Bro. Gillet, superintendent of the Assembly, never needs an introduction to the Northwest. He will make the occasion one of lasting good to the interests he represents.
MAINE CHAUTAUQUA UNION.
Arrangements are being made by the officers of the Maine Chautauqua Union for a grand meeting at Fryeburg, to begin July 27th, 1885, and to continue one week. The grounds at Martha’s Grove are being put in order and beautified by Mrs. Nutter, the prime mover in this matter, and everything will be done for the comfort and enjoyment of all Chautauquans who visit this lovely spot. There is soon to be erected on the grounds a “Hall in the Grove,” after the style of the one at Chautauqua.
The program for this season is an attractive one and will consist of illustrated lectures, vocal and instrumental music, essays and readings. Some part of each day is to be devoted to the Round-Table, question box, discussions and reports of circles. As a result of our meeting last year, circles have sprung up all over the State. In Portland alone, there are three hundred Chautauquans where there were only nine last year.
EDITOR’S OUTLOOK.
VICTOR HUGO.
The greatest of the French writers of this century has passed away from earth, after eighty-three years of a life which was, like Carlyle’s, full of work to the very end. Victor Hugo’s greatness is difficult to measure at this hour; we are too near to know whether this is an Alp or only a hill. That it has attracted the attention, the admiration, the homage of mankind for half a century would seem to mean that this was one of the three or four great lives of the nineteenth century. Victor Hugo came of a union of aristocratic and plebeian blood. His father’s tribe had been of the nobles since 1531; his mother was the daughter of a seafaring race. The current sketches of his father omit the most dramatic incident of Colonel Hugo’s career. We refer to his long chase and final capture of Fra Diavalo—the brigand hero of the opera which bears his name. In the whole history of brigandage in South Italy, there is no more exciting and romantic story than that of his hunt and capture of the “Friar-Devil” by the father of Victor Hugo. In the blood of the poet the plebeian mother triumphed at length over the Monarchist father, and Victor Hugo’s pen has rendered the Republicanism of France more valuable service than his father’s sword gave to the Napoleonic crown.