nt on; and the King sat infected and edified while
Maxian oratory flowed.

"How is it," inquired his father, "that you have been able to think of
these things? I see them when you tell me; but how did they ever come to
enter your head?"

"For some years," answered Max, "I had the advantage of being your
youngest son. Until I was twenty, two lives stood between me and the
succession, and while Stephen and Rupert were drilling I managed to get
educated."

"Poor Rupert!" murmured his father, "he would have made a much better
King than either of us."

"I don't think so," said Max. "He would merely have kept the monarchy to
its old lines--that means sticking in a rut. If the monarchy is to mean
anything it will have to move, not merely with the times but ahead of
them."

"How can it move ahead of them?"

"How otherwise can it lead? That is what the heads of the privileged
classes never seem to understand. Look at the Bishops! See what a
spectacle they have made of themselves, all through not leading."

"Ah, yes," sighed the King; "I thought you'd be against the Bishops."

"Against them?" cried Max, "of course I'm against them! The Bishops are
a set of prehistoric remains: and even if they were all up to date, a
combined house of Bishops and Judges with full legislative powers is
antediluvian (I'm speaking of the Deluge now in the sense in which Louis
XV spoke of it)--it's an eighteenth-century arrangement.

"Yes, I'm against the Bishops, but I'm much more against the Cabinet.
The Cabinet is seeking to control not only the Upper but the Lower
Chamber as well, it is fighting the Bishops merely to delude the people;
and there are the Laity so stupid, or so lazy, or so corrupt that they
won't see it. Every one knows that the Government sells honors for party
purposes, and then covers it up by pretending that contributions to the
party funds are 'public services.' Everything now is to be had for a
price, a Chancellery at so much, a Knighthood at so much more; an Order
of the this, that, or the other, in exact proportion to its prestige or
its rarity. Last year they had a debate on it in the House, a debate
where, between them, the corruptors and the corrupted were in a
majority! And they solemnly took a vote on it, and declared that there
was no corruption, though everybody knew it to be a fact. The Opposition
lay low because they mean to do exactly the same when their time comes.
Oh, and it's not only the House of Lai