oroughly hated, always referring
to England as a sort of court of last appeal on every question, social,
moral, religious, or political, and dimly alluding to Lord Palmerston as
a kind of Rhadamanthus, whose judgments fall heavily on ill-doers.

The helpless hopeless condition of small states in all such conflicts
was actually pitiable. The poor little trembling King Charles dog in the
cage of the lion, and who felt that he only lived on sufferance, was the
type of them. I remember an incident which occurred some years ago
at the Bagni di Lucca, which will illustrate what I mean. An English
stranger at one of the hotels, after washing his hands, threw his
basinful of soap-and-water out of the window just as the Grand-duke was
passing, deluging his imperial highness from head to foot. The stranger
hurried at once to the street, and, throwing himself before the dripping
sovereign, made the most humble and apologetic excuses for his act; but
the Grand-duke stopped him short at once, saying, "There, there! say no
more of it: don't mention the matter to any one, or I shall get into a
correspondence with Palmerston, and be compelled to pay a round sum to
you for damages!"

After all, one could say for these small posts in diplomacy what, I
think it was Croker said for certain rotten boroughs in former days, "If
you had not had such posts, you would have lost the services of a number
of able and instructive men, who, entering public life by the small
door, are sure to leave it by the grand entrance."

These small missions are very often charming centres of society in
places one would scarcely hope for it; and from these little-known
legations, every now and then, issue men whom it would not be safe for
Williams to bark at, and whom, even if he were rabid, he would not bite.

DECLINE OF THE DRAMA.

What a number of ingenious reasons have been latterly given for the
decline of the Drama, and the decrease of interest now felt for the
stage. Some aver that people are nowadays too cultivated, too highly
educated, to take pleasure in a play; others opine that the novel has
supplanted the drama; others again declare that it is the prevalence
of a religious sentiment on the subject that has damaged theatrical
representation. For my own part, I take a totally different view of the
subject. My notion is this: the world will never pay a high price for
an inferior article, if it can obtain a first-rate one for nothing; in
other