nearly two centuries ago, the Revocation | myself in the same atmosphere of damnaof the Edict forced its founders to flee tion and eternal salvation in which I was their native land. The name of the settle- brought up." The men and women presment is Friedrichsdorf, in the landgraviat ent not only chanted and prayed in French, of Hesse-Homburg, so called in honor of but looked French; and yet from the winthe landgrave Frederick II. This prince dows of the temple could be seen the gave the site of the village and some fields spires of Kiedorf and Seulberg, the one a to a number of refugees from Champagne, German Catholic, the other a Lutheran the Isle of France, and Languedoc, who village. M. Weiss found himself in the in 1687 arrived in the country, and craved presence of an ethnologic curiosity, — a his protection. Nor did his liberality end petrified piece of France, two hundred here. For ten years the settlers were to years old. But though the people of be entirely exempted from taxation; at Friedrichsdorf are of pure French blood, the expiration of that time they were to and cling so tenaciously to the customs of pay a land-tax of a florin an acre. They their ancestors, they are not the least were also allowed to organize themselves French in spirit. They know little or after their own fashion, to elect their own nothing of the land from which they came, mayor and aldermen, to manage their own and look upon Germany as their country, law affairs with the exception of one or the country for which, if need be, they two unimportant reservations and to would fight and die. Considering the exclude from the village anybody to whose treatment their forefathers received in presence they might object. These immu- France, the way in which they were driven nities have helped Friedrichsdorf, which out of it, and the welcome they received in now numbers about twelve hundred the land of their adoption, this is, perhaps, French-speaking inhabitants, to maintain not greatly to be wondered at, though M. almost intact the manners, customs, and Weiss evidently thinks it both strange language of their refugee ancestors. This and unnatural. On the other hand, these village, in the heart of Germany, is prob- people are both proud of the language ably a better sample of the France of they speak and the race to which they Louis Quatorze than anything that can be belong. They consider it derogatory to found in France itself. intermarry with their German neighbors; and though they are not in the least moved by a recital of the sufferings of France in 1870-71, they fire up at once if you hint that their men are in any way inferior in strength or their women in beauty to the Hesseners and Brandenburgers around them. Though living in the same country, educated in the same gymnasiums, and trained in the same regiments as their Teutonic neighbors, they are resolute to maintain the natural superiority of their breed. They esteem themselves both better and braver than the folks of Kiedorf and Seulberg; the women being especially proud of their origin and conservative of their customs. Their language is the quaint and beautiful French of the seventeenth century. Anybody who would know how French was spoken and pronounced in the grand siècle must go to this German village. In France itself the secret is lost. But while some of the villagers speak as Madame de Sévigné wrote, others use "vicious and vulgar phrases," which shows, in the opinion of M. Weiss, that the original immigrants were composed of two classes, one educated and refined, the other ignorant and uncultured. Sev eral of the phrases in common use, though obsolete in France, are expressive and convenient. For instance, they say vio lonner (to fiddle), souventes fois, une paire An interesting account of Friedrichsdorf, the existence of which has been almost, if not altogether, forgotten in the mother country, appeared lately in a French periodical, from the pen of M. J. J. Weiss, a politician and writer of some note. Hearing at Homburg that there was a Huguenot village in the neighborhood, he was moved by curiosity to make a visit of inspection. As he neared his destination, he overtook a letter-carrier. "Wo bin ich, bitte?" he asked, and received the rather surprising answer, spoken in excellent French, "Vous pouvez parler Français." This opening naturally led to a conversation; but after a few more questions had been put and answered, the letter-carrier begged to be excused, on the ground that it was Sunday, and it was time to go to the Temple. This excited the visitor's curiosity still more, and he, too, went to the Temple. The pastor was in the pulpit, reading the Confession of Sin in French, from which were omitted none of the characteristic phrases of primitive Calvinistic Christianity, albeit in France itself two-thirds of them have long been obsolete. "I could have believed myself in the New Temple at Rochelle," says M. Weiss, "or in the Paris Oratoire, hearing a sermon from the stern old Pastor Grandpierre. I found de fois. On the other hand, they know nothing of the thousands of words and forms with which, during the last two hundred years, the French language has been enriched. The speech of Friedrichsdorf, in fact, is literally the speech of 1687. Since that time it has undergone no alteration whatever. What it was then it is now. The fact is curious, but it is natural. The persecuted Protestants who arrived in Hesse-Homburg in 1687 were thenceforth cut off from communication with their country and their kindred. So far as French literature was concerned, they might almost as well have been in the wilds of Africa. The children learned French from their mothers, and from the few books they brought with them, which, no doubt, were mainly religious books. The Friedrichsdorfers are necessarily bi-lingual; and all their material interests being centred in Germany, they must needs obtain their news, their literature, and their secular ideas from German sources. French is kept for worship and domestic use; and it is to their religious separateness, more than any other cause, that the long survival of their mother tongue is to be ascribed. There is no test for sincerity and constancy like the fiery ordeal of persecution; and the Huguenots, who, after undergoing contumely and reproach, stripes and bonds, ended by sacrificing their country to their faith, were more than sincere, they were fanati cal. Huguenots lived in an intolerant age, and the doctrine of exclusive salvation, together with the conviction that they were God's elect, made them as intoler ant as Scottish Covenanters. Whenever they had the opportunity they proscribed the Catholic religion as stringently as the Catholics had proscribed theirs. To those stern Calvinists from Languedoc and Champagne, the Lutheranism of Seulberg was hardly less abhorrent than the Mariolatry of Kiedorf. If they could have worshipped in common with their neighbors, all trace of their mother tongue would have perished in the second gen. eration. But their religion was more of Moses than of Christ, and they developed much of that Judaic spirit to which the Jews owe their isolation. To worship in French, to hear the word in the speech in which they had been wont to hear it in the Temple and the Desert-the speech in which, when beset by enemies and overwhelmed with trouble, they had besought the help of the Most Highseemed to these simple souls necessary to their salvation. Thus the old tongue became in some sort sacred to them; it was a part of their religion, to be handed down reverently to their children, together with the family Bible and the Confession of Sins, which, as M. Weiss tells us, the present generation still repeat in the unmutilated form used by their ancestors before Louis XIV. drove them from France. M. Weiss speculates as to how much longer the French language is likely to survive at Friedrichsdorf. He thinks that its disappearance is within measurable distance. Germans are no longer excluded from the village; fifty years ago there were only four, now there are four hundred Teutons at Friedrichsdorf. It may, therefore, be presumed that the process of assimilation has already begun. French is still taught in the village school, but "the brutal uniformity of Prussian law" compels the teaching of German, and "we may expect before long to see French treated in Friedrichsdorf as it is treated in Lorraine." It seems impossible for a Frenchman to speak of Prussia in any connection without saying something abusive. But M. Weiss overlooks the causes that are most likely to put an end to this curious religious survival, — the decay of old customs and the waning of religious zeal. Friedrichsdorf, at least if it remains Calvinist so long as it remains religious, can hardly resist the tendency of the age; and in Germany, at least, that tendency is towards unbelief. Calvanism is not the religion of the future; it is dead in Calvin's own city; it is fast dying in France; it cannot much longer survive even in remote Friedrichsdorf; and when the Huguenot wanderers of 1687 lose their faith, they will probably forget the tongue in which they learnt to worship the God of their fathers. From The Spectator. BOYS IN THE CHRYSALIS. WE published on October 20th, 1883, a paper on the "Autobiography of Anthony Trollope," in which we maintained, what a great many correspondents evidently considered a very odd thesis, namely, that Mr. Trollope probably was, as a boy, as disagreeable, loutish, and incapable as all his comrades, including his brother, almost all his masters, and at least one of his able superiors considered him to be. We maintained that if Mr. Trollope had told the truth, — and of that there was no reasonable doubt, there could be but one explanation of the facts, and that was that Anthony Trollope the boy differed essentially as well as in outward seeming | reserved for this birth-hour, on the stroke from Anthony Trollope the man. The of which it eagerly seizes on the relations one developed into the other, but it was which crowd in upon it from the novel by a sudden start and not by a gradual elements around." That passage conveys, process, just as the tadpole, which is not in better words, precisely the idea we a frog, but something quite different, be- endeavored to make plain, with the exlonging, indeed, to a different branch of ception that we think the change a little the animal kingdom, becomes suddenly a greater than breaking-forth, the actual frog. People are so possessed with the nature being occasionally modified, as we, phrase, "The boy is father of the man," though rarely, sometimes see it modified that many thought this a little absurd, half in maturer life, under religious or other a dozen assured us that no such change influence, and that we should put the poscould occur in a human being, and one sible time of its occurrence much later. excellent man gravely warned us that if a The man's difference from the boy is solution of continuity could occur in life, sometimes not established till he is fiveso it might in death, and then what would and-twenty, unless circumstances have become of continuous identity in another been very favorable to independence, world? We need not say we intended either of judgment or of action. Trollope nothing so absurd as this gentleman im was a man before his true nature appeared, agined, but we did intend to say that the even in respect of efficiency for the work difference, the radical difference, between of life; and we have noted the alteration the boy and the man, which constantly in men older than he, and that, too, in startles as well as puzzles preceptors, is the peculiarities we think least liable to seldom sufficiently reckoned on, especially change, such as temper and frankness. by parents, whose experience of their It seems impossible to most parents that children is often so great and so minute the violent lad should become gentle-temas to be delusive. It is frequently a posi- pered, and the reserved lad frank; but tive change, as it was in Trollope's case, both changes do in rare instances manias if the nature had been compressed in a festly occur. There is no reason, indeed, case, subsequently to be burst; and while why they should not. The relaxation of compressed, lacked qualities which could pressure upon the inner nature, which is only come to it after its release. We are often the consequence of independence or pleased, as well as amused, to find that other change of circumstances, not only this idea, which was a product of con allows the wings of the mind, as Dr. siderable experience, is confirmed by Dr. Martineau says, to be unfolded, but perJames Martineau, who has probably much mits them to grow where they were not greater experience, having, like all reli- before. Tying up a child's limb may only gious teachers of mark, been compelled distort it; but it may also take out of the to make a special study of the young. In general frame its inherent vigor, its natthe course of the remarkable sketch of his ural health, its characteristic and special family history, and of his differences with power, and that larger result of compres his sister Harriet, which he published in sion is true also of the mind. It is not the Daily News of Tuesday, Dr. Marti- only genius which requires room, but neau says: "If I do not misconstrue a sometimes ordinary nature also. Ten per class of facts frequently noticed, there are cent. of the most ordinary natures would natures and among them some of the have been crushed out of shape by a boymost energetic and gifted in the end hood like that of John Stuart Mill as com which remain through childhood in a kind pletely as that of a Shelley or a Coleridge of chrysalis state; and first begin to quiver would have been. The crust over the with their intdneed life, and at length mind, though it often compresses only its break forth upon the wing in the second powers, - - a phenomenon known in every half of their second decade. As that is third household, where Tom's success in also the time when young people often life never ceases to cause a mild surprise, leave the early nest for some new experience, bringing them into contact with fresh types of character and manners, the change of scene is apt to get all the credit of the marvellous hues and vivid flight now taken by the creature once so colorless and dull. But the metamorphosis would not be wrought upon a brother or sister differently tempered. It is essentially the unfolding of an inward nature sometimes also squeezes and deadens, or suspends vitality in the essential character. The difference between Prince Frederick and Frederick the Great was not only one of mental strength, and though in part he may have hidden himself deliberately, in part also, when the flagstone was lifted by his father's death, his character changed. We wonder whether the converse differ moval of the compression which once fell upon children with the irresistible and allpervading weight of an atmosphere. One can easily imagine that if life, with its hard facts such as the necessity of eat ing, of obedience to "musts," and of standing alone. restores this old influence, the lightsome youth of our day will display as men, changes at least as startling, though in an opposite direction, as those which have struck Dr. Martineau and ourselves. Some of our Prince Hals will become Henry the Fifths. The alteration will be attributed to experience, and work, and contact with the unsympa thetic; but it will not be wholly due to those causes, but to the fact that pressure has brought out qualities only existing before in the germ. The man will not be in all instances the lad developed, but the lad transformed. He is not really transformed, of course; but neither is he, as we contend, only grown, but rather he has enlarged, and new characteristics have come out as if they had been created. The potentiality of hardness must be in the clay; but still, pottery is not clay only. We have most of us witnessed this change - if not in others, then in ourselves - as regards one quality, patience; and why should not there be others? Many among us do not grow patient, so much as acquire the faculty of patience; and this often in conscious, yet very sudden leaps. The pressure, whatever it be, has annealed that side of the character, until it is as different from the previous character as pottery from clay. Sharp suffering is the quickest pressure, and the one most rec ognized; but the hydraulic pressure of life acts too, and nearly or quite as effectually. The loss is mainly one of time; and though it is impossible for parents to think so, that is not always loss. The longer childhood is after all something to the good, and there is pliability in gristly bones. Most boys of to-day are ready for anything from learning Arabic to driving cattle, and for the work of life that is a set-off against the three or four years which seem to be lost from a certain want of "breeze," in the builders' sense, visible in so many characters. It is odd to find the moth in the cocoon, and the silk-spinner out of it; but that happens with the human worm, and only strikes us because we are accustomed to another sequence. The one change, when we have once seen it occur or recognized that it can occur, is as little miraculous as the other. The stupid lad becomes the brilliant novelist. Why not the blithesome lad the steadiest of plod ence often occurs, and a character injured For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. 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