
 
 <AM *v^ 
 
 SECOND SERIES 
 /-.# WHITEFRIARS LIBRARY 
 
 OF WIT AND HUMOUR 
 
 EDITED BY W. H. DAVENPORT ADAMS 
 
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 NUMBER TWENTY 
 
 FABLES AND FANTASIES 
 
 BY 
 
 H. D. TRAILL 
 
 LONDON : 
 HENRY AND CO., BOUVERIE STREET, E.G.
 
 SShttrfriars i^tirarg at SSit 
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 The following Vols. are now ready: 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
 Price 2s. 6d. each. 
 
 ESS Ays IN LITTLE. By ANDREW LANG. 
 SAWN OFF: A Tale of a Family Tree. By 
 
 G. MANVILLE FENN. 
 A LITTLE IRISH GIRL. By the Author of 
 
 "Molly Bawn." 
 
 THREE WEEKS AT MOPETOWN. By PERCY 
 
 FITZGERALD. 
 A BOOK OF BURLESQUE. By W. DAVENPORT 
 
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 IN A CANADIAN CANOE. By BARRY PAIN. 
 
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 Price 3s. 6d. each. 
 
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 With Illustrations by A. C. PAYNE. Also a limited Large- 
 Paper Iidition, crown 410, los. 6d. net. 
 
 MR. BA TTERS'S PEDIGREE. By HORACE G. 
 HUTCHINSON. With Illustrations by ,&0. HUTCHINSON. 
 
 A NORTH-COUNTRY COMEDY. By Miss M. 
 BETHAM-EDWARDS. 
 
 THE LETTER OF THE LA W. By Sir H. MAX- 
 WELL, BART., M.P. Illustrated. 
 
 FACES AND PLACES. By HENRY W. LUCY. 
 
 Illustrated. 
 A LITTLE FLUTTER; or, STAGE, STORY, 
 
 AND STANZA. BY H. SAVILE CLARKE. 
 
 THE JOLLY PASHAS. By JOHN A. STEUART. 
 
 Illustrated. 
 
 NUMBER TWENTY. By H. D. TRAILL. 
 
 KING ZUB. By WALTER HERRIES POLLOCK. 
 
 [Shortly.
 
 NOTE. 
 
 r I ^HE story which gives the title to this volume was 
 -^ written specially for it. 
 
 Of the prose pieces which follow, two, "The Protecto- 
 rate of Porcolongu" and "The Great Baxtairs Scandal," 
 originally appeared in Macmittaifs Magazine ; a third, 
 " The Brutes on Their Master," in the Nineteenth Century ; 
 and the last, " The Armourer of the Twentieth Legion," 
 in the Universal Review. The detached pieces of verse 
 were contributed, two of them to the Saturday Review, and 
 the two others to the Daily Telegraph. It was in the pages 
 of Punch that the Baby was first allowed to record its poetic 
 protest against the teachings of the Nurse. 
 
 The Author takes this opportunity of thanking the pro- 
 prietors of these periodicals for the permission to reprint. 
 
 H. D. T.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 NUMBER TWENTY : 
 
 
 
 PROLOGUE . . I 
 
 THE FIRST AGE 14 
 
 THE SECOND AGE 23 
 
 THE THIRD AGE 39 
 
 THE FOURTH AGE 60 
 
 THE FIFTH AGE 73 
 
 THE SIXTH AGE 83 
 
 THE SEVENTH AGE 96 
 
 A FABLE FOR JUDGES 107 
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOLONGU . . . . in 
 THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY . .. . . .141 
 
 THE BRUTES ON THEIR MASTER 145 
 
 A NEW YEAR'S VISION 161 
 
 THE GREAT BAXTAIRS SCANDAL . . . ; .166 
 THE PASSING OF THE AGED PSYCHOPATH . . .189 
 THE ARMOURER OF THE TWENTIETH LEGION . .192
 
 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 IT was exactly half-past eleven p.m. on the 3ist of 
 December, 1900, and Old Seekleham lay a-dying. 
 Obviously he had no more than half an hour at the outside 
 to live, yet so tough was his vitality that no one doubted 
 but that he would manage to hold out that length of time. 
 His end could not be described as unexpected. On the 
 contrary, it had been foretold by the almanac makers for 
 many years, and its precise date had even been fixed by 
 them with an accuracy in which too many of their other 
 predictions were wanting. 
 
 Old Seekleham himself was fully prepared for his de- 
 parture, not to say disposed to welcome it. It was not that 
 he had attained to a greater age than his ancestors, who, in 
 fact, had all been centenarians like himself; it was that his 
 life, as measured by exciting and consequently fatiguing 
 experiences, had already far exceeded most of theirs. He 
 had lived very hard in many ways. His early youth had 
 been of a singularly stormy kind. He was the most pug- 
 nacious of boys a fighter such as never before was seen ; 
 
 IV. L.-XV.
 
 2 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 and, indeed, he had enriched his record with one of the 
 most desperate " mills " in all history before completing 
 his fifteenth year. 
 
 After reaching middle age, he had entered upon a most 
 successful career as a trader ; and during the last third of 
 his life his achievements as an explorer, an inventor, and 
 a scientific investigator had been of the most brilliant 
 order. But of late years he had been suffering severely 
 from the malady known as " ha.ving-had-enough-of-it." 
 
 He grumbled at the magnitude of the wealth he had 
 acquired by trade ; he grumbled at the extent of territory 
 he had opened up to commerce ; he grumbled at the result 
 of his inventions and the fruits of his scientific inquiries. 
 In his desponding moods, which became more and more 
 frequent in his closing years, he would declare that he was 
 far happier before he had made so much money, or had 
 pushed his business to such an extent that its incessant calls 
 on his attention left him with scarce a moment to himself. 
 His inventive skill he got at last to hold in the lightest 
 possible esteem ; while of his science he was wont to remark, 
 with what he intended for irony, that it had revealed to him 
 almost everything except what he most wanted to discover, 
 and what alone he cared to know. To that he was no 
 nearer, he would add with bitterness, than the most remote 
 of his ancestors. 
 
 On the whole, therefore, Old Seekleham was not sorry to 
 be going. 
 
 The hands of the World Clock in the Vestibule of 
 Eternity, where lay the couch of the Moribund, pointed to
 
 PROLOGUE. 3 
 
 thirty-four minutes past eleven. A shadow fell across his 
 bed, and he opened his eyes. 
 
 A tall, spare figure stood before him the figure of an old, 
 old man, of a man many times as old as Seekleham himself, 
 white bearded, deeply wrinkled, and bald save for a single 
 lock of hair depending from his forehead. He leaned upon 
 a scythe, and carried a wallet at his back. An hour-glass 
 was in his left hand. 
 
 " Do you know me ? " he said, in a voice full and resonant, 
 and yet which seemed to bring with it an echo from afar. 
 
 " Not that pleasure," faintly murmured Seekleham, who 
 during the last fifty years of his life had been a model of 
 refined politeness. " In the the gardening line, I presume 
 from your implement. Given up the mowing machine, ap- 
 
 * 
 
 parently. ... Is that another instance of my my mis- 
 directed ingenuity in the matter of inventions ? " 
 
 The aged visitor returned no answer, but placed his hour- 
 glass on the ground, and proceeded to disburden himself of 
 the wallet. 
 
 " Houndsditch ? " whispered Seekleham, more to himself 
 than the other. " But, no ! " he added, as his eye fell on 
 the hour-glass, " a travelling pedlar more likely, with the last 
 new thing in egg-boilers." 
 
 " Is it possible that you know me not ? " said the grey- 
 beard, solemnly. " I am TIMI; ! " 
 
 Seekleham looked at him for a few moments with an 
 amused smile. 
 
 " Time ! " he echoed. " You, Time ? Nonsense ! " 
 
 " Nonsense ? " exclaimed his scandalised visitor. 
 
 " Excuse me. The ejaculation was rude, and I apologise. 
 But really, really to hear an independent, a self-existent
 
 4 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 entity like yourself for you claim independence and self- 
 existence, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Rather ! " replied the other complacently, " and a re- 
 spectable antiquity, too : an existence of which ' the memory 
 of man runneth not to the contrary.' " 
 
 " Exactly ! " resumed Seekleham, his smile now giving 
 place to a positive chuckle. "That's just it. It is all a 
 matter of the ' memory of man ' and nothing else. It was 
 the memory of man, or in other words the continuity of man's 
 mental impressions, which brought Time into being, and 
 without it Time would cease to be. In point of fact, you 
 would be it if you were Time : but you must surely be 
 aware that Time is merely a form of the subjective con- 
 sciousness." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! " was the ironical reply. "Then I suppose 
 you can ' gain ' or ' lose ' a form of the subjective conscious- 
 ness, or ' save ' or ' waste ' it, or ' work against ' it, or be 
 ' tied to ' it, or ' come up to ' it. Or, perhaps " (with in- 
 creasing contempt), " you can take a form of the subjective 
 consciousness by the forelock." 
 
 " Mere figures of speech," said Seekleham, " mere con- 
 veniences of language. Nothing but man's incurable trick 
 of personification. Why, Kant, before I was born 
 
 " Yes, and cant till the day of your death, apparently," 
 interrupted Time, with an impatience which bordered on 
 the discourteous. " Now, look here, if you imagine that I 
 am worth so little that I can afford to waste myself in 
 chopping metaphysics with an expiring century that has 
 only about a quarter of an hour more to live, you were 
 never more mistaken in all your hundred years of life. I 
 have other fish to fry."
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 S 
 
 And, with that, he rose, and having tied his wallet, mouth 
 open, to one of the brass knobs of the bed-foot, began to look 
 round the chamber with an inquiring air. 
 
 Seekleham eyed him curiously, and then cast a glance at 
 the bag. It was branded in large black letters running all 
 along it like the name on a farmer's flour sack. 
 
 " Here! hi! hallo ! " exclaimed the Moribund abruptly, as 
 he saw Time removing two busts from the brackets on 
 which they stood. " What are you doing with those ? Are 
 you aware that they are effigies of two of my most dis- 
 tinguished statesmen ? "
 
 6 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " Quite aware," replied Time, coolly. " But I know what 
 I am about ; thank you for your kind interest in my 
 work." 
 
 " Know what you are about ! Yes, but do you ? Let me 
 tell you that I have preserved those two busts with the 
 utmost reverence for a considerable part of my long life, 
 and I should advise you to " 
 
 "Seekleham," said Time brusquely, "in the course of 
 the long life you seem so fond of talking about, you must 
 have heard many proverbs have you not ? " 
 
 "Yes. Well?" 
 
 " Well," resumed Time, with a blander air, "did you ever 
 come across a proverb about grandmothers and eggs and 
 the way to suck them and the proper persons to give 
 instruction in the art of but, there ! I see you have. Your 
 eye is full of intelligence. Well, in this case, for ' grand- 
 mother ' read ' grandfather to the power of n,' and observe 
 the directions of the adage." 
 
 And as he spoke, he chucked the two distinguished 
 statesmen unceremoniously into the wallet. 
 
 " Come," he continued, with a hasty glance at the hour- 
 glass, " I have not many minutes to spare. Where are your 
 poets, artists, men of letters, men of science ? Point 'em 
 out ! point 'em out ! " 
 
 His manner was so imperious as to abash all resistance. 
 Seekleham could only mutter " Poets ? " and point with a 
 feeble finger at a line of busts on a shelf in the corner of 
 the room, with one powerful and stately head overshadow- 
 ing the rest. 
 
 Many of them Time swept into his sack without a 
 moment's hesitation. A few he did not touch at all, One
 
 PROLOGUE. 7 
 
 or two he took up, and after scrutinising them for a few 
 moments with a doubtful air, replaced them on the shelf. 
 
 " I will give them a little longer," he muttered. " I can 
 always look in again, if necessary, in a few years' time." 
 
 Seekleham watched the operation in silence, until at last, 
 seeing one particular statuette snatched roughly up with 
 evident destination to the wallet, he could contain himself 
 no longer. 
 
 " Good heavens ! " he exclaimed. " He, too ! One of my 
 most popular poets ! " 
 
 " Smooth, isn't he ? " said Time, with an ugly grin, as he 
 passed a contemptuously caressing hand over its polished 
 surface. " But look at him," he continued, holding up the 
 bust between his finger and thumb; "why, if I were to 
 handle him much longer, there would be nothing left of him.' 
 
 And indeed, the popular poet already seemed to shrink 
 and dwindle beneath the touch of Time, who, after spinning 
 the statuette in the air as a boy spins a penny, flung it 
 scornfully among the other alms for Oblivion. Then, to the 
 utter amazement of Old Seekleham, he lifted from its shelf 
 the stateliest bust of all. 
 
 "You you are not going to you cannot mean to 
 to " stammered the expiring Century, his eye travel- 
 ling with painful agitation from Time to the wallet and back 
 again. The other, without noticing his disorder, stepped 
 briskly with the bust to the open door of the Chamber. 
 
 Seekleham breathed again. " I see, " he muttered, " I 
 understand. A promotion." 
 
 "Of course," answered Time, returning empty-handed. 
 " You must have expected that, I think. I have transferred 
 your poet from the Ante-chamber to the Hall of Eternity, as
 
 8 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 one whose place among the Immortals is assured. But let 
 me tell you, sir, that it is the only promotion of the kind 
 that I am in a position to make among any of your living 
 children, and, indeed, the only one I have ever made since 
 the batch of candidates I took it upon me to pass when you 
 were still hardly out of your teens. All the others who 
 have escaped the wallet for the present will have to wait here 
 awhile yet before they can reckon on escaping it altogether. 
 Yes, all of them, even he" pointing to a rugged, shock- 
 headed, Scotch-looking bust that glowered at him from the 
 rank ; " and he" indicating another this also a massive- 
 browed, yet, curiously enough, somewhat simian head that 
 stood beside it. 
 
 "What!" gasped Seekleham, "even my most famous 
 man of science ? Even Dar " 
 
 " Yes," replied Time, " I have said so. Even that distin- 
 guished 'scientist.' Don't you wish," he added, bending 
 lower over the bed, " don't you wish you had expired 
 before they disgraced your record by the invention of that 
 word?" 
 
 The other moaned feebly. 
 
 "They have put many such indignities upon me in my 
 closing years," he murmured. 
 
 A short silence ensued. The sands in the hour-glass were 
 fast running out ; the hands of the clock marked ten minutes 
 to midnight. Time, softly humming to himself M. Jean 
 Richepin's cheerful lyric, " Encore un sihle qui decline" con- 
 tinued to sweep the remnant of the literary, artistic, and 
 other celebrities into his wallet. 
 
 It was with as much pleasure as, in his rapidly sink- 
 ing condition, he was capable of feeling, that Seekleham
 
 PROLOGUE. 9 
 
 observed his visitor's respectful treatment of the favourites of 
 his earliest infancy. Two poets who, he well remembered, 
 had welcomed his birth with enthusiasm, were carefully 
 bestowed by Time in the Hall of Eternity in company with 
 the illustrious singer of his later days. In the profound 
 cynicism that had grown upon him in the closing years of 
 his life he had fancied himself indifferent to their fate ; 
 but even at that moment he felt a stir in his failing heart 
 at the recollection of the glory and the freshness of their 
 cradle song ; and he hailed their escape from the wallet ot 
 Oblivion with a sigh of genuine relief. 
 
 But, on the other hand, if it was without serious concern, 
 it was with unfeigned amazement that he watched the havoc 
 which Time was making elsewhere. Figures which from his 
 earliest days he had seen his children regard with awe and 
 admiration were chucked, with scarcely so much as a glance 
 at them, in the gaping mouth of the sack. Some of them 
 Seekleham himself, in his representative capacity, had not 
 rated very highly, and had indeed looked upon as mere idols 
 of a passing fashion among his sons. But for others he had 
 personally entertained, at one or another period of his life, 
 a respect which, though no longer perhaps so high as it 
 once had been, he had not altogether outgrown ; and it was 
 with a feeling of almost bewilderment that he saw them 
 thus unceremoniously treated. 
 
 It was one thing to doubt their claim to the niche and 
 pedestal, and another to see them summarily banished to 
 the dust heap. 
 
 But the Grand Old Dustman went steadily, and methodi- 
 cally, and mercilessly through them all statesmen, lawyers, 
 savants, poets, philosophers, critics, historians, novelists,
 
 io NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, inventors, actors, 
 singers, preachers, pill-makers : he spared none. His biggest 
 hauls were made from the ranks of the politicians, the 
 preachers, and the pill-makers ; then came the men of 
 letters, then the painters and actors, in the order named. 
 It was among the singers, practitioners of the art in which 
 imposture is the most difficult, that he obtained the fewest * 
 recruits for his wallet. But on the whole it was a monstrous 
 " catch," and Seekleham's wonder grew as he watched its 
 progress. 
 
 Nor was he much less astonished at the promotions than 
 at the degradations of which he was a witness. Many a 
 small and humble effigy, lurking unnoticed in some obscure 
 corner, was taken up by Time, and after a careful and re- 
 spectful dusting established on a shelf in the place vacated 
 by some one or other of the condemned busts often, too, 
 in a higher position than some of those which had been 
 allowed to remain. But Seekleham's amazement did not 
 reach its highest pitch till he saw Time produce some half- 
 dozen or so of entirely new effigies from under his single 
 scanty garment, and place them on the shelves beside the 
 others. . It was not the feat itself which surprised the 
 Moribund, for he had seen conjurers produce fish-bowls 
 from beneath a silk handkerchief; and as he had often 
 heard of the " magic of Time," there seemed nothing very 
 wonderful in his being able to perform a similar trick. But 
 what did astonish him was the effigies themselves, which 
 were absolutely unknown to him. Even in the last few 
 minutes of his existence the flame of curiosity flickered up 
 for a moment, and this, together with his inveterate habit 
 of politeness, compelled an effort to speak.
 
 PROLOGUE. 1 1 
 
 Pointing with a trembling finger at the strange effigies : 
 " Introduce me ! " he muttered to his companion. 
 
 With a glibness born of manifest familiarity, Time ran 
 through their names. 
 
 " Never heard of the gentlemen," murmured Seekle- 
 ham feebly, sinking back again on his pillow. 
 
 " No, I am quite aware of that," said the other coolly. 
 " Your successor, however, and your successor's successor 
 will hear a good deal of them. But you have only another 
 few minutes left now, and you must prepare to bid your 
 final adieu to those who have the best right to be present 
 at your departure." 
 
 Seekleham was past speaking. His lips could only frame 
 the noiseless interrogatory " Who ? " 
 
 " Who ! " said Time. " Why, the Decadents, of course." 
 
 There was no' speculation in Seekleham's eyes. It did 
 not seem quite certain whether or not he knew who the 
 Decadents were. But when the door of the Vestibule was 
 flung open, and they stalked slowly in, a melancholy train, 
 a faint glance of recognition, though not of welcome, stole 
 over his features. 
 
 They sat down at his bedside, and one after another they 
 began to sing. Their songs were in praise of exhaustion, 
 and disillusion, and failure, and emptiness, and weariness, 
 and the vain regrets of yesterday, and the lying promises of 
 to-morrow, and the unspeakable monotony of to-day. 
 
 One of them took up the subject of exhaustion, and 
 recited a sombre poem in which a Mongolian necromancer, 
 by name Ah Sin, predicts the decay of Caucasian civilisa- 
 tion. A second sang of disillusion, of things which are 
 not as they seem, and of the visions which were about him,
 
 12 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 A third had chosen the snows of the previous winter 
 for his theme, and pointed out how gratifying it was to 
 reflect that when once melted they were irrecoverably lost. 
 A fourth had composed a hymn of thanksgiving for the 
 inestimable blessing of the sensation that to-day is exactly 
 like yesterday, and for the exquisitely restful thought that 
 to-morrow will be indistinguishable from to-day. This 
 hymn he called a Tadium Vitce, and he recited it with 
 considerable unction, and with as much feeling as he was 
 capable of showing. 
 
 After this they all joined in the strophic and antistrophic 
 recitation of an Ode to the Spirit of Decadence, which 
 meant, as was explained in the Ode, the Spirit begotten of 
 the fact of living in an age of exhaustion and disillusion, 
 and failure, and emptiness, and weariness, and getting rather 
 to like it. And they wound up with a chorus of congratu- 
 lation to Seekleham on the strength of his rapidly approach- 
 ing departure, since, although Decadence was nice, Death 
 was still better, and they sped him with envy on his 
 journey. 
 
 Old Seekleham, however, had not waited for their per- 
 mission to depart. Indeed, at the very first notes of the 
 first Decadent's song his face assumed a look not merely of 
 resignation to, but of impatience for, his end ; and some 
 two or three " numbers " before the valedictory Ode it 
 would have been plain to any one but a poet or singer, 
 actively engaged in the practice of his egotistic profession, 
 that Old Seekleham was in articulo mortis. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the World Clock struck twelve while 
 the third Decadent was poetically explaining his discovery 
 of the deliquescence of snow.
 
 PROLOGUE. 13 
 
 By the time the chorus was concluded, Old Seekleham 
 had, in a sense more than usually emphatic, passed away. 
 He had disappeared, couch and all, and on the spot which 
 the couch had occupied there now stood a cradle containing 
 a baby with a singularly aged face.
 
 I. 
 
 THE FIRST AGE. 
 
 " At first, the infant, 
 Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms." 
 
 YES, there was no denying it. Little Vicesimus ^Eon was 
 almost as old-looking as the departed Seekleham. 
 His wide-open eyes had as meditative and as wearied a look 
 as though they were gazing out of the head of a septua- 
 genarian. The upward curl of his button nose seemed an 
 indication rather of cynicism than immaturity; the expression 
 of his shapeless mouth was one of profound melancholy. 
 
 Time eyed the elderly infant with a grim smile, and rocked 
 its cradle gently with the handle of his scythe. 
 
 "Are you conscious of yourself yet, Vicesimus ? " he asked. 
 
 " But imperfectly," answered the child, with a slight sigh. 
 " But what age has ever fully realised its own ethos until it 
 was drawing to a close ? I suppose I shall require a poet to 
 interpret me to myself." 
 
 " H'm ! " said Time, dryly, " that is rather a pity. I am 
 afraid you will have to wait some time. Old Seekleham got 
 himself explained that way, but not till his life was more 
 than half over. And after that, so many people went into 
 the interpreting business that he got tired of them. At any 
 rate, he paid very little attention to a good many of rhem in 
 his later years.
 
 THE FIRST AGE. 15 
 
 " Oh, very well ! " said Vicesimus, carelessly, " I can wait. 
 And, indeed, I am not sure that I care about a poetic inter- 
 pretation of myself. I should be satisfied with the scientific 
 exegesis." 
 
 " You portentous little prig," muttered Time to his 
 snowy beard, " you are realising yourself at this moment, in 
 that hideous jargon of yours, if you only knew it. Look 
 here, Vicesimus," he continued, aloud, "you can get the 
 interpretation you want, and easily enough, by watching the 
 ways of your own children." 
 
 " Of my own children? " said the babe, passing his hand 
 musingly over his tired young eyes, " I am not sure that I 
 understand you." 
 
 " I am quite sure you don't," said his aged companion. 
 " Indeed it is impossible that you should. Nevertheless, it 
 is really very simple. Babe as you are, you are the spiritual 
 father of " 
 
 " Stop ! I only admit the word spiritual provisionally, 
 understand. I am not certain that it has any meaning. 
 But continue." 
 
 " You are the spiritual father of every babe that has been 
 born into the world since you appeared. You inspire them, 
 all unconsciously to yourself. They are now what you have 
 made them : what they will become will be what you shall 
 make them hereafter. You can realise yourself in your 
 babyhood of to-day by simply selecting a typical baby and 
 watching its ways. In boyhood, in youth, in manhood, in 
 old age, you will always be able to find your own interpreta- 
 tion by seeking out the typical boy, youth, man, or what not." 
 
 " That," said Vicesimus, reflectively, " will be extremely 
 interesting. Produce a typical baby."
 
 i6 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " I will do so presently," said Time. " Or, rather, I will 
 take you to see one. But you are in a little too much of a 
 hurry. Allow me, at the risk of boring you, to explain the 
 situation to you with a little more precision. You are 
 aware, I suppose, that you are my child ? " 
 
 Vicesimus looked up at the greybeard with a pitying 
 smile. 
 
 " How true it is," he murmured half to himself, " that 
 man never knows how anthropomorphic he is. You 
 mean," he continued, aloud, " that I am probably being 
 spoken of as the latest birth of Time. It is, of course, one 
 of those mere figures of speech with which men delude 
 themselves, but it ought not to have taken you in. However, 
 continue ; let us assume for the purposes of your argument 
 that I am, as you say, your child." 
 
 " The spirit," proceeded the other, in a more solemn tone, 
 "the spirit which you yourself are breathing into your 
 children is itself an emanation from me. It is the Zeitgeist 
 in you which But you smile ! What at ? " 
 
 " Nothing, nothing. Only that word of yours, the Zeit- 
 geist. A little old-fashioned, you know. But go on." 
 
 " It is the Zeitgeist animating you" continued Time in 
 a sterner voice, " which is the moulding and shaping, the 
 quickening and impelling, principle in your children. But 
 do not on that account suppose yourself to have absolute 
 control over them, or even over yourself. If it is your 
 spirit my spirit which moves them to action, it is no less 
 true that that action in its turn reacts upon the motive power 
 to restrain it, to modify it, to deflect it, nay, sometimes 
 even to reverse it. Your children, the children of the 
 Twentieth Century, will have many thoughts, many feelings
 
 THE FIRST AGE. 17 
 
 which they will owe to you, their spiritual father ; but the 
 Time Spirit in you will itself be conscious of some new im- 
 pulses, some fresh stirrings, which will have been communi- 
 cated to it by them. Sometimes the interaction will be so 
 subtle that many will find it hard to say whether it be the 
 Time Spirit which is moulding the thoughts and wills of men, 
 or whether it be men themselves, who by dint of speech and 
 action are generating around them a new atmosphere, and 
 within them a new inspiration of Thought and Will. But 
 one thing I can tell you, that you and they together, Man and 
 the Time Spirit, will undergo many metamorphic changes, 
 and that the series of these transmutations will soon com- 
 mence. Or, in other words," he added, sotto voce t " that you 
 will soon become something better than the odious little 
 pedant-in-swaddling-clothes that you are now. " 
 
 " Amid much," said Vicesimus, u that I know to be mis- 
 leading metaphor, and more that I suspect to be unsound 
 psychology, I am still able to say that I fairly comprehend 
 your meaning. Lead on to the typical baby." 
 
 " I will take you to see one," said Time, lifting Vicesimus 
 out of his cradle and limping off with him. " It is the 
 simpler plan of the two." 
 
 " I have no doubt I could walk if I tried, " said Vicesimus, 
 somewhat hurt at the indignity. 
 
 "The typical baby cannot," replied Time ; " at least, not 
 at present. When it is a few days old it may be able to 
 do so, but thus far it more or less resembles babies of an 
 earlier period, so far as its physical powers are concerned. It 
 is the maturity of its intellectual faculties which is the most 
 striking of its characteristics. It is that, I think, which will 
 be most gratifying to you as a father." 
 /r. L.XV.
 
 1 8 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " I shall study it with much interest," replied Vicesimus ; 
 " but I can promise you no more." 
 
 They had now arrived at the nursery to which Time had 
 been conveying his latest born. It was a large and some- 
 what bare room, neatly decorated with geometrical figures 
 and anatomical and other diagrams. In a cradle in its 
 midst reposed a baby of a few hours old, with a look of 
 intense philosophical curiosity on its expressive countenance, 
 and an air of half melancholy, half cynical Pyrrhonism in its 
 speaking eye. A young woman who, from the extravagance 
 of her costume and the levity of her demeanour, appeared 
 to date from about the beginning of the last quarter of the 
 previous century, was officiously disturbing the meditations 
 of her infant charge by rocking the cradle with her foot. 
 After a few minutes spent in this occupation, the nurse 
 began to croon, half to herself, half to the baby, the words 
 of an early Victorian lyric : 
 
 ' ' Tom, Tom, the piper's son, 
 Stole a pig. and away he run." 
 
 Several times over she repeated this weird distich, and 
 on each occasion the rhyme seemed to send a shudder 
 through the baby's frame. At the fifth repetition of it he 
 held up a slightly creased forefinger, as though to enjoin 
 silence, and then, turning half round in his cradle, he de- 
 livered himself, after a moment's reflection, of the following 
 impromptu criticism : 
 
 ' ' Come ! come ! ' away he run ' - 
 
 Such grammar, girl, is worse than none. 
 Should we not read, ' the piper's man, 
 Stole a pig, and away he ran' ? '
 
 THE FIRS'! AGE. 19 
 
 " Meo periculo, of course," he added with a slight smile, 
 as he resumed his former position in the cradle. 
 
 The girl, somewhat abashed, accepted the emendation, 
 and continued her recital in the new form suggested by it. 
 But it was evidently an effort to her, and after a few minutes 
 she relapsed into silence. 
 
 " Is that a son to be proud of, or not ? " said Time, who 
 it is unnecessary to say was as invisible to the nurse as was 
 his companion, and whom the baby no doubt would not 
 have believed in if it could have seen him. 
 
 " Yes," said Vicesimus, " he is not what you would call a 
 backward child. The principles of grammar have evidently 
 got themselves thoroughly organised among the hereditary 
 faculties of the race. They now come by nature, as writing 
 and reading have done for many centuries. Still, I should 
 like to see some evidences of scientific information and 
 reasoning power. I hate precocious children, but there are 
 some things which even children ought to know, and " 
 
 " Hush ! " interrupted Time. " Unless I am mistaken, 
 the nurse is repeating to herself some lines of an early 
 biological poem which ought to provide exactly the sort of 
 test you require." 
 
 And, sure enough, the girl at that moment began to 
 repeat in a louder voice : 
 
 " How doth the little busy bee 
 Improve each shining hour, 
 And gather honey all the clay 
 From every opening flower/' 
 
 She was not allowed to get any further, for at this point 
 the baby struck in with the sarcastic interpellation :
 
 20 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " Hmv doth the little bee do this? 
 
 Why, by an impulse blind. 
 Cease then to praise good works of such 
 An automatic kind." 
 
 " What do you think of that ? " asked Time. 
 
 " Satisfactory enough," answered the infant Age. " It 
 shows dialectical alertness, and an early grasp of biological 
 truth. But listen ! " 
 
 Again the nurse resumed her recital, in these words : 
 
 " Let dogs delight to bark and bite, 
 
 For God hath made them so ; 
 Let bears and lions growl and fight, 
 For 'tis their nature to." 
 
 " Indeed ! " interrupted the baby, with an indescribable 
 bitterness of contempt 
 
 ' ' Indeed ! A brutal nature then 
 
 Excuses brutal ways. 
 Unthinking wench ! you little know 
 The problems that you raise." 
 
 The girl, however, apparently without heeding the inter- 
 ruption, continued : 
 
 " But, children, you should never let 
 
 Your angry passions rise ; 
 Your little hands were never made 
 To tear each other's eyes." 
 
 But again from the cradle arose that voice of relentless 
 criticism : 
 
 " Not made to tear ! well, what of that ? 
 
 No more, at first, were claws. 
 All comes of Adaptation, fool, 
 No need of Final Cause.
 
 THE FIRST AGE. 21 
 
 And if we use the hands to tear 
 
 Just as the nose to smell, 
 Ere many ages have gone by 
 
 They'll do it very well." 
 
 " Knows his Darwin eh ? " said Time, with a wink at his 
 young companion. 
 
 " Yes. I am not sure that his applications of his know- 
 ledge are always quite sound," said Vicesimus, " but that is 
 a matter of opinion. And now what are his moral senti- 
 ments like ? Is he abreast of the New Humanity ? That is 
 the question." 
 
 " And a question which ought to be settled," said Time, 
 " by the barbarous old nursery ditty that I hear that girl 
 repeating to herself." 
 
 And, as he spoke, the nurse broke out into that ancient 
 cradle song of our Aryan forefathers : 
 
 ' ' By, baby bunting, 
 
 Father's gone a-hunting, 
 All to get a rabbit's skin 
 To wrap the baby bunting in." 
 
 Slowly, and in a tone of profound seriousness, like 
 Arthur answering Sir Bedivere from the barge, the baby 
 delivered itself of the following protest : 
 
 ' ' The cruel sport of hunting 
 To moral sense is stunting, 
 And, since papa's objection 
 To useful vivisection 
 Convicts him, as it seems to me, 
 Of signal inconsistency, 
 I must, with thanks, decline the skin 
 For wrapping baby bunting in." 
 
 " Will that do ? " asked Time, in a tone of exultation 
 which might or might not be feigned.
 
 22 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " Quite, thank you ! " said Vicesimus. " My inspection of 
 the typical baby has been exceedingly interesting, and has 
 been attended with thoroughly satisfactory results. Nothing 
 could be more gratifying to a parent than the sight of so 
 thoughtful and up-to-date an infant. And to think that a 
 few short centuries ago a child of that age would have 
 been simply ' mewling and puking in his nurse's arms ' ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Time ; " he doesn't mewl much, does he ? " 
 
 " He doesn't mewl at all," replied Vicesimus ; " at 
 least, if I rightly understand what mewling is. And he only 
 pukes after a spiritual and allegorical fashion. His puking 
 is, in fact, the mere rejection of the crude and undigested 
 beliefs of the past." 
 
 "You ought to be very proud of him," said his aged 
 companion, grinning. 
 
 "No doubt I ought," said the other. "I ought, I 
 suppose," he continued, as he re-composed himself into 
 a- comfortable attitude in the arms of Time, " to feel like 
 the man celebrated in those lines of the old Roman poet : 
 
 ' Omnes omnia 
 
 Bona dicere et laudare fortunas meas 
 Qui gnatum haberem tali ingenio prreditum.' 
 
 You may take me away again. The only thing we have to 
 do now is to let Nature have its way with that child, and to 
 beware of forcing the tender plant."
 
 II. 
 
 THE SECOND AGE. 
 
 " Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel, 
 And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
 Unwillingly to school." 
 
 VICESIMUS watched his babies with interest, and, for 
 the whole time of his own babyhood, with sympathy. 
 He was much struck by their High Seriousness, as they 
 called it, in conversation with each other ; and he admired 
 it all the more because he felt that they derived it from 
 him. It was the same habit of mind by which he had 
 himself been led to rebuke what he regarded as the 
 frivolities of Time. For Time, indeed, he had no respect 
 whatever, or scarcely any. Even from his earliest moments 
 he had felt no disposition to recognise either relationship 
 or debt to him. As a matter of dry scientific fact, Vicesimus 
 was, of course, aware of his descent from him; and, equally 
 of course, he could not deny that his own mental posses- 
 sions and characteristics his thoughts and impulses, his 
 emotions and beliefs were in some sort a derivation and 
 inheritance from this despised old Abstraction. But he 
 heartily disliked the thought, and put it away from him at 
 every recurrence of it with an increasing impatience. 
 
 The truth was that Vicesimus resented the notion of 
 being the offspring of anybody. He liked to think of him- 
 self as self-caused, as a being who had sprung into existence
 
 24 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 out of an eternal primordial germ, which had itself always 
 existed, and had always contained the potentiality of Vice- 
 simus nay, which was Vicesimus from all eternity. He 
 objected strongly to Time's describing him as being, or as 
 possessing, or as being animated by, a spirit ; and though the 
 poverty of language compelled him sometimes to use that 
 word in describing his own nature and energy, he always 
 used it under protest : for spirit had a derivative sound 
 about it, and Vicesimus not only resented the thought of 
 his having been made, created, or begotten, but did not like 
 even to think of himself as "proceeding." 
 
 Nevertheless, he took considerable pride in the infant 
 generation of his own heirs, and would not for a moment 
 have admitted that their High Seriousness was self-originated, 
 or come by in any way save through inheritance from him. 
 
 But whatever the origin of the quality, Vicesimus de- 
 clared to himself, again and again, as he looked round the 
 world from his cradle, that it was never more urgently 
 needed by civilised mankind. For the sight of those 
 civilised members of the human race who had survived from 
 the days of the departed Seekleham filled him with dismay. 
 Indeed he often asked himself, in the words of the Mongolian 
 necromancer, whom he had occasionally heard quoted by 
 Time, whether civilisation was not a failure, and " the 
 Caucasian played out." All mankind, or all adult mankind, 
 were relapsing; he declared with bitterness, so far as their 
 intellectual tastes were concerned, into primitive savagery. 
 
 They were absolutely given over to Romances of 
 Adventure ! 
 
 Men and women, rich and poor, busy, or so-called busy, 
 and idle, alike, they were all in -the same case. Every
 
 THE SECOND AGE. 2$ 
 
 moment which they could steal from eating, drinking, 
 sleeping, and money-getting was devoted to the Romance 
 of Adventure. 
 
 The Red Indian sitting by his camp-fire was not more 
 eager to hear or to tell some story of the hunt or the battle. 
 The ancient Scandinavian or the modern Maori was not 
 fonder of fairy tales and folk lore. The generation bred up 
 on the Mysteries of Udolpho, and the Castle Spectre, and 
 Melmoth the Wanderer could not have been more devoted 
 to the supernatural. No man or woman over forty would 
 look at anything else. As soon as the housewife could 
 scramble carelessly through her domestic duties, as soon as 
 the father of the family could hurry away from his scamped 
 or neglected business, the whole household settled down to 
 the only kind of " evening at home " for which they cared. 
 Statesmen, ecclesiastics, barristers, solicitors, stockbrokers, 
 artists, architects, civil engineers, soldiers on leave, sailors 
 on shore, physicians, surgeons, and even general practi- 
 tioners deaf to the calls of the night bell, gathered, so to 
 speak, round their respective camp-fires, and read Romances 
 of Adventure to each other aloud. 
 
 The cheeks of middle-aged men flushed hot with generous 
 excitement, as in imagination they watched some act of 
 heroism by flood or field ; and elderly hearts beat faster at 
 the tale of some hairbreadth escape. Every night, in hun- 
 dreds of thousands of households all over the civilised world, 
 adult audiences sat breathless while treasures were discovered 
 in mysterious islands ; while unexplored continents were 
 forced to unveil their long-hidden secrets of blood, and terror, 
 and superstition ; while daring hunters skilfully " potted " 
 elephants, and still more adroitly preserved themselves ; and
 
 26 NUMBER TWENTV. 
 
 while ghosts and ghost-seers " taught the laws of death's 
 untrodden realm " to the mortal upon earth, with almost 
 enough confidence and precision to enable him to offer 
 himself for examination on the subject and qualify for a 
 degree. 
 
 And all this time studious infants, withdrawn in disgust 
 from the society of their frivolous elders, lay musing in their 
 cradles on " Robert Elsmere," or studying with pleasure the 
 exquisite literary vignettes of Dean Howells, the last of the 
 great American divines. 
 
 "The infants of this generation," exclaimed Vicesimus, 
 with enthusiasm, " will save themselves by their gravity, and 
 the adult world by their example." 
 
 Thus passed away the period of his childhood : thus, and 
 with this singular contrast between childhood and old age 
 ever before his eyes the one full of High Seriousness, the 
 other consumed by an unquenchable thirst for the Romance 
 of Adventure. Needless to say, the victory was to the young. 
 One by one the old and middle-aged schoolboys went off 
 upon an unknown adventure of their own, while grave 
 infants stepped out of their cradles, advanced, or rather 
 receded, from long clothes to " short coats," contracted still 
 further to knickerbockers, expanded again to trousers, and 
 finally went to school. 
 
 But then, to use a phrase struck out in a flash of inspiration 
 by the author of a Romance of Adventure, a " strange thing 
 happened." 
 
 The High Seriousness of the infant population had gone 
 on getting higher and more serious every year. From long 
 clothes to short coats, from short coats to knickerbockers,
 
 THE SECOND AGE. 27 
 
 from knickerbockers to trousers their gravity had continued 
 to increase ; but when they reached an age to be sent to 
 school they showed, to the surprise of their elders, no par- 
 ticular eagerness to avail themselves of that privilege of 
 their years. Whether it was that the energetic process of 
 self-instruction to which they had one and all subjected 
 themselves, from the very first hour of their existence, had 
 taught them everything, or had merely given them a distaste 
 for all teaching but their own, it were hard to say ; but 
 certain it is that they showed no desire to go to school, and 
 that they had not been long there before they began to 
 manifest the profoundest disgust for it. Crowds of them 
 might be seen daily, their morning faces shining with the 
 inspiration of independent thought, and transfigured by a 
 noble yearning for intellectual freedom, creeping like snails 
 unwillingly to school. Many of them had their satchels full 
 of thoughtful essays on the futility of education. 
 
 And Vicesimus, though at first he was shocked and scan- 
 dalised at their unwillingness to go to school, was, to his 
 own surprise, not long in sympathising with it. 
 
 This change in his feelings dated from the day when Time 
 at his request accompanied him on a visit of inspection to 
 one of the schools. It was a large, bare room, containing 
 however no more than about fifty boys, each seated at a 
 small table with an adult by his side. 
 
 " Who are the ' grown-ups ' ? " inquired Vicesimus, some- 
 what puzzled. 
 
 " Masters," replied Time. " Who should they be ? " 
 
 " But there are fifty of them ! " 
 
 "Well, why not?" 
 
 " But there are only fifty boys ! "
 
 28 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " Only fifty ! Would you have more boys than masters ? " 
 
 " I don't understand you." 
 
 " Don't you. It's perfectly plain. It is just because 
 there are only fifty boys that there are no more than fifty 
 masters." 
 
 " Yes, yes ! " said Vicesimus, impatiently, " but why so 
 many ? " 
 
 " So many boys ? " 
 
 " No, no ! so many masters. So many for that number 
 of boys." 
 
 " I don't know," said Time, carelessly, " unless it is 
 because that is the custom of the age." 
 
 " The custom of the age ? " said Vicesimus, indignantly. 
 " But /am the age, and I think that the proportion of one 
 master per head of the attendance is excessive. How comes 
 it that the schools are so preposterously over-staffed ? It 
 is not my animating spirit that has suggested such an 
 absurdity. That, at least, I can answer for." 
 
 " No," replied Time, " it is the development of a tendency 
 encouraged during his closing years by the late lamented 
 Seekleham. But you had better inquire a little into the 
 educational system. You will find that the large number of 
 masters is an inevitable incident of it." 
 
 " What is the curriculum ? " asked Vicesimus. 
 
 " There is no curriculum," was the reply. 
 
 Vicesimus stared at the aged Figure for a moment, and 
 then smiled slightly. 
 
 " Perhaps you don't understand me," he said : " I will ask 
 one of the masters." 
 
 " He will be certain not to understand you," said Time, 
 dryly. "All he knows and perhaps he has forgotten
 
 THE SECOND AGE. 29 
 
 that, unless the word occurs in a chronicler of his period 
 is that ' curriculum ' is the Latin for a racecourse." 
 
 " YCS ; but it also means a course of studies." 
 
 " Exactly, and that is why he won't understand it. There 
 is no course of studies not in any one school. If you want 
 to see a course of studies you will have to make a round of 
 schools. And you will find it a good day's work, I can tell 
 you. There are as many as ten schools, each exclusively 
 devoted to the teaching of a different section of the same 
 period. And it is not a long period, either. I remember it 
 as well as if it was yesterday ; indeed, as far as I am con- 
 cerned it was yesterday. From the accession of Henry II. 
 to the Council of Clarendon." 
 
 " Do you mean to say that this school is solely engaged 
 in teaching the history of " 
 
 " I mean to say," said Time, a little impatiently, " that the 
 parents of a boy who comes into this school at ten years 
 old, and leaves it at eighteen, may count upon his knowing 
 his English history from 1154 to 1164 as well as any parents 
 could desire." 
 
 " But nothing else ?" asked Vicesimus, wonderingly. 
 
 "No, nothing else. But then, you see, what he does 
 know he knows thoroughly and at first hand mark that, 
 at first hand. You see that pupil leaving the schoolroom 
 with his master; where do you suppose they are bound 
 for ? " 
 
 " I have no idea." 
 
 " The Record Office, my boy ! " exclaimed Time, in a 
 tone of triumph, real or assumed. " The Record Office, 
 to consult an ' original authority.' Now, perhaps, you under- 
 stand the reason why there is one master to each boy.
 
 30 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 Oh, there is no smattering here, I can tell you. Every boy 
 is thoroughly well grounded by the time he leaves 
 school." 
 
 "Yes," said Vicesimus, "in English history from 1154 to 
 1164. But would he be so thoroughly well grounded in 
 anything else ? Or only," he added, with a touch of bitter- 
 ness, " thoroughly well gravelled ? What does he do when 
 he leaves school ? Goes to a university, I suppose ? " 
 
 The irony with which Vicesimus put this last question 
 was apparent enough in his tone. But Time, without 
 seeming to notice it, quietly answered, " Yes." 
 
 " What ? " exclaimed his young descendant. " A univer- 
 sity ! A society for the study and teaching of the Univer- 
 sitas Scientiarum ? Or a body empowered to confer degrees 
 upon whosoever prove themselves adequately instructed in 
 the history of England from 1154 to 1164 ? " 
 
 "No," said Time, "it's longer than that. There is a 
 university for every ' period,' though there are schools and 
 degrees in every section of each period." 
 
 " But it is all history ? No other faculties ? " 
 
 " My dear boy," said Time, smiling, " the students them- 
 selves have no other faculties when they come here, and 
 they wouldn't appreciate any variety of that kind in their 
 university. To provide it would be useless, and perhaps 
 worse. It would mean either superfluity or confusion, or 
 possibly both." 
 
 " Is nothing but history taught anywhere ; in any school 
 or university ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " was the reply, " science is also taught." 
 
 "On the same admirable principle of the division of 
 labour?"
 
 THE SECOND AGE. 31 
 
 " Just the same, only it is perhaps carried a little further. 
 Take, for instance, the case of Anatomy. That subject 
 supports ten universities, each devoted to the study of a 
 different tissue for the ' soft parts ' alone ; and there is an 
 eleventh, the University of Osteology, which has just founded 
 a Professorship of the Spinal Column, and has a school, and 
 grants degrees for each separate bone in the body." 
 
 "The whole system," said Vicesimus, a little discon- 
 tentedly for such a child of science, " seems to be purely 
 scientific." 
 
 " Not entirely," was the reply ; " there is a considerable 
 portion of the public who are passionately devoted to the 
 study of the supernatural, and the various scientific bodies, 
 to save themselves from becoming too unpopular, have 
 humoured it. There has for some time past been a Chair 
 of Demonology ; there are several Professors of Spookical 
 Research, and they have quite recently founded a Reader- 
 ship in Palmistry." 
 
 " Is is there," said Vicesimus after some hesitation, 
 "any teaching of English literature either in school or 
 university ? " 
 
 " Literature ? I suppose you mean philology." 
 
 " I suppose I do,* said Vicesimus, meekly ; for he felt 
 more and more out of harmony with his environment. 
 
 " They are the same thing, you know. Yes, there are 
 several Philological Universities." 
 
 "Real literature," said the other after a pause, during 
 which he seemed to be reflecting deeply, " is of course the 
 same thing as philology ; but there is or was, I believe 
 a form of so-called literature which does not exactly square 
 with it. I mean Poetry. Do they teach poetry now ? "
 
 32 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " Teach it ? " echoed Time with a chuckle. " No, they 
 don't exactly teach it. They try and cure it." 
 " Eh ? " said the other, puzzled. " Cure it ? " 
 " Yes, cure it ! Don't you understand ? " 
 " Oh, to be sure of course ! " replied Vicesimus, ashamed 
 of not being up-to-date. " How stupid of me. You mean 
 
 that their Schools of Poetry " 
 
 " There are no Schools of Poetry only hospitals." 
 " Well, then, their Universities of Poetry 
 " There are no Universities of Poetry only asylums." 
 " What? Well, now, I confess I don't understand." 
 " Yet it is very simple. The sufferers whose cases are 
 not considered hopeless are sent to the hospitals. The 
 incurables are drafted off to the asylums. As a rule, if a 
 patient is not restored to prose in the course of a couple of 
 years, he is regarded as an incurable, and a place is found 
 for him in an asylum as soon as possible." 
 
 " I see," said Vicesimus : " they treat poetry as a 
 disease ! " 
 
 " Is it anything else ? " said Time, with a quiet smile. 
 " Well, no ; perhaps not. Only it isn't catching." 
 " I am not so sure of that," was the reply, " nor is the 
 scientific world. Indeed, I may say that the preponderance 
 of scientific opinion is the other way. The prevalent 
 treatment, in fact, presupposes it ; for, otherwise, I doubt 
 whether society would consider itself justified in putting 
 poets under restraint. In themselves, they are usually 
 harmless enough ; but it is felt that nothing short of a 
 system of rigid isolation will stamp out the disease." 
 
 Vicesimus remained silent for a few moments. In spite 
 of his air of indifference he did not feel quite comfortable.
 
 THE SECOND AGE. 33 
 
 Saturated as he was by inheritance with the scientific spirit, 
 he had to confess to himself that he was not altogether 
 reconciled to the theory that poetry was a mere form of 
 mental aberration. Whether it was that the discontent of 
 his school-boy children was reacting upon him, or whether 
 the feeling was self-originated, he could not bring himself 
 to regard an exclusively scientific system of education as 
 absolutely satisfying to his whole nature. 
 
 " Was poetry," he murmured, almost timidly, " considered 
 a disease in Old Seekleham's time ? " 
 
 " A good many things were not considered diseases in 
 Old Seekleham's time which people are wise enough now- 
 adays to recognise as such," replied the other, in that 
 provokingly ambiguous tone which might conceal either 
 earnestness or irony. "The truth is that it was mainly 
 owing to Old Seekleham himself that it ever became as 
 serious a matter as it is. The disease was rapidly becoming 
 endemic in the closing years of his life ; but he was one of 
 those who believe in leaving maladies of that kind to them- 
 selves. A fatal mistake. Nobody could have given the 
 system of neglect a fairer trial than he did with most 
 of his afflicted poets for at least twenty years before his 
 end." 
 
 " Yet the disease continued to spread ? " 
 
 " It continued to spread, and it showed signs of becoming 
 congenital in the race. You have heard of children ' lisping 
 in numbers ' pooh, no ! what am I saying ? Of course you 
 can't have, well, there always have been such children, and 
 they got at last to multiply at an appalling rate. Every 
 child began to ' lisp in numbers,' and in the last year of his 
 existence I didn't tell him about it ; the poor old fellow 
 
 IV. L.XV. -}
 
 34 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 was becoming imbecile, and I thought I would let him end 
 in peace society found that it would have to put its foot 
 down in earnest. Some well-known philanthropists took 
 the lead, and the scourge was resolutely tackled. Hence 
 the hospitals and asylums. They board out the children 
 who show inherited symptoms of the complaint, and endea- 
 vour by regular exercise, simple, healthful diet, and all the 
 rest of it, to eradicate the taint in childhood. Sometimes 
 they are successful ; and a baby who began by ' lisping in 
 numbers ' may be all right and quite competently pedestrian 
 by the time he is two or three years old. Another will 
 remain uncertain on his feet much longer, and, of course, if 
 when he reaches the period of youth he shows any well- 
 marked indications of the malady 'rolling eye,' for instance 
 they pack him off to the hospital without a moment's 
 delay. Nothing like taking the thing in time." 
 
 " What is the treatment ? " asked Vicesimus. 
 
 " Oh, it varies with the severity of the attack. For a 
 mild form of it, such as the blank-verse variety, a purely 
 herbal treatment is sometimes sufficient. Chopped leaves 
 of grass have been tried with good results. The ' lengths ' 
 become gradually more and more irregular, and the patient 
 after a while is discharged cured. But, as a matter of fact, 
 if any patient remains in, or can be reduced to, the blank- 
 verse stage, they generally discharge him." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Vicesimus. 
 
 "Yes, he is considered convalescent; as, indeed, he 
 usually is. He requires a keeper for a time, of course, but, 
 as a rule, he is soon able to dispense with his services. In 
 nine cases out of ten a so-called ' blank -verse patient ' is in 
 reality a cured man, and talks as rationally as the rest of us,
 
 THE SECOND AGE. 35 
 
 only a little more monotonously. It takes a quick ear to 
 distinguish it from prose." 
 
 " But the more acute cases ? " 
 
 " Well, they do the best they can with them : that is 
 about all you can say. That and that it's a thoroughly 
 humane system. No whips, or chains, or strait waistcoats. 
 Just a simple padded room for the lyrical cases, and that is 
 all. But really I don't know why we should go on discussing 
 this painful subject. I thought we had come here to study 
 the schools." 
 
 " I don't want to study the schools," said Vicesimus, 
 shortly. And he added, after another glance around him 
 at the fifty pupils each deep in his "ten years' section," 
 with his master at his side, " They are as painful to me as 
 hospitals." 
 
 He was surprised at himself when he had said it; and 
 not less so at the strength of those vague inward stirrings of 
 unrest which had forced the exclamation from him. 
 
 Time surveyed him for a moment with a curious sort of 
 smile, and then went his way. 
 
 But Vicesimus could not go that way. To his extreme 
 astonishment he found himself latest birth of Time as he 
 was in constantly strengthening opposition to what he had 
 supposed to be his own spirit, the Spirit of the Age. As 
 year succeeded year, and he watched the growing restless- 
 ness and discontent of the rising generation with the estab- 
 lished educational system and methods, he felt himself 
 drawn into ever-closer sympathy with their mood. It was 
 far from a willing sympathy ; indeed, he tried with all his 
 might to resist it. His pride revolted at the notion of taking 
 his cue from his own children.
 
 36 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " Can this," he often asked himself uneasily, " can this 
 he the experience for which Time prepared me ? Are these 
 young rascals really reacting upon their Era?" And he 
 struggled harder than ever to show them that he had no 
 notion of being influenced by them. 
 
 But it was in vain. They were influencing him more 
 and more powerfully every year. He rebelled as they did 
 against a culture which nourished nothing in human nature 
 but its critical, analytic, and deductive faculties, and left its 
 imaginative and emotional parts to starve. And he heartily 
 sympathised with their eagerness for the hour which should 
 bring their period of tutelage to an end, and set them free 
 to satisfy those instincts of their being to which science had 
 wholly failed to respond. 
 
 But before that hour came, another, big with momentous 
 consequences, had struck for Vicesimus himself. 
 
 How it all happened he never precisely knew. All he 
 could remember was that one day, as he lay asleep, he felt 
 a hand pressed lightly upon his closed eyelids, and that he 
 opened them and looked up. 
 
 Beside him stood a woman, fair as Aphrodite, grave as 
 Pallas, royal as Hera, with form and features of a divine 
 majesty and beauty, and with all the glory of the sunset, all 
 the mystery of the starlight, in her unfathomable eyes. 
 
 It was a radiant but a momentary vision. She smiled 
 upon him, beckoned to him, and was gone. 
 
 He sprang to his feet, and stared around him in amaze- 
 ment. Time was sitting near him, toying with his hour-glass ; 
 but Vicesimus took no note of the figure at his side, for he 
 was gazing upon a transfigured world !
 
 THE SECOND AGE. 37 
 
 Cloud and sunshine, sea and mountain, brook and 
 meadow, leaf and flower, the browsing kine, the soaring 
 lark, the skimming swallow, all were changed, all glorified; 
 beautiful beyond words, strange past all imagining. An 
 unspeakable peace contended with an intolerable yearning 
 for the mastery of his soul. 
 
 " Who who was that ? " he stammered at last. 
 
 " Who was what ? " asked Time carelessly. 
 
 "That that -" and Vicesimus stopped, speechless, as 
 "woman," "angel," "goddess," rose together to his lips. 
 ' ' She she who touched my eyes and woke me ; she whom 
 I saw for a moment, and who is gone." 
 
 "Touched your eyes, did she?" said Time. "Then 
 that's not all she has done to you, my young friend. You 
 have been touched somewhere else, you will find." 
 
 " In my heart ? " cried Vicesimus, eagerly. 
 
 " Perhaps ! " replied his companion drily, " but in your 
 head certainly. That attractive but half-witted female is 
 the mother, or the mistress, or the goddess, or the saint- 
 patroness they don't seem to know exactly what the 
 relation is, and they all disagree with each other about it, 
 and for that matter with themselves in different moods of 
 those unfortunate lunatics we have been talking of. That 
 is Poesy ! " 
 
 " Well, she is simply the most beautiful young creature I 
 ever saw," said Vicesimus with conviction. 
 
 " Young ! " echoed the other. " Pooh ! she is almost as old 
 as I am." 
 
 For the first time since his awakening Vicesimus turned 
 and looked at the speaker ; and a fresh flood of amazement 
 poured over him.
 
 38 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " But you ! " he exclaimed, " you are not old ! You are 
 young ! " 
 
 " You flatter me," said Time, grimly. 
 
 " Flatter you ! You don't suspect me of irony ? " 
 
 " No ! only of idiocy. I know the symptoms too well." 
 
 " Yes ! " repeated Vicesimus, growing more and more 
 excited, " you are young young, and fresh, and straight, 
 and smiling, and light of footstep ! And I who thought you 
 so old, and grey, and dull, so lame and bowed ! Why, where 
 is your goat-beard, man ? And your stoop ? And your 
 forelock ? And your leaden foot ? And what's gone of your 
 scythe ? And what's come to your hour-glass ? " 
 
 For, though the contents of the upper globe mysteriously 
 kept their level, its sands were sliding downward through 
 the neck with tenfold rapidity, in a thread of flying gold. 
 
 Vicesimus struck his rejuvenated companion on the 
 shoulder, and broke into a merry peal of laughter. 
 
 " Ay," grumbled Time, " laugh on, featherhead ! It is 
 easy to see what is the matter with you." 
 
 And, in fact, it was easy. Nothing in the world could 
 have been easier. 
 
 Vicesimus was in love !
 
 III. 
 
 THE THIRD AGE. 
 
 " And then the lover 
 Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad 
 Made to his mistress' eyebrow." 
 
 THE two stood looking at each other for a few moments 
 in a silence which Time was the first to break. 
 " Good-bye," he said. " I am going." 
 " Going ! " exclaimed Vicesimus, in sudden alarm. " Oh, 
 no ! stay ! stay, I entreat of you stay for ever ! I wish 
 oh, how I wish that you might never move again ! " 
 
 " Thank you ! " replied the other ; " but I have never led 
 a sedentary life, and, in spite of your kind compliments, I 
 am too old to form new habits. My rate of movement 
 varies, no doubt, but I never stop." 
 
 " Never stop ! " cried Vicesimus. " Well, no, not for 
 other people, perhaps. I could understand that. But not 
 for me?" 
 
 " No," said Time sturdily, " not for you ! " 
 The other gazed at him with a countenance in which 
 astonishment, disgust, and grief were gradually merged in 
 an expression of scandalised indignation. That at this 
 particular moment the moment when the world had, for 
 the first time, become enchanted to him, and nothing was 
 wanting for its enjoyment but that Time should just 
 oblige by staying where he was he should refuse to do so !
 
 40 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 The thing was simply monstrous. Vicesimus was too much 
 hurt and wounded to utter another word. 
 
 After a minute or two, Time spoke again. 
 
 " Besides," he said, with a touch of the old familiar irony 
 in his voice, " you must remember that in your present 
 mood you are not particularly good company for me. You 
 can hardly expect me to care about remaining with one who 
 for hours, days, weeks, months, perhaps years to come, will 
 be perfectly unconscious of my existence. No, Vicesimus, 
 I will say good-bye to you. You think you want me to 
 stay, but you don't. If I were to take you at your word, you 
 would soon be in a fever of impatience with me for not 
 moving. Later on, it will be different. I will pay you 
 another visit when you are some years older, and then 
 perhaps I shall believe in the sincerity of your invitation. 
 Then, when you ask me to stay, I shall know that you mean 
 it and you," he added to himself, " will wish you may get 
 it!" 
 
 He was gone in a moment, justifying one of his last 
 remarks in the very act of departing, for Vicesimus was 
 quite unconscious of his flight. 
 
 What is more, he remained so for several years to come ; 
 and so did a very large majority of his children. Even 
 while Time was uttering those farewell words of his, they 
 came pouring in a tumultuous, nay a rebellious, concourse 
 out of the schools. Their masters, one to every boy, 
 rushed after them, expostulating, exhorting, beseeching, 
 denouncing, but in vain. A madness against which they 
 were powerless to contend had seized their pupils. The 
 historical student no longer cared a fig about dates; the
 
 THE THIRD AGE. 41 
 
 student of anatomy snapped his fingers at the lecturer on 
 the sesamoid bones ; the youthful biologist ridiculed the 
 pretensions of his tutor to give him any real insight into 
 life. The revolt was general ; but the insurgents, having 
 flung off their chains, were, as in many other cases, at a loss 
 to know what to do with their liberty. They hurried aim- 
 lessly hither and thither, or gathered together in a confused 
 and swaying crowd. 
 
 It was the moment of Vicesimus, and he felt it. " They 
 have been influencing me long enough," he said to himself; 
 " it is time for me to breathe some of my new spirit into 
 them." And, stepping forward a pace or two, he shouted 
 in a loud voice : " Is it possible, my boys, that you don't 
 know the first thing to be done ? The poets ! The poets ! 
 Release the persecuted poets ! " 
 
 The effect was instantaneous. The words of Vicesimus 
 fell like a blow of the flint upon the steel, striking out the 
 fiery thought that had lain hidden in the mind of all. A 
 wild cry broke from the lips of the crowd, and hastily 
 snatching up such weapons as they could find, they hurried 
 pell mell to the nearest hospital. 
 
 Vicesimus followed them at a distance, curious to see 
 what would happen, and not without a feeling of pride that 
 he was regaining his ascendency over his children. 
 
 The hospital was reached, " rushed," and carried promptly 
 by assault. The medical staff were overpowered without 
 much difficulty. The doors were thrown open, and with 
 piercing but melodious cries of joy and gratitude the poets 
 streamed out. At the sight of the sun, no longer seen 
 through the windows of a ward, at the kiss of the breeze of 
 freedom on their brows and cheeks, at the voices of their
 
 42 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 young deliverers, some of them burst into song that broke 
 down in tears ; others (and these the stronger) into tears 
 that were staunched in song. And at the sight and sound 
 of them Vicesimus, fresh himself from the touch of Poesy, 
 was deeply moved. 
 
 Nevertheless, the effect was on the whole disappointing. 
 A large number, indeed much the larger proportion of then), 
 were indistinguishable from the crowd with which they had 
 mingled. It appeared pretty clear to him that the great 
 majority of them were completely cured. 
 
 On inquiring of the eminent expert in Poetic Lunacy who 
 filled the post of chief resident physician, and whose lower 
 lip was a little swollen and bleeding slightly from a blow, 
 he found that this was the actual fact. All but three or four 
 of the cases, he was told, had already yielded to treatment ; 
 and these three or four, added his informant, pointing to a 
 group of poets singing loudly at a little distance, would have 
 been sent next day to an asylum for Incurables. 
 
 " In fact," said the physician, with a somewhat forced 
 smile, which was not rendered more natural or graceful by 
 his wounded mouth, " it hardly seems worth while to have 
 broken into a hospital for so little." 
 
 Some of the youths present raised a cry of "To the 
 Asylums," but it was not taken up very heartily, and the 
 crowd which moved off in the direction of the nearest 
 asylum was but a small one, and returned empty-handed. 
 For it was thought advisable before proceeding to extremi- 
 ties to ascertain the wishes of the inmates, and it was found 
 that they were unanimous, to an Incurable, in favour 
 of remaining where they were. They were so thoroughly 
 convinced, they said, of the now hopelessly prosaicised
 
 THE THIRD AGE. 43 
 
 character of that world of men from which they had so 
 long been secluded, that they preferred to end their days in 
 the company of their own thoughts, and of their criticisms 
 of each other. 
 
 Such were the first disencharitments of Vicesimus since , 
 his awakening -but, alas ! there were many worse in store for 
 him. He had yet to learn of what refinement of cruelty the 
 goddess of his adoration was capable when she descended, 
 an ironical Diana upon an inadequate Endymion, to touch 
 the sleeping eyes of an essentially prosaic young Age. 
 
 For she had touched his eyes only, and not his lips ; and 
 in many a bitter hour of mute or stammering struggle did he 
 learn how heavy was the curse of denial which had accom- 
 panied the blessing of the gift. 
 
 Everywhere he sought the radiant vision which had once 
 revealed itself to him everywhere and always : on the 
 mountain, and in the meadow ; in the nestling hamlet, and 
 in the lonely glen ; by the sound of waters, and in the 
 deepest stillness of the woods ; at sunset, and at moonrise ; 
 and then most of all, then when he could almost feel her 
 breath in the dawn-wind, and hear her voice in the first 
 twitter of the birds, at the hour of daybreak. But never 
 again did he see her face to face. He knew, he felt, that, if 
 only he could do so, she would redeem the blessing from 
 the curse ; that she who had opened his eyes would then 
 also unseal his lips ; that the thoughts with which his 
 bosom was bursting would find a vent, and that the dumb 
 yearnings which would not let him rest would be stilled. 
 
 And many and many a time did he dream that she was 
 on the point of appearing to him, of speaking to him, of
 
 44 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 once more touching him with her benignant hand. Many 
 and many a time had he turned cold in the twilight at what 
 he thought was the rustle of her robe ; many a time and oft 
 had his heart stood still at her fancied whisper in his ear. 
 But he saw nothing nothing but the world of beauty and 
 mystery to which she had opened his eyes ; heard nothing 
 but the imprisoned voice within him wailing distantly for 
 release ; felt nothing but the old, eternal, speechless pain. 
 And then for a season his anguish would become too 
 great to be borne. His passionate prayers to the adored and 
 fugitive goddess would well-nigh rise to the fury of an im- 
 precation against her who had troubled thus cruelly his brute 
 repose ; who had grafted the longings of the immortal 
 upon the powers of the child ; who had taken from him the 
 tranquillity of the sightless only to condemn him to the agony 
 of the dumb. But even at this moment, when his madness 
 reached its highest at the moment when he was about to 
 curse at once the giver and the gift, the peace of Nature 
 would descend upon him, and his longings would die away 
 like the fretful sobs of an infant ; and with a shudder at 
 the blasphemy which had trembled on his lips, and a 
 blessing upon her who had unveiled to him the face of 
 his Mother, unknowable and unspeakable though she were, 
 and ever might be, he would sink to sleep. 
 
 From all which, however, it will be seen that Poesy 
 incurred a serious responsibility when she descended, an 
 ironical Diana upon an inadequate Endymion, to touch the 
 sleeping eyes of an essentially prosaic young Age. 
 
 But, in the meantime, how fared it with his children ?
 
 THE THIRD AGE. 45 
 
 with the children into whom he had breathed some of his 
 own adoration of Poesy, without any of that faculty of 
 expression which, alas ! was not his to communicate? 
 
 U'ell, some few of them had as bad a time of it as himself. 
 They longed as ardently as he to master the divine language, 
 and strove as vainly with their task, and suffered as acutely 
 from their failure. 
 
 But with the others it was different. They promptly 
 and complacently invented a jargon of their own, and, in 
 order that they might be disturbed by no misgivings on the 
 matter, assured each other once a week, and sometimes 
 oftener, that it was really and truly the divine language. 
 They sighed like furnaces all over the country, and com- 
 posed ballads to the eyebrow of Poesy, which were un- 
 doubtedly woeful if nothing else ; and as most of them, 
 unlike Vicesimus, had never even seen the goddess whose 
 eyebrow they celebrated, they had naturally no reason for 
 doubting the merit of any particular ballad, or for suspect- 
 ing it to be unworthy of its subject or unfaithful to its 
 original. 
 
 This was the reply to Poesy of the children of a prosaic 
 young Age ; and in the course of time, by dint of the 
 invariable law of interaction, it began to exert a reflected 
 influence on the prosaic young Age himself. As the ardour 
 of his worship abated with maturing years, and the echoes of 
 the true though imprisoned voice within him grew fainter 
 and fainter, and became at last inaudible, Vicesimus began, 
 he too, to sigh like a furnace, and to compose ballads to the 
 eyebrow of Poesy, and finally got to believe that they were 
 the genuine thing. 
 
 But not for long. He had other children besides the
 
 46 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 poetasters hardy, sturdy, action-loving, commonplace chil- 
 dren, conscious of their prosaic origin, and proud of it ; and 
 their influence was from the first a competing one with 
 the other. It did not, of course, avail to reveal to Vicesimus 
 the spiritual inadequacy of his own and his other children's 
 attempts at poetry, but it inspired him by degrees with 
 an intellectual contempt for their weakness. He longed 
 for something in the poetic order, which, if not divine, 
 should at least be vigorously human for something 
 strong, manly, and robust. If that was not to be attained 
 by him or by his children, then away with art for ever, and 
 welcome the life of action ! 
 
 But there was still an element of hope remaining. There 
 was a poetry of action, as there was a poetry of thought and 
 of emotion. What had the drama been doing during all 
 those years of woeful ballad^making and imitations of the 
 furnace ? 
 
 " What has the drama been doing ? " echoed Time, who 
 at this moment appeared unbidden at Vicesimus's side, 
 " Come with me and I will show you." 
 
 " Has it degenerated into mere word-spinning, like lyric 
 poetry?" asked Vicesimus, as he prepared to follow his 
 guide. 
 
 " Oh no ! " said Time. " I can't exactly say that. It 
 does not suffer from an excess of manner like other forms 
 of poetic literature. Indeed it rather despises style and the 
 arts of language altogether. You can see that from the 
 history it has gone through. Just before Old Seekleham 
 expired, the realistic drama got to be so overrun with stage 
 directions that they ate up the text ; and then a new school 
 arose, which started with the principle that the highest form
 
 THE THIRD AGE, 47 
 
 of dramatic literature was dumb show. However, the mute 
 drama only lasted a few years, after which they found it 
 necessary to go back to words again. There was nobody, I 
 suppose, with enough literary gift to keep the other style 
 going. But ever since then the question of manner has ceased 
 to interest, and everything now turns on matter. And a 
 precious turn things have taken in that respect," he added, 
 with a laugh. 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Vicesimus. 
 
 " Yes ! " said Time, " it was the Realists' doing. They 
 carried their principles to such a pitch that they provoked a 
 Sentimental Reaction which but here we are." 
 
 And Vicesimus found himself, side by side with his 
 conductor, in a well-appointed study, where, unseen by its 
 occupants, a youth and an old man, he listened with 
 disgust and amazement to the following 
 
 COLLOQUY OF INGENUUS AND THE AGED DRAMATIST. 
 
 " Yes, Ingenuus," said his venerable companion, smiling, 
 "you may indeed be thankful that you were born in a 
 happier age than your parents. You would hardly have 
 enjoyed your visit to the theatre so much last night had 
 your youth been spent under the same conditions as mine. 
 Ah ! Othello, or rather Virtue Triumphant, for though I 
 say it that shouldn't, perhaps, the second title is more to my 
 liking, was a very different play then." 
 
 " Dear Uncle," said the youth admiringly, " how much 
 the world owes to you for having remodelled the denonment 
 of that now delightful drama ! Yet, to us of the present 
 day, it seems hard to realise the idea that it could ever have 
 ended otherwise than with the beautiful scene of mutual
 
 48 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 reconciliation that you wrote for it so humane, so hopeful, 
 so satisfactory all round. Indeed, indeed, we owe you 
 much." 
 
 " Nay," replied the old man modestly. " It was no great 
 merit of mine, after all. Like all reformers, I found my 
 most powerful ally in the monstrous growth of the evil which 
 I attacked. It was the excesses of pessimism twenty years 
 ago that made inevitable the reaction which I led. Perhaps 
 if the pessimists had left Hamlet and Macbeth alone, we 
 should never have got a hearing for the first product of that 
 reaction, the play which prepared the way for the Lear, the 
 Romeo and Juliet, and that most successful of my revisions, 
 the drama you saw last night." 
 
 "T*he first product of the reaction?" said Ingenuus, 
 inquiringly. " I am not quite sure that I know what that 
 was." 
 
 " It was my Shylock ; or, The Forgiving Jew " replied the 
 aged dramatist. " And, as I have said, I doubt whether I 
 should have found a public so prepared to accept it had it 
 not been for the extravagant fashion in which pessimistic 
 Realism had dealt with Hamlet and Macbeth" 
 
 " But is it possible, dear sir," said the youth, " that pessi- 
 mistic Realism found anything to complain of in the original 
 Shakspearean form of those two dramas ? " ^ 
 
 " Indeed, it is possible," was the answer. " The conclusion 
 of Hamlet in particular gave great offence to the Realists. 
 They were shocked at the extreme clumsiness of the ar- 
 rangement whereby the Prince and Laertes exchange foils, 
 and they pointed out I own with some force that a com- 
 plete failure to avenge his -father's death would be more in 
 keeping with Hamlet's irresolute and unpractical character
 
 THE THIRD AGE. 49 
 
 than the tardy and doubtful success which attends his efforts. 
 Hence, in their later version of the play, they made him fall 
 to the ground completely paralysed by the wound from the 
 poisoned foil, and expire in great agony without being able 
 to communicate his secret to any one but Horatio, who in- 
 timates by a meaning glance at Claudius, as the curtain falls, 
 that he intends to use it for purposes of chantage" 
 
 " Dear me ! " exclaimed Ingenuus, " that was a dreary 
 denoumcnt indeed." 
 
 " Was it not ? " said the Shakspearean reviser. " But I 
 almost think that the end of Macbeth was made more de- 
 pressing even than that." 
 
 " Indeed ! you surprise me. And how? " 
 
 " Well, the Realists declared, you see, that a superstitious 
 coward such as Macbeth was would have collapsed at once 
 on hearing that the juggling fiend had ' paltered with him 
 in a double sense.' Indeed he does, if you remember, say 
 to Macduff, ' I'll not fight with thee ! ' " 
 
 " True, but Macduff replies, 
 
 ' Then yield thee, coward, 
 And live to be the show and gaze o' the time: 
 We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, 
 Painted upon a pole, and under writ, 
 " Here may you see the tyrant." ' 
 
 Upon which Macbeth indignantly rejects the proposal, and 
 bids Macduff ' lay on.' " 
 
 " Exactly ! Well, the Realists made him accept the pro- 
 posal. In their version he surrenders, and consents to 
 become the show and gaze o' the time; stipulating only 
 a condition to which Macduff, at the instance of Malcolm, 
 
 \v. L.-XV.
 
 50 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 reluctantly accedes that rotten eggs and other missiles 
 shall be barred. The curtain falls and a very effective 
 ' curtain ' it was thought in those days on the entrance of 
 the painters who have come to paint him upon a pole." 
 
 " And that was actually the end of the play ? " 
 
 " Scenically speaking, it was ; though there was a hint in 
 the closing lines of the dialogue that Macduff, elated by his 
 conquest over the usurper, had formed the ambitious design 
 of murdering Malcolm, and founding a military despotism 
 in Scotland, with himself as the first military despot." 
 
 " I do not wonder," exclaimed Ihgenuus, " that drama of 
 this depressing sort should have led to a revolt, and that 
 the public mind should soon have been filled with an eager 
 longing for something more cheerful, more human since 
 human nature, after all, is cheerful if left to itself than this 
 wretched stuff." 
 
 " Not with so eager a longing, either," said the old man, 
 a little nettled at finding that the influence of the " natural 
 reaction " was in danger of being, as he thought, exaggerated 
 at the expense of his own credit. " I had to educate the 
 public into a taste for my Shakspearean revisions, and I was 
 obliged to do it by degrees. I began, as you know, with 
 the Merchant of Venice, and pointed out how absurd it was 
 to describe as a ' com edy ' a play which turns on th 
 dishonest defraudation of a Jew who has been previously 
 robbed and deserted by his daughter. Do you recollect 
 the passage in the Trial Scene in which Portia pronounces 
 judgment? It is there that my revision begins. Shall I 
 recall it to you ? " 
 
 " Pray do so," said Ingenuus, eagerly. " I should like it 
 of all things."
 
 THE THIRD AGE. 51 
 
 " You remember, then, that speech of Portia's which ends 
 with the words 
 
 ' Nay, if the scale do turn 
 But in the estimation of a hair, 
 Thou diest ; and all thy goods are confiscate.' 
 
 Well, my version continues thus : 
 
 ANT. Nay, learned doctor, but this must not be. 
 Take my good thanks, I know thou meanest well, 
 But who saith flesh, saith blood : 'tis even so 
 In lay and common parlance of the time, 
 And shall the law say other? God forbid ! 
 For law that useth not the people's speech, 
 But wraps itself in quirks, and grows astute 
 With sleight of words to catch unwary men 
 In pitfalls, is a danger and accurst. 
 
 POR. Noble Antonio 
 
 ANT. Prithee, by your leave 
 
 Bear with me ; I have little more to say. 
 I hunger not for death, yet would I scorn 
 To owe the sherds and scantlings of a life 
 To trick of plea or clerkly subtlety. 
 Shylock, approach ! behold my bosom bared 1 
 Nay, start not ! It is thine, thy thing, thy pledge. 
 Take it, foreclose upon my mortgaged flesh. 
 Issue elegit on this realty 
 
 Of skin and nerves, yea ! on this fair demesne 
 That here extended lies, awaiting writ, 
 This poor, pale surety of its bankrupt lord. 
 To't then ! Be speedy ! Carve thy penalty ! 
 
 POR. Why doth the Jew pause ? Take thy forfeiture. 
 
 " I see," said Ingenuus, " that you retain the language 
 of the original wherever it is possible. ' 
 
 " Precisely so," said the dramatist. " I worked in a spirit 
 of reverence for my author.
 
 52 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 SHY. [Raising Ms arm, then suddenly lowering it.~\ 
 
 I will I 'tis in vain ! I cannot strike ! 
 Antonio, thou hast conquered. LQ, I yield ! 
 My wrath hath fizzled out, and that fierce hate 
 I bore towards the Gentile name and race 
 Hath, at the cooling breath of thy reproof, 
 Turned all to concord and sweet arnity. 
 Now in my breast there springs the better thought 
 That 'twere a burning shame and foul reproach 
 To Israel if one of Gentile blood 
 Should in nobility outdo a Jew. 
 That shall not be, God willing. Here I rend 
 The bond that bindeth thee, Antonio. [He tears the bond. 
 
 Away, ye two stern judges of my claim! 
 
 [He flings away the scales. 
 And thou, their horrid beadle ! [He flings away the knife. 
 
 I will ask 
 
 No penalty, no forfeit, no escheat. 
 Give me my principal with interest 
 At five per cent, per month and let me go. 
 
 BAS. O gentle Jew ! 
 
 DUKE. O strange ! 
 
 GRA. O Gentile Jew ! 
 
 Good Shylock, I had hatched a merry jest 
 To fling at thee, but shall not get it oft". 
 Me thou hast conquered, as Antonio thee ! 
 
 SHY. The cash ! I would be jogging ! 
 
 FOR. Tarry, Jew, 
 
 And here," said the dramatist, looking up from the 
 book, " I have introduced bodily the whole of Portia's 
 next speech, in which she points out to Shylock that he has 
 brought himself within the penalty of the law which enacts 
 that he who seeks the life of any citizen shall forfeit half 
 his goods to the threatened party, and the other half to the 
 State. Whereupon Antonio cuts in again, addressing 
 Portia
 
 THE THIRD AGE. 53 
 
 Your pardon, sir, but that may never be. 
 
 Law cannot punish what the law directs, 
 
 Nor Justice scourge her plaintiffs, howsoe'er 
 
 Perversely in the right. Bethink thee, too, 
 
 The Jew sought not my life save while he deemed 
 
 That I resisted his most righteous claim: 
 
 Whatever scheme he harboured was renounced 
 
 On my submission, and his bosom's floor 
 
 Was with the fan of pity throughly purged 
 
 When to his better feelings I appealed. 
 
 And give me leave, sir doctor, to observe 
 
 That all the burden of this usurer's faults, 
 
 His spite and over-reaching lust, descends 
 
 On thee, that in the very novelty 
 
 And freshness of his noble deed canst strive 
 
 To catch his feet in quillets. Fie on us! 
 
 If we, with all our Christian privileges, 
 
 Are worse than Ebrews. 
 
 FOR. Merchant, thou art right, 
 
 Ami thy reproof hath cut me to the heart. 
 For it doth wound more than the Christian in me. 
 It smites the woman. I am Portia. 
 
 BAS. O day and night ! The lady Portia ! 
 
 POR. Ay. 
 
 And this, Nerissa I 
 
 GRA. Father Abraham! 
 
 Your pardon, Jew ! No Gentile oath will serve. 
 
 POR. And here I lay aside my doctor's robe, 
 Abashed and overcrowed by Shylock's deed, 
 Antonio's words, and my own fatal lack 
 Of moral sense. So let my sisters all 
 Be taught of Portia that they strive no more 
 With men in the professions, least of all 
 Compete with them in practice of the law ; 
 Seeing that woman, fair in all things else, 
 Is never fair in play, and once engaged 
 In the sharp battle of the courts, and hot 
 With thirst of victory, as a general rule 
 Would stoop to sharper practice than a man."
 
 54 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " Dear me ! " interrupted Ingenuus. " Wasn't that rather 
 a risky passage ? " 
 
 " Not at all," was the reply. " It just caught the audience 
 at the very top of the reaction against the Woman's Move- 
 ment. It was cheered to the echo. But don't interrupt. 
 I am almost at the end. 
 
 DUKE. Ay, but no woman is the State, nor I 
 That rule it, and the State shall do thee right, 
 Shylock, thou much abused and injured man ! 
 From this day forth I do release thee quite 
 From all the civil disabilities 
 Of Jewish blood. Thou shall deliver up 
 Thy badge of sufferance to be cancelled. None 
 On the Rialto, no, nor otherwhere 
 Within our city, shall assault thee more ; 
 None taunt thee with thy trade, or tweak thy nose, 
 Or spit upon thy Jewish gabardine. 
 Thy daughter shall restore thee what she took, 
 And young Lorenzo shall to prison straight, 
 There to abide the judgment meted out 
 By law to the receiver of stolen goods. 
 Nor shall he clear himself till he redeem 
 The turquoise that thou had'st of Leah. Ay, 
 He shall give back thy ring, or, in its place, 
 A wilderness of monkeys : rest content. 
 Meanwhile, the story, Shylock, of thy wrongs 
 And how thou did'st o'erlook them, and ignore, 
 Shall on the city's archives be inscribed 
 With laud deserved. So that all aftertime 
 May keep the memory of the thing, and know 
 How better far it is to spare than smite, 
 How much forgiveness doth surpass revenge." 
 
 " Beautiful ! " exclaimed Ingenuus with unfeigned enthu- 
 siasm. " So Shakspearean in manner, and yet so thoroughly 
 up to date in sentiment."
 
 THE THIRD AGE. 55 
 
 " You think it Shakspearean ? " said the old man, gratified. 
 " Most distinctly so," was the reply. " Look at these 
 lines, 
 
 ' Nay, start not ! It is thine, thy thing, thy pledge, 
 Take it, foreclose upon my mortgaged flesh. 
 Issue elegit on this realty 
 Of skin and nerves.' " 
 
 " Yes," murmured the other complacently, " that was to 
 show Shakspeare's knowledge of legal technicalities. I am, 
 you know, a believer in the theory that he devilled for 
 Bacon when the future Lord Keeper was at the bar." 
 
 " Yes," exclaimed Ingenuus, " and the rest of the 
 passage, 
 
 ' Yea, on this fair demesne 
 That here extended Jies awaiting writ. 
 The poor pale surety of its bankrupt lord.' 
 
 Or this again 
 
 ' His bosom's floor 
 Was with the fan of pity throughly purged.' 
 
 Eminently Shakspearean ! " 
 
 " Ye-es," said the other a little doubtfully, " but the next 
 line, 
 
 ' When to his better feelings I appealed. ' 
 
 And later on 
 
 ' If we with all our Christian privileges.' 
 
 Do those lines strike you as equally Shakspearean ? They 
 sound to me just a little modern and commonplace, 
 and I don't feel quite sure that there are not a few more 
 blemishes of the same kind, especially in Portia's last speech, 
 and here and there in the concluding address of the Duke." 
 " I didn't notice any," said Ingenuus, who was thoroughly
 
 $6 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 imbued with that noblest characteristic of the culture of his 
 period its indifference to faults in the execution of any 
 work of art, so long as it inculcated a sound moral lesson. 
 " It seemed to me exactly what Shakspeare would have 
 written throughout, except that it was animated by a far 
 broader humanity than Shakspeare was capable of feeling. 
 But beautiful as your Shylock is, I think it is surpassed by 
 that lovely and imposing tragedy I saw last night. Yes ! 
 Othello ; or, Virtue Triumphant, is your masterpiece." 
 
 " I believe it is generally so considered," said the Dramatist 
 bashfully.' 
 
 "What a magnificent situation is that where Othello, 
 with his arm upraised, at the words, 
 
 ' By the throat I took the circumcised dog, 
 And smote him, 7 
 
 and just about to descend and bury the knife in his heart 
 at the word ' thus,' is suddenly spell-bound by hearing 
 once more the faint notes of the Willow Song. It is the 
 most thrilling moment that I know of in the whole of English 
 drama." 
 
 " Yes, the situation has merits ! " said its inventor, his 
 withered cheek illumined by a faint blush. 
 
 " And then the fine concluding scene that follows ! " 
 exclaimed his companion excitedly, snatching up the Revised 
 Shakespeare and beginning to read. 
 
 ' OTH. O Desdemona ! Desdemona ! living ! 
 O ! O ! O ! '" 
 
 " Note," said the Dramatist parenthetically, " the rever- 
 ence of the treatment. Except for the alteration of the word 
 ' dead ' to ' living.' I have strictly followed the text.
 
 THE THIRD AGE. 57 
 
 MON. Livest thou, gracious lady ? 
 DBS. Ay, fair sir. 
 
 And by the grace of Heaven many a year 
 Shall live to cure the madness of my lord 
 With love's sweet hellebore. To yonder pillow, 
 Wherewith his frenzy would have stifled out 
 My innocent life, I owe it that I live. 
 For it is an air-cushion, giving back 
 The aliment it took, a kindly foe 
 To the beleaguered fortress of my breath, 
 That fed the garrison its siege had starved. 
 So lay I feigning death, and then, anon, 
 As soon as my dear lord had turned his back, 
 I flung it off. 
 
 OTH. Sweet chuck ! 
 
 IAGO. I am amazed. 
 
 Nor know I whether my perplexed heels 
 Tread down the firm-based earth, or raised aloft 
 Stare upward and affront the hovering moon. 
 
 GRA. That shall thou know full soon, thou spawn of hell ! 
 General, take order with him, that his doom 
 Be short and sharp. 
 
 DES. Nay, uncle, let me speak ! 
 
 I fain would plead for him whose bolt hath failed 
 To reach its sighted victim, and recoils, 
 An ill-thrown boomerang, upon his head. 
 Spare him. Othello ! let him go his way. 
 Mar not the joy of our recovered loves 
 With deeds of vengeance visited on one 
 Who did but act according to his kind. 
 
 OTH. Angel of grace, thou sayest well. His guilt 
 May be but his inheritance. lago 
 Approach, thou dcmi-devil. 
 
 IAGO. Noble Moor 
 
 OTH. Nay, never hang thy head ! We are but men, 
 And thou didst only what thy nature bade. 
 Ancient, look up ! 
 
 IAGO. Nay, prithee ask me not, 
 
 For needs must that I commune with the ground
 
 58 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 Whereon my sin lies painted evermore 
 In portraiture of blood. 
 
 OTH. It is not so, 
 
 I pray you do not so consider of it, 
 My wife yet lives. 
 
 IAGO. Ay, General, but mine own ? 
 
 My fair Emilia ! O, I have slain 
 The dearest she that ever blest a he. 
 I will betake me to a monastery, 
 And there with penance and with prayer atone 
 For blood. 
 EMIL. [Rising.] Nay, not for mine ! 
 
 IAGO. Emilia ! 
 
 EMIL. Take heart, lago ! thou hast harmed me not, 
 The rib thou smotest was not mine nor thine 
 'Twas but my corset's. I am whole and sound ! 
 
 IAGO. The saints be praised ! For of my blackest crime 
 I am at least assoilzied. Yet, farewell ; 
 It still is fitting that I take the vows 
 For guilt unpurged. I murdered Roderigo. 
 
 MON. Roderigo ! 
 
 IAGO. Ay ! Together we did plan 
 
 Assault on Cassio, and young empty-pate 
 Keing by him he made at shrewdly hurt, 
 And lying wounded, I, for that I feared 
 His blabbing tongue, despatched him. Rest his soul ! 
 He had his qualities : and albeit a snipe, 
 I do repent me that I took his life. 
 
 Enter RODERIGO. 
 
 RODERIGO. Say that thou tried'st to take it, ancient. 
 
 IAGO. Ha ! 
 
 ROD. Honest lago, I did know thee better 
 Than thou clid'st wot of, and did never care 
 To trust thee further than the eye can reach. 
 Wherefore, when I went Cassio-hunting with thee, 
 I wore a shirt of mail from which thy point 
 Turned blunted. I have not a scratch. 
 
 DBS. Good youth, 
 
 I do rejoice with thee. 
 
 OTH. But see lago,
 
 THE THIRD AGE. 59 
 
 How straitly he cloth still peruse the earth. 
 
 What ails thee, man ? What else hast thou to purge ? 
 
 Speak ! 
 
 IAGO. I have wounded Cassio in the leg. 
 And to a monastery must retire. 
 
 Enter CASSIO. 
 
 CASSIO. Not so. 'Twas in a portion of the limb 
 Which was, yet was not, parcel of myself. 
 For the divinity which shapes our ends 
 Did fashion mine in such wise that for me 
 Tis meet I plump them out. Thus did thy blow 
 Fall harmless, striking that which none can kill, 
 An artificially fatted calf. 
 
 OTH. This is good news, lieutenant. Now, by heaven ! 
 Thou shall be officer of mine again. 
 I did suspect thee rashly. 
 
 CAS. General, 
 
 Rashly is scarce the word. I do not think 
 I am exaggerating when I say 
 That all the evidence whereby my guilt 
 Wa^ proved to thee, and on the which thou gav'st 
 lago orders for my taking off, 
 Would not suffice the lightest dairy wench 
 That cuffs a cat for stealing of her cream. 
 
 OTH. I do confess it, and I ask thy pardon. 
 
 CAS. To thee, as free as to thine ancient there, 
 I grant it. 
 
 OTH. Ha ! 'tis well. Now let us in ! 
 And with a rousing catch awake the night ! 
 For all goes smoothly now which was so crost, 
 And virtue wins which hud so well-nigh lost." 
 
 " What do you think of that ? " asked Time, as the aged 
 Dramatist ceased reading, and the youth stooped reverently 
 to kiss his hand. 
 
 " Think ! " replied Yicesimus, with a disgust too deep for 
 words. " No more drama for me ! I am evidently neither 
 a p( 'die nor a dramatic Age.
 
 IV. 
 THE FOURTH AGE. 
 
 "Then, a soldier, 
 
 Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, 
 Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, 
 Seeking the bubble reputation 
 Even in the cannon's mouth." 
 
 POETRY, meaning thereby the art of giving adequate 
 expression to the poetic emotion, is a very frail and 
 delicate product of the human mind. It is reared with 
 difficulty and dies easily. Not so that substitute for poetry 
 which the prosaic invent for themselves : that is a hardy 
 perennial indeed. Nothing kills it : neither the blasts of 
 contemptuous criticism, nor the frosts of utter neglect. 
 It not only thrives, but thrives best, in the lightest and 
 shallowest soils ; and after the exhaustion of everything 
 in the human mind which corresponds to the chemical 
 constituents necessary to successful agriculture, it continues 
 to reproduce itself with an imperturbable fertility, and 
 a supreme disdain for the principle of the rotation of 
 crops. 
 
 Hence it must not be supposed that the discovery on 
 the part of all the more intelligent spirits of this period 
 that the Age was an incurably prosaic one, had any 
 immediate effect in checking the production of verse. It 
 was turned out, or ground out either a flour mill or a 
 
 60
 
 THE FOURTH AGE. 61 
 
 barrel organ will equally suit the metaphor in the same 
 enormous quantities, year by year. Fewer and fewer 
 people paid any attention to it ; but that made no differ- 
 ence. It was there if they wanted it, or should hereafter 
 want it, and in the virtuous consciousness that they were 
 making useful provision for a possible change in the public 
 taste, the multitudinous manufacturers of the article con- 
 tinued placidly to produce it in a constant, and even it 
 was thought in some quarters an increasing amount. 
 
 Still the restlessness which had made the bulk of man- 
 kind intolerant of it displayed a yet more rapid growth. 
 It became clearer and clearer every day that civilised 
 humanity had outgrown that age of " calf love" which, for 
 the individual member of the species, finds its most charac- 
 teristic expression in the hopeless attachment of a youth 
 for a middle-aged woman, while with the race itself it takes 
 the form of an equally desperate, and no less transient, 
 passion for a now elderly Muse of Poetry. And just as the 
 youth who has outgrown his adoration of the mature 
 charmer very often takes to yachting, or big game shooting, 
 or " ranching," or globe-trotting, or to some other form 
 of more or less energetic activity, so it happened at this 
 juncture with the civilised human race. Action ! action ! 
 action ! was the Demosthenic exclamation though not by 
 any means in the same sense as the Athenian orator on 
 the lips of all. Their disgusted satiation with the exercise 
 of their imaginative faculties did not send them back again 
 to science : it impelled them to those forms of activity 
 with which the brain, in any of its functions, should have 
 as little as possible to do. 
 
 Of course, however, it is hardly necessary to say that
 
 62 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 these various changes in the mood of civilised humanity 
 assumed different degrees of importance in different nations. 
 In all of them the scientific spirit had at first been strong. 
 In some the subsequent revolt against it had been equally 
 marked ; in others it was hardly felt at all. While one 
 nation had remained tolerably loyal to its early traditions 
 of scientific culture, and had only taken the poetic malady 
 in a mild form, another had had that complaint badly, 
 while a third had been ravaged by it to a positively 
 calamitous extent. And the recovery from it exhibited 
 corresponding features of difference. Here would be found 
 a convalescent people which had taken refuge in science, 
 and there another which had thrown off the poetic fewr, 
 not to relapse again into the somewhat lymphatic condition 
 of a scientific community, but to pass into a state hardly 
 less febrile than that from which they had emerged of 
 insatiable activity. 
 
 Peoples in such a mood become the natural prey of the 
 military spirit, and one immediate effect of the extinction 
 of the imaginative and aesthetic impulses was the passing of 
 a tremendous wave of militarism over the whole civilised 
 world. The sighing lovers and the eyebrow-hymning 
 ballad-mongers of a few years back became the swaggering 
 swashbucklers of the newer time. They had had, of 
 course, no more experience of actual warfare than Cassio 
 according to the assertion of his envious comrade ; but 
 they made up for want of practical acquaintance with their 
 subject by the copiousness of their theoretical knowledge. 
 Enough remained to most of them of their old scientific 
 habits to make them solicitous of technical accuracy, and 
 they soon learned to use all the military terms of art which
 
 THE FOURTH AGE. 63 
 
 had been in use from the days of Alexander downward, 
 with unerring precision. 
 
 Vicesimus watched their proceedings with the liveliest 
 sympathy, for in virtue of his own original impulse towards 
 action, combined with the effect of their reacting influence 
 upon him, he was himself more restless than any of them. 
 His head ran incessantly on military matters, and he 
 now affected a soldierly demeanour and style of dress, 
 and a formidable cut of beard. He became touchy and 
 quarrelsome in his intercourse with Time who had now 
 come back to him, not looking nearly so youthful, and 
 with a disagreeable habit of " hanging heavily " on 
 Vicesimus's hands. He was continually rebuking his aged 
 companion for some fancied slight, and would at these 
 moments astonish him, even with his long experience of 
 human inventiveness in the matter of expletives, by the 
 exceeding strangeness of his oaths. 
 
 " Glory," he would often declare, with many of these fancy 
 imprecations, "is the only object worthy of man's pursuit." 
 
 " Humph ! That's rather a strange thing for you to say, 
 isn't it ? " Time would observe on these occasions. " Now 
 to me it seems rather an old-fashioned idea." 
 
 " Old-fashioned ! " exclaimed Vicesimus almost fiercely. 
 " What in thunder do you mean ? The love of fame is 
 a natural instinct of humanity, implanted in the breast of 
 mankind a score of ages before all this condemned and 
 withered nonsense, this Tophet-born and Gehenna-begotten 
 rubbish about the brotherhood of the race." 
 
 " But, apart from the humanitarian aspect of the question, 
 how does it look to the scientific eye ? What has science 
 to say to this propensity ? "
 
 64 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " Science be inflated ! " cried the other ; " unless that, 
 indeed, is a superfluous imprecation. Science had better 
 mind its own scientific eye, I can tell it ! The world is 
 not going to sit at its feet for ever, and that is a thing 
 that the most go-ahead of my sons will pretty soon explain 
 to it. In another year or two they will be doing that in 
 a very rough fashion, I expect." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Time. 
 
 " Yes, indeed ! " replied Vicesimus. " One of the most 
 active and adventurous of the races whom I am proud to 
 own as my sons, is getting on worse and worse terms every 
 year with one of the most scientific of them, and there 
 must soon be a collision" between the two. The sooner 
 the better, / say. Yes, by the everlasting jingo ! I should 
 like nothing better than to see them have a brush with the 
 sneaks." 
 
 " The sneaks won't fight, eh ? " said he to whom so 
 many exhausted fighters had failed to " come up." 
 
 " Not they," said his companion, contemptuously. " It 
 seems impossible to kick them into the slightest display of 
 spirit." 
 
 " Why don't you breathe some of your own into them ? " 
 asked Time, with a suspicion of irony. 
 
 " I have tried, and it's impossible. They are quite 
 insensible to my influence. Or, rather," continued Vicesi- 
 mus with a little confusion, " they are so absolutely subject 
 to the influence that I exercised over them thirty years ago, 
 that it is quite beyond my power to move them now. I 
 made a scientific race of them when I was in my cradle, 
 and now they seem hopelessly incapable of imbibing any 
 of the adventurous and martial spirit that I am diffusing
 
 THE FOURTH AGE. 65 
 
 over the rest of mankind. Well, they will have to go 
 under ; that is all." 
 
 " Isn't that rather hard upon them ? " 
 
 " Not the least. Why hard ? Serve them right for being 
 behind the Age." 
 
 " But you are the Age, and it was you from whom, as 
 you admit, they imbibed the scientific spirit." 
 
 " Yes, but I have moved on, and so must they, or take 
 the consequences. Indeed, it is arguable whether I am 
 the same ' I ' that I was thirty years ago. The question of 
 personal identity but there ! you must have a finite exist- 
 ence like my own to be able to understand that question. 
 It is useless," he added, with a pitying glance at Time, "to 
 attempt to explain it to a poor devil like yourself, whose 
 whole associations are with the Infinite. Your conscious- 
 ness must be a very vague, and misty, and unsatisfactory 
 sort of a thing, won vieux. However, it suits you, I sup- 
 pose, so I don't know why / should bother my head about 
 it. Meanwhile, I think I can promise you some amuse- 
 ment in a year or two. My Soldiers are getting morfe and 
 more sudden and quick in quarrel every day, and it can't 
 be long before they drag those wretched Scientists into the 
 field by their very noses." 
 
 About eighteen months after this conversation, Time and 
 Vicesimus stood side by side on a grassy knoll in the midst 
 of a broad champaign in Central Europe. The latter was 
 equipped with a powerful field-glass, and seemed in very 
 high spirits. 
 
 " Here they come at last," he exclaimed excitedly, after 
 a prolonged survey of the landscape through his glass 
 
 W. L.-XV.
 
 66 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " That's the First Army Corps, the nearest to us ! over there, 
 by the edge of the wood ! The Second, I expect, will come 
 in sight in a minute or two in that direction, about seven 
 miles to the left." 
 
 " Where is the Scientist army ? " asked Time. 
 " Well, if you can call the wretched thing an army at all, 
 it is, I believe, about twenty miles away from here, behind 
 that distant hill. With their ridiculous electric batteries, 
 and their absurd flying machines, and their preposterous 
 Army Asphyxiator, they might really quite as well have 
 stayed at home." 
 
 "They wanted to, I believe didn't they? " asked Time, 
 drily. 
 
 "Very much indeed," repli'ed Vicesimus. "They diplo- 
 matised desperately to avoid this war almost begged and 
 prayed, in fact, to be let off their kicking. It was only 
 when the crisis reached its acutest stage that they ventured 
 upon anything like a threat : and then, what sort of a threat 
 was it ? It reminded one of a desperate schoolboy uttering 
 dark menaces of revenge upon his masters, which he means 
 to carry out by laying a train, with sixpenn'orth of gun- 
 powder, under the door of the fives court. They only 
 vaguely warned their enemy that they had been studying 
 the application of science to war with great assiduity for 
 many years, and had brought the art of destruction to so 
 
 high a pitch of There they are ! " 
 
 " Who ? " asked Time ; " the Scientists ? " 
 
 "The Scientists! Pooh! No, you will never see them. 
 
 The Second Army Corps, there, rounding that spur of the 
 
 hill between the river and that patch of corn-land. Gallant 
 
 fellows ! they will face the two big micro-smith erine guns, I
 
 THE FOURT.H AGE. 67 
 
 warrant you, and pluck the ' bubble reputation ' out of their 
 very mouths. Do you make them out ? " 
 
 " I did," said Time ; " but, somehow or other, I don't 
 now." 
 
 He continued to gaze through the field-glass for a few 
 moments, and then, turning to his companion, he observed : 
 " It seems a funny thing to say, Vicesimus, but, do you 
 know, I don't think there is any Second Army Corps. 
 Look for yourself;" and he handed the field-glass to his 
 companion. 
 
 Vicesimus surveyed the distant landscape through it long 
 and intently. 
 
 " You are quite right," he said at last. " There is no 
 Second Army Corps. Or, rather, to be strictly accurate," 
 he continued, after pursuing his investigations a little longer, 
 "there is no longer any living body of men answering to 
 that name. But if," handing the glass back again to Time, 
 " you will be good enough to examine closely the spot which 
 was just now covered by a minute, insect-like, very slowly 
 moving body, you will, I think, find its place filled by a dark, 
 motionless mass of the same dimensions. That, I take it, 
 is what remains of the Second Army Corps." 
 
 " I agree with you," said Time, after a short study of the 
 point indicated. " And how do you explain the " 
 
 " I offer," said Vicesimus, " the conjectural explanation 
 that the electrical machine has proved more successful than 
 I anticipated. I suspect that the Scientists have found 
 means of communicating to the Second Army Corps a life- 
 destroying shock of electricity. But now let us turn our 
 attention to the First Army Corps." 
 
 This fine body of men were now within little more than
 
 68 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 half a mile of them, and the sight of their waving banners, 
 the sound of their martial music, and the glitter of the sun 
 on their arms and accoutrements, had a most exhilarating 
 effect. 
 
 " Look at them ! " exclaimed Vicesimus with enthusiasm. 
 " There is happiness for you, if you like : the only form in 
 which man can really know it the happiness which derives 
 from life, and is yet independent of it, nay, finds its 
 chiefest stimulus and sustainment in the very contempt of 
 life. The Soldier is the only human being who has ever 
 seized upon the philosophy of Stoic and Epicurean alike, and 
 appropriated to himself whatever is good in both the frank 
 enjoyment of all that is pleasurable in existence, combined 
 with the devotion to an end which is higher than existence. 
 Look at those gay and jubilant thousands who are marching 
 past us a few furlongs off. There is not one of those 
 fellows who will not enjoy his camp-fire carouse this evening 
 with a heartiness which no civilian could rival or even 
 realise. Yet there is not one of them who, if he heard that 
 there were to be no more camp-fire carouses for him, but 
 that to-night there would begin for him the silent bivouac 
 of eternity, would not receive the tidings with joy, if only 
 they came accompanied with the promise that he would die 
 in the achievement of some heroic and famous exploit, with 
 the eyes of all his countrymen upon him and their praises 
 ringing in his ears. Ah, the 'bubble reputation'! the 
 ' bubble reputation ' ! How true it is that 
 
 " Is this it ?" interrupted Time. 
 
 "Is this what?" 
 
 " The ' bubble reputation ' ? Look ! " 
 
 As he spoke a species of bulla, of vast dimensions, but
 
 THE FOURTH AGE. 69 
 
 propelled in some invisible fashion at a pace quite twenty 
 times as fast as a balloon, came speeding towards the First 
 Army Corps, and having arrived at a point exactly over 
 them, stopped suddenly, hovered a moment, then descended 
 rapidly, and burst noiselessly in their midst. Half a dozen 
 of the nearest regiments fell flat on their faces like so many 
 packs of cards, and others at a greater distance dropped 
 their arms and staggered like drunken men. 
 
 " What do you make of that ? " asked Time. 
 
 "The new destructive gas, I suppose," said Vicesimus, 
 a little disconcerted. "The Patent Instantaneous Army 
 Asphyxiator. I heard of it some time ago, but never 
 thought there was anything in it." 
 
 " In that," said Time, surveying the prostrate soldiery 
 through the field-glass, " in that you were clearly wrong. 
 I think we may take it that it contains some gaseous com- 
 pound of exceptionally potent properties. But here is a 
 new arrival ! What, pray, is this ? " 
 
 As he spoke a singular-looking machine, apparently pro- 
 pelled by a system of revolving fans, was seen rapidly 
 approaching through the air. It passed completely over 
 the army, dropping dynamite, like sand from a balloon, as 
 it swept above the masses of advancing men, ploughing a 
 broad furrow through them as it went. 
 
 " That, I imagine," said Time, " is the new flying machine 
 that you spoke of with so much contempt." 
 
 " New ! " said Vicesimus, with some ill-humour, " it is not 
 new. It was invented in Old Seekleham's days by a man 
 of the name of Edison ; but it has never been used before, 
 and, as I say, I never believed it would work. However, of 
 course if it will work there is no doubt that it is a handy
 
 70 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 machine to have on a campaign, because you can start it 
 from a distance of fifty miles." 
 
 " What's that ? " exclaimed Time with a start, as a terrible 
 sound struck his ear, and a huge projectile came shrieking 
 through the air towards them. 
 
 " I suspect," said Vicesimus with deliberation, " that it 
 is the micro-smitherine shell." 
 
 "Indeed," said Time, "so that works too, then ! The 
 Scientists are evidently no contemptible foes." 
 
 Before Vicesimus could reply, the mighty shell came 
 hurtling through the air, and exploded with unerring ac- 
 curacy over the advancing host, laying low another five 
 hundred men. A second shell followed, and a third, and 
 then a second visit from the flying machine, and then another 
 from the Patent Army Asphyxiator, and then a dozen more 
 of the explosive projectiles, each alighting with the same 
 fatal precision on its mark and leaving the same tale of 
 dead behind it. 
 
 There was no flinching on the part of the doomed 
 soldiery. They plodded steadily on with dogged deter- 
 mination, but without a spark of enthusiasm, their officers 
 encouraging them from time to time with the assurance that 
 the apparently deadly aim of the enemy's guns was more a 
 matter of luck than skill, and that in a little while they 
 would find his fire becoming less destructive. 
 
 But that welcome experience was not destined to befall 
 the unhappy men. The guns continued to be served with 
 the same destructive effect, and in less than half an hour 
 the First Army Corps was annihilated. 
 
 " How far off are those micro-smitherine guns, do you 
 suppose ? " asked Time. " Forty thousand yards ? "
 
 THE FOURTH AGE. 71 
 
 " At least that distance, as well as I can calculate ! " was 
 the reply. 
 
 " Ha ! " said the other, " you don't have so far to go 
 nowadays then to seek the ' bubble reputation.' It is to be 
 found, it appears, at twenty miles from the cannon's mouth. 
 That is if you ever get it at all. But will all those ,poor 
 fellows five score thousand of them be famous for ever ? 
 A hundred thousand reputations. It seems impossible. 
 Glory would become a drug." 
 
 "Time," said Vicesimus severely, for he was ill-pleased 
 with the tone of his companion, " let us return home." 
 
 They bent their steps homeward, and walked on side by 
 side for a few minutes in silence. 
 
 "Yet they were brave fellows," said Vicesimus, auditxy 
 pursuing his train of thought. 
 
 " Undoubtedly ! " assented Time. 
 
 " Far braver in marching thus steadily against an invisible 
 enemy than if they had seen him face to face." 
 
 " Beyond all question." 
 
 " And it certainly required no bravery to blow them up 
 or asphyxiate them from a distance of twenty miles." 
 
 " None whatever." 
 
 " Well ? " said Vicesimue. 
 
 " Well ! " said Time. 
 
 Again they walked on for a few hundred yards without 
 speaking. 
 
 " Time," said Vicesimus at last, " you have had consider- 
 able experience of life, and I have often heard you reason 
 with a certain shrewdness from observed phenomena. Tell 
 me candidly what lesson you think is to be drawn from 
 the scene you have just witnessed."
 
 72 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " If you ask my candid opinion," said the other, " the 
 lesson I am disposed to draw is this : that there is now no 
 more place in the world for the virtue of military courage 
 than there appears to be aptitude in it for the accomplish- 
 ment of poetry." 
 
 His companion looked at him intently for a few moments, 
 as though he would read his very soul. 
 
 " I am beholden to you," said he, " for your candour, and 
 will be equally frank with you. I am very much of your 
 opinion on that matter."
 
 V. 
 THE FIFTH AGE. 
 
 " And then, the justice, 
 In fair round belly, with good capon lined, 
 With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut, 
 Full of wise saws, and modern instances ; 
 And so he plays his part." 
 
 THE military career is not, of course, the only outlet 
 for the physical energies of the human race, or the 
 only form of fulfilment which man's inward impulse to 
 action can discover for itself. But it is, and always has 
 been, one of the most important; and at the particular 
 period at which it ceased, from the causes detailed, to 
 supply this satisfaction, there were few other resources open 
 to the man of active and adventurous instincts. Such 
 were scarcely even to he found upon that home of adven- 
 ture and activity 7 the sea. All the ironclad navies of 
 the world had by this time destroyed each other, and 
 maritime warfare had consequently fallen into disuse. 
 Nearly all the big game had been extirpated before the 
 humanitarian spirit had led to the total abandonment of 
 field sports ; and Vicesimus himself had had the honour 
 of capturing the last polar bear by kindness at the foot 
 of the structure from which it takes its name. Central 
 Africa had been thoroughly explored, and its inhabitants 
 civilised with remorseless severity. There were no in-
 
 74 NUMBER TWENT\. 
 
 accessible mountain peaks in any part of the world, and 
 all but the very highest were served by well-appointed 
 and extensively patronised railways. And even those 
 which could not be ascended in this way were so abun- 
 dantly supplied with ropes, chains, ladders, huts, automatic 
 luncheon-pillars, and other appliances of civilisation, that 
 there ceased to be any merit of adventure in scaling 
 them. Yachting in bad weather remained almost the only 
 amusement which any man with a taste for excitement, 
 and a delight in the exercise of the virtue of courage, and the 
 faculties of vigilance and resource, would care to indulge 
 in ; and for many years Vicesimus passed part of his life 
 upon the sea. On land, if it was difficult to find danger 
 it was at least easy to get activity ; and incessant activity 
 in hard physical exercise was almost as good an anodyne 
 as danger for the malady of thought. Vicesimus, in 
 common with those of his sons who took after their father, 
 applied it steadily and persistently until close upon his 
 fiftieth year. 
 
 As he approached that age he felt his physical energies 
 unmistakably slackening, and was sensible therewith of a 
 growing abatement of the impulse towards their exercise. 
 But he felt at the same time, and not a little to his surprise, 
 that a new contentment had been born within him. He 
 looked back upon the phases of life through which he had 
 passed, upon the mental habitudes and emotional moods 
 which had once been his, with the astonished perception 
 that he understood them for the first time. His severely 
 scientific boyhood, his passionate and poetic youth, were 
 gone for ever; he would never again think the thoughts of 
 the former period, or feel with the feelings of the latter ;
 
 THE FIFTH AGE. 75 
 
 but he found, to his astonishme.it and tranquil pleasure, 
 that a power over them had been given to him which in the 
 days when those thoughts and feelings were still possible to 
 him he never had possessed. His detachment from them 
 had brought him this compensation, that he could survey 
 them critically, but still with sympathy and appreciation, 
 from without. Every day Vicesimus became calmer, more 
 comfortable, more optimistic. His relations with Time once 
 more assumed a satisfactory shape. Vicesimus found his 
 companionship generally agreeable, and his pace for the 
 most part accommodating. There was no longer the old 
 necessity for either entreating him to go slower, or for 
 " putting him along " with those passionate exhortations 
 which the Western American addresses to his mule. 
 
 Somewhat, too, to the surprise of this now ripe Middle 
 Age, his love of poetry, and of art in general, not only 
 revived, but after a little while began to glow again with 
 a sort of mild autumnal radiance in his breast. It had not 
 the freshness of his springtime yearning, nor the fierceness 
 of his summer passion, but it was none the less sweet nay, 
 it was, perhaps, almost the sweeter to him for that. It 
 might have been a mere efi'ect of advancing years, and 
 possibly of growing intellectual egotism ; but his present 
 mood seemed to him altogether preferable to that through 
 which he had passed in youth, and he would hardly have ex- 
 changed his placid, full-orbed, all-embracing contemplation 
 of the mental image of his once adored goddess, even for a 
 second actual vision of her as on the day when she had 
 unsealed his eyes. 
 
 He would often discuss with Time this change which 
 had taken place in himself ; and Time, without the slightest
 
 76 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 hesitation, appropriated to himself the entire credit of it. 
 Vicesimus never disputed the point with him, being, 
 indeed, inclined to think that the boast was on the whole 
 justified. 
 
 He was more interested than ever in his children, or 
 rather the children of his infancy, and very curious to see 
 whether the course of their mental and spiritual growth 
 had been the same as his own. They had of late ceased 
 to influence him to the same extent as formerly, and he 
 was afraid that the experience might have been mutual. 
 His researches on this point, however, led to results which 
 he considered very satisfactory, and which he soon felt a 
 strong desire to communicate to his companion. 
 
 "Time," he said one day, "you were good enough to 
 show me the Typical Baby. I should like to return the 
 compliment by showing you the Typical Middle-Aged 
 Man." 
 
 Therewith he conducted him to a library, somewhat 
 resembling that in which they had heard the venerable 
 Dramatist read his Shakspearean revisions to his nephew, 
 only that it contained a good many more books, and there 
 were no busts of its owner. 
 
 " There," said Vicesimus, pointing with some pride to a 
 figure seated at the writing table ; " there you have him ! 
 That is the Typical Middle-Aged Man." 
 
 The person indicated was beyond doubt middle-aged, 
 and he possessed another characteristic, which, if not 
 exactly typical of the middle-aged, is not uncommon among 
 them. That portion of his body which lay below the 
 fourth button of his waistcoat was nobly developed, and 
 had it been a torso (instead of an abdomen) would have
 
 THE FIFTH AGE. 77 
 
 dangerously challenged the supremacy of the Farnese 
 Hercules. His somewhat formally-cut beard was already 
 streaked with grey, and, but for a certain touch of severity 
 in his eye, his face was not an ungenial one. 
 
 A vast pile of volumes lay heaped on the table before 
 him, and he was engaged at the moment in passing a large 
 paper-knife between the leaves of one after another of 
 them, and drawing the instrument, after each introduction 
 and withdrawal of it, gently under his nostrils. 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed Time, in a tone of slight disappoint- 
 ment, " a critic ! So that is your Typical Middle-Aged 
 Man." 
 
 "Yes," said Vicesimus complacently, "it is said that 
 every man at fifty is either a fool or a physician. The 
 critic is the physician of the mental, moral, and spiritual 
 life, and every man whose life-history has been mentally, 
 morally, and spiritually a healthy one, ought by that age, 
 if he is not a fool, to be a fully competent judge of these 
 various sorts of health, and of the best modes of preserving 
 them in himself and others." 
 
 " He seems in fair bodily health," said Time ; " except, 
 perhaps, for a slight tendency to corpulence." 
 
 " The result of his sedentary habits," said the other. 
 
 " Yes, and of a diet no doubt generous as his criti- 
 cisms." 
 
 " Possibly," was the reply ; " and as just, also, from another 
 point of view. In fact, it is Shakspeare's own justice : ' In 
 fair round belly, with good capon lined.' " 
 
 " Chicken and champagne," muttered Time, too low to 
 be heard. " But am I to understand," he continued, in a 
 louder tone, " that every middle-aged man is a critic ? "
 
 78 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " Of life, yes ! " replied Vicesimus ; " and for the reasons 
 I have just given you. As to literature, that, of course, 
 depends upon circumstances." 
 
 " Upon what circumstances ? " 
 
 " Well, upon the circumstance of his having literary 
 tastes." 
 
 " And I suppose upon his possessing, or thinking he 
 possesses, the critical faculty the capacity of judging what 
 is good or bad in letters ? " 
 
 " Yes, upon his thinking so ; that is all. If he thinks 
 himself a literary critic, he is one." 
 
 " Why so ? " inquired Time. 
 
 "Because, to be mistaken on such a point, he would 
 have to be an incompetent critic of life and human nature, 
 as personified in himself. And this, I have already said, 
 it is impossible for the Middle-Aged Man to be." 
 
 " I see ! " said Time. Then, after a moment's reflection, 
 he added, " You mean always supposing him not to be a 
 Middle- Aged Ass ? " 
 
 " Exactly," replied Vicesimus ; " always supposing him 
 not to be a Middle-Aged Ass." 
 
 " Let us sum up a little," continued the other. " Your 
 position, as I understand it, is this : that any man of good 
 intelligence " 
 
 " And who trains it properly ! " interjected his com- 
 panion. 
 
 " And who trains it properly, will by the time he attains 
 middle-age have become a competent critic of life ; and 
 therefore, also if in his mature judgment he believes him- 
 self to be such a competent critic of literature." 
 
 "That " said Vicesimus, " is exactly my position,"
 
 THE FIFTH AGE. 79 
 
 " It appears impregnable," said Time, in a musing tone. 
 " My only difficulty in connection with it is to know where 
 the incompetent critics come from." 
 
 " I see no difficulty," was the reply. " They consist 
 entirely of young men whose judgments are not yet 
 matured, and of middle-aged men whose intelligence is 
 either not good, or who have not properly trained it. It 
 is from these two classes that the incompetent critics are 
 drawn ; or, at least, from these and one other." 
 
 " And that is ? " 
 
 " The reviewers of books," said Vicesimus. " I must 
 admit that they supply a certain contingent indeed, per- 
 haps, the majority of incompetent critics ; and it will not 
 do, therefore, to leave them completely out of account. 
 But enough of literary criticism, to which you seem to 
 attach extraordinary importance, though literature is surely 
 only a fragment, and not a very important fragment, of 
 human life. To be a judge of men and women is a far 
 greater thing than to be a judge of books. 1 ' 
 
 " Yes," said Time, drily, " you have explained, and at 
 some length, that it is the greater which includes the less. 
 But then the less happens to be the easier art to practise. 
 I should imagine that any literary critic, furnished with a 
 certain equipment of fixed principles the ' wise saws ' of 
 his art and possessing a fair acquaintance with modern 
 instances of their application, could play his part creditably 
 enough. Don't you think so ? " 
 
 " No doubt ! no doubt ! " replied Vicesimus, somewhat 
 absently, for his thoughts had wandered away from literature 
 to life. " lint," added he, recovering himself, " it is absurd 
 to appeal to me to confirm you on such a point ; you, the
 
 8o NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 greatest critic nay, the one unerring critic of literature in 
 the world." 
 
 Time did not reject the compliment, but he was unable 
 to acknowledge it, for his companion had again relapsed 
 into reverie, and was evidently unconscious of his existence. 
 
 Thus then had commenced the period which Vicesimus, 
 studying it in the persons of his middle-aged children, and 
 feeling it with their feelings, recognised both during its 
 course and, with still more clearness, at its close, as the 
 happiest of his life. It was not of many years' duration ; it 
 was, indeed, the shortest of all the stages, with perhaps the 
 single exception of infancy, into which that life had been 
 divided : shorter than his restless boyhood, shorter than 
 his dreamy and romantic youth, shorter far than his active 
 and adventurous prime. 
 
 He enjoyed it not keenly, it is true ; but calmly, amply, 
 equably, without fluctuation of spirits or reactions of mood. 
 
 Nor was it till afterwards that he discovered it to have 
 been founded on illusion, and learned that, critic of life and 
 human nature as he fancied himself, he had started from a 
 fundamental misconception of his real attitude towards the 
 world around him a radical error in the interpretation of 
 his own moral and mental state. 
 
 He had fancied that his happiness arose from purely 
 spiritual sources ; that it was that of the philosopher who 
 had outgrown the dominion of the passions, and had found 
 perfect contentment in contemplation. 
 
 He had yet-to learn how large a part of that contentment 
 still depended upon material conditions which were year by 
 year undergoing insensible transformation ; how much of
 
 THE FIFTH AGE. 81 
 
 it was derived from the very survival of those physical 
 appetites which he had fancied extinct, but which, though 
 they had ceased to tyrannise over life, remained to give it 
 warmth and colour, and variety and animation. 
 
 In a word, he had yet to learn that the happiness he had 
 experienced did not hail, as he imagined, from the Porch of 
 Zeno, but from the Garden of Epicurus ; that it was not due 
 to the conquest of the material by the spiritual part of 
 him, but to a perfect, if temporary, balance of the two. He 
 was to discover that the declining powers of the body, and 
 the still strengthening faculties of the intellect, had reached 
 the former in their descent, the latter in their ascent the 
 same level, and that it was from the transitory realisation of 
 his whole being, on its physical and intellectual side alike, 
 that he derived that strange satisfaction, falsely supposed 
 by him to be philosophical, which had filled the too brief 
 period of his middle age. 
 
 With his children, this was at longest but a matter of a 
 few years, and it might be abridged by one or other of two 
 causes. With some of them, the passions took so long to 
 abate into mere appetites that old age overtook them before 
 that abatement was accomplished ; and they even, in certain 
 cases, remained the foolish slaves of their youthful lusts to 
 the day of their deaths. With others, the disappearance of 
 the appetites themselves after their succession to the pas- 
 sions was abnormally rapid. But, even in the happiest 
 cases of all, a short decade saw the period out from 
 beginning to end. 
 
 It lasted longer with Vicesimus, in right of the hundred 
 years of life which he was destined to achieve. The 
 
 melancholy hour which sounded for all of them before 
 ir. L. \r.
 
 82 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 their sixtieth year, was for him delayed till close upon his 
 seventieth. 
 
 But it struck at last, and, with the same clearness with 
 which the same sad conviction had been carried home to 
 his children, it was borne in upon Vicesimus that he had 
 grown old.
 
 VI. 
 THE SIXTH AGE. 
 
 " The sixth age shifts 
 Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, 
 With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side ; 
 His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide 
 For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice, 
 Turning again toward childish treble, pipes 
 And whistles in his sound." 
 
 MANY people are so heartless or so thoughtless for 
 no doubt this is one of those evils which are more 
 often wrought by want of thought than want of heart that 
 it never occurs to them to consider how a Century may 
 suffer as it grows old. To them, for all the freedom with 
 which they personify it, it is a mere abstraction. They talk 
 of the spirit of the Age, and the wants of the Age, and the 
 conquests of the Age, and the weaknesses of the Age, yet 
 without any apparent consciousness that they are speaking 
 of a real entity, or using anything more than a convenient 
 form of words to express the sum of the human beings on 
 the earth at any given moment. So feeble is the imagina- 
 tion of the average man that he can hardly be expected to 
 realise a Century to himself as " a pantaloon " or as " lean 
 and slippered." To represent it to the mind with spectacles 
 on its nose, a pouch at its side, and its legs clothed in 
 an unbecomingly loose pair of trousers, would strike him 
 
 83
 
 84 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 probably as a daring flight of anthropomorphism, from which 
 he would shrink back in alarm. 
 
 "This description," he would say, "may apply very well 
 to the children of Vicesimus born immediately after his 
 own birth. They, of course, have by this time become old. 
 Their eyesight is failing, their legs are possibly wasting, their 
 voices may be beginning to show signs of age, but to attri- 
 bute these material and physical changes to a Century is to 
 talk nonsense." 
 
 And so, of course, it would be but for the divine grace 
 of Allegory, which (except for those lost souls who be- 
 lieve that it is itself nonsensical) has been the salvation 
 of some of the most apparently reprobate nonsense in the 
 world. 
 
 Vicesimus, of course, needed no explanations on the 
 subject. He knew that the slippers, and the spectacles, and 
 the well sav'd youthful hose which distinguished the out- 
 ward guise of his aged children, were in his case only 
 figures of speech ; but none the less keenly on that account 
 did he feel and display those mental and moral characteristics 
 of senility which they typified. 
 
 In these days he dwelt much with Time in imagina- 
 tion, yet little with him in fact. He cared scarce anything 
 for him when present, but was eager to recall him when he 
 had passed. Still there were many colloquies between them, 
 and in all of them the rapid senescence of Vicesimus was 
 painfully apparent to his companion. 
 
 His spirits, to begin with, were extraordinarily unequal. At 
 one moment he would indulge in a burst of triumphant 
 prophecy for the future of the human race, at another he 
 would give himself over to the gloomiest forebodings on the
 
 THE SIXTH AGE. 85 
 
 same subject, or liberate his soul in the bitterest sarcasms on 
 mankind. 
 
 "Time," he exclaimed, in one of the former moods, 
 " there is nothing in the whole world like science." 
 
 " Yes ! * said Time, indifferently, for he was accustomed 
 to hear that there was nothing in the world like so many 
 other things that he was not particularly impressed by this 
 assignment of supremacy to one of them. 
 
 " It was a sound principle, sir, on which I brought up 
 my boys a sound principle. I ought to have stuck to it. 
 There is no knowing what point of advancement we might 
 have reached by now." 
 
 " Ah ! that was what the departed Seekleham used to say 
 when he was about your age," remarked Time, drily ; " but 
 he outgrew it before he expired." 
 
 " I daresay ! " said Vicesimus, with a touch of contempt ; 
 " but he fell into a state of second childhood before the 
 
 end. Whereas I " and the unfinished sentence spoke 
 
 volumes of doting self-complacency. 
 
 " He was thought to have distinguished himself in science, 
 however," said the other. 
 
 " No doubt ! no doubt ! " was the reply. rt Or at least 
 in what was accounted science in that day : a day in which 
 electricity think of that ! electricity was actually the most 
 potent force known ; when epidemics existed and people 
 died literally died of them ; and when it was positively 
 regarded as a wonderful thing to be able to travel at ha ! 
 ha ! it is unfilial to laugh, but one really can't help it at 
 sixty miles an hour. Besides, it is not the application of 
 science to material progress that I am thinking of. You 
 should know that well enough."
 
 86 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " Oh ! I should know that well enough, should I?" said 
 Time, a little sulkily. " Well, I don't then ! On the con- 
 trary, I haven't a notion what you're driving at." 
 
 " You do yourself injustice," answered Vicesimus. " You 
 are not so slow as all that. You must have known per- 
 fectly well, or you would have known if you had devoted 
 the smallest amount of yourself to reflection upon my 
 meaning, that the kind of progress of which I was thinking 
 was progress of the moral and spiritual kind." 
 
 " Ah," said Time, " perhaps I should have guessed that. 
 Yes, that is indeed a different matter." 
 
 "What was it disgusted that very respectable Age, the 
 late lamented Seekleham, with his scientific gains ? Why, 
 was it not the very fact that they were purely material, and 
 that when he had accumulated what he thought a vast 
 amount and what no doubt was a considerable quantity 
 of them, he found that they had not advanced him morally 
 and spiritually by a single step. Tell me, was not that the 
 cause of his discontent ? " 
 
 There was no answer to this, and after a pause the 
 question was repeated. 
 
 " My dear Vicesimus," then said Time, kindly enough, 
 but with much firmness, " I must really beg of you to ask 
 me another." 
 
 " Another what ? " 
 
 " Another conundrum ! I could not undertake to answer 
 the one you have just asked me about the cause of the de- 
 parted Seekleham's discontent. The explanations given of 
 it, both by himself and his children, were so infinitely various. 
 The only point on which they agreed was that it was 
 ' divine. ' "
 
 THE SIXTH AGE. 87 
 
 " A divine discontent !" repeated Vicesimus. " Yes, I have 
 heard the expression. But, as a matter of fact, of course there 
 was nothing divine about it at all, any more than there is any 
 divinity about the dissatisfaction of a traveller who finds 
 that he has taken a wrong turning at the last cross-roads. 
 It was not Science that was to blame for the unsatisfying 
 results of progress in the last Age ; it was the men who 
 systematically applied science to the physical and material 
 instead of to the moral and spiritual needs of man. It was 
 the habit of .... Are you favouring me with your 
 attention ? " 
 
 " I am listening with the utmost possible interest," replied 
 Time, whose eye had certainly seemed to be wandering, but 
 who now fixed an attentive gaze upon his companion, and 
 maintained its meditative expression by reflecting how inva- 
 riable a sign is garrulity of advancing years. 
 
 " I say," resumed Vicesimus, " that they had themselves 
 to blame for the state of things which inspired them with 
 this precious ' divine discontent ' of theirs. They first 
 expended all their energies and scientific resources on 
 developing and perfecting what they called the ' arts of life ; ' 
 and then, after having systematically neglected the art of 
 living, they were astonished, forsooth, to discover that their 
 developed and perfected arts of life had made them no 
 better, or wiser, or happier than they had been before. I 
 understand that they took to asking themselves, what was the 
 good of being able to get more rapidly from one place to 
 another, when you found yourself the same poor creature 
 after your journey as before ? Or of finding the means of 
 communicating instantaneously, at thousands of miles' dis- 
 tance, with any number of other creatures as poor as yourself?
 
 88 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 Or of providing brighter lights, and more luxurious houses, 
 and more exciting amusements for the entire race of poor 
 creatures, if all you did thereby was to make them forget 
 for brief intervals how contemptible they still remained, and 
 to prepare for them the deeper reaction of self-scorn on 
 every awakening from temporary self-oblivion ? But they 
 should first have asked themselves what was the use of 
 accumulating all these gains of so-called progress, when one- 
 half of the energy of one-half of civilised humanity had to 
 be expended on the work of protecting these gains from 
 destruction along with those who had amassed them by 
 the other half? It must have been plain to a child, and 
 should have been plain even to the late lamented Seekleham 
 in his second childhood, that no true advance was possible 
 until science had abolished war." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Time, unable to refrain from some slight 
 indication of the fact that he at least retained his memory, 
 and that he had not altogether forgotten the history of a 
 certain period in the career of Vicesimus, when he was not 
 so ready in his recognition of the fact that science had 
 abolished war. 
 
 But the other pursued his discourse without the slightest 
 apparent consciousness of any inconsistency between his 
 present and his former self. 
 
 " Ay ! " he continued. " It might have been clear to the 
 meanest intelligence that civilised man must emerge from 
 the state of warfare in order to apply himself to the satisfac- 
 tion of his moral and spiritual needs, just as savage man had 
 by social combination to obtain a respite from the primeval 
 conflict in order to have leisure and acquire ability to 
 develop the arts of life. But, that emergence effected, what
 
 THE SIXTH AGE. 89 
 
 might not have been done ? What might not I have done 
 if, instead of being lured away to the pursuit of shadows in 
 my early days, I had resolutely dedicated myself to scientific 
 progress along the proper lines ? Along the proper lines ! " 
 he repeated with emphasis, looking fixedly at his com- 
 panion. 
 
 "And which are ?" said Time, absently. 
 
 "And which," repeated Vicesimus, severely, "you would 
 be able to indicate for yourself if you had been honouring 
 me with your attention. On the lines of a strictly scientific 
 analysis of human nature, of a reasoned and dispassionate 
 psychology, to be followed by the uniform and methodised 
 training, in accordance with the soundest scientific conclu- 
 sions, of the human will." 
 
 " Which, by this time," muttered the other, " he would 
 have discovered to have no existence at all." 
 
 " By this means," continued Vicesimus, " man would at 
 last have attained to self-knowledge and self-mastery. And 
 then ! And then 
 
 And here the declining Age would launch out into a 
 philosophical fantasia on the doctrine of human perfecti- 
 bility, full of the longest words imaginable, and compact 
 of phrases possessing all the nobly resonant vacuity of 
 the drum. 
 
 And Time would sit and listen with a smile of half 
 ironical compassion on his wrinkled face. He had seen 
 the whole sad performance many times before, and he 
 could not but feel ho\v much sadder it was with an old 
 performer than with a young one. 
 
 All the inflated hopes, all the swelling ambitions of 
 boyhood, thus brought forth again to adorn the thought
 
 90 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 and spirit of decrepitude with the ghastly mockery of 
 youth ! 
 
 " ' His youthful hose,' " Time would murmur to himself, at 
 moments, 
 
 " His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide 
 For his shrunk shanks 1 " 
 
 How the loose generalisations of the immature observer 
 bagged and flapped around those miserably slender supports 
 which were all that advancing years and bitter experience 
 had left for them ! 
 
 And yet with what dotard vanity did the senile spirit of 
 Vicesimus prank itself in these youthful lendings, and strut 
 to and fro in them in a paroxysm of self-admiration ! 
 
 It was a piteous sight, as Time was forced to confess 
 to himself. There was something very painful to him in 
 this decrepit optimism, this rouging and powdering of 
 the withered cheek of thought, in a tragic, yet ridiculous, 
 attempt to simulate the young flush of hope and the candid 
 innocence of early faith. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was a question whether the reaction to 
 pessimism, which invariably followed these exaggerated 
 optimistic fits, was not the more unpleasant spectacle 
 of the two. They usually announced themselves in 
 the same uniform fashion. Vicesimus's talk would by 
 degrees grow less and less scientific, and although his 
 vocabulary remained as copious as ever, the number of 
 its polysyllabic substantives began to diminish, and that 
 of its adjectives to multiply in proportion. Then gradually 
 the matter of his speech would begin to change, as well 
 as its form. Cynical observations upon life would intrude
 
 THE SIXTH AGE. 91 
 
 themselves into scientific disquisitions on the future of 
 humanity, and in course of time would actually tend to 
 preponderate ; until at last a discourse which had ostensibly 
 started from the theory of human perfectibility, and the 
 proposition that the sum of human happiness was capable 
 of absolutely indefinite increase, would end in a bitter tirade 
 against man and Nature, and a passionate affirmation 
 of all the worst reproaches that had ever been launched 
 against cither by the sternest of their censors, from Swift 
 to Schopenhauer. 
 
 This, however, was only a passing, because a too ex- 
 hausting mood. Vicesimus never long abode in it, and 
 the key of his pessimism soon modulated from the D major 
 the big big U of denunciation to the B minor of melan- 
 choly. 
 
 " Time," he would suddenly say, when this stage was 
 reached, " I am a prey to a divine despair." 
 
 Time, who knew by experience what this meant, would 
 compose himself with a sigh, which might or might not be 
 one of eager expectation, to listen. 
 
 " Well 1 " he would say, " what is it ? A sonnet ? " 
 
 And usually it would be a sonnet very artistically 
 wrought, and framed in the strictest conformity with the 
 rules of the game. Vicesimus took pains to point out its 
 technical perfection ; and his disquisitions on the various 
 forms of the measure, and of the laws which should govern 
 the construction of the octave and sestett, appeared at 
 times to afford considerable solace to his divine despair. 
 
 Sometimes it was in an irregular ode that he con- 
 veyed his god-like dissatisfaction with the scheme of 
 things; but whether it were ode or sonnet, or what not
 
 92 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 other lyrical form, Vicesimus was always eager for a 
 listener ; although it was with a certain condescension 
 that he entertained the ear of Time with strains which 
 he considered, and even declared, to be destined for 
 Eternity. And Time sat listening to them, as he had 
 listened to their like through countless ages. He knew 
 them well, these querulous wailings of a parting spirit 
 which believes itself immortal and is not, so different, so 
 pathetically different from that large, unconscious, joyous, 
 everlastingly echoing song which twice or thrice in human 
 history an Age had poured into his ears. 
 
 " What do you think of it ? " asked Vicesimus, after 
 reciting a piece of which he was particularly proud ; and he 
 awaited the answer with obvious anxiety, for although, as 
 has been said, he sang for Eternity, he was always keenly 
 desirous of the appreciation of Time. 
 
 " It is remarkably melodious," was the guarded reply. 
 
 " Melodious ! " said the other, impatiently. " Yes, of course 
 it's melodious. I know that. But has it the true ring about 
 it ? Will it reach the ear of posterity, think you ? " 
 
 " Well," said Time, with the same diplomatic caution, " it 
 is very piercing and penetrating, and so forth ; and that, I 
 believe, is the kind of note which is supposed to carry 
 furthest." 
 
 " No doubt ! " replied Vicesimus ; " but that in itself is 
 hardly satisfactory, is it ? It would be true of a screech, 
 you know, and I shouldn't like it to go down to posterity as 
 a screech. I had almost rather it were inaudible altogether ; 
 in fact, it would be clearly better to be inaudible altogether, 
 Don't you think so ? " 
 
 The question was a difficult one to answer, and Time
 
 THE SIXTH AGE. 93 
 
 therefore thought it advisable to take no notice of it. A 
 short silence ensued, and then Vicesimus repeated the last 
 movement over again, with a few additional flourishes. 
 
 " You don't consider it a screech, do you ? " he asked 
 uneasily, after a few moments of vain waiting for some 
 criticism from his companion. 
 
 " Well," said Time, with some hesitation, " it is a little 
 high, don't you think ? " 
 
 " High ! " exclaimed Vicesimus, in a tone of grave dis- 
 pleasure. " High ! I don't understand what you mean. 
 Explain yourself." 
 
 " It's a little thin, too, isn't it ? I mean, your voice seems 
 to ' pipe ' a bit ; that's all. It has, if I may SQ describe it, a 
 sort of whistle in its sound." 
 
 " Pipes ? Whistles ? I never heard a more amazing 
 criticism in my life. Now, / should have said that the 
 fault of my singing, if indeed it has a fault, is of an exactly 
 opposite description. I should have thought that it was 
 rather too big and manly a voice for an Age which you 
 would expect to be getting a little at least if there is any- 
 thing in what one hears a little shrill in its tones." 
 
 Time, who thought he had never heard so perfect an 
 imitation of a childish treble in his life, remained discreetly 
 mute; and Vicesimus, after a while, resumed singing with 
 much of his former complacency. 
 
 The venerable and unerring critic had accurately de- 
 scribed Vicesimus's voice. It was melodious, it was 
 piercing, it was penetrating, at least so far as the ears were 
 concerned ; but it was undoubtedly thin. With his execution 
 there was not much amiss ; indeed, it was noticeably 
 superior to what it had been during the brief period of
 
 94 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 his poetic or pseudo-poetic youth. Even Time was 
 obliged to confess that ! He had a vivid recollection of 
 Vicesimus's extremely poor performances at that age 
 of his harsh and rough methods of " voice production," of 
 his clumsy attempts at decorative effect, and of his often 
 ludicrous " forcing of the note " of passion. The venerable 
 and unerring critic could not possibly have been, and was 
 not, blind to these grave artistic faults of the earlier 
 singer. 
 
 But after all ? 
 
 Well, after all, he had to confess to himself that the 
 voice of those days was af least the voice of youth, and 
 health, and hope, and sincerity ; while this ! 
 
 Not all its sweetness could make the hearer forget the 
 shivering thinness of its wire-drawn note. Gaiety the 
 singer never attempted ; but even his melancholy had 
 nothing of the genuine, if transient, anguish that had 
 sounded through the Byronic lamentations of his youth. His 
 very cries of agony had a certain ring of the unreal : even 
 his desperation was more than half a pose. 
 
 On the whole Time felt glad that the scene was drawing 
 to an end, that the singing-voice was becoming weaker, and 
 the lungs of the preacher less long-winded ; that the weary 
 alternations between pessimist poetisings and optimist 
 prosings were beginning to recur less frequently ; that not 
 only did the monotonous tides of mood take longer to 
 complete themselves, but ebb and flood were separated by 
 wider interspaces of stagnation, a longer slack-water of 
 lethargic calm. 
 
 By degrees Vicesimus ceased both from railing and
 
 THE SIXTH AGE. 95 
 
 rejoicing at the scheme of things ; and then from talking of 
 its good and evil ; and then from feeling them ; and last 
 of all from thinking of them, or of anything, except at fitful 
 intervals and for brief and broken periods. 
 
 His strange eventful history was very near its end.
 
 VII. 
 THE SEVENTH AGE. 
 
 ' ' Last scene of all, 
 
 That ends this strange, eventful history, 
 Is second childishness, and mere oblivion ; 
 Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." 
 
 A CENTURY has not many advantages over a centen- 
 arian, but it has some. It expires figuratively only, 
 and not literally, and neither the physical pains and priva- 
 tions which attend extreme old age, nor the shock which 
 accompanies dissolution, can of course be attributed to it, 
 save in metaphor. Nevertheless, it must have been seen, 
 from the history of the Sixth Age of Vicesimus, that the 
 moral sufferings of a Senescent Century may be very acute 
 indeed. The shrinking of its limbs of Will and Energy 
 within the " well-saved " intellectual garments of its youth, 
 is a sufficiently painful mixture of the pathetic and the 
 grotesque ; and its attempts to mimic in the thin treble of 
 its poetry the rich and full-voiced strains of its earlier days 
 are sad and absurd enough to move either to laughter or 
 to tears. Not even the lean and slippered pantaloon of 
 actual life is in his physical decrepitude more provocative 
 of cither emotion. 
 
 And, mutatis mutandis, the same remark holds good of 
 Vicesimus in his Seventh Age. The absolute sensorial 
 nullity of the condition to which his coeval children had
 
 THE SEVENTH AGE. 97 
 
 ;it that stage declined, was spiritually reproduced with a 
 melancholy fidelity in Vicesimus himself. 
 
 He was sans teeth, as they were ; for the instincts of 
 appetite and combat had alike disappeared. There was 
 nothing that he longed for any more, and there was nothing 
 that he would have fought for, either to get or to retain. 
 Life no longer stretched itself before him as a stadium of 
 struggle and attainment ; an arena of competition with ever 
 new and ever vigorous rivals. His mind was like the mouths 
 of his children ; he could feebly apprehend, he could tem- 
 porarily grasp, a thought, but he could neither fully savour 
 it nor firmly hold it. It would slip from the listless clasp 
 of his intelligence and leave emptiness behind it. Nor 
 would its loss be felt, or the desire of replacing it with 
 any fresh food for reflection. The mind was content with 
 vacuity. 
 
 Like his children, too, he was sans eyes. The perceptive 
 faculties of the intellect had ceased to exist. It was not 
 merely now that he could not think he was unable to 
 observe. His own decline into mental infancy left him 
 but dimly conscious of the second physical childhood of 
 his sons. He was just sensible of their general state when 
 anything brought them under his notice, but that was all. 
 That minute and alert insight with which he would have 
 studied, recorded, and theorised upon the phenomena of 
 their condition was gone from him. He could not have 
 discriminated between them or classified them for his own 
 satisfaction, much less have discussed them with any one 
 else. He could perceive objects of intellectual perception 
 faintly and in the mass ; he was utterly unable to disen- 
 tangle their details. 
 
 IV. L.XV.
 
 98 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 But the saddest part of his lot, or what he would have 
 felt as such if age had not mercifully diminished his 
 capacity for suffering, was to be sans taste. He had 
 wholly, entirely, absolutely ceased to enjoy ; it was even 
 no longer comprehensible to him, as he dully surveyed 
 the objects of former enjoyment, that he ever could have 
 enjoyed them. Beauty in Art or Nature no longer stirred 
 in him the faintest thrill. Poetry became to him as prose 
 a concern of the mind alone and not of the soul a vehicle 
 of dim impressions only, and not, as formerly, a storehouse 
 of the keenest and sweetest emotions. If the goddess of 
 Poesy herself could have again descended upon him an 
 ironical Diana upon a still more inadequate Endymion 
 her little practical joke would have missed fire. For it is 
 always necessary that the victim of the practical joke 
 should see it ; and the irony of the Diana would have failed 
 because the inadequacy of the Endymion would have been 
 so obviously too great. Her divine countenance would have 
 said nothing to him, the light on her brow would have 
 reflected no radiance upon his, the wonder of her un- 
 fathomable eyes would have been lost upon the dimness 
 of his own. But, to do her intelligence justice, she never 
 made the experiment. Poesy has too much to do in 
 dementing the young to have time or attention to spare 
 for so unprofitable an industry as that of befooling the 
 old. 
 
 Let it not, however, be supposed that the condition of 
 Vicesimus was as uniformly lethargic as this. It must not 
 be forgotten that he was not a man, but a Century; not 
 an individual, but the type and personification of an Age. 
 Indeed, he endeavoured at times, and in his more acutely
 
 THE SEVENTH AGE. 99 
 
 conscious intervals, to console himself with this very reflec- 
 tion. He would again and again repeat to himself that he 
 was a mere arbitrary creation of chronology ; nay, that he 
 possibly had no existence at all except in the minds of 
 those whom he called his children. Yet he derived but a 
 very imperfect solace from such trains of thought, for they 
 invariably brought him face to face with the insoluble pro- 
 blem of what existence meant, and set him asking himself 
 whether those children whom he spoke of existed otherwise 
 than in their own and each other's consciousness. Still, it 
 was quite clear that, however ideal and subjective, however 
 artificial a product of mere thought and language their 
 existence was, the men themselves had been keenly sensible 
 of the melancholy process of growing old, and that in their 
 temporary gleams of consciousness they could weep over 
 the helpless state into which they had fallen. Why, then, 
 should such painful emotions be any less real to, or less 
 easily borne by, an expiring Century, who was scarcely 
 much more of a mental figment than they? 
 
 In his own temporary gleams of consciousness, which 
 of course were more frequent and more illuminative than 
 theirs, he loved the presence of Time beside him, and 
 would cling to him pathetically, yet with a look of wistful 
 bewilderment, as of one who scarce knew whom he clasped 
 or why he was so loth to loose him. Yet neither was this 
 mood permanent with Vicesimus ; for as one of these con- 
 scious intervals drew towards its close, and the period of 
 lethargy again drew near, he would turn away from his com- 
 panion with ineffable weariness and disgust. 
 
 Time, however, it must be admitted, gave him no excuse 
 for this variable treatment. On the whole he dealt gently
 
 loo NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 with Vicesimus, and never more so than at the moments 
 when he was about to sink into the comatose condition in 
 which so much of his life was passed. And he was always 
 ready for conversation whenever his companion showed any 
 desire for it. 
 
 One day, after long and wondering contemplation of 
 Time, Vicesimus broke silence, if silence can indeed be 
 described as broken by so light and weak a whisper as 
 his. 
 
 " An expiring Century," he murmured, in barely audible 
 tones, " is a melancholy sight." 
 
 " Not to any one with clear ideas on metaphysics ! " 
 replied Time, cheerfully. " You should reflect," he added, 
 " that you only figuratively expire." 
 
 " I have," was the muttered reply ; " and it is no use. 
 My old and helpless children re re what is the word I 
 want ? react upon me, and I feel their weakness and and 
 weariness as if as if what am I saying? as if it were 
 my own." 
 
 " Well," said Time, " that is your own fault. What makes 
 you associate with such wretched old men ? " 
 
 Vicesimus stared dully at him for a few moments. Then 
 he began slowly to grapple with a difficult word : 
 
 "The t t the typ the typical. They are the ty 
 typical 
 
 " Yes, yes ! " interrupted the other with good-humoured 
 impatience ; " but you are not obliged to confine yourself 
 to the company of the children who typify you, or to have 
 any of it, unless you like. Don't you understand that the 
 world is always young, and that while you and the sons who 
 were born with you are passing away, new lives ay, and
 
 THE SEVENTH AGE. 101 
 
 new ages, new generations with other thoughts and hopes, 
 and imaginings and beliefs, are continually beginning?" 
 
 Time meant well, and was, moreover, employing a form 
 of consolation which he had tried upon previous Centuries 
 in their extreme old age with marked success ; but he found, 
 to his intense surprise, that its only apparent effect upon 
 his companion was to be found in an expression of blank 
 and stony horror, which spread gradually over his aged face. 
 
 The conversation dropped ; but Vicesimus had not yet 
 relapsed into one of his lethargic fits, and Time's last words 
 provided him with food for many hours of depressing, 
 agitating, and at last even appalling meditation. 
 
 P'or many years past he had never been accustomed to 
 think of his children save as coeval with himself. From 
 youth upwards he had been wont to abstract his attention 
 from all but his contemporaries. It was in them only that 
 he seemed to himself to live ; it was he and they alone who 
 acted and reacted upon each other. It was they who stood 
 to him for the whole mass of individuals whom as a Century 
 he represented. He had at last got to forget that he had 
 any other younger children at all. And Time's reminder of 
 their existence struck a chill to his weakened heart. 
 
 " What? Then there was no end to it all! " 
 
 He had never before realised with anything like such 
 intensity the eternal flow of life, and the thought worked 
 in him like madness. He had always contemplated the 
 (ireat River in stretches, as it were, of a hundred years, and 
 as receiving at every such interval the waters of a new 
 confluent ; and thus it had seemed no impossible feat of 
 the imagination to realise its final absorption in the sea of 
 the Infinite.
 
 102 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 But to think of it as replenished every day, every hour 
 every minute, by innumerable tiny tributaries, was to think 
 of it as doomed to an eternity of unresting fluvial existence, 
 of increasing movement towards a goal which was never to be 
 reached ; and there was all the despair of insomnia, robbed 
 of its right and refuge of suicide, in the very thought. 
 
 It haunted him in all his conscious hours ; it revived with 
 every emergence from his lethargy ; and in the last moments 
 of his existence, when the hands of the World Clock were 
 once more approaching midnight on the hundredth 3151 of 
 December from that on which Old Seekleham had passed 
 away, the agony of the thought had become intolerable. 
 
 But the approach of the end had produced in him, as 
 so often happens, a strange exaltation of the faculties. His 
 state of second-childishness and mere oblivion had suddenly 
 and marvellously passed away ; and at the first instant of his 
 recovered consciousness he turned fiercely upon Time. 
 
 To his overstrung imagination it seemed that their true 
 relations had now first dawned upon him. 
 
 " Is this," he cried hoarsely, and pointing to the World 
 Clock as he spoke, " is this to go on for ever ? " 
 
 " Is what to go on for ever ? " asked his companion, with 
 the exasperating stolidity he so well knew how to assume. 
 
 " This this idiotic mill-round ; this turnspit business that 
 cooks nothing." 
 
 "Even the imminence of dissolution, Vicesimus," said 
 Time, gently, "can hardly excuse such obscurity of metaphor." 
 
 " Is the world to go on ? Is life to go on ? " exclaimed 
 Vicesimus, passionately. " Are you accursed incubus, 
 accursed gaoler, accursed taskmaster of my wretched race 
 are you to go on for ever ? "
 
 THK S1:\'1-:M'H AGE. 103 
 
 " The violence of your emotions confuses your concep- 
 tions," said his companion. " Compose yourself and explain 
 your meaning." 
 
 " Is it mere folly and falsehood, ' cried the other with 
 increasing vehemence, " is it nothing but a lie of language, 
 to contrast Time with Eternity? Is Time itself eternal, 
 and man its everlasting and helpless thrall ? " 
 
 " At last," said Time, " you condescend to the intelligible 
 and I can answer you. My answer is, No ! I am not the 
 master of man, but his creature ! " 
 
 " His creature ? " 
 
 " Ay ! his creature. I would not admit it to your pre- 
 decessor, who was a self-sufficient, opinionated chap, and 
 taunted me with being a ' mere form of the subjective con- 
 sciousness.' But with you I will be more frank. What he 
 said was strictly true." 
 
 " True ! " 
 
 " Yes, true. I am a mere form of the subjective con- 
 sciousness. I have no independent existence. I do not 
 exist at all except as a mode of the sentient human mind and 
 a condition of its sentience. You see now how unjust, how 
 absurd were your denunciations of my fancied tyranny. 
 Your ' wretched race,' as you call them, have their emanci- 
 pation in their own hands. So long as there is a single 
 sentient human mind in existence on the earth, so long shall 
 I survive. But mankind have only to will and to achieve 
 their own extinction, and from that moment I cease to be." 
 
 Vicesimus gazed at him for some instants in silence. 
 He was answered, but not satisfied. " But what then ? " 
 he resumed at last, in a calmer but more despairing voice. 
 " How much the better are mankind for that ? Will they
 
 104 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 ever can they ever agree unanimously to their own ex- 
 tinction ? " 
 
 " Well, to be candid with you," said Time, with a smile, 
 "I do not think they ever will. That is not a sort of 
 motion that is ever likely to be carried mm. con. But if 
 they do not choose to carry it, where is their grievance 
 against me?" 
 
 Vicesimus was not in a position to say where it was, and 
 relapsed into a gloomy silence. 
 
 The hands of the World Clock moved on ; the sands 
 of the hour-glass sank lessening down ; the expiring Vicesi- 
 mus drew nearer and nearer to his end. 
 
 He spoke again ; but more to himself now than to his 
 companion. 
 
 " What shall sustain us ? '' he murmured, in a voice of 
 anguish, " what console us ? Poetry is dead, and philoso- 
 phy, and religion, and the joy of the life that is, and the 
 promise of the life to come. What shall sustain us, what 
 console us ? How, as knowledge widens and hope recedes, 
 shall we learn to bear our fate ? " 
 
 " Our ! our ! our ! We ! we ! we ! I ! I ! I ! " repeated 
 Time, in mocking accents. " You never will learn to bear 
 it so long as you are as fond of those words as you are." 
 
 "No," he repeated after a while, in a graver tone. 
 " And you won't learn, to bear it by adding to your 
 widening knowledge, but by going back upon an ancient 
 and forgotten wisdom the wisdom of the Laugh." 
 
 " Of the laugh ? " 
 
 "Yes! of the laugh. For a hundred years, with brief 
 intermission, you and your children have been poring over 
 your miserable little lives, and your problematical little
 
 THE SEVENTH AGE. 105 
 
 souls, and asking yourselves in perpetual torment, Whence 
 come they ? Whither go they ? What are they ? But how 
 often have you looked from within outwards, and asked 
 yourself that other question, What does it matter 1 Never ? 
 I _ thought so : never ! Well, not till your children's 
 children learn to ask that question, will they get them- 
 selves consolation. Look outwards now yourself for the 
 moment that is left you." 
 
 With a motion of his hand Time flung open the case- 
 ment, and through its aperture Vicesimus saw the stars of 
 heaven Orion the hunter, and the bear-ward Bootes, 
 busied in their eternal work. 
 
 " Look upwards, look outwards, look around ! Sweep 
 with your eye that immeasurable host of worlds, and then 
 look down again on your children, crawling, the parasites 
 of an atom, upon this speck in the Infinite, and demanding 
 in egotistic agony to be told tlteir future share, forsooth, 
 in the destiny of the whole. Look down again on them, 
 I say, and ask yourself whether such a contrast should 
 not abound for you in the divine consolation of laughter." 
 
 The hands of the World Clock trembled on the point of 
 twelve, and Vicesimus could only just muster up strength 
 enough to reply. 
 
 "Don't see the joke," he murmured, in an almost in- 
 audible voice. 
 
 " No ? " said Time, blandly. " Well, now look here, 
 Vicesimus. I am not going to remind you of the solemnity 
 of the moment, for the sake of binding you to the truth, for 
 truthfulness has always been your chief virtue. It is rather 
 the amount of your self-knowledge than your candour 
 that I am in doubt about ; but I invite you at this solemn
 
 106 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 moment to interrogate your memory strictly, and to tell 
 me frankly whether you ever have seen a joke in your 
 life ? " 
 
 Vicesimus sank back upon his couch, and suddenly, in 
 that clear vision of the dying, it broke upon him that he 
 never had. 
 
 He was just able to convey a negative answer to Time's 
 question by a feeble shake of the head, when the World 
 Clock struck midnight, and he expired. 
 
 But as his last glance went upwards to the starry heaven, 
 and met the gaze of Arcturus and Orion smiling gravely 
 down upon him through the open casement, there appeared 
 upon his own lips the faint flicker of an answering smile, 
 and what seemed to be the dim dawn of a sense of humour 
 in his closing eye. 
 
 " I almost think," said Time, as he pensively watched 
 his departure, " that if he had lived longer he would have 
 been able to see a joke. Anyhow, the power shall be 
 restored to the next century if I can manage it. It is 
 a serious thing for mankind to have been without it for 
 over a hundred years." 
 
 THE END.
 
 A FABLE FOR JUDGES. 
 
 DARBY had jogged with Joan along 
 For years, and never thought it wrong 
 (Nor does one husband in a million, 
 If we the honest truth must own) 
 That he should ride in front, and Joan 
 Should sit behind him, on a pillion. 
 
 The road was long, and sometimes rough, 
 And Dobbin's legs, though stout enough, 
 
 Might have been just a thought more supple ; 
 But still their way, well pleased, they went ; 
 They jogged along, I say, content, 
 
 A simple-minded country couple. 
 
 Well, as it fell upon a day, 
 
 While journeying on their usual way, 
 
 Little suspecting what hung o'er them, 
 Behold ! attired in full-dress " rig " 
 Of gown, and bands, and horse-hair wig, 
 
 Three learned lawyers stood before them. 
 
 " Here ! hi ! you two ! " their lordships said 
 (One of them went to Dobbin's head), 
 With air imperious, almost regal,
 
 io8 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " In all our lives we never saw 
 Such bold defiance of the law, 
 
 This mode of riding's quite illegal. 
 
 " 'Twill be a gross contempt of court 
 If you, sir, dare maintain the sort 
 
 Of attitude in which we find you ; 
 You can't, whoever owns the horse, 
 Allege the slightest right, of course, 
 
 To make the lady sit behind you. 
 
 "This is undoubted law, we know, 
 And hold that it was always so 
 
 From earliest times of Celt and Saxon ; 
 But be that matter as it may, 
 At any rate 'tis law to-day, 
 
 For see ' Ex parte Emily Jackson.' " 
 
 Poor Darby stared : his law was weak ; 
 The man was naturally meek ; 
 
 And when they cried, " Alight, dear madam ! " 
 'Twas vain, he could not but perceive, 
 To cite the judgment in " Re Eve," 
 
 Or try them with " Ex parte Adam." 
 
 His wife was struck by the advice, 
 Dame Joan dismounted in a trice, 
 
 While sheepish Darby, fain to follow, 
 Stood gazing pensive on the ground, 
 And turned the judgment round and round, 
 
 Like something which he couldn't swallow.
 
 A FABLE FOR JUDGES. 109 
 
 At last he stammered out the words, 
 " Is she to ride in front, my Lords ? " 
 
 (How that would have amazed Justinian !) 
 But straight came back the answer pat, 
 " We guard ourselves from saying that, 
 
 On that we offer no opinion. 
 
 " Our judgment's only gist and brunt 
 Is that you may not ride in front 
 
 On any plea ; and if you do, sir, 
 Your wife acquires the right, we say, 
 To have another horse straightway, 
 
 And have the bill sent in to you, sir." 
 
 On this, their lordships left the place 
 With that sedate and solemn pace 
 
 Affected by the learned classes ; 
 Joan looked at Darby, he at her, 
 But neither seemed inclined to stir, 
 
 And Dobbin browsed the roadside grasses. 
 
 Some minutes after, Darby spoke, 
 Prepared, unhappy man, to joke 
 
 On what might prove a life's estrangement. 
 " I mustn't ride in front, 'tis true," 
 Said he ; " but neither, dear, may you, 
 
 So what's to be the new arrangement ? ' 
 
 Now plans may in a flash arise 
 Which, usually to devise, 
 
 Would take the most inventive man years.
 
 no NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 And thus inspired the husband cried, 
 " If side by side we needs must ride, 
 Let me suggest a pair of panniers ! " 
 
 Joan answered not ; she would not talk ; 
 
 
 She neither cared to ride nor walk ; 
 
 She mused, she sulked, she wanted rousing. 
 Darby, good soul, resolved to wait ; 
 He lit a pipe, and climbed a gate, 
 
 While Dobbin still continued browsing. 
 
 But if I'm asked, my married friends, 
 To tell you how this story ends, 
 
 And what are now that pair's positions, 
 I frankly own I do not know ; 
 I really cannot say although 
 
 I entertain my own suspicions. 
 
 Judges are influential men, 
 They awe the simple citizen, 
 
 And their pronouncements ought to bind him. 
 But yet but yet when once these twain 
 Remount, I think you'll find again 
 
 Darby in front, and Joan behind him. 
 '
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOLONGU. 
 
 WHO does not know the island of Porcolongu, and 
 the group to which it gives its name loveliest 
 cluster of islets with which the hand of Nature has sprinkled 
 the sunny bosom of the South Pacific ? Its name has long 
 been familiar to every board-school boy in the kingdom ; 
 and so keenly has the present rage for annexation stimulated 
 the study of geography in the official world, that there are 
 few of the more punctually arriving clerks in the Foreign 
 Office who cannot make shift to find it on a good map 
 before it is time to go out for lunch. No island even in 
 that favoured region is more blest. Its climate is delicious, 
 its people contented, its king convivial. The demands of 
 the Australian labour-market do not expose it to more than 
 an occasional visit from vessels engaged in the coolie- 
 traffic whose crews, moreover, rarely use their revolvers 
 nowadays, except in cases of very obstinate resistance. 
 Porcolongu rejoices in a European Prime Minister, declared 
 by travellers who have enjoyed his hospitality to possess 
 the best (for surely the strongest is the best) head in the 
 southern hemisphere ; and it is the diocesan seat of a most 
 zealous colonial bishop, always courteously ready to offer 
 ghostly counsel to any member of his flock who can make it 
 convenient to call upon him at the Athenoeum between two 
 and four.
 
 112 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 It was not to be supposed that a spot so rich in natural 
 and acquired advantages would long remain unnoticed by 
 any of the Great Powers of Europe. As lying in the high 
 road to nowhere, its position eminently fitted it for use as 
 a coaling-station by vessels plying on that route, and was at 
 the same time calculated to impress every European Power 
 with the necessity of annexing the group as a mere measure 
 of self-protection against the aggressive designs of its 
 neighbours. Accordingly, in the year 188 -it suddenly 
 occurred to two Continental States that they had subjects 
 in Porcolongu whose interests had been too long neglected ; 
 and they proceeded to establish consulates there without 
 further delay. Diplomacy has earned so bad a name for its 
 method of treating facts that it should in common justice be 
 here recorded that this was no mere pretext on the part of 
 the two Continental States in question. There were three 
 Frenchmen, one of them an escaped convict from New 
 Caledonia, and two Germans, both fugitives from military 
 service, resident on the island ; so that Mr. Quillitt, the 
 ambitious and discontented British Consul who had been 
 for some years protecting the five British subjects in 
 Porcolongu, could only report to his Government that this 
 movement on the part of France and Germany " appeared " 
 to him " suspicious," adding that, though there was a 
 " marked disparity between the French, and still more 
 between the German, interests requiring protection and those 
 of Great Britain, he was not prepared to express an absolute 
 conviction that the attitude of the two Powers indicated any 
 designs of territorial acquisition on the part of either." 
 
 Mr. Quillitt's, however, was not the only bosom in which 
 suspicion was aroused. The arrival of the French and
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOLONGU. 113 
 
 German consuls awoke uneasiness also in that part of the 
 O'Mara Molloy's person which he was wont to describe, at 
 the same time striking it, as " me har'rt " ; for its owner 
 was shrewdly sensible that if Porcolongu were to pass into 
 the hands of any European Power, the occupation of The 
 O'Mara, like that of The O'Thello, would be gone for ever. 
 Now this enterprising and ingenious Irishman was growing 
 old, and knew it. Though descended, like a working 
 majority of. his fellow-countrymen, from the ancient kings 
 of Ireland, there were reasons (not unconnected with 
 pecuniary liabilities) which made him unwilling to return to 
 the land over which his ancestors had once ruled ; and his 
 various sojourns in different parts of 'the world had done 
 more for the enlargement of his mind than of his means. 
 He had on two occasions succeeded in acquiring a moderate 
 fortune (on paper) by services rendered to the successful 
 candidate (who ultimately became, by the vigorous employ- 
 ment of paid canvassers in military uniform, the sole 
 competitor) for the Presidency of a South American Re- 
 public ; but his gains had in each case, through an imprudent 
 delay of more than a fortnight in realising them, been 
 swept away by a counter-revolution. Chance had brought 
 him to Porcolongu ; great gifts, both of administration and 
 of trade rum, had commended him to the notice of its king ; 
 and the impulsive gratitude of the monarch had soon after- 
 wards passed the post of Prime Minister on the accom- 
 plished stranger who had been the first to bring him under 
 the civilising influences of " poker." The opportunities of 
 the post had enabled The O'Mara Molloy to lay by a certain 
 provision for his old age ; but one by no means sufficient, as 
 he felt, to maintain the state becoming his royal extraction ; 
 \v. L.XV. o
 
 114 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 and the prospect of finding himself turned adrift at an early 
 date by the representative of some annexing or protecting 
 European Power gave him considerable anxiety. Clearly, it 
 was necessary for him to make hay while the sun shone. 
 
 A day or two after the lineal descendant of Brian Boroihme 
 had come to this conclusion, a knock at the door aroused 
 Mr. Quillitt from his afternoon siesta in the little shanty 
 which was dignified by the name of the British Consulate. 
 
 " Come in," cried the British Consul drowsily. " Oh ! 
 it's you, Molloy, is it ? " Mr. Quillitt never recognised the 
 Prime Minister's chieftainship of his sept, in familiar inter- 
 course. " Why, what the devil is the matter ? " he continued, 
 his attention arrested by the look of portentous gravity on 
 the Premier's face. 
 
 " Matter, is ut ? " said The O'Mara Molloy, shutting the 
 door behind him with a mysterious air. " It's the divil 
 and all the matter, me boy ; as ye'll say hwhan I tell 
 ye." 
 
 " Well, speak out, man ! what is it ? " inquired Mr. 
 Quillitt with impatience, and apparently quite forgetful of 
 the fact that he was addressing the First Minister of the 
 Crown. " Have you dropped an ace out of your sleeve, or 
 has the King joined the Blue Ribbon Army ? " 
 
 " Misther Quillutt, sorr ! " replied his visitor with much 
 dignity, "your jokes are unbecoming, and my business is 
 serious anny way for you and your Government. And let 
 me say, sorr, that since 'tis little enough that The O'Mara 
 Molloy owes to the oppressors of me counthry, the kindness 
 I'm doing yourself personally by this visit should be. the 
 more appreciated." 
 
 " I beg your Excellency's pardon," said the Consul with
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOLONGU. 115 
 
 mock gravity, which, however, soon became real on hearing 
 his companion's next sentence. 
 
 " 'T would be bad for you in Downing Street, I imagine, 
 Mr. Quillutt," said the illustrious Irishman, " if the French 
 were to annex Porcolongu, and you had heard divil a word 
 about ut until after the thricolor had been hoisted." 
 
 " Eh ? what ? annex it ? " exclaimed Quillitt, much alarmed. 
 " What makes you think they are going to 
 
 " Never mind what makes me think ut," said the states- 
 man loftily. " A Proime Minister, sorr, is not at liberty to 
 revale the sources of his information. Enough that I have 
 been made acquainted through a trusty eegent with M. de 
 Chauvin's insthructions, and I'm informed that in the course 
 of a few weeks, unless unless, mind something occurs to 
 prevent ut, the whole group will pass under the French 
 flag." 
 
 " Good God ! " ejaculated the Consul, convinced by the 
 solemnity of the Minister's manner. " But something must 
 be done ; the thing must be prevented." 
 
 " You're right, me boy," said his visitor, with a smile of 
 satisfaction at the impression which he had made, and which 
 he saw might, by judicious management, be indefinitely in- 
 creased. 
 
 After about half an hour's conversation his Excellency 
 took his departure, leaving Mr. Quillitt in a state of 
 considerable perturbation. His confidence in The O'Mara 
 Molloy's judgment, or even in his veracity, was not bound- 
 less ; but in the present case the Prime Minister's statement 
 derived only too much credibility from the circumstances. 
 The establishment of the French and German consulates 
 in Porcolongu had struck Mr. Quillitt from the first as
 
 ii6 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 suspicious. What could France and Germany want with 
 a Consul to protect their three French and two German 
 subjects on the island ? It was not as though, like England, 
 they had five citizens to look after, and a sixth (or, if twins, 
 a sixth and seventh) expected. Decidedly, this step on the 
 part of these Powers portended something ; and it might be 
 as well to be on one's guard. Some bold precautionary 
 stroke was necessary ; and after long rumination Mr. Quillitt 
 devised and determined on it. Next morning, accordingly, 
 he attired himself in his consular uniform (a compliment 
 which he always paid the Prime Minister whenever he was 
 about to make him any questionable proposal), and went 
 round to The O'Mara Molloy's official residence at the 
 Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 
 
 His Excellency was sitting under his verandah in his shirt- 
 sleeves, smoking his after-breakfast cigar, with a cooling, but 
 not too cooling, drink before him. Noticing his visitor's 
 attire, he proposed, with the native courtesy of his race, to 
 array himself in the cocked hat " bequaithed to me uncle 
 by a mar'rshal of France," which, not of course unaccom- 
 panied by other though less imposing articles of apparel, 
 constituted his official costume. 
 
 Mr. Quillitt begged him not to trouble himself. " I have 
 called, your Excellency," he said, with much solemnity of 
 manner, " to resume, if I may be permitted to do so, our 
 conversation of yesterday with reference to the designs of 
 France upon his Majesty's possessions." 
 
 The O'Mara Molloy bowed with a dignity equal to that 
 of the Consul, but remained silent. 
 
 "So grave do I consider the situation, as disclosed to 
 me in your Excellency's statement, that I propose taking
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOLONGU. 117 
 
 immediate steps diplomatic, of course," he added, after a 
 momentary pause, and in a tone of meaning, which, how- 
 ever, produced no responsive sign upon his companion's 
 face, " with a view to the protection of the British interests 
 which would be endangered by a French annexation of the 
 group. The most judicious course of procedure would be, 
 I think, to endeavour to negotiate a treaty of alliance with 
 his Majesty, King Afseesova, whereby, in consideration of 
 his Majesty's agreeing to recognise a British Protectorate 
 over his dominions, the British Government would, on their 
 part, guarantee an undisturbed sovereignty over them to him 
 and his heirs for ever. May I count on your Excellency's 
 good offices in bringing about such an arrangement ? " 
 
 " Ye may, sorr," said The O'Mara Molloy, after a 
 few moments of statesmanlike reflection. " But it's impos- 
 sible to pledge meself that me efforts will be successful." 
 
 " I will address a despatch to your Excellency," said 
 Mr. Quillitt, with a smile flickering at the corner of his 
 mouth, " pointing out to you what I deem to be the 
 commanding reasons which should determine you in the 
 interests both of your native and your adopted country to 
 conclude the Convention which I suggest." 
 
 " Will your argyments be addressed to his Majesty, or to 
 me personally ?" inquired The O'Mara Molloy, with a twinkle 
 in his eye. 
 
 " To you personally," said the British Consul, the smile 
 taking firmer possession of his lips. And producing a fat 
 pocket-book from his pocket, he proceeded : " Inclosure A, 
 in despatch No. So-and-so, will contain this powerful appeal 
 to your Excellency's fine sense of political expediency." 
 With which words he waved gently before the eyes of his
 
 iiS NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 companion a small oblong slip of paper bearing the brief 
 but pregnant legend, " I.O.U. ,500. The O'Mara Molloy." 
 
 The blood of another line of sovereigns (less than five 
 hundred perhaps, but still a considerable number) flushed 
 up into the cheeks of the Prime Minister, and lent a deeper 
 purple to his kingly nose. 
 
 " Never ! " he exclaimed with indignant emphasis, as soon 
 as the power of speech returned. " Never ! Divil a treaty 
 do ye get from me, Mr. Quillutt, on such terms as those ! " 
 
 " But, my dear fellow 
 
 " Not another word, sorr ! I'm astonished that a repre- 
 sentative of the British Crown should insult a British subject 
 by asking um to traffic in his debts of honour." 
 
 Mr. Quillitt was abashed. It had occurred to him that 
 the most economical way of securing the Minister's good 
 offices would be to forgive him a debt he had contracted to 
 the Consul in the vicissitudes of ecarte. But he had not 
 taken sufficient account of the sensitive pride which animates 
 the breasts of those Irishmen whose ancestors were sum- 
 moned to rule by the acclamations of their countrymen on 
 the Hill of Tara. Nor, perhaps, had he appraised with 
 sufficient exactitude the pecuniary value of the Prime 
 Minister's "paper "in the modest estimation of its signatory. 
 
 There was nothing for it, Mr. Quillitt perceived, but to 
 offer his Excellency something down, and the Consul at last 
 resolved, after further reflection, to "go a monkey" (as he 
 expressed it) out of his own pocket. If the coup came off, 
 he might look to be reimbursed out of the secret service 
 money ; if it failed well, he could still trust, he thought, to 
 his superior force at ecarte to compel the Prime Minister 
 to disgorge some, if not the whole, of his gains. He
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOLONGU. 119 
 
 accordingly lost no time in arranging the matter by the 
 despatch of a cheque for the amount above specified, and 
 sat down to draft an artfully worded communication to 
 the Foreign Office, informing that department that he had 
 "just received through his Excellency General The O'Mara 
 Molloy, the able and distinguished Minister of his Majesty 
 the King of Porcolongu, information which left no room 
 for doubt that the French Government were meditating the 
 almost immediate annexation of the group " ; that " his 
 Majesty had, at any rate, instructed his Prime Minister to 
 say that he viewed the present position of affairs with ex- 
 treme apprehension, and to sound the representative of her 
 Britannic Majesty at Porcolongu as to the willingness of the 
 British Government to conclude a Treaty of Alliance and 
 Protectorate with King Afseesova, whereby to secure his 
 independence against the threatened attack." Mr. Quillitt 
 went on to add that, " in the undeniably grave and urgent 
 circumstances of the case, he had not felt himself warranted 
 in rejecting definitely, and on his own authority, the overtures 
 thus made to him ; and had accordingly informed his Ex- 
 cellency the Prime Minister that, subject of course to the 
 approval of her Majesty's Government, and on the distinct 
 understanding that they were to be in no way bound by his 
 action, he was willing to conside^he draft of such a treaty, 
 and to take all the preliminary steps required to put him in 
 a position to sign it on receiving the due official authority 
 to do so." 
 
 It need hardly be said that before despatching this tele- 
 gram (and indeed before sending The O'Mara Molloy that 
 oblong slip of argumentative paper which had finally con- 
 vinced the Prime Minister of the necessity of a British
 
 120 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 Protectorate of Porcolongu) Mr. Quill itt had taken the pre- 
 caution of stipulating for an actual and immediate execution 
 of the treaty on his Majesty's side. The instrument lay 
 before him, duly signed, as he was putting the final touches 
 to his telegram. It contained only three clauses, but was 
 conceived in perfectly clear and satisfactory terms. 
 
 " Had you much difficulty in obtaining his Majesty's sig- 
 nature?" inquired Quillitt of the Prime Minister, eyeing 
 the subscription with a somewhat doubting air. 
 
 " Divil a ha'p'orth ! " was the ready reply. " Hwhy would 
 there be anny ? Ye just prop um up a bit and hold uz 
 hand." 
 
 "The Royal sign-manual seems a little less bold and firm 
 than I should have expected from a man of his Majesty's 
 character," said the Consul, still doubtful. 
 
 " Bedad ! it's furrum enough for a man in his Majesty's 
 condition," said the Minister, with a twinkle. 
 
 "Did your audience last so long, then?" asked Mr. 
 Quillitt. 
 
 "As long as the matayrials," was the reply. "We didn't 
 leave a dhrop in the bottle." 
 
 "H'm," said the Consul, still inspecting the signature; 
 " the right-hand stroke is good enough, but the left-hand 
 one's very jumpy barely intersects the other at all, in fact. 
 However, I've seen worse on a ballot-paper and your 
 counter-signature binds you, in any case." 
 
 Mr. Quillitt's telegram was despatched accordingly, and 
 he waited with considerable confidence for an approving 
 reply from Lord St. Jingo. Unfortunately, however, it was 
 some weeks since the last mail had brought news from 
 England, and Lord St. Jingo, instead of guiding the foreign
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOI.ONGU. 121 
 
 policy of the country from Downing Street, was at that 
 moment enjoying the sweets of newly-recovered liberty at 
 his country house. A change of ministry had occurred since 
 Mr. Quillitt's last advices, and Lord Shivers of Shakerley 
 had succeeded to his rival's place. A week did not elapse 
 before the Consul received an agitated telegram in the 
 following words : " Suspend negotiations at once. Despatch 
 follows" ; and with the arrival of the mail a few hours later, 
 bringing word of the political events which had taken place, 
 the whole mystery was explained. Mr. Quillitt at once 
 divined that his counsels of haute politique had been rejected 
 with something like dismay by the new Foreign Secretary, 
 and began to apprehend a wigging for himself. In the 
 despatch from I Knvning Street which reached him a few 
 weeks later he found ample justification for his fears. 
 
 " I am directed to inform you," wrote the Permanent 
 Secretary, "that her Majesty's Government, while fully 
 sensible of the zeal by which you have been animated, and 
 the promptitude with which you have acted, are unable to 
 approve of the course which you have pursued. You will 
 take an early opportunity of seeking another interview with 
 his Excellency the Prime Minister of Porcolongu, and will 
 inform him that her Majesty's Government do not share 
 the apprehensions which have been expressed by him on 
 behalf of his Sovereign, and that they regard the step re- 
 commended by him as altogether premature. Her Majesty's 
 Government continue to receive assurances of the most 
 friendly character from the Government of the French Re- 
 public, and they see no reason to believe that that Govern- 
 ment entertains any designs of territorial acquisition in the 
 Pacific. I am to add that though her Majesty's Government
 
 122 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 do not question the excellence of the motives which induced 
 you to give provisional countenance to the proposal of a 
 Protectorate, they cannot acquit you of a grave error of 
 judgment in taking that course; and, with a view to prevent 
 the recurrence of any gimilar misunderstanding, I am to 
 request that, before entertaining any future proposal which 
 may be made to you by or on behalf of his Majesty the 
 King of Porcolongu, you will submit it to her Majesty's 
 Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and await his in- 
 structions." 
 
 Having completed the perusal of this most disagreeable 
 communication, Mr. Quillitt uttered a sentence which, 
 without being actually a prayer, was not unlike one in point 
 of grammatical construction. He posted off at once to the 
 Prime Minister and flung down the despatch before him 
 without a word. The O'Mara Molloy read it through with 
 an unmoved countenance, folded it up, and returned it to 
 his visitor. 
 
 " I congratulate ye, Mr. Quillutt," was all he said. 
 
 " Congratulate me ! What do you mean ? On what ? " 
 
 " On the tranquillitee of your conscience, *sorr," replied 
 the Prime Minister, with much di3nity. " It must be a 
 great satisfaction to ye to reflect that, however blind your 
 Government, you, at least, have done your duty to your 
 counthry." 
 
 " Oh, ah ! yes, of course, and all that," said Mr. Quillitt, 
 though with but chastened enthusiasm. " But I say, 
 Molloy you know that five hundred eh? Don't you 
 think wouldn't it be fairer especially considering eh ? 
 What do you say ? " 
 
 But The O'Mara Molloy had said nothing. He was
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOLONGU. 123 
 
 gazing out into the distance with a far-away look in his 
 eyes, as though striving to descry the Hill of Tara through 
 the haze of the centuries. 
 
 " Explain yourself, Mr. Quillutt," he said, after rousing 
 himself with difficulty from his stately reverie. 
 
 " Well, there is not much to explain," said the Consul, 
 nettled into plain speaking. "That five hundred you got 
 was, of course, conditional on the execution of the treaty." 
 
 " No doubt, sorr," was the Minister's reply. " And that 
 is why you insisted on his Majesty's executing it." 
 
 " His Majesty ! Yes ! But what I mean is that the 
 treaty was to be executed on our side too." 
 
 " Then, hwhat the divil hinders ye from executing it ? " 
 said The O'Mara Molloy, rising from his chair with an air 
 of sternness which indicated that the audience was closed. 
 " Ye're thrifling with me, Mr. Quillutt, and bedad, sorr, 
 there is no man living who shall thrifle with The O'Mara 
 Molloy without ruun' ut." 
 
 The British Consul was not wanting in resolution, and, 
 thoroughly understanding his man, he would have taken 
 his chance of " ruun' ut " if he had thought the moment a 
 favourable one for a quarrel. But he was forced to admit to 
 himself that after all there was something to be said for the 
 Prime Minister's interpretation of their bargain, and, more- 
 over, he did not yet feel sure that the draft treaty might 
 not pay for itself after all. Mr. Quillitt, it is scarcely 
 necessary to say, had not relied wholly on so doubtful an 
 informant for intelligence as to the designs of France. He 
 had prosecuted inquiries in other quarters, notably of the 
 German Consul, Herr Wolkenkopf, a simple-minded, easily- 
 handled Teuton, an ardent naturalist, with apparently no
 
 124 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 thought or ambition connected with anything besides his 
 hobby. The Machiavellian Mr. Quillitt had early conceived 
 the idea of playing off one of these two foreign officials 
 against the other, and as they consorted a good deal 
 together, he immediately made it his business to pump the 
 Herr for any information which he might have gathered in 
 the confidence of social intercourse as to the diplomatic or 
 other designs of Monsieur. And when he found, as he 
 immediately did, that the attitude of M. de Chauvin, and 
 the mysterious hints let fall by him from time to time, had 
 aroused suspicion even in the unsuspecting heart of Herr 
 Wolkenkopf himself (or so at least that artless child of nature 
 averred), why, Mr. Quillitt concluded, not unreasonably, that 
 The O'Mara Molloy's warnings had confirmation enough. 
 The French Government, he argued, must pretty soon open 
 the eyes of Downing Street to their real intentions, and 
 unless then they were very prompt in executing them, the 
 draft Treaty of Protectorate, now safe in Mr. Quillitt's desk, 
 would rapidly rise in value in the estimation of a panic- 
 stricken English Foreign Office. All which considerations 
 combined to reconcile Mr. Quillitt to " lying out of his 
 monkey " for a time (as he described it in a phrase which 
 may be commended to foreign professors of the English 
 language), and determined him on playing a waiting game. 
 
 The waiting game, however, turned out to be a very long 
 one ; and the French Government appeared to be in no 
 hurry to perform the expected ophthalmic operation upon 
 Downing Street. Weeks passed, and the island of Porco- 
 longu remained unannexed to the territories of the French 
 Republic. M. de Chauvin made no sign, and the reluctant 
 mind of Mr. Quillitt submitted itself gradually to the un-
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOLONGU. 125 
 
 comfortable conviction that he had been " sold." The 
 scion of Irish kings had bamboozled him, he began to fear, 
 by a mere cock-and-bull story of French designs, and had 
 left him five hundred pounds the poorer for having believed 
 it. He said nothing either to The O'Mara Molloy or to 
 any one else; -but the imposture of which he had been 
 made the victim was never out of his mind, and he spent 
 many a sleepless night in revolving innumerable schemes 
 of retaliation, or at the very least of reimbursement. It 
 was some consolation to reflect that the luck had gone 
 against him of late at ccarte, and that, as he had taken the 
 precaution of not paying his recent losses to the Prime 
 Minister, he was now considerably in the latter's debt. 
 
 One night, about four months after the costly negotiation 
 into which he had been so rashly induced to enter, Mr. 
 Quillitt and the Prime Minister sat battling together at 
 ccarte in the Consul's den. Her Britannic Majesty's repre- 
 sentative had had emphatically a bad time. The luck had 
 run for hours without an interruption in favour of the high- 
 born Irishman, and that in such an overwhelming tide of 
 good fortune that his opponent's undoubtedly superior skill 
 had been utterly powerless to make head against it. The 
 Consul's debt had doubled and trebled since they sat down, 
 and when at a little after midnight he threw aside the cards 
 in disgust, he found that his losses were close upon ^300. 
 Mr. Quillitt made the addition with some difficulty for he 
 had been drinking hard latterly and, in the excitement of 
 loss, a good deal too hard to allow him the full command of 
 his faculties. At the same time, and by a confusion between 
 subject and object which is very common among a certain 
 class of the intoxicated, he was confidently persuaded that
 
 126 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 the more liquor he consumed the more helpless became the 
 drunkenness of his companion. 
 
 " Molloy," said Mr. Quillitt, after eyeing the Prime 
 Minister for a few minutes with an air of pity for his de- 
 plorable condition, " would you like me to pay you what I 
 owe you ? " 
 
 His creditor signified, with a courteous shrug, that though 
 he was in no violent hurry he would not refuse to receive 
 payment if it were offered him. 
 
 The Consul rose from his chair, walked with a somewhat 
 unsteady step to his escritoire., which he unlocked and 
 opened with a still more unsteady hand, and, returning to 
 the table with the Treaty of Alliance and Protectorate, " I 
 have here, your Excellency," he said, his liquid consonants 
 giving almost an Italian sound to his pronunciation of the 
 last word, "a security of the value of ^500, which I shall 
 be happy to tender you in payment of my debt. Not a 
 word ! " he continued quickly, and with a deprecatory wave 
 of his hand, on seeing that The O'Mara Molloy was about 
 to interrupt him. " Not a word ! I am aware that the 
 value is greater by two-fifths than the amount of my debt ; 
 but I waive the difference, sir, I waive the difference. Do 
 you accept my offer ? " 
 
 Surprise is not an emotion which, as a rule, depicts itself 
 with facility on the countenance of a man who has con- 
 sumed a bottle and a half of trade rum ; but it was plainly 
 visible on the face of Mr. Quillitt when the Prime Minister 
 of Porcolongu for all answer produced a little sheaf of the 
 Consul's I.O.U.'s, and, tossing them to him across the table, 
 deliberately folded up the draft treaty and put it in his 
 pocket.
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOLONGU. 127 
 
 " Good Heavens ! " muttered Mr. Quillitt to himself, half 
 sobered by his astonishment. " He is more drunk than I 
 imagined. Ought I to take such an advantage of him ? " 
 
 Promptitude of decision in difficult circumstances is 
 second nature to a diplomatist, and the Consul instan- 
 taneously decided that he ought. He had sufficient com- 
 mand of himself to make the dignified bow of a man who 
 is conscious of conferring a favour, but is too generous to 
 grudge it. 
 
 The Prime Minister finished his glass and took his leave, 
 and in a few minutes his host, after carefully removing all his 
 clothing with the exception of one boot, retired meditatively 
 to rest. 
 
 On awaking, his head (save that it ached consumedly) 
 contained no record of the previous night's proceedings. A 
 glance, however, at his open desk, and at his I.O.U.'s lying 
 on the table, struck dully on one of the slack chords of his 
 memory, and he slowly raised himself to a sitting posture in 
 bed, the better to view the situation. Yes : there was no 
 doubt of it. He had re-sold the useless treaty to its author 
 useless even if the French designs on Porcolongu were not 
 pure inventions of his, because Downing Street had so 
 peremptorily rejected it and had extinguished a debt of 
 three hundred pounds by the transaction. Decidedly the 
 illustrious Irishman must have been very far gone in 
 liquor. Indeed, now that Mr. Quillitt set to work to recall 
 his speech and manner, it occurred to him that seldom in 
 the whole course of his life had he seen a man more hope- 
 lessly intoxicated. His diplomatic conscience assured him 
 that he had done right in taking advantage of the Prime 
 Minister's unguarded condition of mind in order to rid
 
 128 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 himself of his bad bargain. He accordingly went about his 
 not very onerous official duties that day as composedly as 
 Socrates on the morning after the Symposium, and it was 
 not till nearly nightfall that the blow fell. The western 
 waters were glowing in all the glory of a Pacific sunset 
 when a telegram was placed in the Consul's hands, but only 
 to fall helplessly from them the moment its contents were 
 read : " Renew negotiations instantly treaty alliance pro- 
 tectorate Porcolongu. Assure King sympathy support British 
 Government. Despatch follows" 
 
 The Pacific Ocean swam before Mr. Quillitt's agitated 
 eyes. He put his hand to his brow, and leaned against the 
 wattled wall of Government House for support. What did 
 it what could it mean ? 
 
 He had not long to wait for the explanation. Early next 
 morning he received a private despatch from a somewhat 
 highly-placed friend in the Foreign Office in these terms : 
 " Liberals out on Conservative amendment four acres cow. ,$/. 
 Jingo back again. Congratulate you." 
 
 St. Jingo back again ! All was clear, and Mr. Quillitt was 
 ready to tear the few remaining locks from his head in dis- 
 gust at his own impatient folly. There was but one thing 
 to be done. The treaty must be re-purchased from The 
 O'Mara Molloy if it cost the Consul all the savings of his 
 official life to do it. But caution (diplomatic caution) was 
 necessary. It would never do to allow the astute Poly- 
 nesian statesman to suspect that his friend had any very 
 important object to gain in attempting to repossess himself 
 of the draft treaty. 
 
 " I have it," said Mr. Quillitt to himself after a few 
 moments' cogitation. " I will pretend that it was I who
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOLOXGU. 129 
 
 was drunk, and that I only handed him over the treaty in a 
 tipsy freak, which I understood him to be merely humouring 
 as a sober man ha ! ha ! will occasionally do with an 
 intoxicated companion. Yes, it would certainly be better 
 to pretend that I took too much last night." And full of 
 this profound project of dissimulation he betook himself to 
 the Prime Minister's shanty. 
 
 " Molloy," he said, with his most diplomatic assumption 
 of carelessness, " do you know I am afraid I rather exceeded 
 the bounds of moderation the other night, when you made 
 such an example of me at ecarte." 
 
 " Not a bit, me boy, not at bit," replied the Prime 
 Minister cheerfully. " I never saw you play a better game. 
 Luck was against ye, that was all." 
 
 " Oh ! as to the game, that may be," said Mr. Quillitt, 
 still outwardly indifferent, though his anxiety deepened 
 apace at the line which his companion was taking ; " I can 
 play ecarte well enough, however far gone I am. What I 
 am thinking of is not how I played, but how I paid. It was 
 a foolish trick of me to square accounts with you by handing 
 back that treaty." 
 
 " A foolish thrick ye call it," said his Excellency calmly. 
 "And hwhy, pray?" 
 
 " Well er er well, my dear fellow for a diplomatist 
 you know eh ? to part with a document like that a 
 public document it would be thought rather eh?" 
 
 " Bedad, sorr, I should have supposed it would have been 
 thought a divilish deal more foolish thrick for a Prime 
 Minister to buy back such a documint," said the other, 
 looking at the Consul through half-closed eyes ; " a threaty 
 which your Government declines to execute." 
 
 jr. L.-XV.
 
 130 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " Exactly, precisely," exclaimed Mr. Quillitt, catching 
 eagerly at the new pretext thus offered to him. " I never 
 supposed you were serious in accepting it from me. I 
 thought you were merely humouring a friend who had had 
 a drop too much. I couldn't think of holding you to so 
 absurd a bargain ; so I have brought you back my I.O.U.'s," 
 producing them from his pocket, "and if you've got the 
 treaty handy we'll swop at once." 
 
 " Misther Quillutt," said his Excellency, drawing himself 
 up with his stateliest air, " I don't understand ye. I'm 
 perfectly sathisfied with me bargain, and mean to abide 
 by ut." 
 
 " What ! " exclaimed the Consul, with increasing agitation. 
 " You can't be serious impossible. The whole thing was 
 a joke. You couldn't have meant to have let me off a 
 debt of nearly three hundred pounds for the recovery of a 
 worthless " 
 
 " Worthless ! " cried the Irishman, bursting into a laugh. 
 " Then hwhy the divil d'ye want ut back ? " 
 
 Mr. Quillitt made no answer. Obviously there was none 
 which he could make without deciding upon the pitiable 
 diplomatic expedient of telling the truth. 
 
 " Molloy," he said, after a few m'oments of discomfited 
 pause, " you're too many for me, at diplomacy as well as at 
 ecart'e. Look here, I'll make a clean breast of it," and he 
 put his last official telegram into the Prime Minister's hand. 
 "You see now," he continued eagerly, "why I want that 
 treaty back again. It's a matter of life and death to my 
 official future to recover and execute it on behalf of the 
 British Government. And I'm sure, as an old friend, 
 Molloy, you'll not stand in my way ; even if," he added, with
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOLONGU, 131 
 
 a keen glance at his companion, " even if you have at the 
 moment some other political combination in your head." 
 
 Mr. Quillitt stopped for a moment to see whether this 
 last remark of his would elicit any disclaimer. But, none 
 coming, he resumed his solicitations with increased anxiety. 
 
 " See here, my dear fellow, here are my I.O.U's. Take 
 them back again. No, no ! You must I insist ! " ex- 
 claimed the Consul, as he almost forced them into the 
 Prime Minister's palm. " And if a cheque for another two 
 or even three hundred is necessary to arrange the business, 
 it shall be forthcoming. But I must get that treaty back 
 again, and execute it on behalf of my Government at 
 once." 
 
 But still his Excellency made no sign. He was plunged 
 in reflection so profound that Mr. Quillitt had time to get 
 out his cheque-book in great agitation, and to insinuate 
 between the statesman's fingers a cheque for a substantial 
 sum before he roused himself from his reverie. 
 
 " Misther Quillutt," he then said, at the same time 
 absently folding up the slip of paper which had been pressed 
 upon him ; " Misther Quillutt, I will do what I can for ye. 
 But it's impossible for the treaty to be executed to-day." 
 
 " Impossible ! Why ? " 
 
 " I must consult hus Majesty." 
 
 " Consult a rum-cask ! Come, come, my dear Molloy. 
 We are augurs of long enough standing to permit ourselves 
 
 " Enough, sorr ! " interrupted the Minister, with dignity. 
 " It's absolutely necessary to lay the matter before his 
 Majesty. Come again to-morrow." 
 
 " But why not submit it to him to-day ? The Palace is
 
 132 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 only a step from here," said the Consul, glancing through 
 the window of the Minister's study at its sun-baked 
 walls. 
 
 " His Majesty," said The O'Mara Molloy, " is not yet in 
 a condition to grant me an audience. Herr Wolkenkopf 
 attended at the Palace the day before yesterday to show 
 the king a sample of some remarkably fine old schnapps 
 which he had just received from a relation at Amsterdam, 
 and his Majesty, I understand, does not intend to resume 
 official or ceremonial duties until to-morrow." 
 
 To this, of course, there was nothing to be said, and Mr. 
 Quillitt accordingly took his leave, in some disquietude of 
 mind. Some hundred yards from the Ministry of Foreign 
 Affairs, he happened to turn round arid look back just in 
 time to see a figure disappearing rapidly through its open 
 door. 
 
 It was impossible to mistake those elegant proportions 
 M. de Chauvin ! 
 
 A dark suspicion shot through the Consul's breast, and 
 passing downwards like a charge of electricity rooted his 
 feet to the earth. Could this be the explanation of the 
 Minister's having so readily bought back the treaty ? Could 
 it be that he had another purchaser for it in his business- 
 like eye? Was.it possible that the hereditary enemy of the 
 Saxon was about to strike a blow (for a consideration) at the 
 secular oppressors of his race, and that, in plain prose, The 
 O'Mara Molloy had been squared by the French ? 
 
 Painfully revolving these agitating questions in "his mind, 
 Mr. Quillitt walked slowly homeward, to pass the most 
 unquiet night that ever beat out its lagging hours in a 
 sleepless brain. At noon next day he betook himself, in
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOLONGU. 133 
 
 full official costume, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but 
 only to find to his intense anxiety, and even alarm, that the 
 Prime Minister was not to be seen. He had set off early 
 in the morning, his private secretary said, by his Majesty's 
 special command, to visit one of the distant islands of the 
 group. 
 
 Mr. Quillitt now began to feel more and more convinced 
 that he, and probably Porcolongu, was being sold. Having 
 satisfied himself, however, that the private secretary had 
 told him the truth, and that his Excellency had really 
 departed on the alleged journey, he was fain to seek such 
 reassurance as he could gather from the reflection that, 
 unless the mischief was done already a thought at which 
 the spinal column of the Consul, from the cerebellum 
 downwards, underwent the sensation commonly produced 
 by the cold-water jet of the shampooer no negotiation with 
 M. de Chauvin could take place till the Prime Minister's 
 return. 
 
 A day passed ; two, three, a week, and no Prime Minister. 
 But instead thereof, another cipher telegram from Downing 
 Street, which brought out a light dew of perspiration on 
 Mr. Quillitt's brow. Thus it ran: " News received French 
 ironclad left Noumea destined probably Porcolongu. Inform 
 Foreign Office immediately whether treaty, concluded" In 
 desperation, Mr. Quillitt telegraphed back : " Negotiations 
 still pending. Hope conclude treaty this week." This done, 
 it occurred to him, as the only step he could take in 
 The O'Mara Molloy's absence, that he might pay a visit to 
 Herr Wolkenkopf, and after ascertaining whether he, with 
 his usually excellent information, had heard anything of this 
 reported French movement, endeavour to enlist his support
 
 I 3 4 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 in resisting the piratical policy of M. de Chauvin's Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 He found the German Consul with his microscope before 
 him, and his note-books around him, calmly arranging his 
 specimens. 
 
 " Wolkenkopf, my good soul," said Quillitt, in that kindly 
 but slightly patronising tone in which he was in the habit 
 of addressing the dreamy savant, " what do you say to this 
 report just transmitted to me from my Government ? " 
 And he read out the alarming telegram. 
 
 "What say I, mine friend?" said the Herr, looking 
 placidly at him. " But what then should I say ? You 
 know better as I whether your Government true-speaks or 
 not." 
 
 "Nonsense, Wolkenkopf; don't trifle with me. People 
 can only be sure of speaking the truth when they know the 
 truth, and our Government never knows anything. You 
 know that." 
 
 " Do you not say we know everything in Berlin, dear 
 Herr Consul ? " said the German, beaming with mild satire 
 through his spectacles. " And many people who know not 
 everything know so much as you last said." 
 
 " Have you heard anything of this naval movement of 
 the French from the sources of information from which you 
 heard of their political designs ? You still have access to 
 those sources, I suppose ? " asked Mr. Quillitt, sharply, for 
 he was gradually getting to suspect everybody. 
 
 " Yes-well," replied Herr Wolkenkopf. " Through them, 
 mine friend, I hear nothing. I believe not, so I may my 
 own information trust, that any French ironclad is coming 
 here at all."
 
 THE PROTECTOR ATI-. OF PORCOLONGU. 135 
 
 " Ha ! " exclaimed the British Consul, greatly relieved. 
 " I am right glad to hear you say so ; I hoped myself that 
 the danger was not quite so imminent as that. But still, I 
 think there is danger of a French annexation, don't you, 
 Wolkenkopf ? You won't undertake to say that my Govern- 
 ment may lay aside its anxieties on that point, altogether ? 
 Eh?" 
 
 " No, dear Herr," said the man of science, carefully 
 focussing a specimen while he applied his eye to the tube of 
 his microscope. " No, dear Herr, I would not go quite 
 so far as that. I would not so undertake to limit 
 here followed a rather long pause, during which the brass 
 screw of the focussing gear revolved now forward now back- 
 ward, through minute and ever-lessening arcs, between the 
 naturalist's finger and thumb " to limit " and here he 
 looked up with a sigh of relief at the successful conclusion 
 of the delicate operation he had been engaged in " the 
 enterprising instincts of la gr-r-rande nation." 
 
 " Herr Wolkenkopf," said Mr. Quillitt gravely, " you are 
 well aware that I share your suspicions. I am convinced 
 that the Government of the French Republic entertain 
 designs upon the independence of this group, which, unless 
 a firm front is offered to them by the representatives of 
 other European Powers, will very shortly be realised. 
 May I may I count upon your support in my endeavour 
 to counteract them ? " 
 
 Herr Wolkenkopf rose from his chair, replaced his 
 spectacles, which had been temporarily removed for micro- 
 scopic purposes, on his nose, and gazing through them with 
 a look of the greatest candour and benevolence that the 
 human countenance is capable of expressing, replied, " Dear
 
 136 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 and respected colleague, I have always confided in your 
 discretion, nor know I any reason why I should now con- 
 ceal from you that the instructions I have from my Govern- 
 ment received, direct me to resist any P'rench designs on the 
 independence of Porcolongu by every means in my power. I 
 think I may assure you, dear Herr, that these islands will not 
 be allowed, if it is any way possible for my Government to 
 prevent it, to pass under the flag of the French Republic." 
 
 Mr. Quillitt was too delighted to reply in words. He 
 could only grasp his German colleague's hand by way of 
 answer ; and he took his leave in a state of as high com- 
 placency as we may suppose to have suffused the mind of 
 Sir William Temple after successfully negotiating the Triple 
 Alliance. 
 
 Another day came and went without bringing home the 
 truant Minister. On the evening, however, of the second 
 day, Mr. Quillitt, whose house commanded a view of the 
 landing-stage, and who accordingly seldom took his eyes 
 from it, saw The O'Mara Molloy disembark from the 
 Government yacht, which, in his capacity of First Lord of 
 the Admiralty, he had placed at his own service as First 
 Lord of the Treasury of Porcolongu, and walk with rapid 
 steps to his official residence. 
 
 " Good," muttered Mr. Quillitt to himself. "To-morrow, 
 my friend, I bring you and your royal master to book." 
 
 A couple of hours later another telegram reached him 
 from the Foreign Office, thus conceived : " News despatch 
 French ironclad confirmed. If treaty concluded communicate 
 it French Consul, adding British Government cannot indiffer- 
 ence vieiv attack independence allied Sovereign" 
 
 " H'm,"said the British Consul reflectively. " I'll conclude
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOLONGU. 137 
 
 the treaty, if possible, the first thing to-morrow morning, 
 and make my representations to De Chauvin immediately 
 afterwards. If I don't succeed in concluding the treaty 
 if that Irish rascal, or the fuddled savage whom he serves 
 and sells, is playing me false well, I'll associate myself 
 with Wolkenkopf, and we'll make a joint representation to 
 the Frenchman." 
 
 Mr. Quillitt passed a quieter night than he had had for 
 some time past, and rose betimes in excellent spirits. His 
 bedroom window looked out on the bay, and as he gazed 
 across its sunlit waters upon the lustrous expanse of ocean 
 beyond, he felt a thrill of patriotic pride at the thought that 
 it should have fallen to his lot to plant the British flag on a 
 new point of vantage in that golden world. In the midst of 
 these inspiring reflections Mr. Quillitt's eye fell upon a 
 distant object in the offing. He started violently, and the 
 hair-brush fell from his hand. Its place was instantly filled 
 by a powerful binocular, which the Consul hastily brought 
 to bear on the approaching vessel. Yes, there was no 
 mistaking its squat and swarthy hull, its ungainly and 
 forbidding lines. It was a powerful ironclad steaming 
 rapidly towards the bay. 
 
 Mr. Quillitt was dressed in a twinkling, and half-way to 
 the Prime Minister's house before he was five minutes older. 
 As he skirted the little curve of shining sand which had to 
 be traversed to reach it, two figures caught his eye one 
 that of M. de Chauvin striding rapidly in the direction of 
 the Palace, the other that of Herr Wolkenkopf, in quite 
 unofficial costume, a palm-leaf hat on his head and satchd 
 at his side, dredging away as tranquilly as though there 
 were no such things as international rivalries in the world.
 
 138 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 Hurried as he was, the British Consul halted for a 
 moment at the naturalist's elbow. " Look," he said, thrust- 
 ing the binocular into the other's hand, and pointing towards 
 the ironclad. 
 
 Her Wolkenkopf calmly inspected the approaching vessel, 
 and returned the glass to its owner with the single mono- 
 syllable, " Zo ! " 
 
 " You will support me, Wolkenkopf," said Mr. Quillitt, 
 pale, but firm, " in protesting against this act of piracy on 
 the part of France ? " 
 
 " Mine friend," replied the German, quietly, " I promise 
 you I will protest against anything of the kind. But where 
 go you, dear Herr ? To the Minister's ? He is not to house. 
 He is at the Palace with M. de Chauvin." 
 
 " At the palace with M. de Chauvin ? Then there is not 
 a moment to be lost. Follow me, Wolkenkopf." 
 
 And hurrying aross the court-yard, Mr. Quillitt sprang up 
 the broad bamboo staircase three steps at a time, and dashed 
 unceremoniously into the audience-chamber. 
 
 It was as he expected. M. de Chauvin and The O'Mara 
 Molloy were seated at a table with an official-looking 
 document, which the Consul recognised at a glance, before 
 them. A treaty ! with the royal sign-manual (" A week old, 
 no doubt," thought Quillitt bitterly) at its foot, the Prime 
 Minister's counter-signature opposite, and the ink still wet 
 with which the Frenchman had just executed it. 
 
 " What means this inthrusion, sorr ? " said the Prime 
 Minister, rising with dignity from his chair. 
 
 "You infernal swin But stay, my first business is 
 
 with you, M. de Chauvin. Ah ! here is Wolkenkopf. In the 
 name, Monsieur, of our respective Governments, we protest
 
 THE PROTECTORATE OF PORCOLONGU. 139 
 
 against the act of piracy which He waved his hand 
 
 towards the window, all eyes following it, but stopped dead 
 in the tracks of his remonstrance. For the ironclad had 
 hove-to about a quarter of a mile from the shore. Up flew 
 her colours to the peak, and loud exclamations in English, 
 French, and Irish broke simultaneously from three of the 
 persons in the room. 
 
 IT WAS THE GERMAN FLAG ! 
 
 The three ejaculators turned fiercely on their silent com- 
 panion. Herr Wolkenkopf slowly drew a document from 
 his pocket, and opened it before their eyes. All recognised 
 at once the bold but simple signature " x Afseesova II., 
 his mark." But the treaty was not countersigned by the 
 Prime Minister. 
 
 "The King, sorr," exclaimed the descendant of kings, 
 " has been guilty of a gross braych of the Consthitution. 
 Your threaty is not worth the paper ut's written on ! " 
 
 " No ! " said the Herr placidly. " But that" pointing 
 through the window at the surly visitor in the bay "that 
 is worth much paper, and many writings. Not true ? " 
 
 The Prime Minister and the British Consul owned to 
 themselves that it was true. M. de Chauvin audibly attested 
 his consciousness of its truth by execrating " the name of a 
 cabbage." 
 
 " But," cried Mr. Quillitt, gradually recovering his senses, 
 "how did you ? when did he ?" 
 
 " Mine friend," said the German, looking at him with 
 benevolent humour in his mild blue eyes, " I took evening 
 meal with his Majesty yesterday. The schnapps was sclwti, 
 and " 
 
 The O'Mara Molloy sprang forward and roughly plucked
 
 140 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 aside the curtain of rush matting which divided the audience- 
 chamber from the throne-room. There on his back lay the 
 monarch who, like Diocletian, Charles the Fifth, and other 
 weary royal souls before him, had with his own hand 
 divested himself of the burden of rule. At his side reposed 
 three black bottles of a quaint shape. They were perfectly 
 empty, but the legend on their labels showed that they had 
 contained the finest Schiedam.
 
 THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY. 
 
 Dr. Juenemann has compounded a fluid which, in his opinion, is des- 
 tined entirely to revolutionise modern warfare, and put a stop to 
 the horrible carnage with which wars are at present inevitably 
 conducted. His plan is to burst a shell containing this fluid, which, 
 on liberation, is converted into a gas, under the effect of which 
 every living being within a considerable space becomes unconscious, 
 and remains so for Uvo or three hours. 
 
 NEAR the nineteenth century's closing 
 (All the world in peace reposing) 
 Suddenly the rumour ran, 
 " War's grim horrors, felt too often, 
 Good Juenemann will soften " 
 
 (Please pronounce " You-any-man "). 
 
 " Now he's made the thing a study 
 War will cease from being bloody, 
 
 And will only cause a smell. 
 Blessings, then, on modern science 
 And its last humane appliance, 
 
 The Narcotic Vapour Shell ! 
 
 " Boom of gun and rifle's rattle 
 Shall no more be heard in battle 
 Once the Doctor's shell has burst ;
 
 142 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 All the interest will be focussed 
 On the question who are hocussed 
 By their adversaries first. 
 
 " Softly these will sink to slumber, 
 While their weapons, useless lumber, 
 
 At their feet abandoned lie ; 
 Which secured and piled, the others 
 Will approach their sleeping brothers, 
 
 And restoratives apply. 
 
 " ' Waken, brethren, foes no longer,' 
 Stronger thus, and ever stronger, 
 
 Will arise the friendly shout. 
 ' Ended ere we'd well begun it 
 Is the fight ; our shell has won it ; 
 
 Now be yours the shelling out.' 
 
 " Blessings then on modern science 
 For its last humane appliance, 
 
 And on him who framed the plan. 
 War's no more a brutal battue?' 
 So they raised a stately statue 
 
 To the good Juenemann. 
 
 n. 
 
 Years rolled on and times grew milder, 
 All the primitive and wilder 
 
 Human passions sank to rest ; 
 And the public admiration 
 For the Doctor's innovation 
 Was less heartily expressed.
 
 THE 1' ROCK ESS OF HUMAMTY. 143 
 
 Men began to view with coldness 
 One who with such callous boldness 
 
 Could an army drug by stealth, 
 Careless, his designs pursuing, 
 How much harm he might be doing 
 
 To that army's future health. 
 
 " How could he," in accents fretful 
 Murmured they, " be thus forgetful, 
 
 Wrapped in his unscrupulous art, 
 That the rifle or the sabre 
 May be borne by men who labour 
 
 With affections of the heart ? 
 
 " Some perchance may not recover, 
 All of them are bound to suffer 
 
 In the body or the mind, 
 More or less, from that reaction 
 Which narcotic stupefaction 
 
 Almost always leaves behind." 
 
 So the local papers trounced him, 
 Crowds assembled and denounced him 
 
 Till they made their victim flinch, 
 Smashed his windows, broke his image 
 Mobbed him in an ugly scrimmage, 
 
 Threatened him with Justice Lynch. 
 
 Then the conscience-stricken Doctor 
 Doubtful whether to be shocked or 
 Furious at his altered plight,
 
 144 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 Making but a weak contention 
 For his devilish invention, 
 Gave it up and took to flight. 
 
 Fled beyond his country's border, 
 Entered a monastic order 
 
 .For his life's remaining span ; 
 And, from all his fellows parted, 
 Lingered on, a broken-hearted, 
 
 Penitent Juenemann.
 
 THE BRUTES ON THEIR MASTER. 
 
 NO one seemed disposed to break the silence : "the Fox 
 surveyed their confusion with a malicious smile. 
 
 "After all," he continued carelessly, the company still 
 remaining mute, " I don't know that it matters much to 
 me. The conditions of my own life will not be materially 
 affected, whatever course you take." 
 
 " Not affected ! " struck in the Dog quickly. " Oh, come, 
 that is a little too much. Why, surely, if you could induce 
 us to act on your advice, you would " 
 
 " Allow me to finish, if you please," interrupted the 
 other, with a touch of irritation. " I should, even in that 
 case, find it just as hard a matter to live ; I should be shot 
 and trapped instead of hunted, that is all. Nay, I might, 
 perhaps, be worse off, as some people would consider it, 
 than I am now. For I am told, and I see no particular 
 reason to doubt it, that if it had not suited Man to preserve 
 us for the purposes of sport, our race would long since have 
 become extinct. By detaching the Horse and Dog from 
 Man, and thus rendering the fox-hunt an impossibility, we 
 should in fact be removing the main factor in our perpetua- 
 tion." 
 
 " Why are you trying to do it then ? " inquired the Cat- 
 lazily, opening one eye to watch the effect of his question. 
 
 " Why ? " echoed the Fox, with impatience. " Because I 
 
 w, L.-XV. MS ro
 
 146 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 hate to see people being made fools of, as you are ; and 
 because I would rather take my chance of fighting for 
 existence, under some additional disadvantages, than see 
 the simplicity of worthy animals abused by a hypocritical 
 oppressor." 
 
 " Ha ! " muttered the Cat. " A disinterested Fox ! I 
 appreciate your motives. And," added he, dreamily, " I 
 will not mention the word c chickens.' " 
 
 " With your antecedents, you will exercise a wise dis- 
 cretion in not doing so," said the Fox tartly ; " and let me 
 tell you, my friend, that it is a matter of perfect indifference 
 to me whether you appreciate my motives or not. My 
 appeal is made to animals, not only of a superior intelligence 
 to yours, but of a far higher morality than you have ever 
 shown yourself capable of conceiving." 
 
 The Cat returned no answer to this taunt. He was 
 asleep. 
 
 After a short pause, during which the Dog appeared lost 
 in painful reflection, the Fox, in a still more insinuating 
 tone, resumed. 
 
 " It is," he said, " precisely because I entertain so sincere 
 a respect for that combination of moral and intellectual 
 qualities which I find in you, and in our friend the Horse, 
 here, that I have thought it worth my while to lay these pro- 
 posals of mine before you. It needs nothing less than that 
 combination of qualities to enable you to be of any real 
 service to us. We are all of us, as I hold, either persecuted, 
 or exploited, or in some way or other ill-used bv Man. To 
 every one of us he plays the part either of open enemy, .or 
 designing patron, or treacherous comrade, as the case may 
 be. But some among us, as, for instance, that poor silly
 
 THE BRUTES ON THEIR MASTER. 147 
 
 thing there," with a sidelong glance of contempt at the 
 Sheep hard by, " are both morally and mentally too weak 
 to offer any resistance. Others, though not wanting in in- 
 telligence, strength, or courage, are unfortunately so situated 
 as to be unable to render any effective help to the common 
 cause. Others, again, though intellectually well fitted to 
 devise a plan of revolt, and even to direct its execution, 
 have not been fortunate enough, for some reason or other," 
 here the Fox coughed with an air of constraint " to win 
 the confidence of their fellow brutes. The Dog and the 
 Horse, however, fulfil all the conditions required in leaders 
 of a movement of emancipation. They have wit enough to 
 see through Man's pretences to virtue, moral sense enough 
 to be disgusted at his baseness, and more power of annoying 
 and injuring him than all the rest of us put together. 
 What say you, then ? \\ftll you join in the league of the 
 lower animals, as my lord call us, against him ? " 
 
 " Not I ! " replied the Dog promptly, all his doubts 
 dispersed at once by the mere shock of the proposal. " Not 
 I ! He's far too good." 
 
 " Nor I," said the Horse, though with less enthusiasm. 
 " He's much too strong." 
 
 " Too strong ! " echoed the Dog reproachfully. " Is that 
 all ? I thought you loved him as I do." 
 
 The Horse looked mildly at him for a moment before 
 replying. 
 
 " I never said I did not," he added presently. " But 
 perhaps I see more of his strength than you do." 
 
 " I have more respect for your objection at any rate 
 than for his," said the Fox, in a slightly contemptuous tone, 
 " but there is nothing in it. You don't suppose that I ad-
 
 148 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 vocate anything like open resistance to our tyrant. I quite 
 admit that he is too strong to allow any chance of success 
 for that. No, what I mean is that Man is dependent 
 upon you for a vast number of willingly rendered services ; 
 that he relies and has to rely in a hundred matters on the 
 unforced zeal and docility of the Horse, and that were he 
 suddenly to lose the benefit of these qualities, and find 
 himself unable to get any more out of the Horse than he 
 could wring from him by absolute physical compulsion 
 incessantly applied, he would find the situation intoler- 
 able." 
 
 " So should we, I expect," said the Horse drily. 
 
 " No doubt it would be disagreeable to you for a time," 
 admitted the Fox. " But with your well-known fortitude 
 you could surely tire him out. Besides, you continually 
 have not only his comfort at your disposal but his life in 
 your power. Think of the number of necks you might 
 break by concerted action in a single day." 
 
 " You don't tell me what I am to do, however," said the 
 Dog. " For what services, pray, is Man so dependent upon 
 me ? I should think he could make a shift to do without 
 hunting, and he seems to like shooting best without me. 
 What could /do to injure him ? " 
 
 " This is mere affectation," sneered the Fox. " You 
 know as well as I do that you are as necessary to Man in one 
 way as the horse is in another. He wants toys no less than 
 -tools, and you are toys to which he has become so accus- 
 tomed that he could not do without you. Affection he calls 
 his feeling for you, and you no doubt are weak enough to 
 believe him. But, anyhow, you have grown into a habit with 
 him, and it would throw the whole human race into selfish
 
 THE BRUTES ON THEIR MASTER. 149 
 
 consternation to learn some fine morning that no Dog would 
 ever again lick man's hand." 
 
 There was a diabolical twinkle in the Fox's eye as he 
 uttered these words, but his tact told him the next moment 
 that he had gone too far. The last suggestion seemed to fall 
 upon the Dog like a blow. He winced, and rose instantly 
 to his feet. 
 
 " I will wish you good-night ! " he said coldly. " It is no 
 use my staying here any longer. Nothing in the world 
 should induce me to do what you ask." 
 
 " Sit down again, pray," said the Fox earnestly, " and 
 listen to me. I don't expect you to do what I am asking 
 you as long as your feelings towards Man remain what they 
 are. But surely I have already said enough to show you 
 how misplaced is your regard for him. What ! not when I 
 mention that ugly word again ? " 
 
 The Dog shuddered slightly, but remained silent. 
 
 " Not when I mention vivisec " 
 
 " No," said the Dog, in a tone almost of irritation. " I 
 wish to hear no more about that. It ought to be enough for 
 you to know that it doesn't in any degree alter my feelings 
 towards Man." 
 
 "Oh, that's impossible," replied the Fox coolly. "Or 
 at least, if it is possible, you must be in one sense as great 
 an impostor as he is. What is the good of Man's having 
 elevated your moral nature as he pretends to have done ? 
 What is the use of his having developed all the virtues in 
 you if you can't feel now that your patron's vile heartless- 
 ness and hypocrisy deprive him of all title to respect ? Why, 
 even that wretched Rabbit there, who cowers clown when I 
 merely mention his name, even he has conscience enough
 
 ISO NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 to appreciate the villainy of vivisection, if he has not 
 sufficient force of character to condemn it. His brother 
 was netted along with several friends and sold to a vivisector. 
 He witnessed the whole performance in the person of one of 
 his friends before fortunately making his own escape. Hi ! 
 Bunny ! tell us what you think of cutting rabbits up alive." 
 
 The Rabbit glanced timidly round him as though afraid 
 of being overheard, and then replied, in a hurried, trembling 
 whisper : 
 
 "I don't know. Don't ask me. It's bad very bad. 
 But but my mother's hind legs were broken with a shot 
 yesterday, and she has just crawled home. She's lying over 
 there behind the hedge. I'm not sure shooting ain't worse 
 than the other." 
 
 " You're a fool ! " said the Fox, somewhat disconcerted at 
 this display of independent judgment on the Rabbit's part. 
 " The sportsman kills outright a dozen times for once that 
 he wounds. But the very object of the other wretch is to 
 keep his victim alive as long as he can. Besides, that isn't 
 the worst part of the matter by any means. Who cares what 
 happens to us, you, Bunny, I mean, and me ? Man has 
 never pretended to be our friend ; he dislikes me and he 
 despises you. If he ever condescends to do anything but 
 shoot you k is only to put you into a hutch as a toy for his 
 children. You rank merely as a larger sort of guinea-pig or 
 white mouse ; while as for me," continued the Fox, signifi- 
 cantly, "well, he has never tried to make a friend of me 
 not much. And between ourselves he is not far wrong. 
 Anyhow he is welcome to vivisect me, when he can take me 
 alive and persuade me to lie quietly on the operating table 
 without trying a previous experiment in vivisection on my
 
 THE BRUTES ON THEIR MASTER. 151 
 
 own account." And here Reynard bared his formidable 
 rows of teeth in an extremely sinister grin. " To cut up a 
 fox or a rabbit may be as cruel as you please, but you can't 
 exactly call it base. Even to operate on a cat," added the 
 Fox, evidently not sorry to deal a side blow at his satirical 
 companion, " even to operate on a cat, domestic animal 
 as he is called, appears to me to be much the same 
 thing." 
 
 " What's that you're saying ?" asked the Cat, drowsily. 
 
 u I was saying," repeated the Fox in his blandest tones, 
 " that, though they call you a domestic animal, I don't 
 believe that you feel any particular affection towards Man, 
 at least in a disinterested way ; and that as he is probably 
 conscious of that, he is more or less justified in treating you 
 like one of us. What do you think about it yourself? " 
 
 "What do 1 think about what?" asked the Cat, with as 
 much impatience as he was capable of showing. 
 
 " Well, do you feel particularly disgusted at the thought 
 of Man's putting one of your species to a cruel death ? " 
 
 " I should feel particularly disgusted at the thought of 
 Man's putting me to a cruel death," was the reply. 
 
 " But more so at its being done by Man than by your 
 natural enemy, the Dog ? " 
 
 " Not a bit more," said the Cat, calmly. " Why should I ?" 
 
 " Precisely the answer I expected," said the Fox, with a 
 chuckle. " Then if you feel no deeper sense of injury, no 
 keener throb of pain at being tortured by Man than by the 
 Dog, you must be in reality as far apart from Man as we are, 
 and he is under no obligation to treat you otherwise than as 
 one of us. What do you say to that ? " 
 
 " Nothing," said the Cat, upon whom a fresh " exposition
 
 152 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 of sleep " was rapidly gaining. " Nothing. The question 
 has no interest for me." 
 
 " Exactly. Then you may go to sleep again. Man, I 
 say, might have destroyed or tortured us all foxes, rabbits, 
 sheep, even cats, without proving anything more than the 
 hardness of his heart without exhibiting himself, I mean, 
 as an ungrateful and treacherous villain. But the Dog, his 
 comrade for a thousand years, the friend of his fireside, the 
 companion of his walks, the guardian of his flocks, the 
 sentry in his house, nay, the very saviour of his life on the 
 snowfield or in the flood, the animal whom he boasts of 
 having raised almost to equality with himself that Man 
 should torture him ! By Heaven ! " cried the P'ox, in a 
 well-simulated outburst of honest indignation, " it is 
 infamous ! " 
 
 There was another silence, broken only by the low purr- 
 ing of the Cat. Upon the more intelligent members of the 
 assembly this last stroke of the Fox's had not been without 
 its effect. The Dog in particular, in spite of the firmness 
 with which he had proclaimed his fidelity to Man, was 
 evidently a prey to very strong emotions of doubt and pain. 
 
 " I do not believe," he said at last, " that Man often does 
 torture the Dog in this way." 
 
 " Not so often as the Rabbit, it is true ; but why ? 
 Because the rabbit is cheaper, no other reason. In the 
 same way, no doubt, it would cost a man less to cut up 
 children of his own begetting than to have to buy other 
 people's ; but I don't think the economy would be regarded 
 in that case as a sufficient excuse. That Man should ever 
 have vivisected the Dog at all is enough in itself to brand 
 him as the vilest creature in the creation."
 
 THE BRUTES ON THEIR MASTER. 153 
 
 " I don't know," said the Horse, thoughtfully, " that one 
 is quite justified in saying that of the whole race. There 
 are brutes of course among " 
 
 " There are what ? " interrupted the Fox, sharply. 
 
 " I I mean," said the Horse, a little confused, " I 
 mean what they themselves call ' brutes.' " 
 
 " Ay," said the Fox, in a tone of profound bitterness. " I 
 know what you mean. And it shows how completely 
 domestication has alienated your sympathies from your own 
 people, that you have picked up the very cant of insult from 
 our common oppressor. It is we who should rather stigma- 
 tise unusual cruelty or treachery among members of the 
 brute creation, by applying to its author the name of 
 ' man.' But we cannot hope to rival him in that respect. 
 A tiger would gladly make a mouthful of a young chamois, 
 if luck threw one in his way. But to prop up the corpse of 
 the nursing mother in order that the hungry unweaned 
 younglings may be lured within reach of the hunter that is 
 a thoroughly ' human ' performance, is it not? " 
 
 " Well, call them what you will," said the Horse, " all 
 men are not as cruel as some men. / know that from 
 experience, sweet as well as bitter." 
 
 "Ah," struck in the Dog, eagerly, "then you are not 
 altogether the unwilling slave of Man. You too delight, or 
 you have delighted, as I do, in his company and service." 
 
 A light gleamed for a moment in the dim, patient eyes of 
 the Horse, and his nostril dilated and quivered. " I did 
 delight in it," he said proudly ; " I am a thoroughbred, and 
 great things were expected of me once. When I was two 
 years old I carried everything before me. Yes, I have 
 known what it is to win the admiration of thousands ; and,
 
 154 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 what is better, to be loved and cherished by a few. 
 Women have kissed my face and plaited this ragged mane 
 of mine in ribbons ; but that was long ago, before I broke 
 down. My life is very different now." 
 
 " How do you live now, then ? " asked the Dog. 
 
 The Horse paused a moment before replying. " I thought 
 you 'knew," he answered, with an air of simple dignity very 
 impressive to witness. " I draw a cab." 
 
 " Great heavens ! " cried the Fox, who was perfectly well 
 aware of the fact, in a tone of wrathful astonishment. "And 
 you defend this race ! What black what base ingratitude ! 
 Your owner, I suppose, had won thousands by you, and 
 could not spare a few pounds a year to secure a comfortable 
 retirement for one who had done so much for him. I ask 
 you, is there any act of meanness which " 
 
 " Steady, steady !" interrupted the Horse, " not so fast, 
 please ! My owner fully intended to provide for me for life, 
 and actually did so for a year or two, but, unfortunately for 
 me, luck went against him on the turf, and well, to cut a 
 long story short, I passed to the assignees in bankruptcy. 
 But I believe he was really sorry to part with me, and his 
 daughter cried bitterly when she came to bid me good- 
 bye." 
 
 "Much good that was," said the Fox contemptuously. 
 " But, however, I am not concerned either with the cruelties 
 of ignorant men or with the heartlessness of the luxurious 
 and self-indulgent classes. What they may do is of little 
 consequence. It is not their doings which have caused our 
 friend here," glancing at the Dog, " to doubt whether he 
 has not been mistaken in Man. It is the conduct of those 
 who profess to be the most enlightened and humane among
 
 THE BRUTES ON THEIR MASTER. 155 
 
 their species. You know what his master is, don't you ? " 
 he continued, turning from the Dog, who was becoming 
 painfully agitated, to the rest of the company. " He is a 
 well-known vivisector." 
 
 " He is he is one of the kindest and most benevolent 
 of human beings," interrupted the Dog hastily. " He is 
 beloved by all who know him." 
 
 " Except rabbits, I presume," interjected the Fox, drily. 
 " How many scores do they tell me that he ' used up ' in the 
 course of last year ? He must be a delightful person to live 
 with, especially if one happened to be taken ill of some 
 interesting disease." 
 
 " He nursed me through the distemper as a puppy," said 
 the Dog, with feeling. " All through one night he sat up, 
 giving me egg and port wine every two hours. I should 
 have died if it hadn't been for him. It was only his great 
 skill that saved me." 
 
 " Dear me ! how good of him ! " said the Fox. " Probably 
 yours was a : n interesting case, then, and I have no doubt he 
 learned much from it. He did not pull you through altogether 
 though, it seems," and the speaker glanced significantly at 
 one of his companion's twitching fore-legs. 
 
 " No," said the Dog quietly. " The distemper has left 
 chorea behind it. It was impossible to save me from 
 that." 
 
 " Hoiv do you knmv that?" asked the Fox, almost in a 
 whisper, and eyeing the other with a devilish leer. 
 
 The Dog looked at him for a moment, with nothing save 
 pure astonishment in his limpid hazel eyes " What on earth 
 do you mean ? " inquired he. 
 
 " Oh, nothing," said Reynard carelessly. " If you see no
 
 I 5 6 NUMBER TWEN7Y. 
 
 cause for suspicion it may be all right ; only, a scientific man 
 like your master might have wanted to study chorea, and so 
 have allowed " 
 
 " Stop ! " growled the Dog fiercely. " Drop that, or you 
 and I will fall out." 
 
 " Don't lose your temper, my precious innocent," said 
 the Fox, sweetly. " My suggestion seems a very reasonable 
 one to me. I start with the assumption that your master 
 would not scruple to vivisect you if the supply of rabbits 
 failed." 
 
 " Me ! his own dog ? " said the Dog, with a horror and 
 contempt which checked further utterance. 
 
 " No ! not his own dog ? " inquired the Fox with affected 
 surprise. " He draws the line there, does he ? Then the 
 greater scoundrel he to vivisect other people's dogs. The 
 meanest of the lost curs whom he picks up for torture has 
 probably had some one who loved him. ... I assume of 
 course that he would not mind vivisecting other people's 
 dogs. Would he?" 
 
 The Dog returned no answer. He did not feel as sure 
 as he would have liked to feel that his master would mind 
 vivisecting other people's dogs ; and the Fox's criticism on 
 that act seemed to him to throw an entirely new light upon it. 
 Reynard perceived the impression he had made, and lost no 
 time in following up his advantage. 
 
 "What business have you," he went on, " to think only 
 of yourself, and of your own selfish interests ? You might as 
 well be a cat, for all that I can see. If you had been 
 elevated as much as that humbug Man pretends to have 
 raised you, you would think of the race at large, as he does, 
 and not of the individual."
 
 BRUTES ON THEIR MASTER. 157 
 
 " As he does ? " said the Horse. " Oh, but that's all 
 nonsense. Do you believe it ?" 
 
 " Not I," replied the Fox disdainfully ; " I am using Man's 
 own cant, that is all. But our friend here swallows it all 
 most trustfully, I feel sure, don't you ? You believe that 
 Man burns with disinterested zeal for the welfare of his 
 race, and tha^ he tortures Bunny and Pussy there in a 
 spirit of pure humanity eh ? " 
 
 " I don't believe I know it," said the Dog confidently. 
 " I know, at any rate, that my master is incapable of inflict- 
 ing pain, except with a benevolent object. I have heard 
 him say that by the sufferings of a few he hopes to alleviate 
 the agony of thousands." 
 
 " Oh, of course ! " assented the Fox, ironically. " But 
 thousands of whom ? Dogs, cats, rabbits, horses or 
 men ? " 
 
 " Not of men only," said the Dog, with eagerness. " We 
 lower animals are as much interested, so Man says, in the 
 progress of scientific research as himself; and, if we are 
 called upon to suffer, it is for the alleviation of our own " 
 
 " Fudge ! " cried the Fox in a tone of the bitterest con- 
 tempt. " Don't attempt to pass off that sickening stuff upon 
 us. Do you suppose for a moment that men would experi- 
 ment on living animals for the benefit of dogs and horses 
 alone ? " 
 
 The Dog did not suppose so for a moment, and was too 
 honest to pretend that he did. 
 
 " Man is careful enough not to hurt his own precious skin 
 in these investigations of his," continued the Fox. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said the Dog quickly. " Some men 
 have sacrificed their own lives to their experiments."
 
 158 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " Well, let them stick to that, then," replied the Fox, 
 " and we won't complain of them. But you know well 
 enough that that is not the usual way of it. You know that 
 what the vivisector mostly does is to torture scores and 
 hundreds of those wretched rabbits for no other object than 
 to prolong the life or relieve the pains of the race of beings 
 who shoot away Bunny's legs and leave him to die by inches 
 in a hole. Bunny is vastly interested in that object, isn't 
 he ? Don't tell me that the men who sport and the men 
 who torture are different classes. I know they are ; but I 
 know, too, that the men who torture pretend to be the best, 
 and boast that mankind is gradually being raised raised, 
 if you please from the level of the hunter up to their own. 
 That, to my mind," continued the Fox, shaking his head 
 solemnly, " is the shocking part of it. But it makes your 
 course all the clearer for you domestic animals, as you call 
 yourselves ; and I say that a very heavy responsibility rests 
 upon you. You have deserted your own kith and kin, and 
 thrown in your lot with Man ; and I hold that, unless you 
 are as bad as he is, you ought to cast him off without 
 hesitation now you have found out what he is. Yes," said 
 the Fox, collecting his forces for a last effort ; " if you find 
 that, as he approaches what he believes to be his highest 
 development, he becomes more hard-hearted, more treach- 
 erous and hypocritical, more destitute of ordinary fidelity to 
 his brute comrades than he was in his lower stages I say 
 it is time for you to give him up as a bad job. He can't 
 complain if you do. He boasts of having taught you the 
 virtues, and he must expect you to judge him by his own 
 teachings. Come, for the last time, domestic animals, will 
 you abandon Man as unworthy of your society and service ;
 
 THE BRUTES ON THEIR MASTER. 159 
 
 or, rather, will you, Dog and Horse, do so ? for to you," 
 turning to the Cat, " I know it is vain to appeal." 
 
 " Quite so," said the Cat, " and therefore you need not 
 have waked me with your gabble. What on earth has man's 
 unworthiness got to do with the matter? All I want to 
 know is whether I can better myself by leaving him, and I 
 am pretty sure I can't. Man has cream, and cold fish, and 
 soft hearth-rugs, and delightfully padded easy chairs. I 
 know nothing pleasanter to rub one's side against than 
 the leg of his trousers. Sometimes, it is true, in the fine 
 spring weather, I have rambled in the woods, before the 
 young birds can fly, and thought it would be pleasant to 
 live out of doors, and provide for oneself. But when the 
 winter has set in severely, I have always been glad to get back 
 to the fire ; and for an indoors cat," he added, reflectively, 
 "of course the winter is all the better for being severe, because 
 then the robins are not afraid to come on the window-sill." 
 
 " Ugh ! " said the Fox, turning from him with disgust to 
 the Horse ; " is there anything better to be hoped from 
 you ? " 
 
 " Not a bit," said the Horse cheerily. " I have heard 
 nothing from you that I didn't know before. I have never 
 had any very extravagant opinion of Man's virtues. He is 
 rough and selfish, and loses his temper about trifles, but 
 there is good in the fellow at bottom. I don't mind working 
 with him, and 'for him, to a reasonable extent, and I cer- 
 tainly prefer his society if you will excuse my frankness 
 to yours, or that of any other of the lower animals." 
 
 " Mean-spirited wretch ! " muttered the Fox. " You a 
 thoroughbred ! However, I expected," he continued, 
 addressing the dog, " that you would be the only one
 
 160 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 capable of appreciating my appeal. You see what Man is 
 from the moral point of view, and you 
 
 " And I love and reverence him," said the Dog stoutly, 
 " as much as ever. Who am I to judge him I, the creature 
 of his hand ? He has made me what I am, and all I have 
 is his. He is greater, stronger, wiser than I, and I must 
 suppose him to be in all things better too. If anything 
 done by him seems to me harsh and cruel, I will believe 
 that it only seems so because his ways are beyond the 
 compass of my weak mind to comprehend." 
 
 "Whew!" whistled the Fox, in unconcealed astonish- 
 ment, as the Uog and Horse walked away together. " He 
 didn't pick up that language from his scientific master, I'll 
 be bound. But, after all, I needn't be surprised at his 
 merely talking so, when they tell you the story that one of 
 those fools actually raised his head from the operating table 
 to lick his master's torturing hand. That kind runs easily 
 to religion. And to think that just when Man has suc- 
 ceeded in creating the religious instinct in his dog, he is 
 losing it himself ! " 
 
 Chuckling hugely at the reflection, the Fox looked round 
 for some one to share his amusement, when his eyes fell on 
 the features of the sleeping Cat. 
 
 " Ah ! " he said to himself, after a moment's thought, " it 
 is convenient to be wicked, but it is a misfortune to be 
 altogether without moral sense. Unless you understand 
 the difference between good and evil you will miss half the 
 joke of life."
 
 A NEW YEAR'S VISION. 
 
 FAR on the outside edge of things, 
 Within a measurable distance 
 Of those Nineteen Concentric Rings 
 That gird the Realm of Non-existence, 
 
 A traveller in that region sees 
 
 A sort of Purgatorial Limbo, 
 Where sits, each New Year's Day, at ease, 
 
 A cynic Spirit, arms a-kimbo, 
 
 With many thousand spirit-clerks, 
 Who enter in their shadowy ledgers, 
 
 Each with appropriate remarks, 
 The vows of many million pledgers. 
 
 The books are kept till twelve at night, 
 Then closed to further contributions, 
 
 And on the backs these words they write, 
 " New Year," and " Virtuous Resolutions." 
 
 They wrap them in a piece of sky, 
 And seal them up for safe deposit, 
 
 And for a twelvemonth let them lie 
 
 Locked in the Transcendental Closet. 
 w. L.-XV. lfil n
 
 1 62 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 ii. 
 
 I'm told that on the thirty-first 
 
 Of every following December, 
 To hear those books' contents rehearsed 
 
 Is well, is something to remember. 
 
 The Chief recites the righteous deeds 
 
 That each man's virtuous New Year's will meant ; 
 
 The clerk who made the entry reads 
 Statistics of the vow's fulfilment. 
 
 'Tis said I do not vouch it true ; 
 
 It may be a malicious sally 
 That on comparison, the two 
 
 Do not invariably tally. 
 
 Their difference causes, 'tis believed, 
 
 A shock to optimistic notions, 
 And its discovery is received 
 
 With quite a mixture of emotions. 
 
 Some spirits weep, while others muse 
 Like surgeons o'er experience clinic. 
 
 The Registrar's acquired the views 
 Of an incorrigible cynic. 
 
 ' And 'tis from that contempt unchecked 
 
 Vor all mankind, which he alleges, 
 That he permits me to inspect 
 
 The year's new batch of New Year's pledges.
 
 A NEW YEAR'S VISION. 163 
 
 in. 
 
 Ay ! here they are, a long array, 
 
 Close written, pages upon pages, 
 With countless signatures to-day 
 
 Of either sex, and all the ages. 
 
 The sick, the well, the sage, the dunce, 
 
 Of every rank and every calling ; 
 The sinner who has stumbled once, 
 
 The sinner who is always falling. 
 
 The gay, the grave, the dull, the bright, 
 The wild, the mild, the weak, the able, 
 
 The statesman on the Speaker's right, 
 The statesman from across the table. 
 
 The lawyers, doctors, and divines, 
 The will-be wise, and would-be witty ; 
 
 The man who " does a bit in mines " ; 
 The man who's "something in the City." 
 
 The money-lender and the heirs, 
 
 The callow youths with expectations, 
 
 The beggars and the millionaires, 
 
 The wealthy aunts, and poor relations. 
 
 Jockeys, and journalists, and cooks, 
 And drunkards, and excessive smokers, 
 
 Tipsters and pigeons, touts and rooks, 
 Play-actors, painters, bankers, brokers.
 
 164 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 IV. 
 
 And then their resolutions ! Well ! 
 
 You couldn't, had you seen, forget them. 
 These votaries vowing to expel 
 
 The sin that chiefly doth beset them. 
 
 Conceive the " party man " self-bound 
 To steer a course of moral beauty, 
 
 And grow, before the year comes round, 
 A backbone, and a sense of duty ! 
 
 The Irish patriot pledged to curb 
 
 The tongue that runs a thought too gaily, 
 
 And " do with " one expressive verb 
 And three " descriptive " epithets daily ! 
 
 The preacher eloquent, self-shorn 
 To quarter-of-an-hourly sermons ! 
 
 The scientific person, sworn 
 
 To own his borrowings from the Germans 1 
 
 The high financier, self-confined 
 To undertakings safe as churches ! 
 
 The smart promoter quite resigned 
 
 To " place " no shares he wouldn't purchase ! 
 
 The bad, in short, to goodness vowed, 
 
 Irascibility to meekness, 
 To sweet humility the proud, 
 
 To strength and honour shame and weakness.
 
 A NEW YEAR'S VISION. 165 
 
 v. 
 
 So, as I close the book, I say, 
 
 " All earnestly though men assert you, 
 
 O moral promises-to-pay, 
 
 And I.O.U.'s from Man to Virtue, 
 
 " I fear that when the day comes round 
 (That thirty-first of next December), 
 
 The audit will again be found 
 
 To be well, something to remember. 
 
 " Yet though, one knows, fulfilment's scope 
 
 Can hardly equal your dimensions, 
 It still would be but kind to hope 
 
 That most of you, O Good Intentions, 
 
 " Throughout the year your ground may hold, 
 
 All pressure of temptation braving, 
 And relatively few be sold 
 
 By contract, for infernal paving."
 
 THE GREAT BAXTAIRS SCANDAL. 
 
 r I A HE advent of the year 189 was awaited with 
 .I considerable interest by the literary, and with ab- 
 sorbing interest by the political, world. For 189 , as an 
 easy exercise in mental arithmetic assures us, is divided 
 from 1 86 by a space of exactly five-and-twenty years, and 
 the year 186 was the year of the death of the Right Hon. 
 James Minton Tyler, who had left the whole of his valuable 
 diaries and correspondence to his nephew and literary 
 executor, Mr. Knightley Standish, with strict testamentary 
 instructions to withhold them from publication until the 
 lapse of the period referred to. Its expiration was for many 
 reasons eagerly looked for. In the first place, the deceased 
 right honourable gentleman (if that be the proper order in 
 which to arrange his various titles to respect) had throughout 
 the greater part of a long life enjoyed unexampled oppor- 
 tunities of access to the arcana of English politics. With- 
 out being himself a great statesman, or even a statesman at 
 all, he contrived to acquire, and for many years to retain, the 
 confidence of several great statesmen, whose claim to that dis- 
 tinguished title has been as unmistakably affirmed by history 
 as it was unhesitatingly conceded by their contemporaries. 
 A long official career as a minister of the second rank had 
 testified to at least his administrative capacity, and served in 
 
 166
 
 THE GREAT BAXTAIRS SCANDAL. 167 
 
 some measure to explain the respect in which his judgment 
 was evidently held by so many more eminent men. But 
 the extent of his private and personal influence remained 
 always something of a mystery to the last. No one quite 
 knew why that most accomplished of modern financiers, 
 Sir Simon Sheddle, believed in him so devoutly, and trusted 
 him (before their little quarrel) so unreservedly ; nobody 
 could quite understand the bluff Duke of Doncaster's ap- 
 parently sincere regard for him ; and certainly no one ever 
 quite satisfactorily traced the causes of the connection 
 between him and that busiest of political intriguers, Lord 
 Baxtairs. On the other hand, it is only fair to the memory 
 of Mr. Tyler to say that his mysterious friends presented no 
 more insoluble a problem than his enigmatic enemies. If 
 posterity was puzzled to know why he so powerfully attracted 
 some people, it was equally at a loss to explain why he so 
 violently repelled others. No man so favoured by the 
 regards of one set of famous contemporaries has ever been 
 so heartily detested by another set ; and the hatred was on 
 the whole so much the more extravagant of the two senti- 
 ments excited by him, that it can hardly have been the more 
 deserved. 
 
 But whatever view might be taken, whether favourable or 
 unfavourable, of the deceased politician's character, there 
 could be no doubt of his being an extremely interesting 
 figure ; or that the famous diaries, when they saw the light, 
 would prove as interesting as the diarist. He was credited 
 while alive with knowing all that there was to be known of 
 what passed behind the scenes of English politics, and he was 
 not credited with any such excessive amiability of disposition 
 as might induce a man to conceal anything that he knew to
 
 168 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 the discredit of others. His directing the postponement of 
 the revelations for five-and-twenty years might have been 
 supposed indeed by very innocent persons to indicate a 
 tenderness for the feelings of the living ; but those who knew 
 him better were much more disposed to attribute it to a just 
 appreciation of the defencelessness of the dead. 
 
 " You wish, uncle," Mr. Standish had said to him while 
 receiving his last injunctions on this head, " to spare the 
 susceptibilities of those whom your disclosures might wound 
 if published in their lifetime ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the sick man, with one of his queer smiles, 
 " and to save them the trouble of replying." 
 
 Mr. Standish reflected for a moment. His uncle was 
 turned seventy, but two or three of the statesmen with 
 whom he had had intimate relations were a good many 
 years younger. 
 
 " Do you think," inquired the nephew, " that you can 
 reckon with confidence upon all your contemporaries having 
 departed this life before the Memoirs appear?" 
 
 " If any of them survive," was the reply, " they will be 
 very old men." 
 
 " And will feel less keenly on that account, you think ? " 
 
 " I trust so. They will at any rate remember less accu- 
 rately. Even if they can rely upon their own memory, it 
 is enough for my purpose," added Mr. Tyler, who was now 
 growing visibly weaker, "that it will be distrusted by the 
 public." 
 
 A few hours after this interview the worthy old gentleman 
 passed placidly away. "All that was mortal of him," as 
 the phrase is, was interred with public honours, but there 
 was some controversy among his more candid friends as to
 
 THE GREAT BAXTAIRS SCANDAL. 169 
 
 whether this description could be properly held to include 
 his enmities ; for these, observed one of the most candid of 
 the friends aforesaid, were not otherwise " mortal " than in 
 the sense of being deadly. His obsequies, however, were 
 most numerously attended ; and many even of those political 
 associates who were unable to pay this mark of respect to 
 his earthly relics, showed the utmost solicitude about his 
 literary remains. Mr. Standish, as chief mourner, occupied, 
 as may be imagined, a place of high importance and con- 
 sideration. Many were the anxious inquiries addressed to 
 him with regard to the last hours and the last instructions 
 of his uncle ; and as soon as the decencies of domestic 
 grief permitted him to accept invitations, he found himself 
 with as many dinner engagements at the houses of important 
 political personages as the most aspiring of young men 
 could wish for. They began to fall off a little when it be- 
 came known that the deceased politician's diaries were not 
 to see the light for a quarter of a century, but looked up 
 again when people learned as Mr. Standish took good care 
 they should learn that his uncle's papers were not be- 
 queathed to his literary executor under seal, and conse- 
 quently held no secrets from him. And when, a year or 
 two later, he published his Loose Leaves from a Minister's 
 Note-Book, with its piquant allusions to bygone political 
 scandals, and its knowing hints of the " we could an if we 
 would " order, Mr. Knightley Standish became by general 
 assent one of the most agreeable young men to be met 
 with in London society. Mr. Standish bore his honours 
 discreetly and with modesty. He was not so vain, he used 
 to protest, as to attribute his social acceptance to the 
 brilliancy of his talk or the fascination of his manners.
 
 i yo NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 Knowledge, he would go on to say, had attractions of its 
 own ; and if his intimacy was sought and cherished by the 
 grandees of politics, it was merely that " he happened to be 
 better informed than most men of his years." 
 
 But whatever his claims to the notice of these great men, 
 there can be no doubt of its high value to him. The 
 position which it acquired for him, while yet a young man 
 of three-and-twenty, as a social notability, he had, in spite 
 of his modest disclaimer, enough wit and aplomb to main- 
 tain. His uncle's death had left him, as sole legatee, in 
 tolerably easy circumstances; the assistance of his distin- 
 guished patrons enabled him to obtain a seat in Parliament ; 
 and though his Parliamentary career was but a brief one, he 
 made good use of the increased facilities which it afforded 
 him for advancing his reputation as a man likely to be 
 better acquainted than another with the political secrets of 
 the hour. So esteemed and so employed, Mr. Standish 
 lived a life of agreeable excitement and gratified vanity 
 from youth to middle age. Still he was not sorry when, a 
 few weeks after his forty-seventh birthday, he found himself 
 entering upon the last twelvemonth of the period for which 
 his uncle had directed his Memoirs to be withheld from the 
 political world. For, to say the truth, the political world 
 was beginning to lose somewhat of its earlier interest in 
 Mr. Standish. Nearly all his uncle's contemporaries had 
 passed away, and the generation which succeeded them had 
 not the same good reasons for thinking him an agreeable 
 person. A painful suspicion at times stole over him that 
 he was regarded, if not exactly as a " fogey," at least as 
 having entered that middle-state or limbo of fogeyism 
 proper, the inhabitants of which are known by the official
 
 THE GREAT BAX7AIRS SCANDAL. 171 
 
 description of men " no longer young." Add to this that 
 Mr. Standish was not prospering in money matters. He 
 had been left, as has been said, with a fair income, which, 
 being a man of order and regularity, he had never exceeded 
 by more than a hundred and fifty pounds or so per annum. 
 Now twenty-five years of punctual adherence to this practice 
 not only reduces a man's invested capital, which is perhaps 
 a minor matter, but begins to affect his personal comfort 
 by diminishing his income; and this latter consequence 
 Mr. Standish could not tamely submit to. Disgusted at 
 finding himself growing poorer as he grew older, he endea- 
 voured to make his reduced capital go further by seeking 
 more speculative investments, and, as usually happens in 
 such cases, he made a considerable portion of it go so far 
 that it disappeared from his view for ever. The upshot of 
 all which was that it was absolutely necessary for Mr. Standish 
 to make the Tyler Papers a " big success " ; and some 
 twelve months before the permitted date of publication he 
 set vigorously to work to organise victory. 
 
 The result of his first steps more than answered his ex- 
 pectations. The firm of publishers to whom in confidence 
 he communicated some of the contents of his uncle's 
 Memoirs were greatly impressed with what they heard. In 
 particular they were much struck by the light which its 
 disclosures threw upon the secret history of the Coalition 
 of 1 8 , a subject which in the then ill-defined condition of 
 parties would be likely to arrest the special attention of the 
 public. The private negotiations which preceded the 
 Coalition were all fully unveiled in the Memoirs, and a very 
 pretty scandal they revealed a scandal not only compro- 
 mising to some half-dozen deceased politicians, but also,
 
 172 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 and much the most seriously, damaging to the functionally 
 weak but not hitherto organically affected reputation of that 
 still surviving political veteran, the Earl of Baxtairs. The 
 publishers foresaw how revelations of this kind would make 
 \h& Memoirs "draw"; the book, they admitted, ought to 
 be " the book of the season " ; and when Mr. Standish had, 
 by some half-dozen sly paragraphs in the newspapers, con- 
 trived to whet public expectation to the keenest pitch, 
 Messrs. Small, Peaker, and Co. saw their way, not indeed 
 to concluding a definite agreement at once for the copy- 
 right of the Memoirs, but to " mentioning " a sum in con- 
 nection therewith which made Mr. Standish's mouth water. 
 
 Lord Baxtairs, to do that venerable but infirm octo- 
 genarian justice, appeared less affected than any one else 
 by the general excitement about the forthcoming work. 
 Not so, however, his son, Viscount Postern, who having made 
 his peace with his party by whom his father had ever 
 since the Coalition days .been eyed somewhat askance 
 was now looking for orifice. Again and again did he visit 
 the old man at Brighton, where he passed most of his time, 
 in the hope of rousing him to a sense of the situation, 
 and inducing him to take some action to prevent the 
 threatened disclosures. 
 
 " What will you do, sir," his son asked, " if this rascal 
 really has, as is more than probable, a whole budget of 
 unpleasant secrets, and shoots them all out before the 
 public?" 
 
 "Do, my dear Postern," replied the aged earl drily 
 " do ? Why, ' live it down,' to be sure." 
 
 " Live it down, sir ? At eighty ! " 
 
 " What ? You don't give me nine days then ? " was the
 
 THE GREAT BAXTAIRS SCANDAL. 173 
 
 old peer's chuckling retort; and Lord Postern sighed to 
 think how hopelessly the veteran had failed to keep abreast 
 of the progress of public virtue. 
 
 " If we only knew what the fellow's facts are," the son 
 would say impatiently, " we should at least know what we 
 had to expect. Can you not recall the exact circumstances, 
 sir ! " 
 
 " Now, Postern, now, my dear boy," said his father depre- 
 catingly ; " a job of nearly fifty years ago ! Now really, 
 really ! " 
 
 Lord Postern sighed again. He felt the justice of the 
 protest, and that he might as well expect his father to recall 
 all the menus of his dinners. 
 
 " Will you," he said, as a last resort, " will you empower 
 Mr. Dockett to overhaul your papers, and see if he can find 
 copies of the correspondence which passed between you and 
 Mr. Tyler at the time in question ? '' 
 
 " Yes," said the old man, with a sly smile. " Mr. Dockett 
 is a model private secretary, indefatigable in research, and 
 he may see what he can find." 
 
 Further fortified by express authority from the earl, 
 obtained in answer to a letter addressed to him at Brighton 
 by the private secretary himself, Mr. Dockett set to work, 
 and spent three months of almost incessant labour in col- 
 lecting, arranging, collating, and, in many instances, taking 
 copies of the documents which had accumulated in thousands 
 during a long and busy life. But no Baxtairs-Tyler Cor- 
 respondence, no scandals, indeed, of any kind nothing 
 even interesting. Lord Baxtairs might have been a pre- 
 cisian of the straitest sect of political Phariseeism for all 
 that appeared in his papers.
 
 174 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 At this juncture the old earl died ; and the day after his 
 funeral the private secretary made a proposal to his suc- 
 cessor at which the latter opened his eyes. 
 
 Mr. Dockett then explained himself more fully. 
 
 " But but " said the new Lord Baxtairs, " no publisher 
 would " 
 
 " Leave that to me," said Mr. Dockett. " Have I your 
 authority to negotiate with Mr. Standish ? " He received 
 it, and in an hour's time presented himself at that gentle- 
 man's chambers at the Albany. 
 
 Mr. Standish had a slight acquaintance with him, as he 
 had with most private secretaries of official or ex-official 
 personages, and was naturally at no loss to guess the nature 
 of his business. As naturally, therefore, he welcomed him 
 with an air of profound, though polite, surprise. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Standish," said his visitor, who was 
 no less naturally prepared for this kind of reception, and 
 knew the advantage of going straight to the point. " You 
 have no doubt guessed what brings me here." 
 
 Mr. Standish executed a diplomatic bow, which might 
 mean anything. 
 
 " Lord Baxtairs' attention has been called to the news- 
 paper paragraphs respecting the approaching publication of 
 your late uncle's diaries, and has commissioned me to confer 
 with you on the subject." 
 
 Silence still appearing to Mr. Standish to be more prudent 
 tnan speech, he bowed again. 
 
 " I am going to talk quite frankly with you, Mr. Standish," 
 proceeded Mr. Dockett " though indeed," he added, "I 
 can make no merit of that in the peculiar circumstances of 
 the case< All the world knows, of course, that one great
 
 THE GREAT. BAXTAIRS SCANDAL. 17$ 
 
 attraction perhaps the great attraction of the forthcoming 
 Memoirs is the light which they are expected to throw on 
 the secret history of the Coalition of 18 . Most people 
 were aware that Mr. Tyler had a considerable share in the 
 negotiations which preceded that extremely unexpected 
 political combination ; but what they are not aware of," pro- 
 ceeded Mr. Dockett, with a still more pronounced assump- 
 tion of friendly confidence, " is the part played in the affair 
 by a member of the then Cabinet, and a colleague of the 
 Prime Minister whom he was destined to supersede as chief 
 of the administration which followed in a word, by the late 
 Lord Baxtairs." 
 
 Mr. Dockett paused for a moment, but Mr. Standish said 
 nothing. 
 
 "The correspondence the very "private correspondence 
 which passed at the time between these two eminent men 
 is or so we have reason to fear about to see the light. 
 May I ask if it is so?" 
 
 He paused again, and for so long this time that Mr. 
 Standish was obliged to answer. 
 
 " It is my intention," he said, " to publish the letters 
 exchanged on that occasion between the late Lord Baxtairs 
 and Mr. Minton Tyler." 
 
 " I am extremely obliged to you for your candour," said 
 Mr. Dockett, sweetly. " I need not, I am sure, inform any 
 one so familiar with the history of that time, that the publi- 
 cation of that correspondence is gravely deprecated by the 
 present Lord Baxtairs. The position in which his father 
 was placed during the crisis in question was one of extreme 
 difficulty ; the conflict between the claims of public duty and 
 those of private friendship was terribly severe. The former,
 
 176 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 we know, prevailed in the end ; and history, I think, has justi- 
 fied their triumph. But you can well understand the desire 
 both of Lord Baxtairs and his successor that the record of that 
 conflict should be buried in oblivion. During the fortnight 
 or so of its duration, the perplexed minister was necessarily 
 was inevitably compelled to maintain an attitude which 
 would now be open to misconstruction, and might, perhaps, 
 even be deemed well a I will say, inconsistent with due 
 loyalty to his colleagues. In a word, Mr. Standish, we feel 
 that the publication of these letters, which moreover were 
 writtenunder the strictest seal of confidence, would do serious 
 damage to the political reputation of the late earl, if not 
 gravely compromise the political prospect of his successor." 
 
 " Mr. Dockett," said his companion cheerfully, " I should 
 ill return the candour with which you have treated me, were 
 I to conceal the fact that I entirely agree with you. I fully 
 expect that the publication of the correspondence will have 
 both the results which you apprehend, and I assure you that 
 the task of preparing it for the press, with this conviction 
 ever present to my mind, has been the most painful part of 
 my responsibilities as an editor." 
 
 "I am anxious, if possible, to relieve you of it," said 
 Mr. Dockett, drily. " Lord Baxtairs has instructed me to 
 ask you whether you cannot reconcile it with your editorial 
 duty to withhold these letters from publication." 
 
 Mr. Standish felt that it was time to throw off the private 
 individual and assume the public servant. 
 
 " Impossible, Mr. Dockett," he replied firmly ; " I am 
 sorry to say it, but it is impossible. My duty, not only to 
 my uncle, but, as I conceive, to my country, compels me to 
 give these documents to the world."
 
 THE GREAT BAXTAIRS SCANDAL. 177 
 
 " Lord Baxtairs, Mr. Standish, owes a duty to his father ; 
 and so far as the public are concerned, I must say I think 
 that their paramount interest is in the maintenance of those 
 obligations of good faith and honour, as between public 
 men, which alone render it possible for them to serve their 
 country with advantage." 
 
 " I cannot undertake to discuss that point with you," said 
 Mr. Standish, stiffly. " Every man has a right to his own 
 view of what the public interest requires ; but he must 
 expect others to act upon theirs. I have long and anxiously 
 considered the question, and the resolution I have come to 
 you must please consider final." 
 
 There was a pause ; and Mr. Dockett then, in a sensibly 
 colder tone, resumed, 
 
 " I am sorry the matter cannot be settled amicably. As 
 it is, you will force us to take other means." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! Legal ? " 
 
 " No, not legal ; though you are aware, of course, that 
 Lord Baxtairs could restrain you by injunction from pub- 
 lishing any of his father's letters. He was at first disposed 
 to take this course, but I dissuaded him from it." 
 
 At this Mr. Standish rose from his chair, walked to the 
 fire, and turning his back to it laughed outright. 
 
 " By Jove, Mr. Dockett," he said, " you did me an ill 
 turn there." 
 
 " I know I did," replied the other, calmly. " I don't 
 know why you should think I want to do you a good one. 
 I quite understand that an injunction was just the thing 
 you wanted. We couldn't prevent your publishing the facts 
 without the letters, and our suppressing the letters would 
 convince everybody that your account of the facts was the
 
 178 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 true one. How, indeed, could we expect any contradiction 
 of ours to be believed, when we were burking the evidence 
 which, if our story were true, would have established it ? 
 And meanwhile the mere incident of the litigation would 
 have probably trebled the circulation of your book." 
 
 "You deal with the subject like a master," said Mr. 
 Standish, gaily ; " but since you admit yourselves unable to 
 suppress these letters by any action of your own, and since I 
 distinctly decline to oblige you by suppressing them myself, 
 will you kindly inform me what you propose to do ? " 
 
 " I will," said Mr. Dockett, and there was such an unmis- 
 takable twinkle of triumph in his eye that Mr. Standish 
 came back to the table and sat down again. " I will," 
 repeated Mr. Dockett. " We shall immediately publish the 
 correspondence ourselves" 
 
 The announcement was so wholly unexpected that Mr. 
 Standish half rose from his chair at the shock, but instantly 
 recovered and reseated himself. If the threat was serious 
 it was a formidable one, for there were still nine months to 
 elapse before his own liberty of publication arose. But he 
 had recovered his outward composure before he replied, 
 
 "Your threat, my dear Mr. Uockett, would appear to 
 argue a somewhat extensive unfamiliarity with what you are 
 talking about. Lord Baxtairs cannot be aware of what his 
 father's letters contain." 
 
 " On the contrary, we are perfectly well acquainted with 
 their contents." 
 
 " Then may I ask with what object Lord Baxtairs pro- 
 poses to compel his distinguished father to write himself 
 down well, something worse than an ass ? " 
 
 It was now Mr. Dockett's turn to laugh.
 
 THE GREAT BAXTAIRS SCANDAL. 179 
 
 " You are much too shrewd, I take it, Mr. Standish, not 
 to perceive that for yourself. In the first place, we shall 
 have the advantage of telling our own story, editing and 
 annotating our own letters ; and shall then, of course, make 
 out the best case we can for his late lordship. If you 
 dispute the glosses which we put on the letters, we shall 
 reply to you ; but whether you do or not, we shall take 
 good care that the public is heartily sick of the whole matter 
 before your book comes out. In the second, and as I 
 think the more important place, by anticipating your dis- 
 closures we shall have at least the satisfaction of annihilating 
 the prospective profits of a gross breach of confidence. 
 Even supposing we fail to whitewash Lord Baxtairs success- 
 fully, he will be none the worse off than if we had waited 
 for you to blacken him. Nine months hence his reputation 
 may be exactly where it would have been, but what will have 
 become of your market ? " 
 
 " You seem to forget, Mr. Dockett," said Standish, " that 
 the Baxtairs-Tyler correspondence will not be the only 
 ' interesting chapter in my uncle's book." 
 
 "Nor will it be in ours," retorted Mr. Dockett, briskly. 
 " Lord Baxtairs' memoirs, now ready for the press, extend 
 over a period of fifty years, during nearly two-thirds of 
 which time your uncle and he were in constant intercourse 
 with the same public men, and engaged in the observation 
 of the same political events. I imagine," concluded Mr. 
 Dockett, carelessly, " that the two books will cover almost 
 identical ground." 
 
 The last hint, intended to stagger Mr. Standish, had the 
 effect of reassuring him. He had never heard of any such 
 memoirs, though as Lord Baxtairs, the last surviving contem-
 
 i8o NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 porary of his uncle, had for some years been the only man 
 left alive who could possibly forestall the Tyler Papers, he 
 had naturally made many inquiries on the subject. Never 
 having heard of any such memoirs, he was strongly disposed 
 to doubt their existence. Doubting it, he was easily led to 
 doubt the seriousness of Mr. Dockett's threat. At any rate 
 it seemed his game to wait. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Dockett," he said, rising from his chair and 
 looking at the clock, "unless you have anything more to 
 say, I don't know why we should take up each other's time 
 any longer. Of course I have no power to prevent, nor 
 even any right to object to, Lord Baxtairs taking the step he 
 proposes. He must act as he is advised. Good morning." 
 
 So ended the interview ; but in spite of Mr. Standish's 
 determination to defy his visitor's threats, he was not quite 
 comfortable in his mind. And his uneasiness was consider- 
 ably deepened by an announcement which met his eye a 
 morning or two after, on opening his newspaper, under the 
 advertisement-heading of " Messrs. Primmer and Burjoyce's 
 New Publications." Short, but expressive, it ran as 
 follows : 
 
 [Nearly ready '.] 
 
 Fifty Years of Political Life : being a Selection from the 
 Journals and Correspondence of the late Right Hon. 
 the Earl of Baxtairs, G.C.B. 2 vols. 8vo. 
 
 Unwilling as he was to do so, Mr. Standish was forced to 
 admit that this looked like business. A respectable firm of 
 publishers would hardly be likely to stultify themselves by 
 advertising as " nearly ready " any work which they had not 
 either actually seen in manuscript, or of the existence of which 
 they had not good reason to be convinced. Still still it was
 
 THE GREAT BAXTAIRS SCANDAL. 181 
 
 all very strange ; he could not bring himself to think that 
 in short, he was in that state of indecision and perplexity 
 which renders action of any kind impossible. Not long, 
 however, was he allowed to remain in it. His breakfast 
 was spoilt for him a day or two after by a civil but sternly 
 business-like letter from Messrs. Small, Peaker, and Co., 
 pointing out to him that the announcement of Lord 
 Baxtairs' memoirs for almost immediate appearance ma- 
 terially altered the conditions under which they were 
 negotiating for the publication of the Tyler Papers, and that 
 if, as was to be feared, the revelations of the more recently 
 deceased statesman were found to anticipate those of his old 
 political associate, Messrs. S. P. and Co. would necessarily 
 be compelled to reconsider the offer which they had 
 previously stated their willingness to make Mr. Standish for 
 the copyright of his book. 
 
 Mr. Standish flung down the letter on the breakfast-table 
 with an ejaculation of extreme disgust. He felt that his 
 adversary had, at any rate, won the first game. But a long 
 course of industrious self-seeking had accustomed him to 
 subject even nobler passions than that of anger to the 
 restraints of material interest. 
 
 " There is nothing for it," he said, after an hour's steady 
 reflection on the situation " there is nothing for it but 
 compromise." And, sitting down at his writing-table, he 
 hastily penned a note to Mr. Dockett, requesting the favour 
 of a visit from him in the course of the afternoon. 
 
 The private secretary appeared at the appointed time, not 
 indecently, but still quite perceptibly, triumphant. But Mr. 
 Standish's business instincts were now supreme ; and if 
 his visitor had executed a war-dance round his room, and
 
 1 82 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 taunted him as a Red Indian taunts a captured enemy, he 
 would have borne it with perfect equanimity. 
 
 " Mr. Dockett," he said at once, " I feel that it is for me 
 to make the first advances on this occasion. I will begin, 
 then, by admitting that so far you have got the best of it. 
 I didn't believe in the existence of your Baxtairs' Memoirs 
 when you called upon me last week. I do now or, at any 
 rate, I don't think it safe to reckon on their non-existence. 
 They may, for all I know, be ' nearly ready ' for publication ; 
 and if you were to publish them now, I frankly confess that 
 it would knock the bottom out of my uncle's book. But 
 that brings me to the point : and it can be very easily and 
 shortly stated. We are both of us preparing to publish a 
 couple of volumes of political scandal : I, to put the matter 
 plainly, with a view to pecuniary profit ; you, to put it 
 equally plainly, with a view to the spoiling my market for 
 purposes of your own. It is clearly essential to my object 
 to be first in the field ; while, assuming that your purposes 
 can be otherwise accomplished, it is as clearly not essential 
 to yours. Given a reasonable satisfaction of your demands 
 in the matter of the Baxtairs-Tyler correspondence, I pre- 
 sume you would be willing to let my book appear first. 
 Now what would you consider a reasonable satisfaction of 
 these demands ? " 
 
 " What do you offer as such ? " 
 
 " H m ! Well, you can't expect me to suppress the 
 correspondence altogether the spiciest thing in the book ! 
 That would be too much." 
 
 " Those are Lord Baxtairs' terms, however." 
 " Then he will have to abate them," said Mr. Standish, 
 stoutly. "The letters must and shall appear."
 
 THE GREAT DAXTAIRS SCANDAL. 183 
 
 " They are Lord Baxtairs' terms," repeated Mr. Dockett 
 with deliberation ; " but I will entirely on my own re- 
 sponsibility, mind I will make a proposal which, if you 
 accept it, I pledge myself to use my best endeavours to 
 induce Lord Baxtairs to accept likewise. It is this : that 
 within a week from to-day you submit to us the proof-sheets 
 of the chapter or chapters of your uncle's Memoirs contain- 
 ing the Baxtairs-Tyler correspondence. These proof-sheets 
 we are to be at liberty to revise, correct, expurgate, annotate, 
 supplement, and ' edit ' generally, in any way and to any 
 extent we please. They are then to be returned to you, 
 and in the event of your accepting our emendations, 
 elisions, additions, etc., as they stand, and pledging your 
 honour to us to publish the chapters exactly in the form in 
 which we return them to you, we on our part will undertake 
 to delay the publication of our memoirs until after yours 
 have appeared." 
 
 " And supposing I decline to accept your emendations ! 
 What then ? " 
 
 " What then ? The status quo. It will be simply a case 
 of 'as you were.' We resume our right to publish the 
 letters in our own way at once, you resume your right to 
 publish them in your own way hereafter." 
 
 The offer seemed a fair one ; and, sincere or not, it 
 seemed an offer which there could be no risk in experiment- 
 ally accepting. Above all, it promised the invaluable gain 
 of time. Standish asked for a night to consider it, and 
 wrote the next day to Mr. Dockett accepting it, with, of 
 course, full reservation of the liberty of action in case the 
 proposed compromise fell through. The MS. of the Tyler 
 Papers had not yet gone, he said, to the printers, but he
 
 1 84 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 would request his publishers to have the important chapter 
 set up, and the proofs should be in Mr. Dockett's hands in 
 a week. 
 
 The private secretary glanced through the letter, and 
 handed it with an air of quiet exultation to Lord Baxtairs. 
 
 " We shall get ' discovery of documents ' now," he 
 said. 
 
 " Yes," replied his patron, though with considerably less 
 complacency of manner. "You have certainly managed 
 the affair with remarkable address. The completeness of 
 your victory is undeniable. All I am in doubt about is its 
 value." 
 
 " Information is always valuable, Lord Baxtairs, and in 
 this case it was indispensable. When we see the letters we 
 shall at least be able to ascertain what prospect there is of 
 our being able to ' edit ' them into fitness for publication, or 
 whether we are really driven to the desperate remedy of an 
 injunction. I still hope and believe that the former course 
 will be found practicable." 
 
 The earl shook his head doubtfully ; he imagined that he 
 knew his father better than Mr. Dockett did. 
 
 The week wore on, but before the proof-sheets became 
 due a discovery took place which transformed the whole 
 situation. Lord Baxtairs came hurrying into Mr. Dockett's 
 room one morning with an excited air, and a sealed packet 
 in his hand. A glance at it was enough to tell the secretary 
 that it was many years old, and he was about to inquire 
 whether it was really what they were in search of, when 
 Lord Baxtairs handed him a letter which had been attached 
 to it. This letter, which was itself dated some twenty years 
 back, was in the late earl's handwriting, and addressed to
 
 THE GREAT BAXTAIRS SCANDAL. 185 
 
 his son and successor. It was to inform him that the packet 
 contained documents of a peculiarly private character, which 
 his son, if indeed he did not think fit to destroy them alto- 
 gether, would on reading them, at once, see the expediency 
 of guarding from any other eyes than his own. 
 
 " I have no doubt they are the letters we want," said 
 Lord Baxtairs, placing the packet in Mr. Dockett's hand. 
 
 " Do you intrust me with these do you authorise me to 
 inspect to read them ? " asked Mr. Dockett, with rather a 
 curious eagerness. 
 
 " Of course, of course," replied Lord Baxtairs, with some 
 surprise ; " you have had the whole conduct of the business 
 hitherto, and you may as well see it out." 
 
 Mr. Dockett opened the packet and glanced rapidly at its 
 contents, which exactly answered to his expectations. It was 
 indeed the long-sought Baxtairs-Tyler correspondence. 
 
 " Stop," said Mr. Dockett ; " the first thing is * to declare 
 off ' with Standish. He has now nothing to sell us." 
 
 And he hastily dashed off a letter to Mr. Standish, 
 expressing his extreme regret that Lord Baxtairs, after 
 several days' consideration, had declined to ratify the pro- 
 visional agreement into which the secretary had entered. 
 Consequently he would not trouble Mr. Standish to forward 
 the proof-sheets, and both parties might consider the matter 
 as having reverted to the status quo. 
 
 Mr. Dockett spent the whole of that day and far into the 
 night in reading, arranging, and, for the purposes of more 
 convenient reference, copying the papers which had been 
 placed in his hands, and which, in point of fact, contained, 
 besides the Baxtairs-Tyler correspondence, a whole mass of 
 curious and interesting matter, including the record of
 
 1 86 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 several other old political jobs of the most flagrant and 
 fragrant description. 
 
 The next day the secretary submitted to Lord Baxtairs 
 the letters which he had been arranging. His lordship read 
 them through with a lowering brow. They were far more 
 damning than even he had expected. He laid the last of 
 them on the table and looked at Mr. Dockett. 
 
 " There is only one thing for it," he said. " ' Editing ' 
 them is hopeless." 
 
 " Hopeless ! " assented Mr. Dockett, emphatically. " You 
 might as well try to edit Lord Chesterfield's letters into a 
 religious treatise. There is, as you say, only one thing for it." 
 
 " An injunction ? " 
 
 " Yes. It will have a bad effect, of course ; but anything, 
 Lord Baxtairs anything would be better than allowing 
 these letters to be published." To which Lord Baxtairs 
 ruefully agreed. 
 
 Mr. Standish, meanwhile, had of course been somewhat 
 disconcerted by Mr. Dockett's letter, but he could do 
 nothing, and as days and weeks passed without the rival 
 publication appearing, his spirits began to revive. 
 
 " If the fools put it off too long," he thought, " they will 
 improve instead of injuring my market." 
 
 A quarter of a year a half year slipped away ; it was now 
 but three months from the important day, and the " book 
 season " was about to begin. Mr. Standish's publishers 
 plucked up courage and advertised the Tyler Papers. 
 
 In three days an injunction was obtained by Lord Bax- 
 tairs to restrain them from publishing any letters addressed 
 by his father to the late Right Hon. James Minton Tyler. 
 
 Mr. Standish rubbed his hands.
 
 THE GREAT BAXTAIRS SCANDAL. 187 
 
 " The idiots are playing my game," he chuckled. " How- 
 ever, I may as well keep back their book, too, for the 
 present. It will increase the public interest in the affair." 
 And he accordingly applied for and obtained an injunction 
 to restrain the publishers of a certain book, entitled Fifty 
 Years of Political Life, from publishing any letters addressed 
 by the late Right Hon. James Minton Tyler to the late 
 Right Hon. the ^ Earl of Baxtairs, G.C.B. 
 
 " They little think," laughed the present earl, on hearing 
 of the proceedings, " that there is no such book in existence." 
 " No," said Mr. Dockett demurely, " they little think so." 
 And the business being settled, and he not being the 
 private secretary of the new peer, bade Lord Baxtairs a 
 deferential, and received from him a friendly, adieu. 
 
 Two days after, Mr. Standish was startled by a significant 
 change in the publishers' advertisement of Fifty Years of 
 Political Life. In place of the words " nearly ready," at the 
 head of the announcement, it bore the legend " next week," 
 while to its tail was appended the words, " Edited by Sidney 
 Dockett, M.A., for ten years private secretary to the late 
 earl." So they had got three months' start of him. But 
 were the letters really there ? 
 
 They were, every one of them : together with an ingenious 
 summary, sailing as near the wind of the second injunction 
 as possible, of Mr. Minton Tyler's replies. Never was such a 
 scandal unveiled ; the volumes sold like hot rolls. 
 
 Upon Lord Baxtairs, who had not noticed the change in 
 the advertisement, the book fell like a thunderbolt. He 
 instantly wrote an indignant letter to the publishers, and 
 received from them a still more indignant reply. The 
 greater part of the MS. had, they said, been placed in their
 
 1 88 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 hands fully six months before by Mr. Dockett, who had at 
 the same time amply satisfied them of his editorial authority. 
 
 Lord Baxtairs then wrote a furious letter to Mr. Dockett, 
 and received from him a Christian reply. He had acted, 
 he said, as far as his imperfect lights directed him, " for the 
 best " ; and as for his lordship's threats of proceedings 
 civil and criminal the enclosed letter (copy of an original 
 which Lord Baxtairs might see if he wished,) was a sufficient 
 reply to them. 
 
 The letter ran as follows : 
 
 BRIGHTON, Jan. 189 
 " DEAR MR. DOCKETT, 
 
 " You have my full permission to prepare a memoir of my 
 political career, and to use for that purpose whatever documents my 
 son and successor allows you to inspect. 
 
 " Faithfully yours, 
 
 " BAXTAIRS. 
 
 " P.S. Do not mention this to Lord Postern. I prefer to tell him 
 myself." 
 
 The letter fell from its reader's hands. He could almost 
 hear the old man's chuckle at the double mystification, of 
 appointing a biographer without the knowledge of his son, 
 and, without the knowledge of the biographer, authorising 
 the son to withhold from him all really valuable material. 
 The venerable jester had, however, overreached himself here, 
 and the son felt that he was powerless in the matter. 
 
 And so the lawyers, whom he consulted, told him. 
 
 Mr. Standish's agreement with his publishers fell 
 through. 
 
 Mr. Dockett's book was the " book of the season.'
 
 THE PASSING OF THE AGED PSYCHOPATH. 
 
 In Russia, where obscure and imaginary mental ailments are, for all 
 legal and most practical purposes, confounded with insanity of 
 behaviour, the word psychopath, meaning a person who enjoys all 
 the rights of a sane man, and many of the privileges of a lunatic, 
 though coined but a few years ago, is most extensively used by all 
 classes of society. So many persons now describe themselves as 
 psychopaths that it no longer confers upon them the least dis- 
 tinction. LANIN. 
 
 hither, little Vladimir, 
 And listen and take heed ; 
 I've sent for you that you may hear 
 Your grandsire's dying rede. 
 
 I ever sought distinction's niche 
 Throughout my life, and you, 
 
 My Vladimir Ivanovitch, 
 Must be distinguished too. 
 
 Then take not up, O grandson mine, 
 Or dread my ghostly wrath, 
 
 So common and so cheap a line 
 As that of psychopath. 
 
 For you must shun the vulgar herd ; 
 And nowadays, my lad,
 
 190 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 To name yourself by such a word 
 Would stamp you as a cad. 
 
 Far otherwise it was with me, 
 
 Thank Heaven ! when I was young, 
 
 And my well-marked psychopathy 
 Employed the public tongue. 
 
 When, as a child, in childish play 
 I chanced to break a limb, 
 
 And got my tutor sent away 
 By charging it on him ; 
 
 All deemed my case with interest fraught, 
 Whom thus, ere yet a youth, 
 
 A nervous system highly-wrought 
 Forbade to speak the truth. 
 
 In like emotion, too, they joined 
 When, in my boyhood's spring, 
 
 I irresponsibly purloined 
 My father's diamond ring. 
 
 Then as my morbid instincts throve, 
 
 And paralysed my will, 
 Men's curiosity inwove 
 
 A stronger feeling still. 
 
 And awe and wonder were complete 
 When, with no purposed aim, 
 
 I was impelled to counterfeit 
 My uncle's honoured name.
 
 THE PASSING OF THE AGED PSYCHOPATH. 191 
 
 Why dwell upon the homicides 
 
 And criminal assaults 
 For which psychopathy provides 
 
 Excuse as venial faults ? 
 
 Suffice it that a case so rare 
 
 Through mouths of mortals ran, 
 
 Till I was reckoned everywhere 
 A most distinguished man. 
 
 But now, alas ! the psychopath 
 
 Is everywhere on view 
 Ah, boy, avert my ghostly wrath, 
 
 And shun the common crew ! 
 
 Ascribe your thefts to simple greed, 
 
 Plead hatred when you slay, 
 Account for every wicked deed 
 
 In the old-fashioned way. 
 
 To shame these imitative times 
 
 The novel sight present 
 Of one who perpetrates his crimes 
 
 With criminal intent. 
 
 And ever this distinction proud 
 
 To psychopaths oppose, 
 That you, unlike that vulgar crowd, 
 
 Could help it if you chose.
 
 THE ARMOURER OF THE TWENTIETH 
 LEGION. 
 
 r I "HE armourer of the Twentieth Legion lay dying at 
 -I Aquas Sulis, of gout in the stomach. At his bedside, 
 stylus and tablets in hand, sat the eminent local physician 
 Haustus Blupilius Niger, whom the solicitude of the sick 
 man's comrades had substituted for the regimental surgeon. 
 
 Julius Vitalis unclosed his glazing eye, and cast a feebly 
 wistful look at his companion. 
 
 "Are you writing another prescription?" he asked, in a 
 faint whisper. 
 
 " No, my friend," replied Niger, quietly. " I am writing 
 an account of the case for a medical colleague of mine in 
 Rome, who is interested in the prosperity of this place. 
 Aquae Sulis is falling off in popularity as a health resort, and 
 that, considering the large and recent outlay upon the new 
 baths, is a serious matter." 
 
 " You think there is hope, then ? " inquired Vitalis, with a 
 momentary gleam of light under his shaggy eyebrows. 
 
 " For Aquae Sulis ? Certainly. Its decline has but just 
 
 commenced, and can easily be " 
 
 " No, no ! for me ! for me ! " said Vitalis, impatiently. 
 
 " I thought I had explained to you," said the doctor, with 
 a touch of irritation, "that your case is hopeless, quite 
 hopeless." 
 
 " And yet you think it will revive public faith in the cura- 
 192
 
 ARMOURER OF THE TWENTIETH LEGION. 193 
 
 tive properties of the waters," said the armourer, sinking back 
 on his grabatus. 
 
 " In the way I am stating it," replied Niger, with a smile, 
 " I believe it will. I never saw any podagric attack show 
 such signs of yielding to the douche ; but, of course, if you 
 will drink that detestable British mead instead of the sound 
 Falernian I ordered you, and which you might have got 
 regularly and most reasonably, as I told you, from my friend 
 Nobilius Pauper, of 101, Suburra, why, you must take the 
 consequences." 
 
 Vitalis closed his eyes with a sigh, and remained silent 
 for a few moments. 
 
 " I should have liked," he then said, gruffly, " to end my 
 days in Rome. It is hard, after twenty years in the service, 
 to leave my ashes in this accursed isle." 
 
 " Armourer," said the physician, rising to his feet with a 
 deeply offended air, "you forget that you are addressing 
 a Roman citizen, whose family have been settled in this 
 accursed isle, and even in this God-forsaken town," he added 
 with still more elaborate irony, "for a hundred and fifty 
 years. I have every intention of leaving my own ashes here, 
 if indeed they may be thought worthy to repose beside those 
 of your honour's worship." 
 
 " I would rather lay mine by my mother's, in the Appian 
 Way," said Julius, doggedly, " at least if I am to die in this 
 fashion, like a stricken crone, rather than a soldier," and as 
 the thought surged up in his mind he struck the frame of 
 his pallet fiercely with his clenched hand. 
 
 " Have you any messages for friends in Rome ? " inquired 
 the matter-of-fact physician, as he put away his tablets and 
 rose to depart. 
 
 W. L.-XV.
 
 194 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 The dying man feebly shook his head. "Any message 
 that I have," he muttered, " they must come here to read. 
 I have given you the inscription for my cippus already. You 
 will see, will you not, that it is cut by a decent lapidary ? " 
 
 " I have already provided for that," said Niger kindly ; 
 and then, as though to escape his friend's thanks for his 
 affectionate promptitude, moved quickly towards the door. 
 " I sup with Pulcherius," he said, as he paused a moment at 
 the door, " but I will look in again before midnight to see 
 how it fares with you." 
 
 II. 
 
 The villa of the wealthy and elegant Pulcherius Paullus 
 stood on the gentle eminence which we now know as Bath- 
 wick Hill, a spot which commands a striking view of the 
 Queen of the West, and which even in the fourth century 
 A.D. looked down upon a flourishing Roman settlement and 
 important military station. 
 
 Pulcherius was a learned antiquarian and munificent 
 patron of the arts, who delighted in gathering round him 
 whatever notabilities, scientific, artistic, or literary, were to 
 be found, from time to time, either among the Roman 
 residents in Britain or the casual visitors to the island. 
 
 In his spacious supper-chamber there were this evening 
 assembled a small but distinguished party, consisting of a 
 highly fashionable young poet of a refined and melancholy 
 aspect, Nimnimius Heliotropus by name ; another bard of 
 a more fiery and Tyrtaean order in the person of Jingonius 
 Minax ; the well-known numismatist and accomplished 
 decipherer of inscriptions, Aridulus Pulvis ; a gentleman 
 interested in an important staple of Romano-British com- 
 merce, who had made the patronymic of Edulius Molluscus
 
 ARMOURER OF THE TWENTIETH LEGION. 195 
 
 a name to conjure with on the Kentish coast ; and last, but 
 not least, the caustic Aduncus Naso, the cynical tenor of 
 whose philosophic works had rendered him an object less 
 of admiration than of somewhat irritated curiosity among 
 his fellow-residents in Britain. 
 
 As Niger entered the supper-chamber and exchanged 
 greetings with his host, he caught the name of the patient 
 whose bedside he had just left. 
 
 " He is a fine fellow," said Molluscus, " one of the old 
 breed of soldiers, who have done so much to carry the 
 Roman eagles, and ahem ! extend the civilising agencies 
 of Roman trade, to so many distant regions of the world. 
 It is a thousand pities that Fate should have forbidden the 
 gallant old warrior to lay his ashes in the mother city he has 
 served so long and well." 
 
 " You are right, indeed," said their host, with a sigh. 
 " Minax, let us listen to your stirring lines again. Our 
 friend the physician would doubtless like to hear them." 
 
 In the earlier and simpler ages of the Christian era, a 
 poet required less pressing than is necessary in these days 
 to induce him to recite his own compositions. Minax 
 cleared his melodious throat, and with a side glance at 
 Heliotropus, who appeared wrapt in contemplation, he thus 
 began : 
 
 " Nay, lay them by me, spear and sword, 
 
 True-tried on many a stricken field. 
 
 Bethink you that the arms I wield 
 
 Owned me their smith before their lord ? 
 
 " My keen craft whetted them for strife, 
 To reap the foe like ripened corn ; 
 Of my own life and strength was born 
 
 The strength of steel that hedged my life
 
 196 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " Forge blazed and hammer swung, to store 
 
 The fury and the force that broke 
 Forthright and downward in that stroke 
 My failing arm shall strike no more. 
 
 " Is this soft city of the West, 
 This lazar-house among the hills, 
 This couch of weakling aches and ills, 
 
 Fit for a legionary's rest ? 
 
 " No ! if this land must build my pile, 
 
 If the Dark God denies me Rome, 
 
 And calls me to my shadowy home 
 Here, on this far barbarian isle, 
 
 " Why came not, on some battle-day, 
 
 Such summons as the soldier hears, 
 
 Joyous, amid the shock of spears, 
 The clash and clamour of the fray ? 
 
 "My sire, with many a comrade brave, 
 
 Fell, fighting amid Dacian snows ; 
 
 The cohorts of camp-follower crows 
 Served them for mourners, and for graves. 
 
 "And better had such death been mine 
 There, on the rugged Northern plain, 
 Where the wild tribesmen storm in vain 
 
 The rampart of the Roman line ! 
 
 " Ay ! better dead and derelict, 
 
 And food for wolves on Hadrian's Mound. 
 Leg-locked, breast-grappling, arm-enwound, 
 
 In death-grip with the naked Pict." 
 
 These stanzas of Minax were warmly applauded, a 
 circumstance which (for it was only the fourth century A.D.) 
 appeared to give Heliotropus some uneasiness. For a while 
 he seemed anxious to lead the conversation into a particular 
 channel, towards which the other guests, or at any rate
 
 ARMOURER OF THE TWENTIETH LEGION. 197 
 
 Minax, showed a certain unwillingness to follow it. They 
 apparently preferred to let Aridulus Pulvis fix the subject of 
 chat, and discussed coins with animation for some consider- 
 able time. 
 
 Pulvis produced what he declared to be an ancient 
 British coin of Cunobelinus, not represented in Pulcherius's 
 collection, who (as was too common in those early times) 
 expressed polite doubt of its authenticity. Aduncus Naso 
 sided with Pulcherius, and remarked upon the extreme 
 uncertainty attaching to the genuineness of most coins of 
 over two hundred years old. Their own money of to-day 
 ay, and their own monuments, too would in a few centuries 
 gather as much doubt around them as attached, he added, 
 suddenly extinguishing the smile on Pulcherius's face, " to 
 nearly the whole of our amiable host's collection." When 
 the time came for the evacuation of Britain 
 
 But he was here interrupted by a general outcry. In the 
 name of civilisation, commerce, and his investments, 
 Molluscus protested against the ill-omened words. Pul- 
 cherius glanced around him at his art-treasures, and smiled 
 at the monstrosity of the notion that a Society so distinguished 
 for refinement should pass away and leave no trace behind 
 it. The arch geologist, who intended to bequeath his British 
 treasures to a Roman museum, was less concerned with the 
 possibility of the loss of the island than with the date of 
 the event. Minax was too shocked to speak, and from the 
 expression of his countenance was already meditating a 
 poem, in the fire of whose patriotic indignation the recreant 
 Naso should be withered up. Here, however, Nimnimius 
 had the advantage of his fellow-bard. He had his poem 
 ready, pat to the very subject, to which, indeed, he had
 
 198 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 been trying to bring round the conversation, and he seized 
 his opportunity at once. 
 
 " Naso is right," he exclaimed, at the first momentary 
 lull of tongues. " We are bound to look forward to the con- 
 tingency to which he refers. Speaking for myself, I would 
 say that we ought even to wish for its speedy arrival. And 
 in this connection I will, with your permission, recite a 
 short poem which I have composed on the point." 
 
 The company was too taken aback to protest at once, 
 and Heliotropus was too experienced a reciter to give 
 them time to think. He whipped out his MS. and at once 
 began 
 
 " Mother of nations, who hast borne on high, 
 Age after age, in thy untiring hand, 
 
 The tameless eagles of the might of Rome, 
 The bounden fasces of her wise command, 
 
 To climes beneath the Orient's glowing dome 
 
 And Britain's misty sky, 
 The hour has come to grant thy subject globe 
 
 The liberation of its lord's retreat, 
 
 And once more gather round thy pausing feet 
 The far-thrown skirts of thy Imperial robe. 
 
 " The world is ripe for freedom ; manumit : 
 The world is young, and thou hast waxen old ; 
 
 The orb of empire trembles in thy grasp ; 
 Thy song is sung ; thy mighty tale is told ; 
 
 The book is filled for Fate to close and clasp, 
 
 And fix her seal on it. 
 Accomplished is the work Jove's counsel willed; 
 
 That destiny the Sibyl saw and sang 
 
 To old /Eneas, long ere Victory sprang 
 Armed from the brain of Caesar, is fulfilled. 
 
 " For never have the immortal gods ordained 
 Perpetual rule by their august decree 
 To any state by hands of mortal reared,
 
 ARMOURER OF THE TWENTIETH LEGION. 199 
 
 And let it be enough, O Rome, for thee, 
 
 That not unloved by some, by none unfeared, 
 Thou hast subdued and reigned. 
 
 Stand now apart, self-gathered, and rejoice 
 
 In those strong children who from East to West 
 Have sucked the milk of wisdom from thy breast, 
 
 And learnt the speech of nations from thy voice." 
 
 Heliotropus' little poem was received in a chilly silence, 
 which Pulcherius was the first to break. 
 
 " Your lines, my dear young friend," he said, with a touch 
 of paternal satire, " would have as much sense as elegance, 
 were it not for two assumptions which constitute, so far as 
 I can see, though I am no poet, the whole point and pith of 
 them." 
 
 " And which are ? " inquired Nimnimius, with the tolerant 
 smile of cultured youth at the prejudices of Philistine middle 
 age. 
 
 " And which are," continued Pulcherius, " first, that Rome 
 has entered on the period of her decadence ; and secondly, 
 that her subject provinces are anywhere capable of main- 
 taining an independent existence after the withdrawal of 
 her supporting hand. As to the former assumption, it is 
 refuted by evidences of every kind. We have the best 
 reason, I thank the gods, for believing that the Empire is 
 stronger than it ever was, and that when the barbarians on 
 our frontier have received a few more lessons, we shall have 
 no further trouble with them. As to our outlying posses- 
 sions, I will be content to take the case of the province in 
 which we live, and to ask you, as a reasonable man, what 
 possible future Britain would have to look forward to if the 
 Roman eagles and the Roman fasces, of which you have sung 
 so prettily, were to be withdrawn."
 
 200 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 A murmur of approval followed this posing question, and 
 grew louder when it was observed that Heliotropus was 
 rummaging among his papers in apparent search of a poetic 
 reply to it. 
 
 Naso, after that incomprehensible manner of his, was 
 loudest in his expressions of assent. 
 
 " You are undoubtedly right, Pulcherius," said he ; " there 
 is every reason to believe that the Roman Empire is im- 
 mortal. Otherwise, what would become of the trade in 
 oysters." 
 
 " Exactly," said Edulius, eagerly, though with a glance 
 not unmingled with suspicion at Naso. 
 
 " Art and science would perish in this country," observed 
 Aridulus, " without hope of revival." 
 
 " The very remark I was about to make ! " added 
 Naso. 
 
 " In short," continued Pulcherius, " every step which has 
 been made by civilisation since the day when Julius came 
 pearl-hunting to the coast of " 
 
 " Pardon me," exclaimed Pulvis ; " for 'pearl' read 'tin.' 
 That any intelligent man should believe that idle story of 
 Suetonius about " 
 
 " What ? " cried Pulcherius, testily, for this was a point on 
 which he was particularly touchy. " I thought I had con- 
 vinced you that the belief in the existence of a pearl-fishery 
 on this coast was held by our ancestors from the earliest 
 times." 
 
 " Praised be the gods ! " murmured Naso, to himself ; 
 " ancient faith has not yet taken flight from the earth. I 
 have lived to hear one archagologist declare his belief that 
 he has convinced another."
 
 ARMOURER OF THE TWENTIETH LEGION. 201 
 
 Molluscus, who had been growing very uneasy during this 
 controversy, now craved leave to speak. 
 
 " I believe," he said, " that Pulcherius is not far wrong in 
 his account of the invasion of Britain. But if you want to 
 hear the exact truth of the matter, listen." 
 
 And before his audience could turn the conversation in 
 self-defence, he had plunged, in a rough, sonorous voice, 
 into the recital of the following lines : 
 
 " Weary, war-worn, wrapt in deepest study, 
 Doubting Cxsar sits with visage stern ; 
 Eyes that peer across the wine-cup ruddy, 
 Out upon the sea no light discern ; 
 Britain, through her mists 
 Beckoning, he resists ; 
 Rome and Rome's contentions cry, " Return." 
 
 " Idle lounged the legionary ; idle 
 
 Rode the galley at the harbour gate, 
 Fretting in fair winds its hawser-bridle, 
 Straining for the spring across the strait, 
 While its master sat, 
 Now this way, now that, 
 Swift his mind dividing in debate. 
 
 ' ' While he sat and sipped the ruby fluid, 
 
 Brought a slave a bark-strip smooth and thin, 
 Bearing legend, ' Dandorix the Druid 
 Audience seeks most earnestly to win.' 
 Caesar at the ' card ' 
 Gazed a moment, hard, 
 Then gave order, ' Show the stranger in.' 
 
 ' ' Entered then a priest of reverend presence, 
 
 Carrying a small, mysterious keg, 
 Made before the conqueror proud obeisance, 
 Bowing head, but bending not the leg, 
 Even as who should say, 
 ' Though I sue to-day, 
 Vet command I oftener than I beg.'
 
 202 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " ' Ask me not,' began this aged person, 
 
 ' Why my offerings, my advice I bring. 
 'Tis enough that I have laid my curse on 
 That detested country whence I spring, 
 And to see it thrust 
 Prostrate in the dust 
 Would delight me more than anything. 
 
 " ' Wherefore, then, delay thy swoop on Britain, 
 
 Eagle of the nations ? Nay, but haste, 
 Treasures undiscovered and unwritten 
 On its seaboard run to sinful waste; 
 Treasures fitly stored 
 For the Olympian board, 
 Victor of the World, behold and taste.' 
 
 " Saying this, from forth his little barrel 
 
 Drew he slowly something, and unfurled 
 From within a fold of his apparel 
 
 What appeared a knife ; which, deftly twirled, 
 Opened it straightway, 
 And the Wonder lay 
 Plump, before the Victor of the World. 
 
 " Caius Julius put away the ' native,' 
 
 Leaving nothing but its fringing beard, 
 And the while its succulence afflative 
 
 Through his inmost being breathed, insphered, 
 Britain o'er the sea 
 Lured resistlessly ; 
 
 Rome and Roman rivals disappeared. 
 . 
 
 " Kindled in his eye the gleams that presage 
 
 Fullest light of a resolve new-born ; 
 Quick he gave his orderly the message, 
 On a leaflet from his tablets torn: 
 '.Troops embark to-day ; 
 Galleys under way 
 Punctually at six to-morrow morn.' "
 
 ARMOURER OF THE TWENTIETH LEGION. 203 
 
 "Permit me," said Naso, before the company had had 
 time to applaud the verses of Molluscus, " permit me to 
 read to you the sequel of our friend's legend you remember 
 you were obliging enough to read it to me the other day, 
 Molluscus before you indulge too freely the pleasing 
 reflections it is calculated to excite. You were aware, I 
 dare say, that Csesar treated Dandorix with gross ingratitude. 
 But perhaps you do not know that the Druid revenged 
 himself with the terrible malediction recorded in the poem 
 I am about to recite : 
 
 " When the British priest, who oped 
 
 To his country's foes the gate 
 Found his name was not, as hoped, 
 Placed upon the Syndicate, 
 
 " Furious at the unworthy hoax, 
 
 Stormed the Druid, hoary chief, 
 With the wrath that often chokes 
 Men whose plans have come to grief. 
 
 " ' Conqueror, if the aged eyes 
 
 You with dust contrived to fill, 
 Failed your treachery to surprise, 
 They can read the future still. 
 
 " ' Rome shall scuttle write that word 
 
 In the gore that she has spilt 
 Scuttle, hopeless and abhorred, 
 Deep in ruin as in guilt. 
 
 " ' Rome, who for the smallest gain 
 Blood in torrents coldly sheds, 
 Shall retire with ended reign, 
 Leaving us our oyster-beds.
 
 204 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 " ' Then the trade of which your mind 
 
 Studies now to sow the seeds, 
 Shall in future be confined 
 Solely to our local needs. 
 
 " ' Prices Caesar never knew 
 
 His descendants shall dismay ; 
 None shall wax the whole world through 
 So prohibitive as they. 
 
 1 ' ' Other oysters shall arise, 
 
 Rivals weak of British fame, 
 Flavour giving place to size, 
 Magnitude their only claim. 
 
 "' Vainly shall your starveling coasts 
 
 Strive our product to excel 
 With a puny thing that boasts 
 Merely elegance of shell. 
 
 " ' Till at last you hear, unnerved, 
 
 Fate pronounce her sentence due: 
 Natives are for us reserved ; 
 
 Wretched Lucrines wait for you." 
 
 Gloom settled on the faces of those present, with the 
 exception of Molluscus, as Naso concluded his recital. 
 Prices had, in fact, already risen, and they felt in their 
 hearts that the sombre prophecy of this betrayed Druid was 
 but too probably assured of fulfilment. 
 
 " You will not forget the four dozen I am to send by you 
 to Varro," said Pulcherius to Niger, after a pause. " You 
 start for Rome next week, do you not? My slave has 
 written the address, I believe. I gave him the order to 
 do so at the time when I commanded him to carve the 
 inscription for Vitalis's memorial-stone. The fellow is an
 
 ARMOURER OF THE TWENTIETH LEGION. 205 
 
 expert lapidary, and will have done it neatly. There it is, 
 by the way, wrapped in matting. Let Syrus carry it after 
 you to the poor fellow's quarters ; " for the stars showed the 
 approach of midnight, and Niger was rising to go. " It will 
 be a melancholy satisfaction to him, no doubt, to see that 
 the thing has been properly done." 
 
 III. 
 
 Niger found the armourer at the point of death. He 
 bent over him and whispered in his ear. 
 
 " Vitalis," he said, " I have brought your tombstone. I 
 thought you would like to see it before your death. Slave, 
 display it." 
 
 Syrus stripped off the matting and held up the slab. The 
 armourer gazed for a moment on it with a fast-glazing eye, 
 smiled faintly, pressed feebly the physician's hand, and sank 
 back dead. 
 
 Niger looked at the tombstone, then at the slave, then 
 at the stone again, and then, despite the solemnity of the 
 occasion, burst into a roar of laughter. 
 
 The inscription was in the words and figures following : 
 
 DISCEDENTIS MANIBVS 
 
 HAVST BLVPIL NIGR 
 HIC CADVS XLVIII OSTR NATIV 
 
 LVCI jEMIL VAR 
 TRADENDVS CREDITVR 
 
 " Why, you misbegotten progeny of a mule," exclaimed 
 Niger, as soon as he could speak for laughing, "this was
 
 206 NUMBER TWENTY. 
 
 
 
 the address your master gave you, not the mortuary in- 
 scription. You have carved an epitaph for a barrel of 
 oysters ! " 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Useless ? " said Naso, after the merriment created by 
 Niger's recital of this incident had subsided. " Not at all. 
 Make me a present of the slab, Pulcherius, and lend me a 
 chisel, and I'll undertake to make the thing useful to future 
 generations, at any rate." 
 
 The tool was brought to Naso, and, after a quarter of an 
 hour's industrious hacking at judiciously selected portions 
 of the inscription, it assumed this form : 
 
 DIS MANIBVS 
 
 HAVST BLVPIL NIGR 
 
 HIC XLVIII NATI 
 
 LVCI ^EMIL VARR 
 ENDV IT 
 
 " Now," said Naso to Syrus, "take it away, boy, and bury 
 it about a couple of feet underground in your master's 
 garden." 
 
 ***** 
 
 \Extractfrom the Journal of the Archceological Society > 189 .] 
 At the meeting of the Society on Friday last a most 
 interesting paper was read by Professor Giglampz, on a 
 Roman tablet recently discovered in the neighbourhood. 
 The inscription was somewhat extensively defaced, but 
 the learning and ingenuity of the Professor have at last 
 triumphed over the difficulties of his task, and there can
 
 ARMOURER OF THE TWENTIETH LEGION. 207 
 
 now be little doubt in the mind of any one who examines 
 the inscription as conjecturally restored that it is the epitaph 
 of one Haustus Blupilius Niger, who came by his death at 
 Bath at the age of 48, and to whom this memorial was 
 placed by his friend or kinsman Lucius ^Emilius Varro. 
 
 DIS MANIBVS 
 
 HAVST[I] BLVPIL[II] NIGR[I] 
 
 me [SEPVLTI (?)] XLVIII [ANNOS] NATI (?) 
 
 LVCl[vs] ^EMILl[vs] VARR[o] 
 
 [PON]ENDV[M] [CVRAVJIT 
 
 FINIS.
 
 UNDER THE vK^^P^S* H.M. 
 
 PATRONAGE OF gg^jj??Z^ THE QUEEN, 
 
 H.R.H. THE PRINCESS OF WALES, 
 
 H.R.H. PRINCESS MARY ADELAIDE, DUCHESS OF TECK, ETC., ETC. 
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 THE 
 
 GENTLEWOMAN'S BOOK OF SPORTS (I.). 
 
 With Contributions on Fishing, Boating, 
 Swimming, Skating, Cricket, Golf, Lawn Tennis, Archery, etc. 
 
 Crown 8vo. With Portrait, 6s. 
 
 TIMES. 
 
 " The ' Gentlewoman's Book of Sports ' is a very comprehensive yolume, 
 dealing with trout-fishing and salmon-fishing in two chapters apiece by 
 different hands, and with saithe-fishing, bass and tarpon-fishing, sailing, 
 boating, and sculling, swimming, skating, lawn tennis, cricket, archery, golf, 
 and fencing in single chapters, written by recognised authorities on their 
 respective subjects. The volume is pleasantly written, and contains many a 
 useful hint, especially on the very important topic of the costume best adapted 
 to the several sports discussed ; while the portraits of the contributors, with 
 which its pages are adorned, may certainly be accepted as a proof that the 
 pursuit of sport is in no way inconsistent with feminine grace and refinement. 
 The important subject of hunting, and horses in general, is reserved for a 
 subsequent volume." 
 
 DAILY TELEGRAPH. 
 
 " The fair contributors who have enlisted under Lady Greyille's editorial 
 banner can, one and all, lay claim to special knowledge of their several sub- 
 jects. They write with the air and confidence of experts upon a variety ot 
 themes, ranging from trout-fishing to fencing. As a matter of course, sailing, 
 sculling, swimming, and skating are all included in the list of pursuits which 
 a young lady of to-day may cultivate with advantage ; while such pastimes as 
 cricket and golf, which have been more recently accorded places within the 
 feminine sphere, are lucidly and sensibly treated by Lady Milner and Miss 
 A. M. Stewart. The chapters on fishing, from the pens of Lady Colin Campbell, 
 Miss Starkey, Mrs. Steuart-.VIenzies, and 'Diane Chasseresse,' are particularly 
 well done. Indeed, the entire book, which, without being a series of condensed 
 treatises, contains abundant practical information, should find a host of readers 
 among English girls with a taste for healthy and enjoyable exercise." 
 
 FIELD. 
 
 "It is impossible to deny to each of the thirteen ladies who have, between 
 them, compiled the volume, a perfect right to be considered an authority on 
 the subject about which she writes. Lady Colin Campbell, who has already 
 earned her spurs as a writer, leads the way with a chapter on trout-fishing. 
 Miss Starkey follows on the same subject, and reveals herself an ardent angler. 
 Salmon-angling receives no less enthusiastic treatment from the hands of Mrs. 
 Steuart-Menzies and ' Diane Chasseresse.' Yet another chapter on angling 
 commands attention, for it is written by Mrs. George T. Stagg, the lady who 
 can each night lay her head upon her pillow with the consoling thought to an 
 angler that she has caught the largest fish ever taken by rod and line, this 
 being the 250 Ib. tarpon taken last year. Mrs. Stagg's chapter naturally deals 
 with tarpon-fishing. Sailing could not be in more appropriate hands than 
 those of Mrs. G. A. Schenley, who last year sailed her s-rater, the 
 Windfall, with such success in the Solent ; and a very breezy chapter is 
 contributed. In writing upon swimming Mrs. Samuda reveals considerable 
 experience of her subject. Skating by Miss Laura Cannan and lawn tennis 
 by Mrs. Hillyard are succeeded by cricket by Lady Milner, who breaks new 
 ground. It is needless to state that an accomplished archeress like Mrs. 
 Bowley has much to say: and Miss Alice M. Stewart gives many judicious 
 hints to beginners at golf. The last chapter, on fencing, brings Lady Colin 
 Campbell on the scene once more, and the volume is ended in scholarly 
 fashion." 
 
 LONDON: HENRY & CO., 6, BOUVERIE STREET, E.G. 
 And at all Libraries and Booksellers',
 
 BY MRS. TALBOT COKE. 
 
 THE 
 
 Gentlewoman at Ibome* 
 
 CROWN 8vo, WITH PORTRAIT, 6/-. 
 
 PRESS OPINIONS. 
 QUEEN. 
 
 "The 'Gentlewoman at Home ' is written in Mrs. Talbot Coke's most pic- 
 turesque style ; it is at once pleasantly discursive, and full of excellent 
 suggestions, and the general reader will find quite as much to attract him in it 
 as the matron or maid with ulterior motives on the ' doing up' of her home." 
 
 GENTLEWOMAN. 
 
 "The 'Gentlewoman at Home,' one of Messrs. Henry &Co.'s famous series, 
 ' The Victoria Library for Gentlewomen.' . . . the incomparable experience of 
 
 JOHN STRANGE WINTER, IN WINTER'S WEEKLY. 
 
 " I am now reading with much delight Mrs. Talbot Coke's volume of the 
 ' Victoria Library for Gentlewomen.' It is called ' The Gentlewoman at Home.' 
 It is a delightful book ; the outcome of a brilliant woman's very varied ex- 
 periences, full of brightness and tenderness, and more interesting than half the 
 novels that are published to-day. Mrs. Talbot Coke has seen so much, done so 
 much, she is such an indefatigable worker, and yet so full of common sense, 
 that the ' Gentlewoman at Home ' is like a mosaic of varied charms." 
 
 SALA'S JOURNAL 
 
 "A book that will be sure of a warm welcome is the 'Gentlewoman at Home,' 
 
 ma_y gdtiici uuiii 11. itvL unly \vm iu uc a UUUK lu pijiuL iinu itfau me way to uie 
 better understanding of decoration in our houses, but it will be a pleasant 
 volume to take up to while away a weary hour, and we confidently predict that, 
 unless under stress of circumstances, it will not be laid down until the final 
 chapter has been read." 
 
 LONDON : HENRY & CO., 6, BOUVERIE STREET, E.G.
 
 IN CAMBRIDGE COURTS. 
 
 By R. C. LEHMANN, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HARRY FLUDYER AT CAMBRIDGE." 
 
 Crown 8uo, 240 pp. 3s. 6d. Illustrated. 
 
 ALSO A LIMITED LARGE-PAPER EDITION, Crown 4tO, 10s. 6<L net 
 
 PRESS OPINIONS. 
 GLOBE. 
 
 auu appieuuiLe genuine wn unu iiumuui . ivii. j-cumaiiu IHM-II^ wmi <t 
 amusing essays which discourse of Cambridge generally, of fathers, moth 
 sisters, Ded-makers, gyps, and undergraduates. Then comes a series of 
 
 sisters, bed-makers, gyps, and undergraduates, l nen comes a series or Cam- 
 bridge Dialogues in prose, graphically illustrative of undergraduate habits 
 and character, and full of simple and light-hearted fun. ... It is difficult to 
 convey any very clear idea of the varied contents of this welcome volume." 
 
 PUNCH. 
 
 " The Baron recognises with pleasure the actuality of the dramatic scenes 
 'In Cambridge Courts ' by Mr. Lehmann. The dialogues are about the best 
 of the many best things in the book." 
 
 SPEAKER. 
 
 'through the mill' himself, and his studies, mostly 
 not wanting in freshness, vigour, and fun." 
 
 NEW WORK BY R. C. LEHMANN. 
 
 THEBILLSBURY ELECTION, 
 
 and other Papers, from "Punch." 
 
 By the Author of " In Cambridge Courts," " Harry Fludyer at 
 
 Cambridge," etc. [Ready 
 
 Crown 8v0, with 28' Illustrations by HAL HURST, 5*. 
 
 LONDON: HENRY & CO., 6, BOUVERIE STREET, B.C.
 
 NOW READY. FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 THE BACHELORS' CLUB. 
 
 By I. ZANGWILL. 
 
 Crown 8vo. 348 pp. 35. 6d. 
 
 With ILLUSTRATIONS by GEORGE HTTTCHINSON. 
 
 DAILY CHRONICLE : "With all his fun he is not a ' funny man,' he is a literary 
 
 humorist in all the seriousness of claiming a place in literature." 
 FUN : " On Fame's drum it will beat rub-a-dub-dub." 
 LADY : " The author is one entirely born to the motley. His quips are quaint, 
 
 his satire delightfully exhilarating." 
 LITERARY WORLD: "Entitles Mr. Zangwill to rank as a genuine humorist. 
 
 The book is full of good things." 
 MORNING POST : "The author has a manner of touching upon the foibles of 
 
 the day, full of playful malice, but quite devoid of bitterness, which is 
 
 one of the best gifts of the humorist. 
 
 OBSERVER : " The author has a delightful vein of humour." 
 SATURDAY REVIEW: "We like the stories of ' Hamlet up to Date ' and 'The 
 
 Fall of Israfel' best, but all are amusing, and all coruscate with puns." 
 SPEAKER : " It is impossible to read this book without being delighted with 
 
 it. It is full of good things." 
 
 JUST READY. 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY, 
 
 By the Author of "THE BACHELORS' CLUB," etc. 
 Crown 8vo. 188 pp. is. 
 
 " A very clever tale." Scotsman. 
 
 OB 
 
 in <Dtw 3Ut. 
 BY BMILIO MONTANARO. 
 
 Translated from the Original Spanish by J. T. GREIN, with 
 a Prefatory Note by JOHN GRAY. 
 
 ON HAND-MADE PAPER. WITH SILK BINDING, Is. NET. 
 
 LONDON : HENRY & CO., 6, BOUVERIE STREET, E.G.
 
 At all Libraries and Booksellers'. 
 
 GEORGE MOORE'S NEW NOVEL. 
 
 VAIN FORTUNE. 
 
 By the .Author of " A MUMMER'S WIFE," " A MODERN 
 LOVER," etc. 
 
 In crown Sv0, unth Eleven Illustrations by 
 
 MAURICE GREIFFENHAGEN. 
 
 BY LADY CONSTANCE HOWARD. 
 
 EVERYBODY'S DINNER BOOK, 
 
 from Is. to 10s. 
 
 By LADY CONSTANCE HOWARD. 
 
 Crown St'O, 3^. &/. 
 
 TWO-SHILLING NOVELS. 
 
 A FREAK OF FATE. 
 
 By E. F. SPENCE. 
 
 THE DYNAMITARDS. 
 
 By REGINALD TAYLER. 
 
 In paper boards, 2s. 
 LONDON : HENRY & CO., 6, BOUVERIE STREET, E.C.
 
 BY 
 
 BARRY PAIN. 
 
 (VOL. vi. abe TJdbftefrfars OLtbrarg of Wiit anfc Ibumour.) 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT. Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 PRESS OPINIONS. 
 
 "The pleasant and even remarkable book which Mr. Barry Pain has con- 
 tributed to the Whitefriars Library. The best thing in the book, to our mind, 
 is ' The Celestial Grocery,' a quaint and thoroughly original blending of 
 effervescent humour with grim pathos." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 " If you want a really refreshing book, a book whose piquant savour and 
 quaint originality of style are good for jaded brains, buy and read In a 
 Canadian Canoe. . . . There is in these stories a curious mixture of humour, 
 insight and pathos, with here and there a dash of grimness and a sprinkling of 
 that charming irrelevancy which is of the essence of true humour. As for 
 'The Celestial Grocery,' I can only say that it is in its way a masterpiece." 
 Punch. 
 
 " In Mr. Barry Pain we have a new humorist, not of the rollicking sort who 
 splits one's tympanum by coarse guffaws, but quiet, dry, quaint, and refined, 
 making one think even while one laughs, and taking one out of the world of 
 fact into the nebulous region of imagination and speculation. He has struck a 
 new vein which, if we err not in judgment, is rich in the pure metal of thought. 
 There is no vulgarity in his humour ; his fancy is bold and strong, and often 
 exquisitely graceful in its creations. . . . ' The Celestial Grocery, a Fantasia,' 
 is a piece of fantastic imagining which should live in literature." Evening 
 News and Post. 
 
 " Indeed, the absolute and incessant incongruity of the writing is a new 
 thing, though perhaps the newness is still more in the excellent stuff of the 
 ingredients. Lots of people can do the topsy-turvy, but few have such a back- 
 ground, for it includes a fine gift of style, and a real knowledge of life." Star. 
 
 "Genuine fun which has a knark of shading off into equally genuine pathos. 
 Mr. Pain is no mere droll. With him the source of laughter is also the source 
 of tears. There is much in this book of his which is truly pathetic." Globe. 
 
 11 Indeed, we are much mistaken if Mr. Barry Pain's In a Canadian Canoe 
 does not create a. furore. Certainly it is one of the wittiest books of the year." 
 Illustrated London News. 
 
 NEW WORK BY BARRY PAIN. 
 
 STORIES * INTERLUDES. 
 
 By the Author of " In a Canadian Canoe," etc. 
 
 [Ready 
 
 Crown %vo, with Frontispiece, y. 6d. ' 
 
 LONDON : HENRY & CO., 6, BOUVERIE STREET, E.G.
 
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