score,

She "missed him vastly" when he sail'd away,

Yet tried to "smile as brightly, day by day,

Although, Dear Heart, my Life seems Dull and Grey."

My brave, true Silence!

And then we read, "He bravely met the foe!"

Some tears still blot those words of long ago,

Those days were very full of grief and woe,

My loving Silence!

What need is there her further life to tell? All were not struck who died by shot and

shell;

Some hearts grew still because they loved so well,

Like sweet, shy Silence.

Temple Bar.

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY. Earth, like a princess charmed asleep By wizard spells in years of old,

In winter's cavern lies a-cold, And round her still the snows shall sweep And roaring winds their watches keep,

Till dawns the joyous hour foretold, And fairy spring with wand of gold Exulting from the skies doth leap. Then, like a prince of gay romance, Hot-footed on his sweet emprise, The happy poet shall advance

To where the dream-bound beauty lies, And woo with his enraptured glance The wonder of her waking eyes. Speaker. ARTHUR AUSTIN-JACKSON.

May-bloom foameth pink and white,
Apple-bloom hath purple light,
Butterflies have fairy flight,
Leaves dally in their young delight.

bore

But one there was who "charmed her

more and more!"

My happy Silence!

An old-time sailor. And she "heard with pride,

Tales of his courage, which is true and tried."

They spent some "happy days," too, "side by side!"

Dear grand-aunt Silence.

On billowy verdure lightly float
In labyrinths under, dim, remote.
Daisy and speedwell blend their fine
Trebles in the joy divine,
While yellow-dotted bees hum over
Honeyed purple of the clover.

Soft fertile gold fills every flower,
Birds warble and pair in every bower;
We yield to life's abounding power-
Now or never. Love's full hour.

RODEN NOEL.

From The Contemporary Review. JEAN BAPTISTE AND HIS LANGUAGE. When the French-Canadian came to lodge on British premises, we flattered ourselves he would soon become one of the family. We have been disappointed.

The truth is, Jean Baptiste never did come to lodge in our house; that is just our British way of putting it. We annexed his shanty to our mansion, that was all. But surely that was enough to make a John Bull of him?

No; Jean Baptiste is Jean Baptiste still. The storms of progress have beat upon his hut for one hundred and thirty years, and the air within is what it was a century ago. The force of our example, the sense of our superiority, the winsomeness of manner by which John Bull commonly insinuates himself into the affection of other subject races, have all been lost on the FrenchCanadian. He is more Catholic than the pope, more French than President Faure. The red, white, and blue, which cross each other on the flag above his roof, re-arrange themselves in three broad stripes around his heart. When the bells of Protestantism are calling him to church, he is going home to dinner from mass. While the commerce of the world is shouting round him in English, he chatters his little bargains in his mother tongue, and sings the chansons of his grandfather.

It is the language of Jean Baptiste more than his religion, more even than his blood, that keeps him what he is the most interesting because the most resisting of all the human creatures we are trying to turn into Englishmen.

In case what I have said should seem too fiatly contradicted by what I am going to say, let me remark that the foregoing assertions are as true in general as the following are in particular. From our impatient point of view Jean Baptiste appears to stand like a rock against the rising tide of Anglification. To his anxious parents and guardians he seems to yield. "On!" cry we. "Back!" cry they. And neither we nor they think he is doing as we tell him. "Le cléricalisme c'est l'ennemi,"

say the Gambettas in France. No, say Tardivel and his fellow-crusaders in New France, "l'anglicisme, voilà l'ennemi!"

On Midsummer day, which being the festival of St. Jean Baptiste is the great national holiday of the two million Frenchmen in America, the commonest inscription flaunted through the streets of Quebec and Montreal is this: "Notre Langue, nos Lois et notre Religion." These are the three chief materials of that Chinese-wall which has shut the nineteenth century out of Lower Canada. Whether the twentieth century is to have any better luck will depend largely on the extent to which the mortar is picked out. Religion may be the stone of which the wall is built, and law the broken glass on top, but language is the cement that holds all together. It is easy to understand, therefore, how "l'anglicisme est l'ennemi," from the point of view of a French-Canadian nationalist; and all French-Canadians are nationalists.

From the dust-heap of unfulfilled prophecy I picked this specimen the other day: "Canada once taken by the English-a few years will be enough to make it English." The words were addressed to the French government in 1759 by General Montcalm, who, in his camp at Quebec, was facing a probability that he could not hold Canada for Louis much longer. The English, he was kind enough to say, might wish to adapt their system of government to the varying circumstances of the countries to be governed, but the thing was impossible "because of their defective system of constitutions." "If England," the French general declared, "after conquering Canada, knew how to attach the country to herself by policy and advantages, if she did not interfere with its religion, its laws, its language, its customs, its old government, then Canada, separated by all these from the other colonies, would always be an isolated country. But that is not the policy of Britain. If the English make a conquest they must needs change the constitution of the country. They bring

in their own laws, their own ways of thinking, their very religion, which they compel the people to adopt under penalty at least of losing their citizenship. In a word, if you are conquered by Englishmen you have to become English yourselves."

The brave but despondent soldier went on to draw a melancholy picture of those Anglicized Canadians in his prophetic eye-Anglicized, turned into politicians and merchants, infatuated with that pretence of liberty "which, among the people of England, often includes license and anarchy. Farewell, then, to their sterling worth, their simplicity, their generosity, their respect for authority, their thrift, their obedience, and their faith!" "I am so certain of what I say," the general concluded, "that I will not give ten years after the conquest of Canada before it is all accomplished."

Three weeks after that letter was written, and before it could be received in Paris, its writer lay dead on the heights of Abraham, and with him had fallen the sovereignty of France in America. The ten years that he allowed for the process of Anglification have been multiplied by thirteen, and the process has hardly begun. From the pan-Anglican point of view (if ecclesiastics will allow me to borrow the word) this fact almost justifies Montcalm's contempt for our "defective system of constitutions." But we have succeeded, at the cost of leaving Quebec a French and therefore "an isolated country," in attaching it to ourselves by a bond which has stood a good deal of straining. Jean Baptiste was allowed to keep his own laws, to a very large extent; his religion, in a curious halfestablished condition which it may be worth John Bull's while to look at some day; and his language, to his heart's content.

Now and then, in early days, panAnglicanism in Canada was patronized by the British government. On my table lies a long and eloquent protest, written seventy years ago, against a judge's ruling that English should be the only language used in the Canadian

courts. The writer, Auguste Morin, lived to sit beside that judge, Mr. Justice Bowen, and to hear and decide cases in his native language without protest from any one. When responsible government was granted in 1840, the Imperial Parliament not only harnessed French Quebec in legislative union with English Ontario, but decreed that English was to be the only official language. This clause of the new constitution was a dead letter from the beginning, and eight years later it was withdrawn at the unanimous request of the French and English legislators of Canada. The official status of French was confirmed in 1867 by the federal constitution which now governs almost all British North America, and in the Province of Quebec the official position of the French language is distinctly stronger than that of English. M. Morin drew a pathetic picture of the poor French widow unable to get justice because she might not address the judge in the only language she could speak, and suggested that lawyers could not be trusted to do their best when pleading in a tongue unknown to their clients. Now that any man has a right to sue in his own language, Englishmen complain that they have to accept service of writs in French whether they understand it or not; and many an Englishman has become more impressed by the advantage of employing a French lawyer to plead before French judges and French juries than by the disadvantage hinted at by M. Morin. In many departments of the public service, too, there are far more French officials than the proportions of the two races in population would justify. The freeborn Englishman who has occasion to be arrested would naturally like it best done by an English policeman; and he declares the humiliation to be needlessly deepened by the pigeon-English or the "V'nez donc" with which his lingering steps are guided by Connétable Jean Baptiste. There is no denying that a French-Canadian alderman or secretary of state would rather give an appointment to a man of his own race than to

one of ours-especially as we acted on the same principle while we had the power. Unfortunately we have furnished them with a very convenient excuse, in the fact that for every English-Canadian who can speak French there are ten French-Canadians who can speak English. A knowledge of the two languages is essential in most public offices, and in many private positions as well. Even the English merchants of Montreal often have to pocket their prejudice and employ a French instead of an English salesman, simply because the one knows both languages, while the other only speaks that of a quarter of the citizens.

This very fact, however-the increasing knowledge of English among the French-Canadians-while it is an enormous advantage to them in a worldly sense, gives much anxiety to their pastors and the other watchdogs of nationalism. It is true, when Jean Baptiste goes home at night he leaves all his English at the office or warehouse-or nearly all of it. His wife can speak her mother-tongue and no other. His children go to exclusively French schools. Very few French-Canadians, high or low, have the least social intercourse with their English fellow-subjects; and of these few a very small percentage speak English among themselves. They have their own literature -all the literature of France, except what the priests forbid, and the works of a small but able band of native writers. Finally, they have numberless newspapers - generally a little deficient in "news," but rich in other kinds of fiction, devoting long columns of large type to prove that "l'anglicisme est l'ennemi." All this is true, and yet -and yet the thin end of the Anglicizing wedge has entered and the thick end is following.

Sometimes consciously, but often without the least idea of offence against Littré, Jean Baptiste has added a multitude of English words to his vocabulary. Other words, which occur with variations of meaning in the two languages, he uses in the English sense; and often when his words are purely

French his idiom is purely English. The watchful Tardivels may well be grieved.

When little Jean Baptiste goes to school his downward course begins. Like little John Bull he undergoes "les terribles avanies dont la coventry est la moindre punition," though little John Bull has a different opinion on the latter point. He plays a match-and match he calls it, too. The other day I came across a still more curious act of involuntary homage paid to John Bull as Master of Sport. M. Philippe de Gaspé, whose "Mémoires" and "Les Anciens Canadiens" form the best introduction to the study of French-Canadian life, tells us not only that the heroes of his school-days learnt to "faire la boxe" from the English, but that a favorite French game of marbles called "la Snoque" was really an English invention known originally as the last knock!

When Jean Baptiste goes on his travels he takes a ticket. with a check for his baggage, and enters a train. (He used to go to the station in a gig, according to M. de Gaspé, but I never heard him use the word, though I know he patronizes the cab-stand rather than the "place de fiacres.") "All aboard!" shouts the French guard. "All right," says the French passenger. I remember one day, going down from Montreal to Quebec, hearing the guard ask a swarthy habitant for his "billet." "Eh?" said he, puzzled. "Votre tiquette," explained the guard. "Oh! Je comprends. Le voici." I have even encountered a sentence like this, "Nous leur donnerons des free-ticket." Jean Baptiste will also tell you, if you desire such information, that the train consists of "douze chars et un engin," instead of "douze wagons et un locomotive;" but he still finds time to call the railway itself a "ch'min d'fer," having cut down the syllables from four to two.

I have heard M. Legendre, a member of the Canadian Royal Society, boldly defend before that august assembly the use of such words as "checké” and "checkage." But what would he say