gone over to the majority! At least he nobly redeemed the character of his countrymen from the libel which makes the name of a Scotsman synonymous with meanness. Paris in September, 1871, presented a strange sight to the eyes of a visitor. The shadow of the double ordeal of the siege and the Communist rising still lay heavily upon it. In the streets traces of the conflict between the Versaillists and the Communards were everywhere visible. Lamp-posts twisted by the shell fire, plate-glass windows perforated by bullets, columns chipped and shattered, and the pavement ripped up for the erection of barricades, were the common sights of the streets; whilst the blackened ruins of the Tuileries, and the other public buildings destroyed by the rebels, remained to attest the desperate character of the civil war that had been waged in the capital. The inhabitants had not yet recovered from the privations of the siege and the horrors of the Commune. There were few who smiled, and there were many who could not speak of the past without tears. That which was specially noticeable was the fact that all the fury of the Parisians seemed to be turned against the Communards. Many of them, speaking of the Prussians, referred warmly to the contrast between their conduct and that of their own lawless fellow-citizens. Outside Paris the traces of the siege were everywhere visible, and driving along the country roads near St. Cloud--where the people were still living in tents and wooden sheds, almost every house having been destroyed--one came constantly upon little groups of graves of German soldiers who had been buried where they fell, each grave marked by its wooden cross with its simple inscription. These monuments spoke eloquently of the tragic character of the struggle. At Versailles, where the National Assembly was sitting, the great bulk of the Communist prisoners were confined in the orangery in front of the palace. Loaded cannon commanded this improvised prison, where many hundreds of men and women were herded promiscuously. Standing on the terrace above the orangery, I leant over the balustrade in order to look on the prisoners beneath. I had to withdraw hastily, for from the miserable crowd there came up an unbearable stench, such as might emanate from a cage of wild animals. Now and then one saw Communists being escorted by soldiers to meet the swift vengeance of the court-martial which was sitting to try them. These unhappy prisoners, who had little chance of escaping the penalty of death, bore themselves with firmness, and manifestly believed that they were sufferers in a holy cause. Not even the sight of the destruction they had wrought in Paris could wholly stifle one's feelings of sympathy with them in their wretched plight.