ffending souls alive.

"Within the last few years we have had the laws of natural science
opened to us with a rapidity which has been blinded by its brightness,
and means of transit and communication given to us which have made but
one kingdom of the habitable globe. One kingdom--but who is to be its
King? Is there to be no King in it, think you, and every man to do that
which is right in his own eyes? Or only kings of terror, and the obscene
Empires of Mammon and Belial? Or will you, youths of England, make your
country again a royal throne of Kings, a sceptred isle, for all the
world a source of light, a centre of peace; mistress of learning and of
the arts; faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent
and ephemeral visions; faithful servant of time-tried principles, under
temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and amidst the
cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in her strange
valour of good will towards men?"

FOOTNOTES:

[25] Sunday, June 20, 1897.

XXII.

"PRINCEDOMS, VIRTUES, POWERS."

The celebrations of the past week[26] have set us all upon a royal tack.
Diary-keepers have turned back to their earliest volumes for stories of
the girl-queen; there has been an unprecedented run on the _Annual
Register_ for 1837; and every rusty print of Princess Victoria in the
costume of Kate Nickleby has been paraded as a pearl of price. As I
always pride myself on following what Mr. Matthew Arnold used to call
"the great mundane movement," I have been careful to obey the impulse of
the hour. I have cudgelled my memory for Collections and Recollections
suitable to this season of retrospective enthusiasm. Last week I
endeavoured to touch some of the more serious aspects of the Jubilee,
but now that the great day has come and gone--"Bedtime, Hal, and all
well"--a lighter handling of the majestic theme may not be esteemed
unpardonable.

Those of my fellow-chroniclers who have blacked themselves all over for
the part have acted on the principle that no human life can be properly
understood without an exhaustive knowledge of its grandfathers and
grandmothers. They have resuscitated George III. and called Queen
Charlotte from her long home. With a less heroic insistence on the
historic method, I leave grandparents out of sight, and begin my gossip
with the Queen's uncles. Of George IV. it is less necessary that I
should speak, for has not his character been dra