ble to be read a second time; but Mr. Froude is
convinced that the whole affair was no more than a smart and salutary
lesson given to some obtrusive Papists, and he commends the measures
adopted by Elizabeth's ministers to secure proper discipline. Similarly
the wholesale massacre of the people in the English northern counties is
not at all condemned by the judicious Mr. Freeman. The Conqueror left a
desert where goodly homesteads and farms had flourished; but we are not
any the less to regard him as a great statesman. I grow angry for a
time with these bold writers, but I always end by smiling, for there is
something very feminine about such shrill expressions of admiration for
force. I like to figure to myself the troubles which would have ensued
had Carlyle lived under the sway of his precious Friedrich. It was all
very well to sit in a comfortable house in pleasant Chelsea, and enlarge
upon the beauties of drill and discipline; but, had the sage been cast
into one of the noisome old German prisons, and kept there till he was
dying, merely because the kingly disciplinarian objected to a phrase in
a pamphlet, we should have heard a very curious tune from our great
humourist. A man who groaned if his bed was ill-made or his bacon
ill-fried would not quite have seen the beauty of being disciplined in a
foul cellar among swarming vermin.

The methods of certain other rulers may no doubt appear very fine to our
robust scribblers, but I must always enter my own slight protest. Ivan
the Terrible was a really thorough-paced martinet who preserved
discipline by marvellously powerful methods. He did not mind killing a
few thousands of men at a time; and he was answerable for several
pyramids of skulls which remained long after his manly spirit had passed
away. He occasionally had prisoners flayed alive or impaled merely by
way of instituting a change; and I think that some graphic British
historian should at once give us a good life of this remarkable and
royal man. The massacre of the revolted peasants would afford a fine
opening to a stern rhetorician; he might lead off thus--"Dost thou think
that this king cared for noble sentiment? Thou poor creature who canst
not look on a man without turning green with feminine terror, this
writer begs to inform you and all creatures of your sort that law is law
and discipline is discipline, and the divine origin of both is
undeniable even in an age of advertised soap and interminable spo