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choose his wife from an establishment of this description. That a woman should have been brought up in one of them operates in no way unfavourably against her in a social point of view; nor after her eyebrows are pulled out, and her teeth blackened, is she less likely to make a good wife than any one else. It would indeed be somewhat unfair upon her if she suffered for this accident of her early life, for she is bought as a mere child by the degraded men who speculate in this trade, of indigent parents, who are unable to maintain a family of girls, and at the age of seven or eight enters the establishment. Her first years are spent in her education, and after she is grown up, her master is ready to part with her whenever he receives a fair offer."

The direct action of the Government is placed beyond all question by a report which Mr. Oliphant obtained from an unexceptionable authority, and which distinctly affirms that the practice "is supported and protected by the Government, large districts being set apart for the residence of the females, who are kept under strict surveillance. Parents who are unable, or disinclined, to bring up their female children, can sell them to the Government between the ages of six and ten. Until they are fourteen they remain as servants, and are educated in various domestic duties, such as cooking, housekeeping, &c. At that age they come on the regular establishment, are open to the public, and are obliged to serve in this capacity for ten years. Should any man, before that period elapses, wish to marry any one of them, he must pay the Government a sum of money for permission to do so; her name, however, being still retained on the books. Should no such offer be made, at the expiry of the ten years she is returned to her parents or friends, with a small sum of money, and having been taught some employment. No disgrace attaches to women who have been brought up in this manner, and they generally make good marriages; but should she be guilty, after marriage, of any indiscretion, it is in her case (as in that of every Japanese wife) punishable by death."

We shall not dwell upon the correspondence of the minister plenipotentiary. It is chiefly interesting for the information which it affords as to the real feeling of the Japanese government and people on the commercial treaty. Nothing can be more plain than the fact that the treaty was accepted, not, it is true, under direct compul

sion, but as a political necessity, which it was impossible to resist, and that even at the moment of its being accepted, it was in the hope that circumstances might subsequently enable them to neutralize or evade its provisions. Mr. Alcock's correspondence amply attests the indisposition, as well of the government as of the population, to enter cordially into the relations which the terms of the Treaty suppose, and for which they stipulate; and we regret to add, that the same correspondence proves but too plainly that this indisposition on the part of the Japanese to cultivate the intercourse which it is sought to force upon them, is only too well justified by the character and the conduct of some at least of those Europeans among whom have been the pioneers of the new commercial immigration.

ART. V.-Le Progrès par le Christianisme. Conférences de NotreDame de Paris. Par le R. P. Félix, de la Compagnie de Jésus. 1re. année, 1856. Paris: Libraire Adrien Le Clere et Cie.

HE creating hand of God has implanted deep in every human breast a yearning after the perfect and the infinite, a thirst after an unseen and immeasurable good, earnest as that of the hart panting after fountains of water. It may be indeed that the real good is not always discerned, that some object of evil usurps its place, and under false colours leads astray the deluded heart. Still this very fact is proof that the desire of something not yet attained exists in all, that the hearts of all throb for a good not yet possessed, and a good this world can never give; for when the phantom which forms the object of the moment is grasped, it is thrown aside like the toy of an infant, or used only as a stepping-stone to what lies beyond. Ever restless in the eager pursuit of that which for the time appears the one object of life, the mass of the human race, or at least of that portion of the human race whose hopes and aims rise not above this earth, are employed in the pursuit of ends which, like the Dead sea fruits, turn to ashes in their grasp; or it may be some

apparently more precious prize comes in sight before the one reached has been scarcely tasted; and few pause to reflect on the poet's words,

"Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying,
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, oh think it worth enjoying."

But no! It is neither worth the winning nor the enjoying, for the whole universe can never satisfy man's soul. The nobler the nature the more ardently burns this insatiable heaven-instilled fire of longing, this thirst which no creature, no object of earth can ever assuage. Hence comes it that fine and sensitive souls, who yet know not God, exclaim with Shelley,

"We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter,

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought."

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But to Christian men is revealed the secret of that universal and wistful pining; that yearning for what in fact is the very opposite to what is not.' It is the human heart seeking for what is, stretching out its arms after the one great and everlasting "I AM ; after Him who made it, and who alone can fill and satisfy it. Hence, we wander in our exile, "weeping and sighing in this vale of tears, "exclaiming from our innermost being, Deus, Deus meus: ad te de luce vigilo. Sitivit in te anima mea: quam multipliciter tibi caro mea." Yes, "in ways how manifold" do men display this inborn thirst, whether individually or collectively, whether singly in the pursuit of personal aims, or conjointly when whole nations unite in proclaiming some great watchword of humanity, and re-echo it around the civilized globe, as they now with one voice call out for "Progress." Well might the Père Félix experience the sentiments he describes when in the preface to his Conferences he tells us :-" It seems to me as if Jesus Christ had in silence spoken to me that great word which, together with their mission conferred courage and power on the Apostles, 'Ite, go; go say to these men, empassioned after progress, that,-Progress, it is I"

Never can the Church, the true Mother of mankind, be

heedless of these universal impulses. It is hers to mark and direct the tendencies of the ages as one by one in quick succession they pass along before her throne, which is destined to endure through all, even to the consummation of the world. Whether men will hear, or whether they will forbear, it is her part to descend among their ranks, to guide and assist their aspirations, to direct to its true end the instinct of the day, and by these means to secure eternity for such as will give heed to her warning voice in time; and not only so, but if it may be, to win for future generations the blessings which must flow from the due appreciation and faithful following of the calls of God, as one by one they become manifested among the peoples. Unchangeable in her doctrine and her principles, Christianity still adapts herself to every change among men; the sacred Heart of her Divine Master knows what is in man, and knows how to meet all man's wants it is infinite in wisdom as in love and in compassion, and there is no chord which can vibrate in the human soul but finds its response in the tender Heart of Jesus, and in the tender voice of His Catholic Church, in which He lives and breathes still on this earth. In this she possesses that unmistakeable stamp of Divinity no mere human system can exhibit. Such systems may live for their day, and so long as the circumstances which called them forth continue; but it is only to wither and die, so soon as the earthly prop on which they lean fails to support them. God's Church, founded on the everlasting hills, and living by the Spirit of God, appears as a heavenly messenger among men, stooping to the alleviation of their lowest needs, and the soothing of their humblest sorrows, but always independent of them, not created by them, not looking to them for support. Hence, while in her heavenly life she remains one and the same throughout all time, yet like her great Apostle, she becomes "all things to all men, that she may save all;" and as a nurse lends herself to the varying mood of the sick one she is tending, so does the Good Shepherd through His Church seek to direct, rather than to thwart, every tendency, not evil in itself, of poor suffering manhood. Now this cry for Progress, so far from being evil in itself, has a double claim on the loving ear of Christ; for what is it in its true sense but an answer to His own blessed precept-" Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is per

fect?" It is when this type of perfection is lost sight of that what is esteemed to be Progress becomes retrogression; not because the desire to progress is evil, but because the road and the end to be attained are mistaken. Let us make room for the eloquent words of Father Felix :"Man created perfectible, his eye and his heart opened to the infinite; man, from the gulf of his misery, feels himself capable of a perfection which he imagines, which he dreams of, and which he possesses not. On the threshold of his existence, from the dawn of his reason, he catches glimpses at the end of a distant perspective of the image of a perfection which reveals itself to attract him towards it. That perfection, intimately revealed in the sanctuary of his soul, becomes for him an impulse which solicits him to ascend in every order of things, towards all to be found in them which is most elevated, most beautiful, most perfect, most like to God; for this impulse is nothing else than the movement of life seeking its ideal, and striving after its imitation; the greatness which attracts him is a ray from God beaming in his soul, and the movement which he receives from it is an impress of the infinite which has touched him. God in fact has touched the depths of the human soul; He has shed there His own reflection, and with it a charm of His own and man, moved by that reflection and that charm of God, seeks everywhere and in all that infinite of which he bears in himself the unalterable impress and the invincible seduction. stretches after it with all his powers, he pursues it in all his movements; and even in his most extravagant wanderings and most profound degradations, he still dreams after and seeks that infinite which he is pursuing always, even when his course leads him far from it."-pp. 16, 17.

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Again, in the same preliminary discourse, our author observes:

"Now, I say that this pursuit of the infinite, which is nothing else but the seeking after Progress, appertains to what is most legitimate in human life; it is the passion of the magnanimous, it is the ambition of the generous; it is the most noble vocation of man; it is even man following the most divine of his impulses, marching under the attracting influence of God to the most glorious of his destinies. No, no, this need of the more perfect, this ambition for that which is best, is not in man an idle jest of Providence; it is the sign of the vocation which Providence has vouchsafed him in opening before him the perspective of the infinite; vocation truly royal by which God calls man to advance in every way, and to make of all creatures steps of ascent by which he may

* St. Matt. v. 48.

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