cated by its rate of progress during the last quarter of a century, we find equal ground for expecting that she can easily carry the burden which the war has imposed upon her. Her foreign trade (imports and exports together) has risen from an annual average of £54,000,000 for the ten years ending with 1836, to £251,000,000 for the same period ending with 1866. The yearly balance of value of her exports over her imports rose in the same thirty years from £1,240,000 to £12,280,000. On 31st December 1869 she had 10,575 miles of railway open, all constructed since 1840; while 3671 miles of new lines were being made. The development of her home traffic is proved by the facts that, in 1869, the railways carried 105,017,972 passengers over an average distance of 23 miles, and 42,078,413 tons of goods over an average distance of 94 miles. The gross receipts produced by this traffic amounted to £27,000,000, giving an average of £2550 per mile per annum. The production of coal rose from 5,900,000 tons in 1853, to 13,100,000 tons in 1869; and that of iron from 660,000 tons to 1,350,000 tons in the same period. The manufacture of beetroot sugar, which was only 26,000 tons in 1841, reached 204,000 tons in 1869. The bills discounted at the Bank of France represented £73,000,000 in 1852, and £267,000,000 in 1869. The progress has been the same in almost every branch of trade; and the closer we look at the details of each branch, the more clearly do we see that the progress has been real, solid, and sound, and that it shows no mark of fictitious success. Further more, the signs of national prosperity are not limited to these augmentations, great as they are, in the quantities of business done. The extension of foreign trade in new articles, especially in iron-work, rail

way stock, and textile manufactures, supplies evidence of equal value. Until 1855 France had no share in the supply of metallic products to other countries. That trade was monopolised by England and Belgium; but during the last fifteen years, rails, iron bridges, railway carriages, and fixed plant, have been sent all over Europe by French makers; locomotives from the Creusot Works have been sold in England itself, and the wire covering of the Atlantic Cable of 1867 was supplied from the Jura. That France should be able to compete successfully with England in iron seems scarcely credible, but it is so; the fact is explainable by the relative cheapness of labour in France, and by the admirable management which it brings to bear: coal and ore cost far less in England, but the difference in the price of raw material diminishes with the degree of work employed to convert it into a manufactured article, and France can turn out a locomotive at the same price as England, though the matter which composes it costs nearly twenty-five per cent more in one case than in the other. The same results may some day be attained in other trades, even in cotton perhaps; for France is already able to sell muslins and other similar fabrics in central Europe, notwithstanding the rivalry of the cheap Swiss makers. The rapid extension which has taken place in the export of French agricultural products deserves to be specially alluded to, for but few persons probably are aware of its importance. The value of the wine shipped has risen from an annual average of £1,880,000 forty years back, to £9,000,000 at present; the increase in corn shipments between the same dates has been from £440,000 to £5,200,000, in cheese and butter from £90,000 to £1,800,000, in horses and cattle from £320,000 to £5,200,000, in eggs from

£130,000 to £850,000, in fruit from £130,000 to £660,000, in linen and hempen threads from £50,000 to £520,000, while a hundred other articles have increased in similar proportions. The only objects in which a diminution has occurred are those known as "articles de Paris," which include coffrets, gloveboxes, dressing-cases, and analogous trifles; their exportation has fallen from £250,000 a-year to £180,000. With this one exception, every single element of export has gone up from five to ten times since 1830.

In the face of such facts as these, which could be multiplied almost indefinitely, if there were any use in furnishing further proofs, is it not reasonable to suppose that the home and foreign trade of France will continue to develop in the future as they have done in the past? Is it not fair to expect that the balance of trade in its favour will steadily increase, that the yearly profit laid by will go on augmenting, that production in all branches of industry and manufacture will maintain its progress? Education is advancing with rapid strides: a few years ago, forty per cent of the conscripts drafted into the army were unable to read and write; in 1869, the proportion was only twenty per cent, and it seems to be steadily decreasing at the rate of about one per cent per annum. The population is becoming more and more able to understand its interests, and to extend the productiveness of its work. Excepting in politics it appears to be advancing on all the roads which lead to profit; its old habits of economy have not been really affect ed by the influences which got into play during the extravagant years of the Empire. And it should be remembered that the wasteful outlay of that period was not only compensated by special gains, but that it

was localised in Paris and a few other large cities, and that the mass of the inhabitants took no part in it. The French, as a whole, are still a thrifty, sober, hardworking race; the one black spot in their commercial future is the separation which is growing up between the objects, tendencies, and interests of the agricultural population and those of the manufacturing classes; that separation is not yet sufficiently defined to enable us to determine how far it may some day influence the forward march of national wealth; but it may be feared that the scission between the peasant who owns land and the workman who owns nothing, may grow hereafter into a grave danger.

From the facts and figures before us, it results that the events which have occurred since this time last year have involved an outlay which obliges France to add about £23,000,000 to its budget for the next ten years, but that that addition can be reduced to about £13,000,000 at the expiration of that period. Whether these amounts will turn out to be absolutely correct depends on the form which may be finally given to the settlement of the still outstanding part of the debts incurred; all that can be said with certainty at this moment is, that these amounts appear to approximate closely to the truth, according to the statements made by M. Thiers. An increase of £23,000,000 of taxation in one lump has never yet been applied in Europe, and it will necessarily weigh heavily on France, especially at a moment when she is suffering in so many other ways, materially and morally. But there cannot be the slightest doubt, in the face of the evidence that has been adduced here, that she can bear it, and that, if necessary, still higher sums could be extracted from her without producing exhaustion, or

even much fatigue. The accumulation of money in the country has permitted France to support the disasters of the war without showing a sign of breaking down under them. The development of her resources will continue; four or five years of prosperity will enable her to reconstitute by profits the entire sum which she has lost; and, but for the eventuality of political difficulties, there seems to be no ground for doubting that she will recover with an energy and a speed which will be cited in history as a great example of the recuperative forces which trade and production are beginning to bring into play. These forces are relatively new, and their application in France has not yet been seriously tested: they will now be called upon to show what they can effect; and if they carry France quickly up the hill again, the experiment will once. more

prove the truth of the principles of the modern school of economists, and will demonstrate that in France, as elsewhere, the progress of nations depends on their productive powers and on the extension of their trade. France, fortunately for her, has become as thoroughly a nation of shopkeepers as England is or was; but, in addition to her commercial aptitude, she possesses a special elasticity of character and temper which serves her admirably now, for it supplies her with confident hope in her trial and humiliation, and prevents her suffering from the despondency which would assuredly afflict most other races at such a moment. We may look on without anxiety at our neighbour's convalescence, and may feel certain that the moment of completely restored health is not far off.

THE name which we have just written is one which no Scotsman can pronounce or think of without a special movement of pride and pleasure-a gratification more tender, more familiar and homelike, than that even with which we bethink ourselves of Shakespeare, who is the greatest magician of all, the wizard whose magic is still more widely spreading and penetrating. Shakespeare is England's, Britain's -part of the inheritance of all who speak our language; but Scott belongs to us by a closer relation ship. He has made us glad and proud in one tender, private corner of our heart, which does not open to the poet purely as a poet. There happens to be, as we write them, a special meaning in these words, but their truth is beyond times and seasons; it was as true twenty years ago as now, and will be as true as ever generations hence. A passing irritation, an affectionate anger even moves our minds that we should be supposed to feel more warmly towards him now than at any other moment. Walter Scott needs no celebrations, no feast held in his honour. Scotland herself is his monument. It is with no ephemeral enthusiasm that we regard a man whose thoughts have mixed themselves inextricably with our thoughts, whose words rise to our lips unawares, whose creations are our familiar friends, and who has thrown a glow of light and brightness over the scenes which are dearest to us. From Schiehallion to Criffel, from the soft coves and lochs of the west to the rugged eastern coast with all its rocks and storms, something of him is on every hillside and

glen. We do not know any poet who has so identified himself with a country, so wrapped himself in its beauty, and enveloped it with his genius, as this greatest of our national writers has done for Scotland. His fervid patriotism (unlike as the two men are in every respect) is more like the Italianism of Dante than the milder nationality of any other poet. Dante was fierce and terrible in his narrow patriotism, Scott benign and cordial; but what Florence was to the one Scotland was to the other. Her name was written in his heart. Had she been convulsed with the great throes of national conflict, it was in him too to have shown that wild vehemence of patriotic love and grief as truly as did Allighieri. As the days he fell upon were peaceful days, he contented himself with the sweeter task of lighting up and beautifying the country of his love. He hung wreaths and ornaments about her with lavish fondness. He adorned and decked her, sometimes with the enthusiasm a man has for a tender mother, sometimes with the passion of a lover for his bride. He is henceforward to all the world the type and model of a patriot-poet. When a critic means to bestow upon Manzoni, for instance, the highest encomium that can be given, the very grand cross of literature, he calls him the Scott of Italy; and we feel the praise to be overweening. body but Dante has ever so concentrated himself upon a beloved country, and perhaps no poet ever born has received so full and abundant a reward.

No

The present moment, of course, suggests reflections of its own; but

these are apart from Scott and the real impression he has made upon the mind of his country. It suggests to us a wondering, half-smiling reflection that a hundred years ago there was no Scott known in Scotland. No Scott! no genius of the mountains, shedding colour and light upon their mighty slopes; no herald of past glory, sounding his clarion out of the heart of the ancient ages; no kindly, soft-beaming light of affectionate insight brightening the Lowland cottages! And yet more than this-there were no novels in the land. There was Richardson, no doubt, and the beginning of the Minerva press. But the modern novel was not, and all the amusement and instruction and consolation to be derived from it were yet in the future. The softer and lesser, but still effectual, hands which helped in the origination of this prose form of perennial poetry, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austen, Miss Ferrier, rose with the greater magician, like secondary moons round a planet. There were no novels; and a hundred years ago the past history of Scotland was a ground for polemics only-for the contentions of a few historical fanatics, and the investigations of antiquarians-not a glowing and picturesque path in which all the world might rejoice, a region sounding with music and brilliant with colour, as living as our own, and far more captivating in the sheen and brightness of romance, than the sober-tinted present. This is but a superficial enumeration of what Sir Walter has done for us. He has made our past beautiful and dear; he has lighted up our country, and given her a charm for all the nations of the earth; but he has done even more than this. To us he has populated Scotland. He has set that enthusiasm of loyalty which belongs only to a primitive race in full and splendid relief against the darkness

of the hills to which it belongs; but he has also set forth the less demonstrative faithfulness of the tamer peasant of the plains, triumphant over the complications of more artificial life and the restraints of prudence and common-sense. He has surrounded us with the beautiful, the noble, and the fair, and he has not disdained to pluck a very daisy from the soft slopes of St Leonard's and wear that as his crowning glory. Could we go back to that Scotland of 1771, into which a new Scott was born without much remark, of the old mosstrooping race, tamed down to all the soberness and regularity of a respectable family, how strangely different should we find it! The people we should meet would be more entertaining in themselves, more original, less like everybody else, no doubt. They would remember the '45, and still feel in their hearts some remnant of that thrill of doubt and fear and hope which must have run through the island before the ill-fated prince turned back on his way to London. But in their recollections there would have been no Vich-Ian-Vohr, no Evan Dhu, no Flora-high quintessence of the old Celtic race. And Arthur's Seat would have risen to the sky with no consciousness in its lion crest that David Deans's cottage lay safe below. And Stirling would have shone in the sun with no FitzJames treading its lofty streets, no Douglas and no Lufra to call forth applause even from the Ladies' Rock. And Loch Katrine and her isles would have lain hidden in the darkness, with no soft courageous Ellen to bring them to human ken. What a strange, what an incredible difference! No Highland emigration could so depopulate those dearest hills and glens as they are depopulated by this mere imagination. A hundred years ago they were bare and naked-nay, they were not, ex