'Absolutely necessary,' replied the Democrat.

'I don't know about that,' said a voice behind them, and Queen Mab
started, seeing the Professor. 'But depend upon it, the fittest will
survive. I think, myself, that it is quite time you were gone; but some
types die out very slowly, especially the lower types; and you may be
said, as regards freedom of intellect and the march of Science, to be a
low type--in fact, a relic of barbarism. There can be no doubt that,
in the economy of Nature, bishops are an unnecessary organ, merely
transmitted by inheritance in the national organism, and that in
the course of time they will become atrophied and degenerate out
of existence. When that time comes you must be content to pass into
oblivion. Study Palaeontology.' Now he pronounced it Paleyon-tology,
not having had a classical education. 'Think of the pterodactyles, who
passed away before the end of the Mesozoic ages, and never have appeared
again. What, in the eternal nature of things, are bishops more than
pterodactyles?'

'I wonder,' interrupted the Bishop severely, 'that you dare to speak
of your pernicious teachings under the name of Paleyontology, as if the
First Principles of that revered divine, whose loss we all deplore, were
ever anything like that!'

The Professor only glared, and was going on, but the Democrat stopped
him, by remarking, in a loud and exasperatingly complacent voice:

'You are quite correct. Only upon the wreck of the old order of
existence can arise the New Democracy.'

'Can you never stop talking about yourself?' snapped the Professor
testily. 'One would think, to hear you, that Democracy was the goal of
everything.'

'So it is,' said the Democrat.

'Not a bit of it. You and your democracies are only a fleeting phase, an
infinitesimal fraction of the aeons to be represented, perhaps, in some
geological record of the future, by a mere insignificant conglomerate
of dust and bones, and ballot-boxes, and letters in the _Spectator_ and
other articles characteristic of this especial period. What a dream of
Science that, interstellary communication established, some being
of knowledge and capacities as infinitely excelling our own as our
faculties excel those of the lowly monad, wandering on this terrestrial
globe, and culling from the imperfect archives of these bygone years a
corkscrew, an opera-glass, or, perchance, a pot of long since petrified
marmalade, preserved intact by some protecting incru