of virtue, to allow a
perverted moral atmosphere to be introduced into an orb which has done
so much for us in the way of tidal action, of artistic enjoyment, and,
I will say, of amatory sentiment--(cheers)--as our satellite? Now what
kind of moral atmosphere, I would ask, surrounds the average Russian? Of
a mental atmosphere I will not speak--suffice it to say that that also
is immeasurably inferior; but is it fitting for a nation like ours, in
the van of progress, to suffer a moral atmosphere degraded, pernicious,
and suffocating to circulate in regions to which we could furnish one so
infinitely more salubrious?' (Prolonged Ministerial cheers.)

CHAPTER XII. -- THE DELUGE.

'The drivelling of politicians!'
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.

It is said that the unexpected always happens, and therefore one
may deplore without surprise the fact that schemes set on foot by a
charitable government to relieve the necessities of their starving
fellow-countrymen should frequently have a diametrically opposite
effect. Into the Ministerial cheers that followed the Premier's last
statement broke a sound outside the House, a sound as of much wailing,
the howling of innumerable newsboys, the cries of 'Woe, woe!' the dirge
of an empire _qui s'en va_! With those now familiar noises was mingled,
but at a greater distance, a strain of martial music.

'What is this?' said the Prime Minister through the increasing tumult,
with a vague idea of legions of the able-bodied unemployed coming in
person to state their views on the debate. 'A riot?'

'No,' shouted the member below the gangway, promptly divining, by a
prophetic instinct, the real nature of the case. 'It is a Revolution.'

'Heavens!' said the leader of the Opposition helplessly. 'I hope not. I
had no idea!'

It was too true. The Army was advancing to the House--the broken-down,
ragged, wasted remnant of an Army of Heroes. Sent forth, too late, to
'smash' Prester John, and relieve the Equator, they had all but overcome
the Desert, and had only been defeated by space. Too many of them lay
like the vanished legions of Cambyses, swathed by the sand and lulled
by the music of the night wind. The remnant had returned of their own
motion. It was an impressive spectacle, and the British public, finding
no more appropriate action, cheered vociferously, while the newsboys,
hundreds of them, continued to howl one against another. For the
newspapers had got wind of Somethi