Orsonism is not what will hinder our Aristocracy from still reigning, still, or much farther than now,-to the very utmost limit of their capabilities and opportunities, in the new times that come. What are these opportunities,granting the capability to be (as I believe) very considerable if seriously exerted This is a question of the highest interest just now.

In their own Domains and land territories, it is evident each of them can still, for certain years and decades, be a complete king; and may, if he strenuously try, mould and manage everything, till both his people and his lominion correspond gradually to the ideal he has formed. Refractory subjects he has the means of banishing; the relations between all classes from the biggest farmer to the poorest orphan ploughboy, are under his control; nothing ugly or unjust or improper, but he could by degrees undertake steady war against, and manfully subdue or extirpate. Till all his Domain were, through every field and homestead of it, and were maintained in continuing and being, manlike, decorous, fit; comely to the eye and to the soul of whoever wisely looked on it, or honestly lived in it. This is a beautiful ideal; which might be carried out on all sides to indefinite lengths,-not in management of land only, but in thousandfold countenancing, protecting and encouraging of human worth, and dis-countenancing and sternly repressing the want of ditto, wherever met with among surrounding mankind. Till the whole surroundings of a nobleman were made noble like himself and all men should recognise that here verily was a bit of kinghood ruling "by the Grace of God," in difficult circumstances, but not in vain.

This were a way, if this were commonly adopted, of by degrees reinstating Aristocracy in all the privileges,

authorities, reverences and honours it ever had, in its palmiest times, under any Kaiser Barbarossa, Henry Fowler (Heinrich der Vogeler), Henry FineScholar (Beau-clerc), or Wilhelmus Bastardus the Acquirer: this would be divine; blessed is every individual that shall manfully, all his life, solitary or in fellowship, address himself to this! But, alas, this is an ideal, and I have practically little faith in it. Discerning well how few would seriously adopt this as a trade in life, I can only say, "Blessed is every one that does!"Readers can observe that only zealous aspirants to be "noble" and worthy of their title (who are not a numerous class) could adopt this trade; and that of these few, only the fewest, or the actually noble, could to much effect do it when adopted. "Management of one's land on this principle," yes, in some degree this might be possible: but as to fostering merit' or human worth, the question would arise (as it did with a late Noble Lord still in wide enough esteem),1 "What is merit? The opinion one man entertains of another!" (Hear, hear!) By this plan of diligence in promoting human worth, you would do little to redress our griefs; this plan would be a quenching of the fire by oil: a dreadful plan! (In fact, this is what you may see everywhere going on just now; this is what has reduced us to the pass we are at!)-To recognise merit you must first yourself have it; to recognise false merit, and crown it as true, because a long tail runs after it, is the saddest operation under the sun; and it is one you have only to open your eyes and see every day. Alas! no? Ideals won't carry many people far. To have an Ideal generally done, it must be compelled by the vulgar appetite there is to do it, by indisputable advantage seen in doing it.

1 Lord Palmerston, in debate on Civil Service Examination Proposal.

In such an independent position; acknowledged king of one's own territories, well withdrawn from the raging inanities of "politics," leaving the loud rabble and their spokesmen to consummate all that in their own sweet way, and make Anarchy again horrible, and Government or real Kingship the thing desirable,—one fancies there might be actual scope for a kingly soul to aim at unfolding itself, at imprinting itself in all manner of beneficent arrangements and improvements of things around it. Schools, for example, schooling and training of its young subjects in the way that they should go, and in the things that they should do what a boundless outlook that of schools, and of improvement in school methods, and school purposes, which in these ages lie hitherto all superannuated and to a frightful degree inapplicable! Our schools go all upon the vocal hitherto; no clear aim in them but to teach the young creature how he is to speak, to utter himself by tongue and pen;which, supposing him even to have something to utter, as he so very rarely has, is by no means the thing he specially wants in our times. How he is to work, to behave and do; that is the question for him, which he seeks the answer of in schools; in schools, having now so little chance of it elsewhere. In other times, many or most of his neighbours round him, his superiors over him, if he looked well and could take example, and learn by what he saw, were in use to yield him very much of answer to this vitallest of questions but now they do not, or do it fatally the reverse way! Talent of speaking grows daily commoner among one's neighbours; amounts already to a weariness and a nuisance, so barren is it of great benefit, and liable to be of great hurt but the talent of right conduct, of wise and useful behaviour seems to grow rarer every day, and is nowhere taught in the streets and thoroughfares any more. Right schools were never more desirable than now. Nor ever more

unattainable, by public clamouring and jargoning, than now. Only the wise Ruler (acknowledged king in his own territories), taking counsel with the wise, and earnestly pushing and endeavouring all his days, might do something in it. It is true, I suppose him to be capable of recognising and searching out "the wise," who are apt not to be found on the high roads at present, or only to be transiently passing there, with closed lips, swift step, and possibly a grimmish aspect of countenance, among the crowd of loquacious shamwise. To be capable of actually recognising and discerning these; and that is no small postulate (how great a one I know well)-in fact, unless our Noble by rank be a Noble by nature, little or no success is possible to us by him.

But granting this great postulate, what a field in the Non-vocal School department, such as was not dreamt of before! Non-vocal; presided over by whatever of Pious Wisdom this king could eliminate from all corners of the impious world; and could consecrate with means and appliances for making the new generation, by degrees, less impious. Tragical to think of: Every new generation is born to us direct out of Heaven; white as purest writing paper, white as snow ;— everything we please can be written on it; and our pleasure and our negligence is, To begin blotching it, scrawling, smutching and smearing it, from the first day it sees the sun towards such a consummation of ugliness, dirt, and blackness of darkness, as is too often visible. Woe on us; there is no woe like this,—if we were not sunk in stupefaction, and had still eyes to discern or souls to feel it!-Goethe has shadowed out a glorious far-glancing specimen of that Non-vocal, or very partially-vocal kind of School. I myself remember to have seen an extremely small, but highly useful and practicable little corner of one, actually on work at Glasnevin in Ireland about fifteen years ago; and have often thought of it since.

I always fancy there might much be done in the way of military Drill withal. Beyond all other schooling, and as supplement or even as succedaneum for all other, one often wishes the entire Population could be thoroughly drilled; into co-operative movement, into individual behaviour, correct, precise, and at once habitual and orderly as mathematics, in all or in very many points, and ultimately in the point of actual Military Service, should such be required of it!

That of commanding and obeying, were there nothing more, is it not the basis of all human culture; ought not all to have it; and how many ever do? I often say, The one Official Person, royal, sacerdotal, scholastic, governmental, of our times, who is still thoroughly a truth and a reality, and not in great part a hypothesis, and worn-out humbug, proposing and attempting a duty which he fails to do, is the Drill-Sergeant who is master of his work, and who will perform it. By Drill-Sergeant understand, not the man in three stripes alone; understand him as meaning all such men, up to the Turenne, to the Friedrich of Prussia: he does his function, he is genuine; and from the highest to the lowest no one else does. Ask your poor King's Majesty, Captain General of England, Defender of the Faith, and so much else; ask your poor Bishop, sacred Overseer of souls; your poor Lawyer, sacred Dispenser of justice; your poor Doctor, ditto of health: they will all answer, "Alas, no, worthy sir, we are all of us unfortunately fallen not a little, some of us altogether, into the imaginary or quasi-humbug condition, and cannot help ourselves; he alone of the three stripes, or of the gorget and baton, does what he pretends to!" That is the melancholy fact; well worth considering at present.-Nay I often consider farther, If, in any Country, the Drill-Sergeant himself fall into the partly imaginary or humbug condition (as is my frightful apprehension of him here in England, on survey of him in his marvellous Crimean expeditions, marvellous Courts martial revelations, Newspaper controver

sies, and the like), what is to become of that Country and its thrice miserable Drill-Sergeant?

But now, what is to hinder the acknowledged king in all corners of his territory, to introduce wisely a universal system of Drill, not military only but human in all kinds; so that no child or man born in his territory might miss the benefit of it,-which would be immense to man, woman and child? I would begin with it, in mild, soft forms, so soon almost as my children were able to stand on their legs; and I would never wholly remit it till they had done with the world and me. Poor Wilderspin knew something of this; the great Goethe evidently knew a great deal! This of outwardly combined and plainly consociated Discipline, in simultaneous movement and action, which may be practical, symbolical, artistic, mechanical in all degrees and modes, -is one of the noblest capabilities of man (most sadly undervalued hitherto); and one he takes the greatest pleasure in exercising and unfolding, not to mention at all the invaluable benefit it would afford him if unfolded. From correct marching in line, to rhythmic dancing in cotillon or minuet,-and to infinitely higher degrees (that of symbolling in concert "first reverence," your for instance, supposing reverence and symbol of it to be both sincere !)-there is a natural charm in it; the fulfilment of a deepseated, universal desire, to all rhythmic social creatures! In man's heaven-born Docility, or power of being Educated, it is estimable as perhaps the deepest and richest element; or the next to that of music, of Sensibility to Song, to Harmony and Number, which some have reckoned the deepest of all. A richer mine than any in California for poor human creatures; richer by what a multiple; and hitherto as good as never opened,-worked only for the Fighting purpose. Assuredly I would not neglect the Fighting purpose; no, from sixteen to sixty, not a son of mine but

nould know the Soldier's function too

and be able to defend his native soil and self, in best perfection, when need came. But I should not begin with this; I should carefully end with this, after careful travel in innumerable fruitful fields by the way leading to this.

It is strange to me, stupid creatures of routine as we mostly are, how in all education of mankind, this of simultaneous Drilling into combined rhythmic action, for almost all good purposes, has been overlooked and left neglected by the elaborate and many-sounding Pedagogues and Professorial persons we have had for the long centuries past! It really should be set on foot a little; and developed gradually into the multiform opulent results it holds for us. As might well be done, by an acknowledged king in his own territory, if he were wise. To all children of men it is such an entertainment, when you set them to it. I believe the vulgarest Cockney crowd, flung out millionfold on a Whit Sunday, with nothing but beer and dull folly to depend on for amusement, would at once kindle into something human, if you set them to do almost any regulated act in common. And would dismiss their beer and dull foolery, in the silent charm of rhythmic human companionship, in the practical feeling, probably new, that all of us are made on one pattern, and are, in an unfathomable way, brothers to one another.

Soldier-Drill, for fighting purposes, as I have said, would be the last or nishing touch of all these sorts of Drilling Processes; and certainly the acknowledged king would reckon it not the least important to him, but even perhaps the most so, in these peculiar times. Anarchic Parliaments and Penny Newspapers might perhaps grow jealous of him; in any case, he would have to be cautious, punctilious, severely correct, and obey to the better whatever laws and regulations they emitted on the subject. But that done, how could the most anarchic Parliament, or Penny Editor, think of Forbidding any fellow-citizen such a

manifest improvement on all the human creatures round him? Our wise Hero Aristocrat, or acknowledged king in his own territory, would by no means think of employing his superlative private Field-regiment in levy of war against the most anarchic Parliament; but, on the contrary, might and would loyally help said Parliament in warring down much anarchy worse than its own, and so gain steadily new favour from it. From it, and from all men and gods! And would have silently the consciousness, too, that with every new Disciplined Man, he was widening the arena of Anti-Anarchy, of God-appointed Order in this world and Nation, and was looking forward to a day, very distant probably, but certain as Fate.

For

For I suppose it would in no moment be doubtful to him That, between Anarchy and Anti-ditto, it would have to come to sheer fight at last; and that nothing short of duel to the death could ever void that great quarrel. And he would have his hopes, his assurances, as to how the victory would lie. everywhere in this universe, and in every nation that is not divorced from it and in the act of perishing forever, Anti-Anarchy is silently on the increase, at all moments: Anarchy, not, but contrariwise; having the whole universe for ever set against it; pushing it slowly at all moments towards suicide and annihilation. To Anarchy, however million-headed, there is no victory possible. Patience, silence, diligence, ye chosen of the world! Slowly or fast in the course of time you will grow to a minority that can actually step forth (sword not yet drawn, but sword ready to be drawn), and say: "Here are we, Sirs; we also are minded to vote,-to all lengths, as you may perceive. A company of poor men (as friend Oliver termed us) who will spend all our blood, if needful!" What are Beales and his 50,000 roughs against such; what are the noisiest anarchic Parliaments, in majority of a million to one, against such? Stubble against fire. Fear not, my friend; the issue is very certain when it comes so far as this!

CHAPTER LVIII.

SILCOTES.

THE oaks at Silcotes grew from gold to green, then grew golden once more, and then settled down into the full green of summer; yet stillness, or nearly stillness, reigned over hall and park, garden and forest. The perfectly-ordered machine, so long wound up, went on just the same, the least noticeable fact about it being the absence of its master.

The neighbours got excited and curious about the house, the more so as week after week went on. They met the horses exercising regularly, and the men looked much as usual. The deep wailing bay of the bloodhounds was still heard by the frightened children, whose mothers told them that the Dark Squire was away to the war-a piece of information which made him seem in their eyes more weird and more dark than before. Everything, said the gossips, was going on just as usual at Silcotes, save that some most astounding family discoveries had been made, and, without doubt, Silcote was following the track of the Italian army.

No. 95.-VOL. XVI.

Every

People who had not called for years came and called now, out of sheer honest curiosity, a curiosity which was doomed to continual disappointment. thing was unchanged. The lodge gates were opened with the greatest alacrity; lawn and drive were well kept; the flowerbeds were blazing out as heretofore, and the gardeners were busy among the new French roses; the door was opened to the visitor by the butler and two men in livery, but "Mr. Silcote was in Italy, and was not expected home at present." That was all that could be learnt.

Lord Hainault of course heard of all these things, and, with his worthy wife, wondered very much at them. He had seen but little of Silcote in his life, and what little he had seen he had not liked. liked. He seldom had any personal correspondence with him, but he had taken it into his head that a common should be inclosed it was impossible that it could be done without stroking the Squire the right way, and so the Squire suddenly became a most important person. Lord Hainault began at breakfast-time by laying down the proposition that country gossip was just as bad as town gossip, and that he did

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