ones. And the leaders of this party have taken hold with a will, and before long their work in the reconstruction and amalgamation of this unhappy land will be evident.

It is the unsettled position that is now galling to every one; and here I must mention something that has arisen very similar to one of the questions evoked during our war with Spain-the volunteer. Here in South Africa, serving as ordinary troopers, are men from every corner of the Empire. There are young clerks and barristers from London, men of private means and fortune, shopkeepers, mineowners and sheep-raisers from Cape Colony, judges and tea-planters from Ceylon and India, and hardy Australians and Tasmanians from the antipodes. Our cousins from our own side of the water also-business men from Montreal and the French Canadians of Quebec, young fellows from the Western cattle ranges, and hundreds of Americans also, for one meets them everywhere.

They have all had Pretoria before their eyes, they should go home with "Pretoria" in their throats; and the fact of the matter

learned, he could have outfitted a squadron from his own private purse and never felt

it.

suddenly. "There's an awful pretty girl over in that store, but she won't look at Every time I go in there that cross

me.

He thought a little while.

"Well," said he, "I know I will be." He kicked the pony's sides. "Sometimes it's a bit of a bore, but I'm awfully fit, and won't I have a good time when I get back to London !" He slapped the pony with the long blue envelope. I'd like to ride this gee down the Row," he said, just to see what people would say." "Dressed just as you are?" I suggested. Oh, well," was the answer, "I would like another pair of breeches. Can't get another pair for love or money-been all over town. There is only one thing that worries me, however," he added: "can't get any letters. We've been knockin' about so that I suppose they're tired send ing them after us. Haven't heard from home for almost two months."

He left me and turned down a side street to deliver his note. Afterwards I met him again and learned his name. Some day he may have a title to it. His first cousin has one already, and is on a general's staff.

Crossing the square, I met my friend the trooper again some time later. He is very young, hardly more than a boy, and he greeted me boyishly.

"I say," he began, "funny thing just now. Met a Tommy over there who looked at me hard and then came up and spoke to me. Somehow I thought I'd seen him before. 'Isn't this Master Edward?' he asked. Who do you suppose it was-the gardener's son from my father's place! We had quite a talk, and he gave me the news of the family. He had got some letters since I had." He switched off

I asked him if he had seen his cousin, whom I knew. "Yes, I saw him the other day," he replied. "Had to salute him. Felt like going up and punching him, but, of course, I couldn't do that."

It happened that I met his cousin with the red lapels and the crowns on his shoulder, and told him. He laughed at the story.

66

Cheeky little rascal!" he said. "Would have been just like him to do itand I'd had to put him under arrest. Heard he was here-been trying to get hold of him. This knocking about will do him lots of good."

Now, that's one type of volunteer. He's out for a lark, and I don't think for one minute that he has regarded anything seriously-even the fact of being shot at. But there is the other sort of chap-of whom I have met several; and his lot is not so easy. He is the man who has abandoned business or a practice to take up his military service, and in many cases he has suffered most severely.

It is only just now, during this period. of inaction, when the thing seems almost finished, that he feels the hardship most. But he indulges in little or no complain ing, and only expresses the hope that the war will soon be over. So far as he is concerned it is over, and the English Government has already done a wise thing in beginning to establish the Volunteer Police, which calls for a separate enlistment. Before many weeks have gone I hope to hear that the transports are ready to take some of the volunteers back to the place they came from.

L

EO XIII. is the two hundred and sixty-third Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, and as such is Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, successor of the Prince of Apostles, highest Prelate of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the Occident, Primate of Italy, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Roman Province, and finally Sovereign of the Temporal Dominions of the Holy Roman Church.

Leo XIII. was born on the 2d of March, 1810; he therefore celebrated his ninetieth birthday last March. He was elected Pope on the 20th of February, 1878, and he has thus completed more than twenty years of his Pontificate. He has enjoyed a well-earned fame as an adroit diplomat, and all of his policy has as its scope the obtaining and maintenance of good relations with all the Powers, except, naturally, with Italy. His first step was to notify all Governments (except the Italian) of his elevation to the Pontificate, and to follow this up by letters to the various sovereigns, in which he showed how he proposed to dissipate every existing dissension between the Vatican and the respective States. Where relations had been broken off, the Pope proposed, with an equity and courtesy which did him honor, to take them up again.

He began this line of operations by addressing a letter to the German Emperor, a letter now of great historic im

portance, in which he expressed the desire that the dissensions on account of the May Laws should cease. The Kaiser passed on the letter to Prince Bismarck, who suggested to his sovereign the propriety of accepting the propositions. of the new Pope and of responding to them in a respectful and well-wishing manner. From that time the Vatican received with eagerness every wish expressed by the Iron Chancellor, even if the Center (the Roman Catholic party in Germany) registered its opposition. The end of all was that Bismarck submitted more than he supposed to the Papal authority in order himself to hold the Center in check. Throughout all the negotiations the Pope in no way endangered good relations with Protestant Germany.

Who does not remember how much Leo XIII. did in order not to rouse inimical feelings in France? He finished by espousing the cause of the Republic, and by breaking with the Royalists and the Imperialists. Many Bishops were not able to swallow the bitter pill, but the Pope never let an occasion pass to prejudice them toward obedience to his will, although that obedience had to be passive in some cases, and not active. Even when the Radical Cabinets, such as those presided over by MM. Bourgeois, Brisson, and Waldeck-Rousseau, had recourse to energetic acts against the clergy, the Pope

not only made no protest, but showed himself, on the other hand, rather conciliatory. He did not wish to stir up bad feelings in France; he feared lest his own international influence might be endangered by the grave consequences which would inevitably follow any rupture with the "Eldest Daughter of the Church."

Leo XIII. has shown himself also notably conciliatory with England. While his predecessor, Pius IX., never made a secret of his own sympathies for the success of the Nationalist movement in Ireland, Leo endeavored to induce the Irish Bishops, whom he frequently called to Rome, to abstain from a hopeless contest. When these councils were not sufficient, the Pope did not hesitate to publish a decree of excommunication against those belonging to the Irish National Leagues, against authors of boycotts, and against any one who became a member of any secret society. By this policy the Pope hoped to arrive at an end which would redound to the glory of the Church, namely, the establishment of a concordat, providing for the resumption of diplomatic relations with Great Britain. The British Government, however, while not refusing to consider such a proposal, declared that, as a Pontifical Nuncio could not find his posi

MARIANO RAMPOLLA DEL TINDARO

tion an agreeable one in London, being accredited to a Protestant court, so an English Ambassador could hardly find a post at the Vatican a proper one. This check, nevertheless, made no difference in the unceasing efforts of the Pope to maintain the best possible relations with England, even though he had to stand by his guns when the question of a tentative union between the High Church and Ritualistic party of the Anglican Church with the Roman Communion came up. The great ability manifest in every line of his letter "Ad Anglos" will not be forgotten.

The same conciliatory policy was also shown to the Austro-Hungarian Government. When the Hungarian Chamber of Deputies approved certain laws, among them those providing for purely civil marriages, the Hungarian Bishops began a violent contest with the Government. In principle the Pope sustained them, but when they endeavored to extend their fight, even to the breaking off of diplomatic relations, he checked them, and counseled rather a temporary submission to hostile laws which had received the sanction of the Government. In the end this conciliatory policy brought its own reward.

With Spain, Leo XIII. adopted pre