iples and Methods and Men.

Dacre was at work--at the work he loved and lived for. The enthusiast,
like a general, was reviewing his spiritual and mental troops--proudly
glancing along the lines before he removed the screen and called
another eye to behold. He had drawn them up, with their banners, to fill
Geoffrey, at once, with his own confidence and knowledge--for it _was_
knowledge and certitude, not opinion or fantasy, that filled him.

John Dacre was a magnificent dreamer, and he saw and lived among
magnificent visions. The spirit that had evoked Royalty and Aristocracy
and made them a potent reality for twenty centuries burned in him as
purely as in the old poet's picture of King Arthur.

No wrong that is all wrong can live for two thousand years and bind the
necks of men. Royalty was the first wave of the rising tide of humanity;
Aristocracy was the second. Both were necessary--perhaps natural. But
the waves fall back and are merged when the risen sea itself laps the
feet of the precipice.

It is hard to describe Dacre's face at this supreme moment, except by
saying that it was visibly lighted with an inner light. Standing in the
moonlight, with his pale features made paler, the shadows of the face
darker, and his tall form straight and moveless as a statue, from the
intensity of his thought, he almost startled the more prosaic Geoffrey,
who had lingered to light a cigar before coming out on the breezy cliff
path.

"Hey! old fellow; what do you see?" Geoffrey asked as he came up.

But he had to speak again, laying his hand on Dacre's shoulder before he
got an answer, though Dacre had noted the question, as his answer showed
when it came.

"See! I see a glorious panorama," and he turned and looked at Geoffrey,
still with arms folded. "I have seen the history of our country
stretched out like a map upon the sea. I saw thereon all those things
which have made England famous forever among the nations--the kings, the
nobles and the people, advancing like a host from the darkness to the
light."

"Yes, to the light of other days. But you know that has faded," said
Geoffrey, as he buttoned his overcoat and pulled down his hat.

"No; not the light of other days, but the light of to-morrow, which
never fades."

"Well, then, I don't understand you, old man; that is all," said
Geoffrey, contentedly, as he paced along, casting a satisfied,
thoughtless glance at the shimmering waves below, in some such natural
wa