Nelly, meanwhile, though frightened at the idea of being so soon again confronted with her antagonist, looked forward, nevertheless, to the expedition with eager excitement. Her whole being seemed to crave for change; she sickened with a sense of want, the very vagueness of which was a fresh element of distress. She loved her home and yet it wearied her. Margaret was a dear noble creature, but almost oppressive in her nobility. The discovery which Nelly had made at Clyffe, though it intensified gratitude and devotion, yet seemed to lift her sister to an eminence too lofty for the unconstrained affection of equals. Such a self-sacrifice was something almost awful in its grandeur. To desire a thing, as Margaret's vehement nature would, she knew, desire it; to resign it without a struggle; to cover the anguish of the sacrifice with a mask of smiles; to assist cheerfully at the very process which made it for ever irremediable; to let the person for whose sake so much was suffered remain absolutely unsuspicious of the fact-how grand, how generous, how almost terrifying the moral power that could brace itself to such an act, and carry it through unflinchingly to its close. Had Nelly wanted anything, she must, she knew, have struggled with all her might, however uselessly, to get it; and if unsuccessful, have filled her little world with cries of disappoint

ment. The very idea of Margaret's serene, magnanimous, composed, self-abnegation, struck her with amazement, and added to her growing impression that the world was a different and a much more mysterious place than she had been accustomed to conceive.

The journey to Sharingham was a long one; and when the Evelyns arrived late in the afternoon, they found the Clyffe people already come, and Erle and Anstruther awaiting them at the hall door. Nelly had never met her husband's friend since the troubled, anxious days at Naples, when Anstruther's good services and constant watchfulness had relieved their position of half its natural embarrassment. It was sad, but far from disagreeable to see him once again, and to chat with unrestraint about old times, scenes which they both remembered, pleasures enjoyed in common, interests with which none but a participator could fully sympathize. It was pleasant, too, to know, as Nelly instinctively did, that her companion enjoyed it quite as much as herself, and to be practically assured that there were, after all, people in the world with whom it was possible to feel entirely at ease. Nelly went away to dress in the greatest spirits; and assured her sister gleefully that Mr. Erle, she felt convinced, would prove himself a most agreeable host.

all that influence to which she is subjected by them, she imposes on the men of her kindred and friends. Inseparably bound up with her religious feeling is her patriotism. The final triumph of Poland over Russia, its restoration to its ancient limits, a great swaying, proselyting Catholic Poland is her grand idea. And that this may be one day accomplished, she strives with all the passionate and exciting energy of her nature, and devotes herself body and soul to all the plans and instructions of the National Government and clergy. This same idea she instils into the dawning minds of her children; and when they are old enough, sends them with her blessing to the ranks of the insurgents, to drive the hated Moscal from Polish soil.* A Polish writer, exalting his country's cause in one of the French magazines, thus speaks of his countrywomen:-'At that age, when other mothers usually begin to teach their children of God, honour, and duty, the Polish mother already instructs hers in the duties of patriotism. On her knees the fair-haired child first learns that he is born accursed, and his imagination is filled with bleeding images of the sufferings of his forefathers, with pictures of dungeons, exile, and death. Every day in his young heart she renews the agony of the Three Partitions.'

With all her undisputed excellence and force of character, the Polish woman is yet subject to the same laws as all other women. Her actions are prompted by the heart, seldom by the head. Serious reflection soon confuses and tires her. Her convictions are reached by jumps and contradictions, but once reached, they remain stubborn against all authorities or proofs. More poetical than logical, she mingles passion with all she says and does, and regards the events of life only as they take a dramatical or poetical form. Her passionate nature makes it a necessity to personify in itself all that excites her

You

sympathy or attracts her love. If she meddle with politics-and in Poland almost every woman is a politician her imagination and feelings are alone consulted. Converse with a Polish lady on liberty, national rights, or popular institutions, she will be at no loss for eloquent or poetical language, but will repeat to you long strings of ideas, which are sublime in all but their possibility of being carried into action. Ask her what she wants for her country? if she would be contented with a small, but united, independent, Catholic Poland? if her patriotism would be satisfied that Poland should resemble Holland or Belgium a quiet, unobtrusive nation of prospering people, cultivating commerce and those arts and sciences which make a country peacefully glorious and morally pre-eminent? may be sure she would soon grow impatient at your questions. The picture of such a peaceful, sensible existence for her country would seem utterly inglorious, and not at all harmonize with her ideal. She would tell you in a burst of vigorous language that her ambition and patriotism were too great for such a narrow field; that the idea of a Catholic Poland of six or seven millions, was a satire on her aspirations; that nothing less would satisfy them than the old Sclavonic land of her forefathers, extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea, from the Oder to the Dnieper; and that, to acquire this, she was willing to make her life a long struggle, and her death a martyrdom. Converse with her on those two sacred subjects, Patriotism and Religion, and she bounds to the farthest of extremes, and her religion becomes bigotry, and her patriotism fanaticism.

This psychology of the Polish women, as is now presented to actual observation, can be traced far back through history. Their passionate, heroic, daring, but fanatical character, was well exemplified in one

celebrated woman of the seventeenth century, who may be taken as a model by many of her sex at the present day. I refer to the celebrated Marina Mniszek, a member of the powerful family of that name, who, when Poland was about serving Russia as Russia has since served Poland, was crowned Tsarina in the old Kremlin of Moscow. The Jesuits had chosen her as a fit bride for the young page whom they were putting forward as the son of the Muscovite Tsar Ivan IV., a youth who had been murdered by the friends of the celebrated Boris Godonov, and who is known in history as the first false Demetrius. She accompanied her bridegroom, a Polish army, and a retinue of priests, to Moscow. At that moment it was a grain of sand in the balance of fate whether such a country as Russia should ever exist. The proselyting zeal of the Jesuit clergy decided in favour of Russia. The marriage of the young pair, their coronation, the behaviour of the Poles, the crusading of the priests, violating all the feelings of the Muscovites, roused up in their bosoms those two sentiments, patriotism and religion, which are there quite as strong and far more stubborn in their more sluggish natures than even in those of the Poles. The mob rose, the false tsar was murdered, and his young wife fled. But she was soon consoled; his life was devoted to a cause, and not to one or another instrument of that cause. A second false Demetrius was soon found, and Marina became a second time a wife and a tsarina. But this time the whole of orthodox Russia was roused, and led by two celebrated men, one a noble, the other a butcher, whose statues now stand in the square of the Kremlin, the Russians drove the Poles from their country. But Marina still proceeded undaunted in her ambitious career. When her second husband died, she married a third, a Cossack, who continued the pretentions of the first two husbands; and this, together with the

Catholic standard which he raised, brought thousands of partizans to his call. For years, leading more the life of robbers' than of princes, this pair carried on in the Steppes of Russia the struggle of Russia against Poland, of Romanism against Orthodoxy, and if they did not succeed, it was only, as I said before, because they had passions opposed to them as strong, if not stronger than their own. Marina Mniszek I take to be the very type of her countrywomen even at the present day.

In 1770, about one hundred years later, we have evidence of the powerful influence of the Polish women on public affairs. Immediately before the first Partition, when Russia, Austria, and especially Prussia, were just pouncing down on their prey, the only government which perceived the danger to Europe of Poland's annihilation, was that of France. The Duke de Choiseul, at that time the minister of Louis XV., sent to the Polish Confederates a commissioner to aid them with money and advice. His despatches home give a pretty accurate description of what Poland then was, and merit reading by all who wish to thoroughly understand the Polish question. After complaining of the anarchy of the country, and the incapacity of those in authority, Dumouriez, speaking of the women, thus writes in one of his despatches: 'All capacity and energy in Poland,' he says, seem to have passed from the men to the women, who are occupied in action, while the men are leading the life of women.'* All those who have themselves seen anything of the present struggle, or who have critically examined many facts reported in the newspapers, must come to the conclusion that the Polish women of our day are in no wise degenerated when compared with the Marina Mniszeks, or with those of that time when Dumouriez wrote his despatches.

Can we be surprised, therefore, when, in the present fight, like in