fortifications, threatening to fall, came out upon an open space. Above us lay the slope which we had observed; it was some three thousand feet in height, and consisted of hard, black ice, here and there overlaid by a strip of snow, so that the axe was in use during most of the climb. Of the bergschrunds only one caused trouble. The gap itself was fairly narrow, but the upper lip of the chasm rose in a sheer wall of some feet, so that when we had discovered a spot where we would cross its width we had still to cut a ladder up its further side. Altogether this portion of the mountain took us five hours to climb, and it was half past eleven when we stood upon the summit. There was hardly a wisp of cloud to be

seen.

The day after we crossed the GlockIn front of us stretched the high- thurm, and came down its north side lands of the Engadine as far as the eye into the valley of Radurschal. The could see, a tossed ocean of peaks, here limpid clearness of the air which we purple, there white, and on all the had noticed from the Weisssee Spitze sparkle of the sun. To our left, under had prepared us for a change of a green sky, rose Monte Cevedale and weather. The morning too had broken the Italian Alps, and in the foreground in the east in long bars of an orange was the sturdy Ortler with its flying color. So that we were not surprised buttresses of rock. On all sides the when we reached the peak of the mountains were distinct with a marvel- Glockthurm to see an ominous strip of lous clearness. Needless to say the black beginning to broaden out from camera was brought into play and some the edge of the horizon. Consequently twenty photographs were taken. we wasted no time in the descent, but the storm travelled the faster; and before we were free from the snow, we could see the rain, no great distance off, drawn between the hills like a diaphanous curtain, shot here and there with a gold thread of sunlight. By the time it swept across to us we had still two miles of stone and scree to cover before we could hope for shelter.

For two hours we remained on the top, unconscious of the lapse of time. The extreme note of admiration was struck by the Londoner of the party. He stood by himself for some time on the edge of the slope, fortifying his strength with Kola biscuits and sizing up the scene. At last he turned towards us and said, with a grave air of conclusiveness, "This is better than Taplow or Maidenhead."

Tyrolese legends tell of a wild hunter who lured a certain baron from The descent was as monotonous as the chase, and made him a formal the climb had been interesting. We demand for his wife. The baron's followed the usual route across the prayers and entreaties secured a sarWeisssee, and all the afternoon plod-donic offer of an alternative. If within ded knee-deep in fresh snow, with a month the baroness could guess the sun burning on our backs. We the three words which composed the reached Gepatch at eight.

Late that night the photographs were developed. We all three slept in one room, and at intervals I kept waking up. Each time I saw a patient

hunter's name her domestic happiness should not be disturbed. The baron returned homewards in despair, and broke the tidings to his wife. But she, sitting in the highest tower of her.

castle and looking over the dark tree-a certain quaint monastic look. A tops to where the hunter lived, imag- large, bare hall of white washed stone ined his name from the nature of his stretched from front to back; it was demesne, and, clapping her hands paved with cobbles, and solidly arched gaily, exclaimed, "Tree, Fir, Pine." like a Norman church, while on either This simple myth might fitly have side a massive stairway led upwards grown up in the Radurschal Thal. For and downwards. The most interesting pines and firs clothe its steep sides feature of the building, however, was down to the very level. The only gaps | the kitchen. It dispensed with the are the green tracks of winter ava-luxuries of a fireplace and chimney, an lanches. Even the waterfalls which outlet for the smoke being obtained by leap and brawl throughout the Tyrol the primitive device of leaving the are missing here, and the unusual door open. The roof was low and silence gives the hollow an added lone- naturally black, and from an angle of liness. To us, indeed, seen in the dim the room a large square of brickwork light and through the driving rain, it waist high had been built out to cover seemed as lonely a spot as the world a fourth of the area. On the flat top of provides. Even the Church had for- this some wood logs were crackling gotten it. Wherever else one goes, under a gipsy kettle. The reappeareven though no dwelling-place be vis-ance of our hostess with an apron full ible, one may be sure of distinguishing of eggs checked further explorations, the high white tower capped with its brown cupola asserting the domination of the priesthood; but here only an occasional woodcutter's hut or a rare châlet in the midst of a tiny alp gives a touch of life to the solitude.

and we retreated to the guest-chamber, and whiled away the period of waiting with an examination of the visitors' book. It accounted completely for the locking of the door, for only nine strangers were recorded to have slept there since the summer of '88.

The inn, dignified by the title of "Radurschal Haus," stands in the cen- During the evening the storm intre of the valley, some three miles creased, thunder volleyed about the from its head. We found the door hills, and every now and then, in an locked and the house empty. But as occasional lull, came a flash of lightthe nearest village lay a good ten miles ning so vivid that the glacier and snowoff at the mouth of the Thal, we had fields at the head of the valley shone no resource but to kick our heels in the rose-pink in the light. The morning, rain on the bench outside. There we however, broke brightly, as if washed soaked for half an hour. At last we clean by the rain, and we were up beheard the tinkling of bells, and four times, only to find that the house held cows slouched lazily from the trees yet another surprise in store. For, into the clearing. Our landlady was entering the kitchen, we saw a young pursuing them with guttural expostu-girl drying her dress before the fire. lations; she carried a gigantic um-She did not turn or indeed give any brella, and her skirts were tucked up to her knees, so that she looked like a dingy mushroom which had been galvanized into life. Our appearance caused her a most palpable shock. However, she unlocked the door with profuse apologies, and departed to forage for provisions.

The interior of the house deepened the impression of remoteness which the valley produced. It had the peculiar odor which one associates with deserted dwellings, and wore besides

sign that she noticed our entrance, but we observed that she was well and neatly clothed, and had a certain fragile air which ill accorded with her loneliness and the long journey she must have come. For the nearest posting-station was twelve miles away, and it was evident at a glance that she belonged to none of the peasants in the Thal.

After breakfast we strolled on to the grass in front, and noticed a couple of chamois, which had been driven by the

or

From Belgravia.

WOMEN OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

THE GREAT CITOYENNE

(MADAME ROLAND).

the

IN these days when a bloodless but complete revolution has been effected in the position of English women, fruits of which are destined to be lasting, it cannot but be interesting to recall to mind the immense part taken in the great but by no means bloodless Revolution of France a hundred years ago by women, who absorbed more attention and power, and played a more striking part than was ever done before in the drama of life.

a while the girl followed us into the light. She was pretty, with a certain delicate fineness about the contour of her face, rare in the Austrian German. She looked, moreover, in trouble, and seeing us, hesitated as if about to speak. But all of a sudden her face cleared, and, following the direction of her gaze, we saw a thin coil of smoke rising from a châlet above us. We had remarked this on our way down to the inn on account of its superiority and finish. It was cunningly fashioned of little over-lapping shields of pine wood, and seemed to be a hunting-box. But on the evening In reading their histories, we cannot before there had been no hint of life help being struck by the intensely within it. The windows had been"modern" tone of the French heroshuttered, and the gate barred. The ines of the end of the last century. girl turned from us with her speech unspoken, and tripped lightly up the path, leaving us to imagine a romance, and fast for the details.

The so-called new and "advanced" ideas of the women of our day were no novelties to the French of the last dec ade of the eighteenth century. They From the inu we walked down the were accepted as a matter of course, Radurschal Thal, passing continual and received no additional opposition shrines set up to memorialize the on the score of sex from their oppodeaths of peasants who had been sud-nents. It never seems to have entered denly overwhelmed by the winter the heads of the "advanced" men of snows, and reached Pfunds with its the period, that women could be exfrescoed houses at two.

cluded from participation in all that made life to them worth living, freedom, liberty to lead their own lives, and the right to a share in men's perils and heroisms, as well as their privi leges. Even the latest development of women's careers to-day in England had its counterpart during the French Revolution, though originating from a different motive. Whereas of late, a certain section of English women have desired to enlist themselves as volunteers in order the more effectively to carry out their ambulance duties in time of war, a number in France enrolled themselves as women volunteers in order to repel the foreign invaders who hovered on their borders and endeavored to crush the new-born liberties of French patriots. In one thing only do we find French women of the end of the eighteenth century inferior in initiative to our women of the end of the nineteenth century - there was

1789, the first year of deliverance, and bred in the hearts of the victims a ferocity of hate for their oppressors, a fierce love of the principles of liberty, and an overwhelming desire for its immediate fruition.

no demand for "woman's suffrage; "those who at last had nothing left to but this may probably be explained by tax, culminated in the intense misery the fact that men had only re-acquired of the years immediately preceding the privilege of voting for the National Assembly as late as 1789, after many years of desuetude, and events marched so fast and furiously to the end of the Reign of Terror in 1794, that time and opportunity were lacking for the promulgation of this doctrine. Probably if the great Napoleon, the enemy of freedom, had not arisen to crush all liberty for the time being, the political enfranchisement of women would not have had to wait another hundred years to germinate in the minds of

men.

At all times, in France, women have exercised potent influence, politically, socially, and sentimentally.

The country of Jeanne d'Arc has never lacked heroines and martyrs.

During the reigns of Catherine de Medici's miserable sons, their Italian mother, by her absolute, cruel, and narrow-minded policy, plunged the country into the horrors of St. Bartholomew, which were only equalled by the excesses of the Reign of Terror.

In 1789, women of all classes threw themselves with ardor into the great Revolutionary movement, and by their burning enthusiasm intensified the zeal of the men, and urged them on to heroic deeds of self-sacrifice and duty to suffering humanity.

Women of noble and unselfish ideals such as Madame Roland, or of stainless life and character like Charlotte Corday, or the fascinating, fearless, unhappy Théroigne de Méricourt, the heroine of the women's march to Versailles, or the women of the people, full of hate and desire of vengeance, who crowded round the guillotine in 1793, uttering ferocious shouts and counting with exultation the ghastly heads as they fell before the axe of Sanson, were one and all animated by the same passionate love of liberty, the mother of all virtues. All were ready to sacrifice their lives gladly for freedom, conscious of the righteousness of their cause and of its ultimate triumph.

During the corrupt reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. the influence of women at court, and therefore all over France was paramount and entirely pernicious to the welfare of the people. Women in all ages have matched the men, so as noble aspirations, unselfishness, love of justice and right were at a discount amongst the men who crowded the courts of the licentious Bourbons, where the debauchery and depravity were unparalleled since the era of Tiberius and Commodus, the throngs of titled courtesans merrily joined their royal and aristocratic realize that nothing but a terrible baplovers in spending the revenues exacted from the miserable peasants with tears of blood, until similar tears were extorted from them in turn by the Revolution they originated.

Many generations of bad government by kings, courtesans, and courtiers, the oppressions of the rich clergy and nobles who monopolized all that was worth having in the State, and exacted their taxes and seignorial dues from

Many unthinking, superficial people even now who have never known what it is to suffer and be despoiled to support the luxury and vice of tyrants, while shuddering at the excesses of the Reign of Terror, entirely ignore the causes of the sanguinary deeds which stand forth so luridly. They do not

tism of blood could have regenerated such a corrupt country, and purged it from its grossness and selfish indifference to wrong-doing. It was civil war in another form.

When the day of vengeance came, how was it that the women seemed more ferocious than the men?

The answer is very simple. They had suffered more, and "Great miseries are always ferocious."

The hearts of thousands of mothers The great, the incomparable Citoyhad been tortured by the sight of their enne Roland, a Woman of stately children dying before their eyes of beauty, of splendid gifts of mind and cold, hunger, nakedness, and disease heart, whose nobility of soul shone untaught, uncomforted, unfed," or forth in her mobile and expressive growing up miserable mental and face, and who by her goodness and physical abortions. Compelled as charm won all hearts, even the most women to stay at home and have this hardened and degraded, when they suffering ever present to their senses, came under the spell of her magnetic goaded to madness by the sight of it, personality. and the feeling of their own impotency to relieve it, worn out by toil and privation so that women of thirty-five looked sixty, could they do aught but hate the rich and in most cases infamous seigneurs and their families who lived in idle luxury, dead to all feelings of humanity and pity, while exacting their legal dues to the last farthing, to spend in wantonness and prodigality at court? There is small wonder for the unexampled and bitter hate which surged up in the hearts of men and women against the rich, the nobles, years before the word republic had and above all the great churchmen who looked smilingly on their misery, sunned themselves in the sight of royalty and harlots, but preached submission to the powers that be, while like the nobility they owned vast estates, which were practically exempt from

taxation.

The monstrous burdens, too many to enumerate, which crushed down the poor, seem to us, born in happier times, extraordinary exaggerations, but they were cruel facts.

"The flocks were not tended, they were only shorn."

Surely no woman ever appealed more to the minds and hearts of the great majority of her sex than this one, who, with only the most ordinary advantages of culture, rose by the force of her genius above the commonplace surroundings of the small shop-keeping. class in which she was born and bred, and became the intimate friend and equal of the most intellectual and noble-minded men of the day.

A high-toned Republican from conviction, taste, and inclination, many

even been whispered in France; during the last few years of her life, she became the idolized inspirer of the Gironde party, who, in spite of mistakes, absorbed to itself all that was most noble, devoted, unselfish and highprincipled in Revolutionary France. This beautiful and intellectual woman was possessed with a love of suffering humanity, and a burning desire to redress its wrongs. She herself saw all her life how stoically misery and privation were endured, and her heart beat with indignation when she contrasted this with the frivolity of the heartless and polished courtiers whom for one brief week she critically surveyed from the "back-stairs" at Versailles. Far from being impressed or overawed by the gorgeous sight of the court ceremonial, the young girl turned away in disgust, to the astonishment of her

When the twenty-four millions of "haggard faces" became flushed with the hope of better days, and a possible era of plenty and freedom dawned upon their dazed senses, we can quite understand that they lost control over themselves, that in their mad haste for freedom and relief, they swept away ordinary-minded bourgeoise mother, all who stood in their way many bitter foes, but also staunch devotees of the cause of humanity.

The name of one of the most prominent women of the Revolution, who also became its martyr, rises at once to our minds in connection with this subject.

and requested to be taken home. "Otherwise," said she, "I shall detest these people so heartily I shall not know what to do with my hatred. They make me feel injustice and see absurdity."

Events of any importance were rare in the early years of Manon Phlipon →