de such
migrations has not usually been encouraging, and we fear that thousands
more will acquire a good deal of bitter knowledge learned in that same
expensive school.

* * * * *

A COMPARISON.

_The French and the Negro._

A writer in the March number of The Forum has drawn a vivid picture of
France in its poverty, misery and tyranny in 1789, and contrasted with
this the thrift, the improved land culture, and the better clothing,
food, home and intelligence of the French peasantry of 1889. The
Revolution of 1789 broke the tyranny of the old crushing regime and
opened the way for the new world that brightens and gladdens the France
of to-day. But the Revolution did not itself make the great change; it
simply made it possible.

Two factors developed in French character were the practical forces in
the new prosperity--economy and the desire for ownership of lands and
homes. That economy was pushed, in many cases, almost to the extreme of
miserly hoarding. We give below a few brief extracts illustrating the
point in question:

"The life led by a comfortable English or American farmer would
represent wicked waste and shameful indulgence to a much richer
French peasant. I, myself, know a laborer on wages of less than
twenty shillings a week, who by thrift has bought ten acres of the
magnificent garden land between Fontainebleau and the Seine, worth
many thousand pounds, on which grow all kinds of fruits and
vegetables, and the famous dessert grapes; yet who, with all his
wealth and abundance, denies himself and his two children meat on
Sundays, and even a drink of the wine which he grows and makes for
the market."

"The French peasant has great virtues, but he has the defects of
his virtues, and his home life is far from idyllic. He is
laborious, shrewd, enduring, frugal, self-reliant, sober, honest
and capable of intense self-control for a distant reward; but that
reward is property in land, in pursuit of which he may become as
pitiless as a bloodhound."

"Take him for all in all, he is a strong and noteworthy force in
modern civilization. Though his country has not the vast mineral
wealth of England, nor her gigantic development in manufactures
and in commerce, he has made France one of the richest, most
solid, most progressive countries on earth. He is quite as frugal
and patient as the Ger