so many of the questions thus raised, and which, when it was settled once for all, established the central authority, one and indivisible, never more to be shaken, has been taken out of our way. No such perturbing question as that now exists to complicate the problem of the Union of the British States in federation "as co-ordinate departments of a single and undivided whole."
These four points of controversy be- tween the various American States, the signs of growing life and healthy progress, I have singled out, not to magnify the difficulties, but because they are the very points about which discussion will inevita- bly arise when the federation of the British States is attempted. The success which has attended the patience, earnestness, perseverance, discussion, mutual compro- mise, and the sincere efforts of statesmen to produce unity and concord in the case of the United States, will also attend the like efforts to combat the lesser but simi- lar difficulties that will beset the consoli- dation of United and Greater Britain. The fact that the possibility of a civil war, and of a division of the Union, was so frequently, and on relatively insignificant occasions, thought of on both sides by the party leaders, may be taken as a measure of the degree of consolidation the Union had obtained up to 1840. The leaders, however, undervalued the solidarity of material interests which already obtained ; and the national instincts of the people (as is often the case) were juster and stronger than the leaders estimated. Among the masses of a vigorous people there always lives a strong feeling of hon- or, and in democracies this feeling is pitched very high as regards hostile for- eign powers ; and, therefore, that which would in all likelihood most readily bring about a federation of the British domin- ions would be for Great Britain to be en- gaged in war with some foreign power. Far from the colonies falling off like ripe fruit, or each going their own way to save their skins whole, there is every reason to conclude, from what has occurred in simi- lar cases, that they would enter into the war of defence with such heartiness, and' be ready to make such sacrifices, as would be altogether embarrassing to the more timid and cautious home government. In fact, this is already what has happened in a small way, when a regiment, raised and equipped in south Australia, volunteered for service in the Transvaal, and when the Canadians in 1878 offered ten thousand men for foreign service at the time of the Turco-Russian war, on the occasion of our Indian troops being brought to Malta, and Victoria her gunboats at Suakim this very year. These colonies fully intended what they offered ; and in a small way the incidents may be taken as an index of what would be likely to happen in a real war. It was a common war that taught the seventeen provinces of the United Netherlands in 1619 to federate ; it was a common war that taught the twenty-five principalities and States of Germany in 1871 to federate; it was a common war that taught the United States in 1776 to feel their strength, and that bound each of them together in closer federal bonds. And though, no doubt, contrary to the fears or hopes of some, a common war would do the same for the British States, were they in a common cause to fight and triumph together (joint counsels and joint efforts in common dangers, sufferings, and successes being the strongest cem- ent for binding men together), yet it would be far better for ourselves, as well as for friends or foes, if our federation and union were brought about by reasonable endeavors before such catastrophe fell upon us. J. N. Dalton.
MAGDA'S COW.
CHAPTER XI.
THE STORK'S NEST.
"Desdemona. Alas! what ignorant sin have I committed?" —Othello.
To both Filip and Magda the winter seemed interminably long and dreary. But the longest and dreariest winter must terminate at last; and though the end of March still found the snow lying in numerous patches in the creeks of the hills and the nooks of the forest, yet their days were counted, and they dwindled by degrees from lengthy winding-sheets to tiny pocket-handkerchiefs, and from pocket-handkerchiefs again to single stars, scarcely larger than the anemones which were already springing up all around them.
"The storks have come!" shouted Kuba one morning, watching the large birds of passage as they circled in agitated curves over the houses like bustling travellers at the end of a journey, — the old inhabitants seeking out their former nests, and passing them in review, to see what repairs would be needed to render their summer lodgings fit for use; young
