moment. He is one of the people whom thought, as it were, always distresses. But he learnt conscientiously long ago at Saint-Manine the treatment he was to mete out to the supernatural -not to deny, not to explain, only to soothe. Mariotte is to be assured that, under the protection of the saints, the ghost can do her no harm. Mariotte's

friend goes away-relieved. Baptiste's own attitude towards the occult remains perhaps much like the attitude of persons far freer and bolder in thought and belief than he "it may be so, my lord."

Five-and-twenty minutes later, the diligence having arrived at the auberge on the road below, Pierre, blowing and apoplectic, and still very fat though he peeled off three coats to make the ascent, reaches the Place. He has the

snuff in his pocket. M. le Curé pays him therefor. He brings a little news from Saint-Manine; but not much. M. Baptiste is not so very keenly interested. Lead a narrow and simple life, and it grows narrower and simpler every day. M. le Curé's heart and ambitions are bound up, contained, fulfilled, in Laforge now. The seminary and his youth have faded a good deal from his mind. He, with the rest of the village, likes the rubicund Pierre because he is a cheerful incident in the day of Laforge, not because he brings news of a place which, after all, is not Laforge, and so really not very important.

The Place is very pleasant and animated this afternoon. M. le Curé has enjoyed it. It is his play-time. The approach of a tall man with thin lips and eager eyes reminds him that that play-time is over. In the Catholic village, the schoolmaster and the curé stand respectively for Progress and for Retrogression, and are nearly always at enmity. But in this case Progress regards Retrogression as a child, with a slightly contemptuous and a

not unkindly tolerance. The brownskinned, bright-eyed children of Laforge also feel M. le Curé to be, in some sort, one of themselves. They cling on to his hands and soutane. Having no means of finding out for himself, Baptiste consults Pierre to see if the hour for his class-preparatory to confirmation-has really come; and Pierre, on the irresponsible authority of a cheerful Italian watch, with the picture of a décolletée lady in a blue satin dress on the back of it, assures him that it is two o'clock. Pierre finishes his glass with the patron. The schoolmaster lights a very thin cigarette and reads a Socialist newspaper, which proposes to destroy all institutions and orders in time, but is careful to insist on M. le Curé's caste and profession being destroyed first.

Meanwhile, M. Baptiste, with half the young idea of Laforge at his heels, has gone back to his church. As a teacher he is admirable. The round face with its kindly good temper, the sympathy and understanding with the youth he will never himself quite outgrow, make all children love him. Then, too, M. Baptiste is not confused by seeing more than one side of a question, and of the truth of what he teaches has never felt a doubt. "The more you know, the less you are sure," is a sound, if a dismal, axiom.

'By the time the class is finished, and M. le Curé has dutifully admonished the offending youth who has been playing on its outskirts, and rewards a sobbing little girl with a sou for having a toothache, the autumnal afternoon is well advanced. Then there are Vespers, and perhaps a sick peasant to be visited; or a hurried baptism to be performed in a stone hut, three miles away along a path cut round the mountain. It is sunset and declining light before Baptiste is back at the presbytère he first left at six this morning; and the evening may well be

his own. In his little living-room, when Annette has served his modest supper-to-night, because the sick peasant lacked the barest necessaries of death, it must be so modest as not even to include the sour wine which, in this land of vineyards, is incredibly cheap-M. le Curé spends his short solitude.

Does he feel it to be solitary? Does he dream in reality, as healways dreams in books, of the woman his harsh vows forbid him to marry, of children nearer and dearer than the children he taught this afternoon? Very seldom. If one is to violate a great fundamental law of Nature, one cannot begin too soon. It must be considered-it is often forgotten-that Baptiste was trained and disciplined from his boyhood for this maimed life; that he can hardly be said to renounce the dear and common joys, for he has never expected to have them. Compare him with his brother priest of the Church of England (on whose poor stipend Baptiste would find himself disgracefully rich), with his delicate wife, his half-dozen hapless children, and the consequent too engrossing family cares, and it may well be thought-if its strong temptations can be overcome that Baptiste's position is more dignified and contented, and his usefulness less hampered.

Perhaps three times a year he writes a letter, to a sister living forty miles away; nearly as often he takes down one of his four volumes of the "Lives of the Fathers" (left him by a distant priestly relative), dusts it politely, and puts it back again. The "Lives" would not be exhilarating, very likely. But to Baptiste books, of any sort, may occasionally be a duty, but are never a recreation.

If to-morrow be Sunday, there is his sermon to prepare and learn by rote. But he does not need books even for that. Knowing his people, he, wisely, VOL. XXXV. 1847

LIVING AGE.

writes out of his own head-and heart. If to-morrow be not Sunday, M. Baptiste may indulge in a cigarette; and sometimes in a nap. The light grows dim. Monsieur moves the sputtering logs on the low fire on the hearth (it is only at this hour that his frugal Annette allows him a fire at all) with the broken toe of his broad shoe. Annette puts her head in at the door and says "Bon soir, Mo'sieu" with a severity which means "Candles are dear, and there is no need to sit up late." Then she apparently bangs all the doors in the house, and retires, like a respectable tornado, to her own home in the village.

M. le Curé sits looking at the faces in the fire for another ten minutes. The choice between bed and a candle becomes pressing. Bed is much cheaper. By half-past nine M. le Curé is enjoying the "heavy honeydew of slumber," with a regular, peaceful snore, and never a dream.

On Sunday-the cheerful Sunday of the Catholic, when is kept the fête Dieu and the fête of every one else as well-M. le Curé finds his church much fuller than on week-days. But his congregation has not at all the air of "one-long-service-and-get-it-all-done-for

the-rest-of-the-week" which distinguishes many Protestant worshippers. To-day he preaches his sermon. He has a manner naturally dramatic, warm, eager, spontaneous. His discourses are both less frequent and less foolish than his brother's of the English Church-it may be, less foolish because less frequent. Baptiste, at any rate, does not spend his time in explaining away doubts which have never existed in the minds of his hearers, nor in gallantly trying to reconcile the very latest scientific theory with the most ancient form of the Christian religion. If he attempted controversy, the thin-lipped schoolmaster, standing in the dark shadows at the back of the

church, would have his sneer and his answer ready enough. But M. Baptiste fortunately takes it to be his business-in spite of the busy symbolism that surrounds him and the highly complicated dogmas of his great Church-to preach "simple Christ to simple men," and is content if they leave him no wiser, but a little better.

The only change in his devoted and monotonous life is occasionally to take déjeuner and perhaps a hand at cards, chez Mademoiselle Angèle. Mademoiselle carefully remembers to forget that she knew Baptiste as a grubby little peasant boy. Baptiste's own natural good breeding and simplicity cause him really to forget it. If his muslin lappets are tumbled and his large hands not too clean, he is happily free from the self-consciousness which would make such defects painful. True, Mademoiselle's simpering and affectation distress him a little. Bnt she has a cuisine so recherché, and, it being neither fast nor vigil, Providence, that good, kind Providence, must mean M. Baptiste to enjoy it! He does. He is delightfully polite and good-tempered. Certainly, he has nothing to talk of but Laforge. But he talks of it very pleasantly. Mademoiselle Angèle gives him the most welcome aumônes for his poor. When she is not digging up her soul, as it were, and looking at the roots (and so effectually preventing its growth, no doubt), she is really the most excellent of rielles filles. M. Baptiste, after the still more excellent coffee, takes his leave, feeling comfortable, satisfied, and welldisposed to all the world.

Once, only once, there comes an upheaval in his life.

One perfect winter's day there ar rives in Laforge a certain Professor of Archæology, with a large, wise, bald head, and near-sighted eyes looking for Roman remains through spectacles. He stays at the Hôtel de France.

He meets M. le Curé on the Place, and readily accepts his invitation to pass an evening with him by the wood fire in the presbytère. As they sit, M. le Professeur tells his host of the lands in which he has travelled-wide, wonderful, enchanted lands. Baptiste listens, delighted. Then the guest goes on to politics, to science, to speculation. Words like "Ultramontanism" and "obscurantism" roll glibly off his tongue. M. le Curé pushes his chair back a little, bewildered. The professor speaks easily of what have been to his hearer the supreme certainties of religion and life, as moot points only: of Infallibility as more than fallible; of a future where, it may be, the very bulwarks of the great faith shall have been swept away. He talks, as the talker always does, for himself, not his hearer. He is so clever and stupid that he is perfectly unconscious of the confusion, the terror even, he has raised in his host's honest mind. He bids him good-night cheerfully. M. Baptiste forgets how dear candles are, and sits, staring at the gray ashes on the hearth, till the couple he has produced for his visitor are burnt to their sockets and have flickered into darkness.

If it were, indeed, as M. le Professeur implied it might be! If the one true Church were not the Truth after all! If, behind the deep, intense, mocking blue of the sky, there were really no answer nor any that hear, and "the hope of the world were a lie!" The horror of one cut adriftlost on a gray and pitiless sea-overwhelms M. le Curé's soul. When he creeps up to bed, the dawn is showing pearl and rose in the east. For the first time in all his life, anxious and awful thoughts keep him a wake. For a day or two he performs his duties as a man in a dream. But habit and education are strong. M. le Professeur-still quite unconscious of

what he has done-returns to Paris. The fears lift, slowly, from Baptiste's soul-as he so often has seen the clouds lift from the mountains and leave the peaks clear and serene against the sky. He perceives, with an infinite relief, that he has only been tempted of the devil-not to the common sins of the flesh, but to the subtler sin of a presumptuous mind. "Believe what I tell you, because I tell you" has been well said to be the first and last word of his Church. Before his rough crucifix, M. le Curé confesses the intellectual vanity and wickedness which made him question, even for a moment, her divine pronouncements.

For a few years he looks back on that temptation of his soul as a traveller looks back on some awful chasm, narrowly shunned. Then, gradually, he forgets. The calm life of Laforge, the daily round of honest duties, his own narrow and sensible mind, blot out the impression. In the greatest of all consolations for the uncertainty of the future-work in the present-he grows old. His bishop, who can re

move him to a better or worse cure at his discretion, forgets all about him. The fierce political whirlwinds which fell many great trees, leave this modest shrub unharmed. The children he has taught in the church are children no more. M. le Curé makes the steep The Cornhill Magazine.

ascent to that church with less ease than he used; the busy wrinkles grow thick round his pleasant eyes, and his ruddy face shrivels a little like a winter apple. The advanced schoolmaster gets a post in a town which is much better worth upsetting than ever Laforge could have been. Annette dies. Many of M. le Cure's friends lie now in the sunny, untidy, graveyard on the mountain slope, wtih its rude, ill-made wooden crosses and poor, loving little offerings of sham immortelles. The day cannot be far away when M. le Curé must lie there too. Well, he has done his work. If he has not brought enlightenment-and he has not-he has brought peace. If he has taught but an illiberal creed, he has taught it devoutly and intensely, in season and out of season, faithfully and from his heart. He has continued the noble tradition of his Church, and has helped to make it-more than any other in the world-the Church of the peasant and the poor.

If indeed the faith of that Church be realized, in that kingdom where they. that have riches shall hardly enter, where there shall be not many wise and not many prudent, and where men shall be judged, not for their lack of ten talents, but for their use of the one committed to their trust, M. le Cure's place may well be a high one. S. G. Tallentyre.

There is an element of uncanniness about some of the recent developments in plant-growing. The honorable profession of gardening, coeval, we are led to believe, with man's own origin, is being lured down strange by-paths in these latter days, straying far from Nature's obvious course that has sufficed it for so many ages, and it is dif

ficult to see yet the precise bourne at which it will arrive. All through the centuries, till now, man has been content to rear his plant children out of Mother Earth, trusting to pure water and fresh sunshine to ensure their healthy development; the ordinary routine of day and night, and the natural course of the seasons, summer

and winter, seed-time and harvest, have been their share, and he has been satisfied with the offspring that have resulted from this upbringing. But nowadays the adventurous impulse of the times is leading him to experiment in many various ways, and in the spirit of many a modern ardent educationist he is bringing all sorts of previously unheard of influences to bear— electric force, electric light, colored lights, germ inoculation, anæsthetics, and what not-in the hope of raising a product superior to anything that has gone before. The days of experiment

are yet too young for any of the most modern developments of plant-growing to have become an integral part of horticulture; and gardeners of all men, with a fixed routine ingrained in them through countless centuries, move slowly and are apt to regard innovations very dubiously. Still a considerable measure of success, that argues a probable future, has been accorded to some of them, and they claim a definite place in our notice.

For instance, electricity, that great force that the latter part of the nineteenth century harnessed to the uses of man, has not, in its victorious career, left untouched the domain of the plants, and now electroculture, or the application of the electric current in plant-growing, is fast becoming a recognized development in up-to-date agriculture and horticulture. To Professor S. Lemstrom, of Helsingfors University, we Owe much of our knowledge in this matter, for he has been experimenting for a considerable number of years on the effect of passing a current of electricity through growing plants, and he has come to the conclusion that in the large majority of cases, crops grown in an electrified atmosphere are far above the average both in quality and quantity. the years 1902-1903 he had experimental fields in England near Newcas

During

tle in connection with the Durham College of Science, in Germany near Breslau, and in Sweden at Alvidaberg, where he grew many plants under electrical treatment. The results were very remarkable. Thus strawberries in electrified fields showed an increase of 50 per cent. to 128 per cent. over those grown in normal fields. Corn showed an increase of 35 per cent. to 40 per cent.; potatoes 20 per cent., beets 26 per cent., and so on. And since in many of these cases the treatment was tentative and varied for experimental purposes the results will be largely improved when only the most satisfactory method is employed. In fact, Professor Lemstrom believes that under this treatment one may safely reckon upon an average increase of 45 per cent, over the normal for all crops grown on land of ordinary fertility. It is worth noticing that electricity is of no use on poor land, and it will not help poor farming. Just as "to him that hath to him shall be given," so it is on fertile and well-cultivated land that the greatest increase is shown under electroculture.

The method of applying electricity is as follows. A wire net is first stretched across the field a little above the surface; this net is then connected with an electrical machine stationed in a shed or building without the field, and the current traverses the net. As the seeds sprout and the little plants begin to grow, the net must be raised, as on no account must it touch the plants; but the raising need only be done once or twice during the summer. On rainy days it is quite useless to apply the electric current, as through the damp the wire net loses its electrical charge directly. It is also injurious to the crops to have the machine working during brilliant sunshine.

Now, when we come to inquire why the electric influence should cause so marked an improvement in the crops,