n the New Democracy comes,
it intends, as the Democrat was saying, to be mild but firm, and see
if the Millennium can't be got to travel faster. And the first mild but
firm thing it will do will be to pull down the Established Church of
England and level it with the--with other denominations.'

'What _is_ the Millennium?' said Queen Mab.

'Some think one thing and some another,' returned the Owl. 'Perhaps we
had better not discuss it; it is so easy to be profane on the subject
before you know where you are. But you can hear Parliament legislating
for it any day, and see people living up to it under the gangway.'

'I should like to go and see how they do it,' said Mab, 'just for once.'

'Well, so you can,' said the Owl. 'We can start directly if you like. It
is the safest place in London now that the session is on, because of the
Home Rulers. The dynamiters couldn't very well blow it up with the Irish
members in, and it would look too pointed for them all to be away at the
time of its being blown up. Make me invisible and we will go.'

So Queen Mab made them both invisible, and they flew away to the House
of Commons. There ensconcing themselves on a high beam, they soon forgot
the cobwebs in the interest of the debate. It was a remarkable debate,
and, what is also remarkable, I can find no traces of it in the Hansard
for that year, and it hardly conforms to the latest rules. Sometimes I
am inclined to think that the Owl must have invented it or dreamed it,
but he says that every word is mathematically correct, and I know him
for a most truthful bird, who never told, or at all events never meant
to tell, a lie. The debate was on a Bill introduced by Government for
the colonisation of the lunar world by emigration of the able-bodied
unemployed, and the House was full. All the Home Rulers were present,
a fact which gave the Owl a feeling of pleasant security, and members
generally were wide awake and very attentive.

In a brief speech of three hours the Prime Minister advocated the
principles of the Bill.

'I am not what is vulgarly called a Jingo' (hear, hear!) he said
finally, 'and measures of simple aggrandisement, sir, I have never been
known to advocate.'

'How about Bechuana?' from Mr. Jacob Bright.

'If the rules of courtesy demanded a reply to that interruption,' said
the Prime Minister, 'I would answer,' and he did so for an hour by
Shrewsbury clock. He then proceeded:

'But there is a wide difference be