nd the pale of men's charity; make you odious to your
dearest friends, and turn you into a monster to be pointed at by the
finger!" Oh heavens! and this is Mount Olympus!

It is a fact amazing to ordinary mortals that _The Jupiter_ is never
wrong. With what endless care, with what unsparing labour, do we not
strive to get together for our great national council the men most
fitting to compose it. And how we fail! Parliament is always wrong:
look at _The Jupiter_, and see how futile are their meetings, how vain
their council, how needless all their trouble! With what pride do we
regard our chief ministers, the great servants of state, the oligarchs
of the nation on whose wisdom we lean, to whom we look for guidance in
our difficulties! But what are they to the writers of _The Jupiter_?
They hold council together and with anxious thought painfully
elaborate their country's good; but when all is done, _The Jupiter_
declares that all is naught. Why should we look to Lord John
Russell;--why should we regard Palmerston and Gladstone, when Tom
Towers without a struggle can put us right? Look at our generals,
what faults they make; at our admirals, how inactive they are. What
money, honesty, and science can do, is done; and yet how badly are our
troops brought together, fed, conveyed, clothed, armed, and managed.
The most excellent of our good men do their best to man our ships,
with the assistance of all possible external appliances; but in vain.
All, all is wrong--alas! alas! Tom Towers, and he alone, knows all
about it. Why, oh why, ye earthly ministers, why have ye not followed
more closely this heaven-sent messenger that is among us?

Were it not well for us in our ignorance that we confided all things
to _The Jupiter_? Would it not be wise in us to abandon useless
talking, idle thinking, and profitless labour? Away with majorities
in the House of Commons, with verdicts from judicial bench given after
much delay, with doubtful laws, and the fallible attempts of humanity!
Does not _The Jupiter_, coming forth daily with fifty thousand
impressions full of unerring decision on every mortal subject, set all
matters sufficiently at rest? Is not Tom Towers here, able to guide
us and willing?

Yes indeed, able and willing to guide all men in all things, so
long as he is obeyed as autocrat should be obeyed,--with undoubting
submission: only let not ungrateful ministers seek other colleagues
than those whom Tom Tower