this of capital?

Under the leadership of deputies like MM. Basly and Camelinet, backed
by the revolutionary press of Paris, the miners in another part of
France, at Decazeville, went on 'strike' in January 1888. They began by
brutally murdering M. Watrin, one of the best managers in the country.
They kept the whole region idle and in terror for three months and a
half. They inflicted great loss on the company and disturbed all the
industries of France. They themselves lost 630,427 francs of wages. The
company finally granted an increase of wages representing only 1-1/2 per
cent. of the wages sacrificed by the strike. The Municipal Council of
Paris, which had fomented the strike, magnificently gave the miners
10,000 francs of money which did not belong to them. All the Radical
press together subscribed 70,000 more. The Decazeville charities gave
2,231! And the next year all the miners testified that they had been
quite content with the wages before the strike, and gave a banquet to
the chief engineer!

CHAPTER XII

IN THE NORD--_continued_

LILLE

Thanks to Louis XIV., French Flanders became politically French more
than two centuries ago. But it still remains essentially Flemish. The
land has a life and a language of its own, like Brittany or Alsace. The
French Fleming is rarely as haughty in his assertion of his nationality
as the French Breton; but when a _Monsieur de Paris_, or any other outer
barbarian, comes upon a genuine _Flamand flamingant_, there is no more
to be made of him than of a _Breton bretonnant_, standing calmly at bay
in a furrow of his field, or of the bride of Peter Wilkins enveloped in
her graundee.

Even in the great and busy cities of Lille and Roubaix, the Flemish
tongue holds its own against the French with astonishing pertinacity.
But if French Flanders is still more Flemish than French, the Flemings,
I believe, are very good Frenchmen, just as I imagine the most
enthusiastic Welshmen of Mr. Gladstone's beloved little principality,
would be, after all, found, at a pinch, to be very good Englishmen.

Architecturally, their ancient Flemish capital, Lille, now the chief
town of the great Department of the Nord, is decidedly more French than
Flemish.

The seven sieges it has sustained have left it quite bare of great
historic monuments, and during the past thirty years millions of francs
have been spent upon its streets, squares, and boulevards, with the
result of giving it t