslems, with the knees and forehead
resting on the pavement.
Papal religion and national sym-
pathies have always been closely
related in Poland, and it is probably
true that many a religious fanatic
has also been what is called a rebel.
Looking to the intensity and super-
stitious character of the devotion
in these Polish churches, one is
almost surprised that there are not
miracles à la mode in Warsaw.
Perhaps the Tsar and Prince Gort-
schakoff do not approve of Roman
Catholic miracles, though they
would hardly put the stamp of their
authority to the French couplet-

De par le Roy, défense à Dieu,
De faire miracle dans ce lieu.

The

Warsaw is one of the cities that 'have been,' like Poland herself. In a retrospect of Polish history it is, especially at this time, an interesting recollection that for most of the regulations defining our present position in the Turkish Empire we are indebted to the Poles as much as to any other people. It will probably surprise not a few Englishmen to learn that the peculiar privileges, 'capitulations' as they are termed, by which our direct intercourse with the Ottoman Empire is regulated, and under which subjects of this monarchy carry on business in Turkey, were originally conceded to the Poles. These concessions were not made to us on