rhaps the present world is less reticent in its eagerness than
it was in his younger days. I doubt, however, whether it is more
dishonest, and whether struggles were not made quite as disgraceful
to the strugglers as anything that is done now. You can't alter the
men, and you must use them." The younger Duke sat down and sighed
over the degenerate patriotism of the age.

But at last even the Rattlers and Robys were fixed, if not satisfied,
and a complete list of the ministry appeared in all the newspapers.
Though the thing had been long a-doing, still it had come
suddenly,--so that at the first proposition to form a coalition
ministry, the newspapers had hardly known whether to assist or to
oppose the scheme. There was no doubt, in the minds of all these
editors and contributors, the teaching of a tradition that coalitions
of this kind have been generally feeble, sometimes disastrous, and
on occasions even disgraceful. When a man, perhaps through a long
political life, has bound himself to a certain code of opinions, how
can he change that code at a moment? And when at the same moment,
together with the change, he secures power, patronage, and pay, how
shall the public voice absolve him? But then again men, who have
by the work of their lives grown into a certain position in the
country, and have unconsciously but not therefore less actually made
themselves indispensable either to this side in politics or to that,
cannot free themselves altogether from the responsibility of managing
them when a period comes such as that now reached. This also the
newspapers perceived; and having, since the commencement of the
Session, been very loud in exposing the disgraceful collapse of
government affairs, could hardly refuse their support to any attempt
at a feasible arrangement. When it was first known that the Duke of
Omnium had consented to make the attempt, they had both on one side
and the other been loud in his praise, going so far as to say that he
was the only man in England who could do the work. It was probably
this encouragement which had enabled the new Premier to go on with an
undertaking which was personally distasteful to him, and for which
from day to day he believed himself to be less and less fit. But when
the newspapers told him that he was the only man for the occasion,
how could he be justified in crediting himself in preference to them?

The work in Parliament began under the new auspices with great
tranquilli