fully used to enforce the Chinese immigration law, the Celestials being able to use each other's permits with impunity, all being "alike as two peas" to the casual Caucasian glance, but not to the Bertillon compasses. In South America the Bertillon system has also penetrated, the Argentine Confederation making use of it. Here is, indeed, breaking of the ground for a general international application. Wherever tried there is only one chorus of approval at the results. Our English officials have done themselves little credit in this matter. They foolishly boast of more detections of false identities of prisoners than the French. But such detections are evidence of bad and not good criminal administration. It proves the general practice of adopting false names among hardy criminals and usually with success. The English practice is for officers to waste much valuable time in haphazard strolls among prisoners on the chance of bagging some game. But the very officer needed may be absent, or dead, or left the service at the right moment. Well do English criminals know all this. The recognitions are more in England simply because assumption of false names is so generally practised, while in France it is one of the lost arts so far as any success is concerned. The English identifications are as bogus as were the French in the bad old days of rewards. We have had repeated statements in Parliament that the persons escaping identification are 21 per cent. Such a figure is altogether imaginary. Let the English officials honestly confess, as their French mates did long ago, that the old methods are a complete failure. Let them, too, show a better temper and more readiness to receive valuable lessons from their French friends when offered in good part. The sneers and insinuations against the French are very humiliating to a patriotic Englishman. The contrast among the French officers is very marked. They speak in a most generous fashion of their English fellows, and are always ready to copy any good points, a noted instance. being their unlimited admiration for the management of street traffic by the London police, and the imitation in Paris of late years of every detail thereof. I hope that, by the adoption of this "Scientific Fad" from our neighbours, Mr. Monro's successor will demonstrate that in these references to the French his predecessor utterly misrepresented the spirit which animates "Scotland Yard" to-day.

EDMUND R. SPEARMAN.

CANADIAN SOCIETY, PAST AND PRESENT.

THE

HE evolution of Canadian society in its gradual development from a monastic and aristocratic origin to the heterogeneous and cosmopolitan institution of to-day is curious enough. The elements of which it is composed are varied and conflicting. We find two principal races, living on the same soil, dwelling together in peace, but diametrically opposed in characteristics, in habits, in religion, and in language. The French-Canadian has all the advantages which a prior possession of the soil can give him. He first gave names to its towns and counties, and framed laws for its government. The EnglishCanadian, strangely enough, derived surprisingly little benefit from his conquest, since full liberty as regarded their religion, laws, and language was granted the conquered. He found himself, indeed, in the extraordinary position of being obliged to conform to the laws of those he had subdued. To this day in Canada racial prejudices exist, and though dwelling in outward peace and unity, French and English society have amalgamated very little. The upper class of French-Canadians are many of them descendants of the ancienne noblesse who formed the little Vice-Regal Courts about the French Governors, and obtained Seigneuries under Royal Charters. They brought to the shores of New France, and their descendants still preserve, the grace of bearing, the pretty turn of speech, and the charm of manner which so often mark our Gallic neighbours. One needs little imagination to recognise a possible Madame Récamier in many of these stately French ladies, all of whom possess in some measure that peculiarly French gift, l'art de tenir le salon. Like their sisters across the water, they are all conventbred. Few have travelled far or enjoyed educational advantages beyond what a convent affords. The majority, nevertheless, are intelligent and well informed, witty, and often brilliant-more accomplished than soundly educated. The men are polished and courtly in manner, always agreeable, and apparently well educated.

The English-Canadian, on the contrary, seems in his new sphere of

action to have parted in a great measure with the graces of his old life. He has acquired in many instances a roughness of manner and a want of grace of speech which makes him appear as distinct in race from his forefathers as is his brother Jonathan. This is the more strange, since many English-Canadians trace their descent from noble forebears. Collaterals of the best Scotch and English blood are to be found all over Canada, but the repose of manner, the dignity of bearing which should mark the order of Vere de Vere, are not so often found as they might be in her Canadian descendant.

In the early history of the Colony women, except in the capacity of wives, are little mentioned, but in 1839 the Ursulines and Hospitalière nuns arrived, and vied with the priests who had preceded them in devotion and self-sacrifice. The Hospitalières took charge of the Hôtel Dicu, founded at Quebec by a great French lady, the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, and the Ursulines founded the educational establishment, which still trains the minds and fingers of French-Canadian ladyhoodThe fame of the saintly Madame de la Peltrie (Mother Superior of the Ursulines) and of Marie Guyart (known in religion as "Ste. Marie de l'Incarnation") lives to this day. These noble women were stirred to the heart by reading the "Relations" of Father Le Jeune, a Jesuit priest and Champlain's chaplain. Madame de la Peltric spent thirty-two years of her life labouring among the Indians and teaching the children of the early Colonists. The Ursuline nuns of the present day have a high reputation for needlework in all its branches, for musical skill, for painting, and, alas! for the manufacture of pine-cone monstrosities. They are a cloistered Order and never go beyond the precincts of their convent walls. A tale is told of these same good ladies employing their spare moments in teaching a pet parrot (in all reverence be it said) to repeat prayers. When versed in this holy accomplishment they wrote to their sister nuns in a certain convent in France: "We send you our parrot, dear sisters, to show you that in this new land we do not forget the offices of our religion. He is a pious parrot and will repeat to you the 'Ave Maria' and 'Angelus.'" The bird was sent across the ocean in a sailing ship, and during the long voyage he lived chiefly in the forecastle, where the sailors amused themselves mightily by teaching him to swear. Arrived at the convent, in response to the gentle advances of the nuns, the parrot poured forth a volley of such terrible oaths that he was promptly expelled, and the nuns remained not a little scandalised at the form which church prayers took on the other side of the Atlantic.

The early Governors lived at the Château St. Louis in Quebec, which château was unhappily destroyed by fire in 1834, "after it had been," says Dr. Miles, "for two hundred years the headquarters of the French and British Governors of Canada." Its situation was unique and beautiful, overlooking the St. Lawrence and commanding glorious views of the Island of Orleans, Beauport, and Pointe Lévis. On arrival of each successive Governor in Quebec the keys of the castle were presented to him, and he then repaired to the parish church, the chapel of the Jesuits, the "Hôtel Dicu," and the Ursuline Nunnery. At the Château de St. Louis took place the balls and entertainments given by their Excellencies under the ancien régime, and even later under English rule. The first ball ever recorded in Canada was one given here by the Comte de Frontenac, and M. Le Moine tells us that the Superior of the Jesuits, who made horrified note of it, adds piously in his journal: "God grant that nothing further come of it." "Tartuffe " (we learn on the same authority) was acted first on American soil in this historic castle, greatly to the disgust of good Bishop Laval, who appears to have attempted the rôle of a Savonarola in this new world.

Round the Governor gathered a little Court of exiled noblesse, many of whom belonged to the proudest families of France. The first Bishop of Canada had the blood of the De Montmorencys in his veins, whilst the officers of the famous regiment "Carignan Salières" were all men of more or less noble birth. Some held offices about the Governor, and in the colony, and not a few owned seigneuries granted to them by Kings of France. The rights of Canadian seigneurs were those of their French prototypes, and they exacted homage from their vassals in like manner. Many of their privileges were extraordinary and immoral enough, and some excuse for the outrages of the French Revolution may be made in remembering them. "Fealty and Homage" was rendered by the seigneur to the Governor, and in turn the vassal rendered homage to his seigneur. In Hawkins Picture of Quebec

we find a description of the former ceremony: "His Excellency being in full dress and seated in a State chair, surrounded by his staff and attended by the Attorney-General, the seigneur, in an evening dress and wearing a sword, is introduced into his presence by the InspectorGeneral of the Royal Domain and Clerk of the Land Roll, and having delivered up his sword, and kneeling upon one knee before the Governor, places his right hand between his and repeats the ancient oath of fidelity, after which a solemn act is drawn up in a register kept for that purpose,

which is signed by the Governor and the seigneur, and countersigned by the proper officers."

M. Le Moine, in his valuable book, Quebec, Past and Present,' quotes the historian Ferland's description of the way in which Foi et hommage was rendered in Canada.

"After the which reply, the said Guion, being at the principal door, placed himself on his knees on the ground with bare head and without sword or spurs and said three times these words: 'Monsieur de Beauport, Monsieur de Beauport, Monsieur de Beauport, I bring you the faith and homage which I am bound to bring you on account of my fief Du Buisson, which I hold as a man of faith of your seigniory of Beauport, declaring that I offer to pay my seigniorial and feudal dues in their season, and demanding of you to accept me in faith and homage as aforesaid.'"

Next in importance to the Governor came the Intendant, whose office, however, was "judicial and not executive." The most famous Intendant of whom Canadian history bears record was Bigot, who, to quote M. Le Moine," must have not only a sumptuous palace in the city, with women more beautiful than chaste to preside at his recherché routs but also a diminutive Parc-aux-Cerfs at Charlesbourg, where the pleasures of the table and chase were diversified by ecarte or rouge et noir. The Intendant's Palace faced the river St. Charles at Quebec and commanded a lovely view of the St. Charles valley and the distant range of blue mountains. The merest ruins remain to-day to show where the palace stood, yet the town gate leading to that quarter is still called "Palace Gate."

In 1720 Père Charlevoix describes Canadian society as follows:* "The best blood of our country is here in both sexes. There is a general love of pleasure and amusement, with polished manners and a total absence of rusticity whether in language or in habits, throughout the country." The de Lotbinières, the de Salaberrys, the de Longueils, and the Vaudreuils (amongst others) remain descendants of the ancienne noblesse of Canada and retain, as in 1720, the "polished manners" and "total absence of rusticity" which marked their forefathers.

Such was Canadian society under the old French Viceroys, the Comte de Frontenac, Marquis de Vaudreuil, Marquis de Tracey, M. de Denonville, and Marquis de Beauharnois, among others. With the change of Government in 1759 very little social revolution took place. Lady Dorchester held her brilliant little Court as in French

Tanti

Vide Quebec, Past and Present.