“From four and a half to six per cent. on real estate security of the second class.
“From six to eight per cent. on loans and limited liabilities.
“From eight to ten per cent. and upwards on industrial, financial, and speculative ventures.
“In the future and during a still indefinite period, which cannot fail to be long, very long, this scale must be modified by the excess of unemployed capital.
“Unquestionable securities will descend to three per cent., or below that; those of the second class will bring four and a half; men will be happy to make six per cent. in manufactures or production; finally, one can obtain eight per cent. only by running wild risks. There will be a general change in the rate of capitalization, in the sense of lessening the interest while increasing the amount of capital. Some exceptions—that is to say, some happy chances, some skilful personal strokes—may occur to confirm this rule. The general movement, however, will, we believe, be that which we have indicated.”
But what remains, then, to be done? Little of anything, if we wish to attribute to the revival of activity, which will come in its own time, only the sense and the direction which the movement has had until now. On the other hand, forced to admit that the human spirit has not at all gone to sleep, and that the inventive genius which the Master of all things in his goodness has bestowed upon his humble creatures has not in the least diminished, it is necessary also to confess that in the future it is the unknown which opens before us; and just as, before this century, people had not even thought of all the beautiful applications of heat, electricity, steam, and light which have made the material glory of our age and of an illustrious galaxy of savants, even so to-day we cannot say toward what end the efforts of humanity might tend to-morrow. One Being only knows it—he who knows all and sees all, he for whom the past, the present, and the future are but one, he who does not depend at all on time—God, in fact, the creator of all that has been, that is, and that shall be, the great dispenser of all good and of all progress; he who disposes of man at his will in one way or the other, often while the latter, in his folly, refuses to abase his blind presumption sufficiently to recognize him.
Let us, then, leave to the future that which belongs to the future, and let us hold ourselves, each one for his own account, ready to obey the impulse which it may please God to give us.
THE LAST PILGRIMAGE TO MONT SAINT-MICHEL.
When the traveller who is visiting the beautiful localities of the Channel Peninsula quits the southern faubourg of Avranches—a picturesque little town built of sparkling granite—a road, marked by a succession of rapid declivities, brings him to the shore of a large bay formed by the sinking of the coasts of Normandy and Brittany. Before him reaches, far away and out of sight, the flat extent of sands, furrowed by the rivers Sée, Sélunce, and Coësnon, whose silvery windings the eye can follow to a considerable distance. On the higher parts of these sands grows a fine kind of grass, the poa of the salt-meadows, and which, mingled with marine plants and sand-weeds, furnishes a favorite pasture for sheep. The lower and barren portion of the sands disappears twice a day beneath the tide, which at times spreads gently and caressingly over them, while at others it rolls foaming in with precipitate fury, as if eager to pass its appointed boundary. At high tide nothing is visible but an immense lake, partially engirdled with hills; and in the distance, like a pyramid of granite, sometimes from the bosom of the waves, sometimes from the expanse of sand, rises a nearly circular rock, laden with constructions of various kinds intermingled with vigorous vegetation, and crowned by large and lofty buildings.