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LUTHER QUADRICENTENNIAL. 



the convicts have a thousand means by which 

 to take life. The awls, paring-knives, scissors, 

 and leather straps, abound in the cells. 



So far as relates to subsequent or second 

 committals, while in France they count as high 

 as forty-one to forty-eight per cent., at Louvain 

 they scarcely exceed six per cent. The reason 

 of this difference seems to exist not only in the 

 system itself, the administration of which is 

 very intelligent, but also, and especially, in the 

 chosen officers. The lowest guards obtain their 

 places by competition. But this does not sat- 

 isfy the director, who has them continually 

 under his eye ; he desires that they should re- 

 gard their employment as a mission to which 

 they should wholly devote themselves. 



"At the time of our first visit to Louvain, 1 ' 

 says the journal " La France," " we came 

 strongly prejudiced against the single-cell sys- 

 tem generally, so that it was not without sur- 

 prise that we observed the calm air of the 

 prisoners. They seemed to have even a kind 

 of attachment for their sad home. Here one 

 sees wreaths of ornamented paper all around 

 the cell ; in others, the spaces for the vessels 

 were covered with odd ornaments, which re- 

 vealed a certain taste in the unfortunate ones 

 who had arranged them ; in some there were 

 natural flowers in a pot on the work-bench. 

 These flowers had been gathered by the con- 

 vict in the yard, where he daily made a prom- 

 enade. These yards do not resemble the dun- 

 geons where French prisoners turn back and 

 forth like imprisoned deer. They are oblong 

 little gardens, inclosed on the sides by the high 

 walls and terminating at the ends by gratings, 

 one of which facilitates the watch of the 

 guards placed at a central point, and the other 

 presents the vast kitchen-gardens of the prison. 

 The product of the little gardens goes to some 

 of the convicts, who can cultivate a corner as 

 they please during their recreation, and eat 

 the fruit and gather the flowers. We were no 

 less astonished to see bouquets in the peniten- 

 tiary-cells, and on entering the office of the 

 director, M. J. J. Paul, an accomplished man, 

 we could not refrain from saying to him, 

 ' Sweet prison, sir, where the convicts are per- 

 mitted to make the air which they breathe 

 fragrant with the perfume of flowers.' ' I 

 know it is an infraction of the regulations,' he 

 replied, 'but I have given an order to the 

 guards not to remove them. When a criminal 

 begins 'to decorate his cell, by attaching him- 

 self to flowers, he has become less obdurate. 

 If one of them finds in his yard a bird fallen 

 from a nest, which he desires to keep in his 

 cell, I close my eyes again and rejoice, for that 

 man will become better.' " 



LUTHER QUADRICENTEMIAL. Saturday, 

 Nov. 10, 1883, was the four-hundredth anni- 

 versary of the birthday of Martin Luther. 

 There were many reasons why the occasion 

 should be celebrated. That religious and so- 

 cial movement which he originated is one of 

 the few great dividing-points in the history of 



civilization. The preceding four centuries be- 

 long distinctively to mediaeval history ; the 

 four centuries which have since elapsed belong 

 as distinctively to modern history. More than 

 half of Christendom holds that this religious 

 movement has been a great and almost unmixed 

 evil ; less than half hold that it has been a 

 great and almost unmixed good. But there 

 are few men in our day who do not hold that 

 the social and political reforms which sprang out 

 of and have accompanied this movement have 

 been of the highest benefit. It would not be 

 easy to find a Roman Catholic who would wish 

 civil governments to be restored to the state in 

 which they were at the close of the fifteenth 

 century. Few would, even in theory, hold 

 that the Church should be re-established as it 

 was in the times of Alexander VI, Julius II, 

 and Leo X. Indeed, the reformation which 

 went on within the Church was hardly less 

 notable than that which went on from it in 

 the lifetime of Luther, and for a generation 

 thereafter; and that reformation within the 

 Church can be traced, mediately or immedi- 

 ately, to the revolt which Luther headed 

 against the Church. 



It is easy to affirm that if there had been 

 no Martin Luther there would have been some 

 other man or men who would have done all 

 that he did, and better than he did it. Noth- 

 ing is easier than to speculate upon what might 

 have been. But there was a Martin Luther, 

 by whom, through whom, and often in spite 

 of whom, certain great things were brought 

 about. Luther's countrymen, and not a few 

 others, hold that these things were among the 

 most notable recorded in human history. 



Luther's life was a warfare. His weapons 

 were thoughts and words, which in the long 

 run have ever proved themselves mightier 

 than armies and armaments. One of the most 

 thoughtful of American authors, writing of 

 " Luther and his Place in History," says : " He 

 spoke for all future ages. His words saved 

 Germany, and created Modern History. The 

 Gothic and German races rose to rare prosper- 

 ity at the touch of Luther's genius ; the Latin 

 races rejected his teachings, and have for three 

 centuries slumbered in dull reaction and decay. 

 He died at the age of sixty-three, the master 

 intellect of the Teutonic race." 



The countrymen of Luther have never been 

 unmindful of their debt to this peasant's son. 

 He gave them a common language, the first 

 requisite to a national unity, lying even deeper 

 than mere unity of race. Not that, as some 

 have said, he created the modern German lan- 

 guage. To create a language is what no one 

 man, no cycle of men, has ever done. But in 

 adopting in his writings, and especially in his 

 translation of the Bible, the Franconian dialect, 

 remote on the one hand from what was known 

 as the High Dutch, 'and on the other from the 

 Low Dutch, yet still intelligible to all, he fixed 

 the forms of that dialect as the language for 

 the people. His guiding purpose was, so to 



