nother's
giving. Her own hand is her own undoer. She stabs herself with
bigotry, superstition, divided councils, domestic feuds, ignorance,
temerity; she wills, but does not; her East is one black storm-cloud,
that never bursts; her utmost fight is a defiance; she showers
reproaches, where she should rain down blows. She stands a mastiff
baying at the moon."

"Tropes on tropes!" said. Media. "Let me tell the tale,--straight-
forward like a line. Verdanna is a lunatic--"

"A trope! my lord," cried Babbalanja.

"My tropes are not tropes," said Media, "but yours are.--Verdanna is a
lunatic, that after vainly striving to cut another's throat,
grimaces before a standing pool and threatens to cut his own. And is
such a madman to be intrusted with himself? No; let another govern
him, who is ungovernable to himself Ay, and tight hold the rein; and
curb, and rasp the bit. Do I exaggerate?--Mohi, tell me, if, save one
lucid interval, Verdanna, while independent of Dominora, ever
discreetly conducted her affairs? Was she not always full of fights
and factions? And what first brought her under the sway of Bello's
scepter? Did not her own Chief Dermoddi fly to Bello's ancestor for
protection against his own seditious subjects? And thereby did not her
own king unking himself? What wonder, then, and where the wrong, if
Henro, Bello's conquering sire, seized the diadem?"

"What my lord cites is true," said Mohi, "but cite no more, I pray;
lest, you harm your cause."

"Yet for all this, Babbalanja," said Media, "Bello but holds lunatic
Verdanna's lands in trust."

"And may the guardian of an estate also hold custody of the ward, my
lord?"

"Ay, if he can. What _can_ be done, may be: that's the Greed of demi-
gods."

"Alas, alas!" cried Yoomy, "why war with words over this poor,
suffering land. See! for all her bloom, her people starve; perish her
yams, ere taken from the soil; the blight of heaven seems upon them."

"Not so," said Media. "Heaven sends no blights. Verdanna will not
learn. And if from one season's rottenss, rottenness they sow again,
rottenness must they reap. But Yoomy, you seem earnest in this
matter;--come: on all hands it is granted that evils exist in
Verdanna; now sweet Sympathizer, what must the royal Bello do to mend
them?"

"I am no sage," said Yoomy, "what would my lord Media do?"

"What would _you_ do, Babbalanja," said Media.

"Mohi, what you?" asked the philosopher.

"And what would the com