ere and unexampled manner.

'After the disasters of the Prussian invasion in 1871,' says
our author, 'the City of Boston, in America, placed at the
disposal of the French Academy a special prize of two
thousand francs to be given to whoever should be judged most
worthy of the honour, on account of services rendered during
the siege and in presence of the enemy. The Academy could
find no more fitting recipient of this distinction than the
Community, which during the whole time of the war had sent
five hundred infirmarians into the battlefields, one of whom
had fallen under the fire of the Prussians, among the
wounded at Bourget. Public opinion fully endorsed the
decision, when the first literary body in the world adjudged
this reward to the humble and despised corps of the Freres
des Ecoles Chretiennes. At the same time the National
Defence Government insisted on decorating their venerable
Superior with a cross of honour. He would have refused it,
as he and his predecessors had already done many times, and
he only yielded when he was told that there was nothing
personal in the honour; that it belonged to his Institute;
and that it was only as the representative of the Society
that he was asked to wear it. The eminent Dr. Ricord, who
had been an eyewitness of the devotion of the Brothers, was
charged with the office of fastening the cross on the
cassock of Frere Philippe, in the great hall of the
mother-house. This was the most embarrassing moment in the
life of that man of God. He could not bear to wear the cross
of honour, and in fact he never did wear it. When he
returned after conducting the Doctor to the door at the end
of the ceremony, he somehow managed that no one should
perceive his decoration. The cross was not to be seen; and
it has remained ever since as a kind of myth, or mysterious
souvenir; it was never found.'

Thus in France Ministers of Public Instruction and Superiors of the
Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes agree in removing the cross from
elementary schools: but how marvellous the distance between the
religious principles which lead to the two kinds of removal!

And now, in these days of payment by results, let us look for one moment
to the Ecoles Chretiennes from this point of view; and then we will bid
the Brothers a respectful farewell.