f the lands of the nobility
and clergy to sell them at a low price to the middle classes and
the peasants. The middle classes and the peasants thought that the
revolution was a good thing for acquiring lands and a bad one for
retaining them.

The legislators of the Republic made terrible laws for the defence of
property, and decreed death to anyone who should propose a division of
wealth. But that did not avail the Republic. The peasants who had become
proprietors bethought themselves that though it had made them rich,
the Republic had nevertheless caused a disturbance to wealth, and they
desired a system more respectful of private property and more capable of
assuring the permanence of the new institutions.

They had not long to wait. The Republic, like Agrippina, bore her
destroyer in her bosom.

Having great wars to carry on, it created military forces, and these
were destined both to save it and to destroy it. Its legislators thought
they could restrain their generals by the fear of punishment, but if
they sometimes cut off the heads of unlucky soldiers they could not do
the same to the fortunate soldiers who obtained over it the advantages
of having saved its existence.

In the enthusiasm of victory the renovated Penguins delivered themselves
up to a dragon, more terrible than that of their fables, who, like
a stork amongst frogs, devoured them for fourteen years with his
insatiable beak.

Half a century after the reign of the new dragon a young Maharajah
of Malay, called Djambi, desirous, like the Scythian Anacharsis,
of instructing himself by travel, visited Penguinia and wrote an
interesting account of his travels. I transcribe the first page of his
account:

ACCOUNT OF THE TRAVELS OF YOUNG DJAMBI IN PENGUINIA

After a voyage of ninety days I landed at the vast and deserted port of
the Penguins and travelled over untilled fields to their ruined capital.
Surrounded by ramparts and full of barracks and arsenals it had a
martial though desolate appearance. Feeble and crippled men wandered
proudly through the streets, wearing old uniforms and carrying rusty
weapons.

"What do you want?" I was rudely asked at the gate of the city by a
soldier whose moustaches pointed to the skies.

"Sir," I answered, "I come as an inquirer to visit this island."

"It is not an island," replied the soldier.

"What!" I exclaimed, "Penguin Island is not an island?"

"No, sir, it is an insula. It was formerly called an is