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hands while she was drifting to ruin. This it was that drove him to start a regular crusade against his own countrymen. He went about among them, preaching and lecturing in every town in the kingdom, in every district; and wherever he went he denounced, with fiery eloquence, their lack of patriotism; and implored them in thrilling tones to shake themselves free from the fatal indifference in which they were sunk. He wrote poetry for them, too, stirring national hymns, war songs, in which he told them of the great deeds their forefathers had done. And the result was a great revival, national, social, and religious. The people rose as if from a long sleep at the bidding of this new evangelist.

Strangely enough it was the peasants who, more than any other class, took the bishop's exhortations to heart. What shall we do to save ourselves and our country?' was soon their one cry. Educate yourselves' was Grundtvig's answer. This, indeed, was the burden of all his latter-day preaching, for he held strongly that in education lay these men's one hope. Nor was he content with telling them what to do; he showed them how to do it. It was he who first conceived the idea of a Peasants' High School, and who formulated the plan on which all these schools are founded. It was he, too, who insisted that all the teaching given should be viva voce, and that no one should be allowed to go there until he was eighteen. This latter point was one to which he attached great importance; for he was convinced that, under eighteen, boys are developing too rapidly physically to be able to learn easily. Besides, he was anxious that all who went to the High Schools should, before going there, work on the land, and thus have the chance of becoming attached to it.

Before long, in all parts of the kingdom, peasants, acting on their own initiative in many cases, began to band themselves together to build schools modelled on the lines Bishop Grundtvig had laid down for them. Already, in 1844, a Peasants' High School was opened at Rodding, in Schleswig, by the Peasants' Union; and as time passed other high schools were organised. Unfortunately, however, before they were able to make their influence felt, the war of 1848 broke out; and for years men were too busy cutting one another's throats to trouble their heads about education. No sooner was peace restored than the peasants were again hard at work building schools; but again their work was undone ; for in 1863 came another war, more disastrous even than the first. The loss of Schleswig-Holstein was followed by a time

of terrible depression in Denmark: it was not so much that the people were demoralised by their defeat as that they were plunged into despair. Look where they would they could see no ray of hope; they felt as if they were foredoomed; as if the fate that had befallen Schleswig-Holstein would befall all Denmark sooner or later. And not one Dane in fifty but would rather see his native land swallowed up by the Baltic than annexed by Germany.

It was in the hope of arousing the people out of this depression that in 1866 Dr. Norregaard betook himself to Testrup and founded the Peasants' High School there. He was quite a young man at the time, rich and talented, with a brilliant future before him, if he". chose; yet he gave up everything, and, accompanied by his wife and his brother-in-law, went forth to this desolate region that he might throw in his lot with the peasants, and help them to rally from. their misfortunes. Not only did he defray all the initial expenses. of the school, but for years he contributed largely to its maintenance. Fired by his example, other men of his class also founded high schools; and, as the political atmosphere became clearer, communal authorities joined in the work. In many districts the peasants united and organised schools for themselves, engaging their own teachers. In the course of a few years there were Peasants' High Schools of one sort or another in every part of Denmark; and they were springing up on all sides in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. In Denmark alone there are at the present time no fewer than seventy-five schools, and all in full working order.

At first the Peasant High School movement was regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, cautious politicians fearing lest it should work for woe, not weal, in the land; and pressure was again and again brought to bear on its leaders to induce them to change their High Schools into dairy or agricultural schools. 'If you educate peasants they cease to be peasants,' they were told; 'they will throw down their spades and flock into towns in the hope of becoming officials or clerks.' This was not a pleasant prospect, it must be confessed; for, even at that time, towns were overcrowded, and of officials and clerks there was no end. The proeducationists, however, went on their way undismayed; for they knew the men with whom they had to deal, knew that they had much more sturdy common sense than the world was inclined to give them credit for. Besides, they disagreed with their critics fundamentally as to the end and aim of education. 'What peasants need most is not technical training, but mental,' they

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declared. They need to be taught that they have minds and souls as well as bodies; they need to have their interest aroused in things outside their own farmyards. When once they have learnt to use their heads, they will teach themselves to use their fingers; when once they have learnt to think clearly and judge correctly, they will provide themselves with the means of learning how to farm well."

The result has proved that they were right; for, although higher education has brought about a great change both in the Danish peasants and their economic condition, it is in every way a change for the better, not the worse. It has rendered them

intelligent without either making them discontented with their lot or giving them a taste for town life; it has transformed them. it is true, but into first-rate agriculturists, not third-rate officials. Before the High Schools were opened the Danes cultivated their land neither better nor worse than their neighbours; at the present time they are by far the most successful farmers in all Europe. A Dane can live comfortably and save money out of land on which an Englishman would starve.

In judging of the present condition of these people, it must be remembered that the climate of Denmark is none too good, and that its soil is none too fertile; it must be remembered, too, that the Danes have experienced economic disasters, as well as national, in these latter days. Early in the eighties they were threatened with something very like starvation; for they were, and had been for generations, a corn-growing people, and corn-growing ceased almost suddenly to yield any profit. Then a few years later they found themselves deprived at one fell swoop of their chief market; for Germany, almost without a word of warning, closed her doors against their produce. Meanwhile America had become more and more formidable as a competitor; for, not content with supplying Europe with corn, she had begun to supply it with butter, eggs and bacon. And in Denmark, year after year, there were floods, droughts, epidemics among cattle, plagues of all kinds in fact. Thus Danish farmers had many difficulties to contend against, to contend against alone, too, without anyone to give them a helping hand. For the Government could do but little for them in those days, and there are no great land-holders in that part of the world to take the lead in adapting scientific discoveries to agriculture. Already eight years ago two-thirds of all Denmark was in the hands of peasant proprietors whose holdings range in size from eighteen

acres to two hundred; and one-half of the land that remained was in the hands of agricultural labourers. When evil days came these men were thrown entirely on their own resources: they were left to work out their own salvation; and work it out they did by the sheer force of their shrewdness, intelligence, and pluck.

No sooner was it evident that corn could no longer be grown at a profit in Denmark than they promptly set to work to turn their land into pastures and market-gardens. While their neighbours were still rending the very heavens with their complaints and clamouring for protection, they were already hard at work learning how to make butter and raise vegetables on the most approved scientific principles. As they had but little money wherewith to reorganise their industry, they formed themselves into co-operative societies that they might turn what they had to the best possible account. In the course of five years they built 1000 co-operative dairies and fitted them up with all the newest butter-making implements worked by steam; they also founded 323 co-operative cattle-breeding societies. When Germany closed her markets against their pork, they at once organised co-operative curing houses, where they turned their pork into bacon, all ready for transport to England. At the present time practically the whole cattle-raising and dairy industry in the country is worked by the peasants on the co-operative principle-is worked at a profit Whereas in other countries small farmers have of late become poorer and poorer, in Denmark they have become richer. They do not, it is true, make fortunes-the day for that is past-but they make enough money where with to live in a fair amount of comfort, wherewith to provide for old age too. And this they do by dint of using their brains as well as their hands in their work, by dint of turning science to account in the cultivation of their land. It is to them that Denmark owes in a great measure her present prosperity; it is they who, by their intelligence and industry, have saved her from economic ruin and have rendered her the richest country in the world, per head of the population, barring England. And they are but what the Peasants' High Schools have made them. It is at such places as Testrup that they have learnt to fight the great fight successfully.

too.

EDITH SELLERS.

THE CARIOLE.

'BUT yes, Monsieur, it is I who tell you; confide yourself therein that the old Count is a sorcerer-a black sorcerer-a sorcerer of the most black.'

Thus, with much emphasis, Lisette, waitress of the Trout Inn at St. Enimie des Gorges du Tarn-those cañons which look on the map of France like black caterpillars wriggling across the white tablecloth desolation of the Causses. For centuries the gorges and caves of the barren limestone plateaux of the Causses, 'the roof of France,' have been the refuge of the outlawed and oppressed of the Loire valley and the Limousin. Free companions, Huguenots, Aristocrats, have all climbed and burrowed there in turn like hunted conies in the caves of the rocks and the clefts of the ragged rocks; and the savage old Middle Ages, themselves hard pressed by modernism, still share its recesses with the last French wolf. Of late the railways have driven great breaches in this fortress, through which herds of tourists pour in to sack and spoil; but ten years ago, when I listened to Lisette's scandal about her neighbours, the Causses were still a stronghold of the grim and gruesome, in which a moderner could enjoy all the thrill of trespass in the first degree, poaching on the preserves of Father Time. Wherefore, as the expert burglar encourages the expansive housemaid, so did I encourage Lisette to continue her confidences as to the Count's sorceries.

'Behold him, the old Count in his château down there in the gorge, and the lights, and the chanting, and the black masses that never finish all night long. Can Monsieur see him at work? But, for sure, one has but to embark and descend the gorge. No, there is no other way, and Monsieur will not really think of going, for, look you, I am mocking myself of Monsieur in saying he could descend. Ah, but that descent would be very rude. There are the Seven Rapids to pass, and the Eleven Deeps, and the Great Ratch and the Little Ratch, and the Milling Whirlpool and the Boulders of Bramabiau. There is for a day's work, and all must be passed before dark, for the Old One has bewitched the gorge.

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