children round her knees, bids her husband a tearful but brave
God-speed. The mother, as she gazes with a full heart on the boy
who is as the apple of her eye, bids him go forth and fight in
Freedom's Holy War. The lass bids her lover take his stand for all
that she thinks worth having, esteeming him something less than a
coward if he fails to the fight. Woe betide the oppressors when the
women of a nation take up the quarrel."

Ah! thou mighty Christian England, who hast always prided thyself on
being the most liberty-loving of all the Powers that be, how couldst
thou have crushed the liberty of two small states? How couldst thou have
torn so mercilessly the noble passions and aspirations of being free and
independent from the Boer hearts? Hast thou verily extinguished by
force the highest and holiest ambitions of a free-born people? Can the
mountain torrent rushing down the valley be stemmed in its onward
course? If patriotism is the ideal of a race that nourishes the most
indestructible of all passions, then ye have indeed contended against an
indestructible element of the Boer nature.

Next to and quite as prominent as this all-absorbing passion for freedom
is the _religious trait_ in the Boer character. As a people they are
distinguished from all other nations by their religiosity. Remembering
that they are the offshoot of men and women who perished in France,
Holland, England and elsewhere for their faith, one does not wonder that
they are religious. The religion of the Boer forms part and parcel of
his very existence. His mind is imbued with the words and thoughts of
Holy Writ. On a Sunday you will find him with his family, as a rule,
attending service in his little chapel. If he cannot go to church, he
will gather his family, increased sometimes by the presence of
neighbours, round the family altar, and there he will read his Bible,
sing his Psalms, bend his knees and lift up his heart in prayerful
adoration to the God of his fathers.

Attaches, correspondents, and foreigners who fought on the side of the
Boers were struck much by the simple piety, the religious ideas and
sentiments of the Boers. Early in the morning and late at night their
camps would resound with hymns. In this enlightened twentieth century,
however, it has become the fashion to scoff and sneer at everything
which savours of religion, so much so that it seems incredible to most
that the Boers, as a people, can