years afterwards Bismarck became strance. Then respectable citizens alive to his mistake, and would have were startled by the depressing news retrieved it by a second summary in that they had been deserted by Admiral vasion, had it not been for the interposi- Saisset, the trusty commander of the tion of the czar. In these anxious days National Guard, who had followed the writer had a letter from a man- Thiers to Versailles. The law-abiding not Captain Bingham-who had access men of property had fondly believed to sources of information the most that he, at least, would have stuck to intimes. Like Bingham, he occupied an his post. The admiral afterwards exapartment looking out on the Arc de plained to Bingham that he had acted Triomphe. And he wrote, "I never sorely contre cœur. But Thiers' orders dress of a morning without seeing the were peremptory, and he was bound to triumphant Prussians again passing obey. under the Arch." The Commune was a legacy of the humiliating war, and, as we said, of the extravagant expenditure of the Empire. Paris was discontented, impoverished, and overcrowded with workmen out of employment, from whom the insurrectionary Directory recruited its defenders. The bourgeois Thiers, soldierlike only in theory, was not the man for the critical situation. Had MacMahon been then in charge, events might have been very different. Thiers' best excuse was that he could not trust the soldiers. Had they looked up to a marshal whose courage they respected, and been under the wholesome terrors of military law, there would have been little fear of their fraternizing with the discontented. The regular uniform has a supreme contempt for shop-keepers of the National Guard and pekins in blouses. As it was, Thiers, though he had such dashing soldiers as De Gallifet at his back, showed a pitiable example of impotence and vacillation. There was no reason why he should not have at once drawn the teeth of the factions by quietly removing the guns parked on the heights of Montmartre. writer saw them a few days before the impending outbreak practically unguarded. Indeed the cannon had actually been secured, but unfortunately the teams to drag them away had been forgotten. That might have been the error of an incapable subordinate. But Thiers evacuated Paris so promptly that in his panic he would actually have abandoned Valérien, and that key of the attack was only saved by a timely reminder and remon The One of the first striking incidents of the second siege was the demonstration of the Rue de la Paix, which ended in a slaughter of unarmed men. We always doubted whether the Communists were greatly to blame, and Captain Bingham's testimony goes far to exculpate them. A more insane project than for a procession of unarmed citizens to force a line of military posts could hardly have been conceived. But the friends of order were not content with simple persuasion: "the language used was of an excitable, if not a violent character." The National Guard gave them fair warning, and only fired when their line was being broken. Bingham says that the casualties would have been far more numerous had not the Federalists passed the night in the wine-shops. Moreover, it is more than probable that many fired in the air, otherwise the volleys at point blank must have been much more deadly. And the report we had from Laurence Oliphant corresponds with that of Captain Bingham. Oliphant was an eyewitness, and helped afterwards to drag some of the wounded into the offices of Messrs. Blount the bankers. He had been warned, by the by, that he might expect a sign that he had been sinning against the light in declining to quit Paris at the orders of his prophet. He took that bloody drama of the Rue de la Paix as the predicted sign, and straightway sent in his demission as Times correspondent. The gentlemen of the pavement had been succeeded by the gentlemen of the gutter, and these last were by no means pleasant masters. A strange mixture they were; for with Blanqui, who had grown grey in conspiracies, and with the Raoul Rigaults and the Felix Pyats, were such honest fanatics as Delescluze, such chivalrous though mistaken soldiers as Rossel. The world of Paris was more topsy-turvy than ever. With men like Rossel and the fighting Pole Dombrowski at their disposal, the Communists chose for their general-inchief Bergeret the ex-waiter. He could not ride; he did not care to walk so far; so when he delivered his famous attack on Versailles, he accompanied the column in a carriage and pair, till the fire from Valérien disturbed his equanimity. It was then that Paris was encouraged by the memorable despatch announcing that Bergeret lui-même was directing operations. There were exceptions, and Raoul Rigault was one; but Bingham does justice to the general incorruptibility of the feather-brained anarchists. So far as honesty went, they made a happy choice of their finance minister. "Jourde's wife washed the family linen as of yore (not that the minister seemed to use much), and he took his hurried meals at a low eatinghouse. And, poor fellow, he looked sadly in want of good feeding." Indeed it is a singular fact that with Paris abandoned to the dregs of the populace, the deserted mansions of the rich were not given over to sack and pillage. There was the Bank of France, with untold gold in the cellars. The governor remained courageously at his post, and treated coolly and successfully with the commissioners of the Commune. He ransomed the vast treasures in his custody for less than a million sterling. And Bingham vouches for a fact which would otherwise seem incredible. "While the marquis was doling out his millions of francs to the Commune, he was sending regularly, once a week, silver and gold wherewith to pay the Versailles troops, who cost about £120,000 a day." Almost as mysterious is the protracted defence, and it suggests that the dash had been taken out of the regular officers and privates, demoralized by a succession of crushing disasters. Cluseret, who had been war minister for nearly a month, asserted that during that period "the Communists only lost one hundred and seventy-one men, and that only six thousand men, not including two thousand artillerymen, were engaged in the defence." As Bingham, who accepts the statement, comments, "It was this insignificant number of combatants, who spent more time in the wine-shops than on the ramparts, which resisted for two long months an army of one hundred thousand men, forty-seven field-batteries, and a formidable siegeartillery." It might have been supposed that the patriotic besiegers, at some personal risk, would have been eager to spare the capital the calamities of a prolonged bombardment. But for weeks they were content to lay at longbowls with the cannon of the forts and enceinte. Their firing was so methodical that the regular intervals could be confidently reckoned with. At times they made it hot enough at the exposed crossings, and Captain Bingham gives a grimly ludicrous account of a troop of bonnes waiting a chance to rush across to the bakery over the way. At last the Versailles troops slipped into the city in place of storming it; and we know how terrible and indiscriminating were the reprisals. No one can ever tell how many innocent victims were murdered at Satory or dropped to these nocturnal volleys of platoon firing, which disturbed the slumbers of the residents near the Parc de Monceaux and the Gardens of the Luxemburg. "What struck me as deplorable in those days," says Captain Bingham, "was the conduct of the population, which, after having shown the most abject submission to the Commune, now clamored for blood. No sooner was an arrest made than the cry, A mort! a mort! was raised." On the close of that bloody tragedy which restored Paris and France to the rule of the constitutional democracy we may let the curtain fall. Since then every political notoriety and many an obscure individual have had their chance. Captain Bingham remarks that under the Third Republic there have been thirty-six ministers of the interior. It is relatively satisfactory, with regard to the continuity and stability of French foreign policy, to know that there have been only half as many ministers of foreign affairs. On which his comment is that these frequent changes keep up a certain excitement, and do not seem to do the country much harm. He thinks that ministerial instability appears to act like a sedative, and to prevent more serious complications. We are glad to believe that the English temperament is essentially different from that of the French; but should we ever realize the fond dreams of our advanced Radicals, and have annual Parliaments with paid members, we may go through a course of somewhat similar experiences, which will at least give us "a certain amount of excitement." From The Cornhill Magazine. THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN. "Yes, mother, he will come. Of course he will come!" and the girl turned her drawn and anxious young face towards the cottage door, just as if her blind mother could see her action. It is probable that the old woman divined the longing glance from the change in the girl's tone, for she, too, half turned towards the door. It was a habit these two women had acquired. They constantly looked towards the door for the arrival of one who never came through the long summer days, through the quiet winter evenings; moreover, they rarely spoke of other things, this arrival was the topic of their lives. And now the old woman's life was drawing to a close, as some lives do, without its object. She herself felt it, and her daughter knew it. There was in both of them a subtle sense of clinging. It was hard to die without touching the reward of a wondrous patience. It was cruel to deprive the girl of this burden, for in most burdens there is a safeguard, in all a duty, and in some the greatest happiness allotted to human existence. It was no new thing, this waiting for the scapegrace son; the girl had grown up to it, for she would not know her brother should she meet him in the street. Since sight had left the old mother's eyes she had fed her heart upon this hope. He had left them eighteen years before in a fit of passionate resentment against his father, whose only fault had been too great an indulgence for the son of his old age. Nothing had been too good for dear Stephen-hardly anything had been good enough. Educated at a charity school himself, the simple old clergyman held the mistaken view that no man can be educated above his station. There are some people who hold this view still, but they cannot do so much longer. Strikes, labor troubles, and the difficulties of domestic service; socalled gentleman farmers, gentleman shop-keepers and lady milliners-above all, a few colonies peopled by university failures, will teach us in time that to educate our sons above their station is to handicap them cruelly in the race of life. Stephen Leach was one of the early victims to this craze. His father, having risen by the force of his own will and the capabilities of his own mind from the people to the Church, held, as such men do, that he had only to give his son a good education to ensure his career in life. So everything-even to the old parson's sense of right and wrong-was sacrificed to the education of Stephen Leach at public school and university. Here he met and selected for his friends youths whose futures were ensured, and who were only passing through the formula of an education so that no one could say that they were unfit for the snug government appointment, living, or inheritance of a more substantial sort that might be waiting for them. Stephen acquired their ways of life without possessing their advantages, and the consequence was something very nearly approaching to ruin for the little country rectory. Not having been a university man himself, the rector did not know that at Oxford or Cambridge, as in the army, one may live according to one's tastes. Stephen Leach had expensive tastes, and he unscrupulously traded on his father's ignorance. He was good-looking, and had a certain briliiancy of manner which “goes down" well at the 'varsity. Everything was against him, and at last the end came. At last the rector's eyes were opened, and when a narrow-minded man's eyes are once opened he usually becomes stouy at the heart. Stephen Leach left England, and before he landed in America his father had departed on a longer journey. The ne'er-do-well had the good grace to send back the little sums of money saved by his mother in her widowhood, and gradually his letters ceased. It was known that he was in Chili, and there was war going on there, and yet the good old lady's faith never wa vered. "He will come, Joyce," she would say; "he will surely come." And somehow it came to be an understood thing that he was to come in the afternoon when they were all ready for him-when Joyce had clad her pretty young form in a dark dress, and when the old lady was up and seated in her chair by the fire in winter, by the door in summer. They had never imagined his arrival at another time. It would not be quite the same should he make a mistake and come in the morning, before Joyce had got the house put right. Yet, he never came. A greater infirmity came instead, and at last Joyce suggested that her mother should not get up in bad weather. They both knew what this meant, but the episode passed as others do, and Mrs. Leach was bedridden. Still she said: "He will come, Joyce! He will surely come." And the girl would go to the window and draw aside the curtain, looking down the quiet country road towards the village. "Yes, mother, he will come!" was her usual answer; and one day she gave a little exclamation of surprise and almost of fear. "Mother," she exclaimed, "there is some one coming along the road." The old lady was already sitting up iu bed, staring with her sightless orbs towards the window. Thus they waited. The man stopped opposite the cottage, and the two women heard the latch of the gate. Then Joyce, turning, saw that her mother had fainted. But it was only momentary. By the time she reached the bed her mother had recovered consciousness. "Go," said the old lady breathlessly; "go and let him in yourself." Down-stairs, on the doorstep, the girl found a tall man of thirty or thereabouts, with a browner face than Engiish suns could account for. He looked down into her eager eyes with a strange questioning wonder. "Am I too late?" he asked in a voice which almost seemed to indicate a hope that it might be so. "No, Stephen," she answered. "But mother cannot live much longer. You are just in time." The young man made a hesitating little movement with his right hand and shuffled uneasily on the clean stone step. He was like an actor called suddenly upon the stage, having no knowledge of his part. The return of this prodigal was not a dramatic success. No one seemed desirous of . learning whether he had lived upon husks or otherwise, and with whom he had eaten. The quiet dignity of the girl, who had remained behind to do all the work and bear all the burden, seemed in some subtle manner to deprive him of any romance that might have attached itself to him. She ignored his half-proffered hand, and turning into the little passage, led the way up-stairs. Stephen Leach followed silently. He was rather large for the house, and especially for the stairs; moreover, be had a certain burliness of walk, such as is acquired by men living constantly in the open. There was a vaguely-pained look in his blue eyes, as if they had suddenly been opened to his own shortcomings. His attitude towards Joyce was distinctly apologetic. When he followed the girl across the threshold of her mother's bedroom, the old lady was sitting up in bed, holding out trembling arms towards the door. Here Stephen Leach seemed to know better what to do. He held his mother in his arms while she sobbed and mur. mured out her joy. He had no words, but his arms meant more than his lips could ever have told. It would seem that the best part of happiness is the sharing it with some one else. "Joyce" was the first distinct word the old lady spoke, "Joyce, he has come at last. He has come! Come here, dear. Kiss your brother. This is my firstborn-my little Steve." The young man had sunk upon his knees at the bedside, probably because it was the most convenient position. He did not second his mother's proposal with much enthusiasm. Altogether he did not seem to have discovered much sympathy with the sister whom he had left in her cradle. Joyce came forward and leaned over the bed to kiss her brother, while the old lady's hands joined theirs. Just as her fresh young lips came within reach he turned his face aside, so that the kiss fell on barren ground on his tanned cheek. "Joyce," continued the old lady feverishly, "I am not afraid to die now, for Stephen is here. Your brother will take care of you, dear, when I am gone." It was strange that Stephen had not spoken yet; and it was perhaps just as well, because there are occasions in life when men do wisely to keep silent. "He is strong," the proud mother went on. "I can feel it. His hands are large and steady and quiet, and his arms are big and very hard." The young man knelt upright and submitted gravely to this maternal inventory. "Yes," she said, "I knew he would grow to be a big man. His little fingers were so strong-he hurt me some I times. What a great moustache! knew you had been a soldier. And the skin of your face is brown and a little rough. What is this? what is this, Stephen, dear? Is this a wound?" "Yes," answered the Prodigal, speaking for the first time. "That is a sword cut. I got that in the last war. I am a colonel in the Chilian army, or was, before I resigned." The old lady's sightless eyes were fixed on his face as if listening for the echo of another voice in his deep quiet tones. "Your voice is deeper than your father's ever was," she said; and all the while her trembling fingers moved lovingly over his face, touching the deep cut from cheek-bone to jaw with soft inquiry. "This must have been very near your eye, Stephen. Promise me, dear, no more soldiering." "I promise that," he replied, without raising his eyes. Such was the home-coming of the Prodigal. After all, he arrived at the right moment in the afternoon, when the house was ready. It sometimes does happen so in real life, and not only in books. There is a great deal that might be altered in this world, but sometimes, by a mere chance, things come about rightly. And yet there was something wrong, something subtle, which the dying woman's duller senses failed to detect. Her son, her Stephen, was quiet, and had not much to say for himself. He apparently had the habit of taking things as they came. There was no enthusiasm, but rather a restraint in his manner, more especially towards Joyce. The girl noticed it, but even her small experience of human kind had taught her that large, fair-skinned men are often thus. They are not "de ceux qui s'expliquent," but go through life placidly, leaving unsaid and undone many things which some think they ought to say and do. After the first excitement of the return was over it became glaringly apparent that Stephen had arrived just in time. His mother fell into a happy sleep before sunset; and when the ac |