owes much to Broquant's fancy. The man who attacked him, he tells us, was a betrayer of smugglers, naturally hated by all decent Englishmen. And as for Broquant himself, he would have been condemned, he thinks, if he had not torn away his cravat and shown to the court the marks of the wounds inflicted by the monstrous informer. The vision of his wounds evoked a general sympathy. Broquant cheated the gallows, and suffered no worse penalty than a return to his prison. Two months afterwards success crowned his efforts. He laid hands on a boat at Deal, and regained his native soil after seven weary years spent in a foreign dungeon. The heroism and braggart humour of Broquant are in perfect harmony with his craft and experience. This disdain of the English, his perfect confidence in his own prowess, are engaging even to the descendants of the brave mariners whom he harassed. There was a bluffness in his temper, a rough edge to his tongue, which belong to the natural, untutored sailor. A very different kind of man was Charles Dunand, a doctor like Thomas Dover, who sailed aboard the Duke from Bristol city. He first took to the sea in the quality of a surgeon, but the excitement of the combat soon seized upon him, and he became a fighting corsair like the rest. Thus he led a double life, or rather he divided his years into two separate pieces. In the winter he was a corsair, sailing out from Boulogne or Calais in search of prizes. But no sooner was his lugger laid by for the fine weather than he betook himself to Paris to pursue his medical studies. Thus he made the sea pay for his instruction; and as the Channel did not give him his bellyful of fighting, he took his doctor's degree on his return from Moscow. No man of his time had a stranger career. So long as the war lasted, Dunand was found aboard the lugger with a pistol in his hand. When peace was signed in 1815 he retired to the practice of his profession; and having taken his share in the making of history, spent half a century as a modest doctor in a country town. But it is Jacques-Oudart Fourmentin, the famous Baron Bucaille, who is the classic of his kind. Though he was not a baron, and had no right to the name of Bucaille, his glory is untarnished, and he goes down the stream of time with all the honours of war and peace thick upon him. To read of his exploits is to exhaust the catalogue of human virtues. No enterprise was too high for him, no adversary was too strong. For years he haunted the Channel, cruising anywhere between Portsmouth and the North Sea, without knowing check or disaster. He was an adroit seaman as well as an intrepid fighter. None knew better than he that the battle was to the swift as often as to the strong, and having a perfect knowledge of shoals and reefs, he more than once lured 66 a powerful adversary to his doom among the sunken rocks of the Channel. The biography, composed by his son and printed by M. Malo, exhausts the language of praise and flattery. If we may believe this interesting document, Fourmentin spent his life in holding-up a large division of the British fleet with his single lugger. And Fourmentin also, like Broquant, passed his hour of glorious life with the Emperor. Captain Bucaille," said Napoleon, "I am told that you are the sailor in all the fleet who knows best the coast of England.' Where could you find a better opening? "I think," replied the modest Fourmentin, "that you will find many sailors in Boulogne who know it as well as I." "No," said the Emperor, 'it is you of whom I have need, and I will begin by asking you if a descent upon England is possible or easy?" The answer of the corsair is magnificent. "Sire," replied the intrepid Boulonnais, "it is as easy to land a force in England as to drink a glass of wine, but the flotilla must be attended and protected by a squadron of three-deckers." Thereafter Fourmentin told Napoleon at what time he should make his descent, and at what point on the English coast he would be wise to land. Indeed he gave him a choice of five convenient spots, and it is wonderful, if the project were as easy as drinking a glass of wine, that we do not to-day bow the knee before the tricolour of France. Napoleon listened with a patient reverence. The plan seemed simplicity itself. Even the ship was chosen, the Adolphe, in which the Emperor should sail. "I will immediately give the necessary orders,' said he, "to get the Adolphe ready for the sea. You will take the command, and I myself will embark on this ship. Captain Bucaille, I will go to England with you." "Sire," said the Captain, "the Adolphe will pass through everything. It will feel upon it the hand of its old captain and the presence of its Emperor. Vive l'Empereur !" The Adolphe never made its journey to England, easy as that journey seemed, and you cannot help thinking that the words of the gallant Fourmentin outran his deeds. That is as it should be. We expect a proper boastfulness in a hero, whose exploits are lost in legend, and who when he went a privateering declared that he preferred to sail for the mouth of Thames, because there he had a bigger choice of prizes. And this, proud as it is, is not the last word of his arrogance. One evening several corsairs were dining together,thus M. Malo tells the story,— a gigot was served, and a discussion arose as to which was the better, French or English mutton. Fourmentin declared that the only way to resolve the question was to pass judgment pièces sur table; nothing was wanting but English mutton: he charged himself with the task of fetching some. Straight he went to the harbour and called his faith. crew together, according to corsairs are worthy a simple his custom, by beating the We need not look too bottom of a casserole with a closely into their veracity. hammer. He set sail, landed True or false, they inculcate in the dead of night on the the plain lesson that the sailors English coast, seized the coast- who set sail from Boulogne to guard station, bound all the harry the English shipping men whom he found except were of an intelligence and six, whom he bade, with pistol humour which equalled their held at their head, to lead him courage. Even in the year of to the best herd of sheep in Trafalgar they showed what the neighbourhood. There he the good blood of France could chose the best half-dozen, put achieve, and we close M. Malo's them on the backs of the six spirited history in a temper of coastguards, and made them loyal admiration. Truly we on board. He can say with Barby d'Aurecarry them started with the flood; he villy, who knew them well, returned with the flood- "we love these men, these and with the six sheep, the old gulls, disfeathered by the flavour of which he and his col- storms they have resisted," and leagues could thus appreciate we say it no less emphatically and compare. It is a pleas- because the old gulls hovered ant fairy tale, and it makes always about our ships, and you doubt whether the other would, if they could, have pleasant fairy tales told of the landed upon our shores. THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. IN Lecky's History of Rationalism' an attempt is made to trace the stages by which modern civilisation freed itself from the control of the Church, and now proceeds on its course under the influence and guidance of purely secular and utilitarian motives. The impression left upon the reader by a perusal of that work is, that while in the sphere of personal religion the Church may be a necessity, as a factor in the wider movements of civilisation its influence is rapidly on the decrease. A sympathetic reading of history seems to corroborate that view. There was a time when the Church took in hand the arduous task of moulding and guiding the chaotic forces of society. In his masterly survey of the Middle Ages, Comte, with perhaps a touch of exaggeration, has shown the debt which modern civilisation Owes to the Roman Catholic Church. Lecky traces the influences which led to the decline of the Church, due to a conflict between the two ideals the theological and the industrial. In the conflict the industrial, or as it might be called the secular, ideal received powerful support from two sources, Political Economy and Mechanical Inventions. Political Economy, with its gospel of enlightened self-interest, struck a blow at the Church and its doctrine of the depravity of man. According to the theory of the Economists, the social world was so framed that harmony followed naturally when individuals were allowed to pursue their own interests,-in other words, from individual selfishness there resulted collective harmony. Political Economy gave strong support to the Deistic theory of the time of Adam Smith of the natural goodness of human nature, which needed only freedom to develop along the lines of selfinterest to produce a harmonious industrial and social order. In such an atmosphere of optimism the old doctrine of depravity was out of place. Theological sanctions, as Lecky shows, lost their force, till gradually civilisation came to draw its motive power from an undisguised Secularism. Mechanical inventions found in the doctrine of enlightened self-interest a congenial ally. It soon became clear that a world of social and industrial harmony did not evolve naturally from enlightened self-interest, which came to mean the acquisition of wealth on a colossal scale by those who were in a position to take advantage of the great productive powers of machinery. What is known as the Industrial Revolution, inspired by self-interest, certainly did not result in collective happiness. In pursuit of their own individual welfare, the great capitalists of the time did not contribute to the happiness of the people. the people. Where good results followed-as in the case and State is vividly illustrated in the history of Scotland. Fully absorbed in purely theological and ecclesiastical matters, the Evangelicals looked with suspicion on all purely secular activities, with the result that from them came no word of guidance at a critical time in Scotland's history, when social habits were changing, and industry and commerce were bringing to the front new ideals of life and conduct. The Moderates, on the other hand, were equally blind to the signs of the times. The absurd optimism which they borrowed from the Deists made them at ease in Zion, and cut them off from hearty sympathy with the struggling masses whose problems are now economic rather than ecclesiastical. of New Lanark under Robert Owen-they were due to the substitution of the Christian doctrine of self-sacrifice for the politico-economic doctrine of self-interest. We have improved greatly since the early years of the nineteenth century, with its appalling social and industrial problems; but it is a suggestive fact that the improvement has come from the humanitarian spirit which, in revolt against the doctrine that individual self-interest is the prime motive force in life, has, under the guise of the brotherhood of man, brought back into public affairs Christian influences. Unhappily for civilisation, the Church accepted her defeat at the hands of the Economists and the Deists in too meek a spirit. Impressed with the errors and evils which In the Church of Scotland grew out of the attempt of the one man arose who, with proRoman Catholic Church to phetic eye, recognised the dawn wield Theocratic sway over the of the new day. The hour had nations, Protestantism unduly come, and with it the man in narrowed its own claims. In- the person of Dr Chalmers. In stead of recognising that it him was represented the best was the custodian of princi- qualities of both Evangelicals ples of universal import, and and Moderates. With the upon recognition of which all Evangelicals, Chalmers held true civilisation depended, the that no enduring civilisation Church-especially the Evan- was possible which did not rest gelical section-narrowed its upon regenerated individuals, outlook upon the world, which and, with the Moderates, he was viewed, not as a theatre believed that religion could not for the development of the be narrowed down to other great conception of a Kingdom worldliness, but must be made of God, but as a kind of Vanity to embrace the secular side of Fair whose allurements were to life. The aim of Chalmers was be shunned by the pilgrim on to draw Scottish religion away his journey from the City of from the Vanity Fair concepDestruction. Such a concep- tion of the world, and to lead tion meant the dividing of life it back to the older and nobler into two antagonistic portions conception of a Kingdom of God -the sacred and the secular. upon earth. How was this to The harm done in both Church be done? The Evangelicals |