"It is going to be a really good holiday?”

"I am going to forget that I am leaving all my interests behind. In good hands, I grant you. Mr. Randal will write constantly."

The afternoon sun was full on the broad avenue of elms. As they walked along slowly her white dress was now in golden light, now in dappled shadow, for the leaves were out on the trees. The sun on her hair was as on deep waters, and as she looked up at him under her dark lashes her eyes were now golden light, now mysterious shadow.

For the first time he referred to what had passed between them more than two years ago.

"I am half way through the period of my probation, Anne," he said. "I shall be glad when it is at an end." And then jealously: "I believe the things you are interested in engross you to the exclusion of me; they push me out."

"And the things you are interested in must push me out," she answered. "One can't have two engrossing interests. Wait till the five years are up, Alastair."

"I shall have to wait," he said, "with what patience I may."

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.

BY RENÉ HENRY.

HE empire of Austria-Hungary is the scene today of widespread political agitation. It is upset by the conflict of many forces, some of which are old, some young and big with prom

ise. So far does the conflict at times extend, that the state of the country fairly approaches anarchy. The double name itself describes the nature of the dualistic government which, since 1867, has ruled the empire.

Austria-Hungary is at present a crude mosaic; a mixture of heterogeneous elements. Though connected one with the other, and sharing in a mutually common government, these elements have kept themselves quite distinct, perpetuated themselves as separate peoples, and retained their racial and territorial individuality. Few real unions or assimilations have occurred among them and, to-day, viewed from any point, Austria-Hungary is a veritable Babel.

The empire was founded in 1526, when combinations of royal marriages and successions joined, but did not unite, the hereditary states of Austria, the kingdom of Bohemia, and the kingdom of Hungary under the sole sceptre of the Hapsburgs. Beginning with great power in the upper valley of the Rhine in Switzerland, in Alsace, and in Swabia, where it is now but a memory, the house of Hapsburg has been destined to move slowly toward the east, and to become more and more an Eastern empire. Because of this, it has reigned during four centuries over the whole of the middle Danube and its dependencies, and as such we see it, at the end of the nineteenth century, at the gate of the Balkans.

The hereditary dominions of Austria extend along the northeastern part of the Alps, to the port of Trieste, and up through the Viennese basin of the Danube. A line thus drawn is the old southeastern marche of the Holy Roman Empire. The independent kingdom of Bohemia includes Bohemia proper, a rich basin in which the Elbe rises, and which,

bounded on all sides by high mountains, is a natural citadel commanding the plains and plateaux of Central Europe; Silesia, or the upper valley of the Oder, an industrial region, the greater part of which was taken from Austria in the eighteenth century by the Prussians; Moravia, a large and fertile tract which slopes from the highlands that separate it from Silesia towards the Danube, bordering it between Vienna and Pressburg. The kingdom of Hungary (whose fate was shared by its very old associate, the kingdom of Croatia), extends from the shore of the Adriatic to the joint confluence of the Drave and the Save with the Danube, and the Russian border. In its territory it includes vast regions of flat land extremely fertile, the mountainous regions of the Carpathians, and the plateau of Transylvania, which bounds the plains of the Hungarian Danube and the Theiss.

Austria Hungary has in times past also possessed countries since lost, such as Belgium, a great part of Italy, not to mention the hegemony of Germany. But, on the other hand, the empire, during the centuries since 1526, has acquired and still possesses important provinces, such as Galicia, secured in the eighteenth century in the partition of Poland; and Dalmatia, a narrow strip along the Adriatic. Bosnia-Herzegovina also are under the administration of Austria-Hungary, but, as a result of the Berlin Treaty of 1878, they own Turkey suzerain. These principalities are at once the hinterland of Dalmatia and the outpost of the empire with regard to the Balkans and Saloniki.

This short summary will give some idea of the veritable harlequin coat that clothes the empire of Austria-Hungary—at least when viewed from the side of history. And this is the capital view-point in the eyes of the great majority of statesmen and scholars of Central Europe, so deeply impregnated are they with the medieval feudal spirit, so respectful and tenacious of ancient parchments and of "what has been."

From the ethnical side, the complex and heterogeneous nature of the empire is even more striking. Every AustriaHungarian subject belongs to a particular nationality which, too much alive to lose itself in a common nationality, exists still under its own historical and constitutional diversities. These constantly assert themselves and endanger national harmony. Simplify and arrange the map of Austria-Hungary un

til it is reduced to a rectangle, with the greater length on the north and south; divide this rectangle into three parts by lines parallel to the north and south. Within these lines we see, passing over irrelevant details, states within states, small principalities, and groups without number, ethnically distinct. In the northern and southern portions of our rectangle are found Slavs; in the west-centre, Germans; in the east, Magyars; and still further eastward, Roumanians The Slavs must be subdivided into many nationalties, for the term designates not one nation, but a family of nations. Among the northern Slavs, going from west to east-from Bohemia to the extremity of Galicia -Slavonic, Polish, and Ruthenian. Among southern Slavs are many Italians, as far as Trieste, then Slavonians, Croats, and Serbs.

Among the entire population of forty-seven millions, twentythree millions are Slavs, eleven millions Germans, and eight millions Magyars. The remaining five millions embrace nationalities too numerous to mention. Every nation has its grievances against every other nation. Hatreds are begotten and

grow strong.

From the standpoint of religion, on the contrary, one finds throughout Austria-Hungary if not an absolutely supreme, at least a predominant, note of harmony. Thirty-one millions of the people are Roman Catholics and particularly fervent ones throughout the Germanic countries of the Alps and among the Poles and the Croats. In Northwestern Bohemia the Catholicism of some is colored by a surviving Hussite spirit. Five millions are Greek Catholics or Uniats. They include the Ruthenians and sections of the Roumanians. Against these thirtysix millions, there are but four million Oriental Greeks (the remainder of the Roumanians and the Serbs); four million Protestants (Magyars); two million Jews, scattered principally through Galicia, Hungary, and Vienna; and half a million Mohammedans, part of the Slavs of Bosnia. But at present the religious question Austria-Hungary has not the importance in that it once had, at least with regard to home politics. In my travels through the empire, I no longer hear the old time argument maintained, that the internal policy of Francis Joseph was, before everything else, a Catholic policy. In fact, the Emperor-King has sanctioned for Austria, and later for Hungary, laws of a decidedly laicising character.

VOL. LXXXII.-4

Several years ago, when national questions dominated everything in Austria, religious disputes were ascendant in Hungary and of sufficient intensity to disintegrate several political parties in the parliament of Budapest. Because of such disputes, the Catholic Ougron opposed the Protestant Kossuth, and the Catholic Apponyi the Protestant Tisza. But now the violence of the present struggle, instituted by the Magyars against Vienna, has left room for nothing but national considerations, and Apponyi and Ougron are joined with Kossuth.

But Austria-Hungary is essentially a Babel. Is it to be the scene of a dispersion of peoples? The impression that such will be the case is widespread. Austria-Hungary has been represented as a sheaf which is about to undo itself and disintegrate after the manner of irreconcilable forces, or as an edifice of which Francis Joseph is the corner stone, and when he, the corner stone, disappears, the whole building will fall. Hence the tiresome question asked of every one who is thought to be conversant with Central European politics: "What will happen after the death of Francis Joseph ?"

The assumed breaking up of Austria-Hungary has been called the "theory of dislocation," and the theory has been generally accepted as an accurate forecast. Many of my countrymen have contributed much toward spreading it. When Frenchmen maintain it, they have in mind that type of state, of which France is an example, in which all the elements have been fused and moulded under the strong and able hands of ancient kings; a centralized, unified state, which knows only one nationality-French. The great majority of Frenchmen, therefore, when they consider Austria-Hungary, a state so radically different from their own, at once determine that it cannot live. Americans much more readily understand a political composite such as Austria Hungary. They as republicans, however, must forget their democratic form of government, and reason objectively if they would understand that the keystone of monarchical Austria Hungary is not affection, more or less great, for the sovereign, but the monarchical sentiment itself, which continues to animate those nations of Central Europe, and which will outlast the life of the Emperor-King, Francis Joseph.

But what is of prime importance in the question is that Austria-Hungary is a country made for federation. Ameri