ese truths to be self-evident--that all monarchs
are usurpers and descendants of usurpers, for the reason that no
throne was ever set up in this world by the will, freely exercised,
of the only body possessing the legitimate right to set it up--the
numerical mass of the nation."

He was full of it, as he had been all along, and 'A Connecticut Yankee
in King Arthur's Court' is nothing less than a brief for human rights
and human privileges. That is what it is, and it is a pity that it
should be more than that. It is a pity that he should have been beset
by his old demon of the burlesque, and that no one should have had the
wisdom or the strength to bring it under control.

There is nothing more charming in any of Mark Twain's work than his
introductory chapter, nothing more delightful than the armoring of the
Yankee and the outset and the wandering with Alisande. There is nothing
more powerful or inspiring than his splendid panoramic picture--of the
King learning mercy through his own degradation, his daily intercourse
with a band of manacled slaves; nothing more fiercely moving than that
fearful incident of the woman burned to warm those freezing chattels,
or than the great gallows scene, where the priest speaks for the young
mother about to pay the death penalty for having stolen a halfpenny's
worth, that her baby might have bread. Such things as these must save
the book from oblivion; but alas! its greater appeal is marred almost
to ruin by coarse and extravagant burlesque, which destroys illusion
and antagonizes the reader often at the very moment when the tale should
fill him with a holy fire of a righteous wrath against wrong. As an
example of Mark Twain at his literary worst and best the Yankee ranks
supreme. It is unnecessary to quote examples; one cannot pick up the
volume and read ten pages of it, or five pages, without finding them.
In the midst of some exalted passage, some towering sublimity, you
are brought suddenly to earth with a phrase which wholly destroys the
illusion and the diviner purpose. Howells must have observed these
things, or was he so dazzled by the splendor of its intent, its
righteous charge upon the ranks of oppression, that he regarded its
offenses against art as unimportant. This is hard to explain, for the
very thing that would sustain such a great message and make it permanent
would be the care, the restraint, the artistic worthiness of its
construction. One must beli