se to the reader, and with a proper apology, broke
ground by asking what he read.

"I am perusing," answered the young gentleman, "the last work of the
Herr Doctor Hohenstockwitz, cousin and librarian of your Prince here in
Gruenewald--a man of great erudition and some lambencies of wit."

"I am acquainted," said Otto, "with the Herr Doctor, though not yet with
his work."

"Two privileges that I must envy you," replied the young man politely:
"an honour in hand, a pleasure in the bush."

"The Herr Doctor is a man much respected, I believe, for his
attainments?" asked the Prince.

"He is, sir, a remarkable instance of the force of intellect," replied
the reader. "Who of our young men know anything of his cousin,
all-reigning Prince although he be? Who but has heard of Dr. Gotthold?
But intellectual merit, alone of all distinctions, has its base in
nature."

"I have the gratification of addressing a student--perhaps an author?"
Otto suggested.

The young man somewhat flushed. "I have some claim to both distinctions,
sir, as you suppose," said he; "there is my card. I am the licentiate
Roederer, author of several works on the theory and practice of
politics."

"You immensely interest me," said the Prince; "the more so as I gather
that here in Gruenewald we are on the brink of revolution. Pray, since
these have been your special studies, would you augur hopefully of such
a movement?"

"I perceive," said the young author, with a certain vinegary twitch,
"that you are unacquainted with my opuscula. I am a convinced
authoritarian. I share none of those illusory, Utopian fancies with
which empirics blind themselves and exasperate the ignorant. The day of
these ideas is, believe me, past, or at least passing."

"When I look about me----" began Otto.

"When you look about you," interrupted the licentiate, "you behold the
ignorant. But in the laboratory of opinion, beside the studious lamp, we
begin already to discard these figments. We begin to return to nature's
order, to what I might call, if I were to borrow from the language of
therapeutics, the expectant treatment of abuses. You will not
misunderstand me," he continued: "a country in the condition in which we
find Gruenewald, a prince such as your Prince Otto, we must explicitly
condemn; they are behind the age. But I would look for a remedy not to
brute convulsions, but to the natural supervenience of a more able
sovereign. I should amuse you, perhaps," added