conditions, by the intelligent blacks, and in no region is rightly attributable to an exceptional increase of wealth. Much less is it attributable, as is often conjectured, to the influx of Northern capital and capitalists, bringing Northern ideas with them. It ought to go without saying, that immigration, with or without capital, will always try to assimilate itself to the state of society into which it comes. Every impulse of commerce is not to disturb any vexed issue until such issue throws itself immediately across the path. It never purposely molests a question of social order. So it is in the South.

Certain public men in both North and South have of late years made, with the kindest intentions, an unfortunate misuse of statistical facts to make it appear that public society in the South is doing, not all that should be done, but all it can do, for the establishment of permanent safety and harmony, through the elevation of the lower masses especially, in the matter of public education. In truth, these facts do not prove the statement they are called upon to prove, and do the Southern States no kindness in lulling them to a belief in it. It is said, for instance, that certain Southern States are now spending more annually for public education in proportion to their taxable wealth than certain Northern States noted for the completeness of their public school systems. Mississippi may thus be compared with Massachusetts. But really the comparison is a sad injustice to the Southern State; for a century of public education has helped to make Massachusetts so rich that she is able to spend annually twenty dollars per head upon the children in her public schools, while Mississippi, laying a heavier tax, spends upon hers but two dollars per head. Manifestly it is unfair to compare a State whose public school system is new with any whose system is old. The public school property of Ohio, whose population is one million, is over twice as great as that of ten States of the New South whose population is three and a half times as large. And yet one does not need to go so far as the "New West" to find States whose taxpayers spend far more for public education than Southern communities thus far see the wisdom or need of investing. With one-third more wealth than Virginia, and but one-tenth the percentage of illiteracy, Iowa spends over four times as much per year for public instruction. With one-fourth less wealth than Alabama, and but one-fourteenth the percentage of illiteracy, Nebraska spends three and a half times as much per year for public instruction. With about the same wealth as North Carolina, and less than one-eighth the percentage of illiteracy, Kansas spends over five times as much per year for public education. If the comparison be moved westward again into new regions, the Territory of Dakota is seen making an "expenditure in the year per capita on average attendance in the public schools," of $25.77, being more than the sum of the like per capita expenditures by Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama,

and Georgia combined. In Colorado it is about the same as in Dakota, while in Nevada it is much greater and in Arizona twice as large. As to comparative wealth, the taxable wealth of Dakota, in 1880 at least, was but one two-thousandth part of that of the six States with which it is compared.

Now what is the real truth in these facts? That the full measure of this American public school idea, and of that Elevation idea of which it is an exponent, and which has had so much to do toward making the people of the Northern States the wealthiest people in the world, waits in the South, not mainly an increase of wealth, but rather the consent of the Southern white man to see society's best and earliest safety, and quickest, greatest and most lasting aggrandizement, in that public equality of all men, that national citizenship, wider than race and far wider than the lines of private society, which makes the elevation of the masses, by everything that tends to moral, æsthetical, and intellectual education, in school and out of school, the most urgent and fruitful investment of public wealth and trust. Just this sincere confession. All the rest will follow. The black man will not merely be tolerated in his civil and political rights, as now sometimes he is and sometimes he is not; but he will be welcomed into, and encouraged and urged to, a true understanding, valuation, and acceptance of every public duty and responsibility of citizenship, according to his actual personal ability to respond. He will be told not merely that he may vote some particular way, but that a non-voter is a nuisance and he must vote his own way and face the results. Party platforms will declare and pledge the same protections, and no others, to him in all his public rights and from all public wrongs and ignominies, as if, being otherwise just what he is, he were white.

To effect this is not the herculean and dangerous task it is sometimes said to be. The North has 20,000,000 foreign immigrants to Americanize, and only this way to do it. The South, for all her drawbacks, has this comparative advantage: that her lower mass, however ignorant and debased, is as yet wholly American in its notions of order and government. All that is wanting is to more completely Americanize her upper class-a class that is already ruling and will still rule when the change is made; that wants to rule wisely and prosperously, and that has no conscious intention of being un-American. Only this: to bring the men of best blood and best brain in the South to-day, not to a new and strange doctrine, but back to the faith of their fathers. Let but this be done, and there may be far less cry of Peace, Peace, than now; but there will be a peace and a union between the nation's two great historic sections such as they have not seen since Virginia's Washington laid down his sword and her Jefferson his pen.

GEORGE W. CABLE.

FREDERICK III.

EVE

VERY one who last June witnessed the glorious procession of the Queen to and from Westminster Abbey, will ever remember one royal figure towering above all the rest, the Crown Prince of Germany, as he was then, resplendent in his silver helmet and the white tunic of the Prussian Cuirassiers-the very picture of manly strength. He is now the Emperor of Germany, and when we think of him as travelling from San Remo to Berlin through storm and snow, wrapped up in his grey Hohenzollern cloak, a sad and silent man, is there in all history a more tragic contrast? But there beats. in the breast of Frederick III. the same stout heart that upheld Frederick II. at Hochkirchen. He does not know what danger means, whether it come from within or from without. "I face my

illness," he said to his friends, "as I faced the bullets at Königgrätz and Wörth." And forward he rides undismayed, following the trumpet-call of duty, and not swerving one inch from the straight and rugged path which now lies open before him.

There was a time when his friends imagined a very different career for him. They believed that he might succeed to the throne in the very prime of manhood. His father, the late Emperor, then Prince of Prussia, had been the most unpopular man since 1848, and it was considered by no means impossible that he might think it right to decline the crown and to abdicate in favour of his son. The star of Prussia was very low in 1848, and it sank lower and lower during the last years of the afflicted King, Frederick William IV. Few people only were aware of the changes that had taken place in the political views of the Prince of Prussia, chiefly during his stay in England, and the best spirits of the time looked upon his son, Prince Frederick William, as the only man who could be trusted to inau

gurate a new era in the history of Prussia. His marriage with the Princess Royal of England gave still stronger zest to these hopes, for while he was trusted as likely to realize the national yearnings after a united Germany, she was known as the worthy daughter of her father and mother, at that time the only truly constitutional rulers in Europe. England was then the ideal of all German Liberals, and a close political alliance with England was considered the best solution of all European difficulties. Young men, and old men too, dreamt dreams, little knowing how distant their fulfilment should be, and how dashed with sorrow, when at last they should come to be fulfilled.

The Prince himself knew probably nothing about the hopes that were then centred on him, but, for a man of his vigour and his eagerness to do some useful work, the long years of inactivity which followed were a severe trial. It has been the tradition in Prussia that the heir to the throne is allowed less power and influence than almost anybody. He may be a soldier, but, whether as a soldier or as a politican, he is expected to stand aloof, to keep silent and to obey. In the violent constitutional conflicts which began soon after his father's accession to the throne, the young Crown Prince felt himself isolated and unable to side with either party in a struggle the nature of which he could not approve, and the distant objects of which he was not allowed to foresee. What could be more trying to him than this enforced neutrality, when he and those nearest and dearest to him felt, whether rightly or wrongly, that the safety of the throne was being jeopardized, and the great future of Prussia, as the leader of the German people, forfeited for ever?

It would, however, be a mistake to imagine that the years of his manhood have been passed in idleness. Good care is taken in Prussia that no one, not even the heir to the Crown, should enjoy a sinecure. It required hard work for the Crown Prince to make himself a soldier, such as he has proved himself in two wars, but he never flinched from these military duties, whether they were congenial to him or not. Then came his social duties, his constant visits to foreign courts, his representative functions on every great occasion in Germany or in Prussia. And, besides these public duties, he made plenty of work for himself in which, helped and inspired by the Crown Princess, he could more freely follow the natural bent of his mind and his heart. The pupil of Professor Curtius, he preserved through life a warm interest in historical and archæological researches. When he was able to help he was ready to do so, and a limited sphere of independent action was at last given him, as the patron of all museums and collections of works of art in Prussia. The conscientious discharge of these duties, often under considerable difficulties, has borne ample fruit, and will not easily be forgotten by

those who worked under him and with him. And, as the Crown Princess assisted him, so he was able to support the Crown Princess in her indefatigable endeavours to improve the education of women, the nursing of the poor, the sanitary state of dwellings, and in many other social reforms which were far from popular when they were first started in Prussia by an Englishwoman. Only in political questions which were so near his heart he had no voice, nay, his own ideas had often to be kept concealed, lest they might encounter even more determined opposition than they would if advanced by others. The political views of the Crown Prince and those who thought with him have often been criticized, and the best answer to them has been found in the success of that policy of which neither he nor his father, when he was still Prince of Prussia, could fully approve. Men think, because they are wiser now, they were wiser then; but a successful policy is not necessarily the wisest policy.

"There is a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.”

During the Crimean war there were most competent judges who considered an alliance of Prussia with Austria and the Western Powers as the wisest policy, and who looked on the course adopted by the wavering brain of Frederick William IV. as disastrous to the future of Germany. Those who persuaded the King of Prussia to side with Russia may no doubt point with pride to the immense success which their policy has since achieved. They may claim the merit of having cajoled Russia into neutrality during the Austrian campaign, and again of having secured her sympathies by secret promises during the Franco-German war. But they forget that an open alliance of Prussia and Austria with England, France and Italy might have prevented the Crimean war altogether, and many of the fatal consequences that have sprung from it. Anyhow, we have now reached again the same point where the principal nations of Europe stood before the beginning of the Crimean war. Many changes, no doubt, have taken place in the meantime, but the fundamental question remains the same, How can the permanent peace of Europe be secured? So long as that question remains unanswered, so long as that old riddle remains unsolved, the new Emperor need not think that even now he has come too late, or that his father has left him no laurels to win.

The question is, whether the Germanic nations of Europe and America can be made to combine, and to form a League of Peace which will make war in Europe impossible. It is no secret that the formation of such a League has been the chief aim of German diplomacy ever since 1872. That league was to be formed on the uti possidetis principle, not for offensive, but entirely for defensive pur