and habit have a great share in forming our
views with regard to it. This strikes me at
once when I am spending a Sunday in Paris.
When I was in Scotland, I "sounded an alarm
to my conscience" on a Sunday morning with a
bar or two of the Laird of Cockpen. When I
become a resident in London, my conscience in
course of time lets me go to hear the bands in the
Parks; but when I visit Paris for a week or two,
I cannot even make up my mind to go to the
theatre on Sunday. There are several things even
here in England that I cannot reconcile myself
to. I have no objection to music on a Sunday,
but I have a notion that it is not right to dance
on that day. I will laugh and chat, and tell
stories and drink wine with you on a Sunday,
but I will not play cards or billiards with you.
Yet for the life of me I cannot logically
maintain that it is more sinful to play cards or
billiards (for simple amusement) than to tell
stories and laugh. Indeed, perhaps there would
be less harm in the game than in the idle talk.
This prejudice, arising from habit and training,
prevails on every hand.

I do not say that a band in the Park on
Sunday afternoon is contrary to the law of the
Sabbath, or that it is a bad thing in itself; but
I do say that to concede this amusement, and
this alone, is not to do the best that might be
done towards providing national harmless
entertainment for the people. Music by all means,
if music is lawful; but let us have Museums too.

          THE GREAT BEAR AND THE
                      POLE STAR.

I AM a Pole, wicked enough to love my country,
desiring to be her own free citizen, and doing
what I may to sting the heel of foreign despotism
till it lift itself from off me and my countrymen.
God keep us all and always in that wickedness,
though the czar may send us to Siberia, as he
is now doing, despatching batches of us
sometimes even twice a week!  Why doesn't he try
a Bartholomew massacre?  Dead he may have
us; living we can never be his. But in the
way of banishment he does what he may to make
a solitude and call it peace.

The families of the banished are not allowed
to see them at the citadel; permission to be present
at the departure of the train may be obtained
from the railway station on the other side of the
Vistula, in the suburb Praga; but how many
steps must be taken to obtain such a permission!
The supplicant must pass three different
administrations, and in each he—or she—is
received with a selection of those coarse words
in which the Russian language is very rich.
The soldiers, the aides-de-camp, the generals,
abuse the "rebels who ought to be strung up
together," and who dare to have love among
themselves. Whoever gets a pass, must go to
Praga the night before the departure, and before
ten o'clock; after that hour no one may show
himself in the streets.

The day of departure being fixed, the military
officers conceal it; but in spite of that, and in
spite of the false dates with which they cause
the public to be wearied, in spite, also, of the
difficulties attending a stay on the other side of
the river, by which the suspicions of the police
are aroused; there are always many there—for
the most part, women—who pass the long
nights, while it freezes and blows, with a sad
patience of love, under the walls of the station.
The Russians do not allow them to go into the
waiting-rooms. The morning passes away, but
there are no exiles at the station. Perhaps
tomorrow, perhaps the day after, perhaps at the
end of the week, the hour may strike for the
one last kiss of husband, father, brother, lover.
Siberia gives none back. When the banishment
takes place in the winter, five out of ten
die on the journey; and shall the dear one go as if
he were forgotten of his own kin, with no one
to give him a warm blanket and the last few
roubles? Sometimes these women guess the
time by intuition, or buy the secret at a high
price from the Russian officer on duty.

The first batch of prisoners is brought at
daybreak; but one can neither approach nor see
them. Nothing is heard but the clicking of
chains, and the blows of the soldiers with the
butt-end of their guns; there the prisoners and
their friends remain with a wall between them
for more than three hours, until all the banished
arrive at the station. Five minutes—only five
minutes—before the departure, at the second
signal of the locomotive, the gate opens. No
woman present, nor scarcely any one, knows for
certain whether she shall find her own among the
banished. No one of the banished knows
whether his sister, mother, wife, is there; whether
any one in that crowd from which he is separated
by the sentinels, is interested in him. From
both sides one hears the calls of surnames and
christian names; the voices are filled with all
uncertainty, which changes into expressions of
sharp grief, if the call remain without reply, or
into a feverish melancholy joy, when a loved
voice is heard. But there is no time for
emotion. The exile must make his last will—for
to all that he possesses he dies morally; he must
give his last words of advice; and he must
hurriedly take the scanty provisions for a journey
of eternal farewell. And while this is doing,
or being sought to be done, soldiers and
sergeants, without any pity, take the banished
by the shoulders and shove them into the
carriages. The soldiers push the last delayers
into the carriages, the train starts, and a
dreadful cry rises from those who are left.

The carriages are of the fourth class, open,
without windows, furnished only with curtains
of serge. Each of the condemned carries
a soldier's grey coat, made of pieces of stuff
previously used in the service. The condemned
forced to hard labour are chained two and two,
men and women, and put into a special carriage.

A young lady, on the eve of being separated
from her betrothed, threw herself under the
wheels of the carriage of General Berg, and
drew his attention. He allowed the marriage to