BOOK VI

WHEREIN ARE OPENED SOME GLIMPSES OF THE FATE BELOW THAT ATTENDS THOSE
WHO ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS, AND THOSE WHO DESIRE TO MAKE OTHERS
BETTER. LOVE, DEMAGOGY, AND SCIENCE ALL EQUALLY OFF-SPRING OF THE
SAME PROLIFIC DELUSION,--NAMELY, THAT MEAN SOULS (THE EARTH'S
MAJORITY) ARE WORTH THE HOPE AND THE AGONY OF NOBLE SOULS, THE
EVERLASTING SUFFERING AND ASPIRING FEW.




CHAPTER I.

NEW DISSENSIONS.

We must pass over some months. Warwick and his family had returned to
London, and the meeting between Edward and the earl had been cordial
and affectionate. Warwick was reinstated in the offices which gave
him apparently the supreme rule in England. The Princess Margaret had
left England as the bride of Charles the Bold; and the earl had
attended the procession in honour of her nuptials. The king,
agreeably with the martial objects he had had long at heart, had then
declared war on Louis XI., and parliament was addressed and troops
were raised for that impolitic purpose. [Parliamentary Rolls, 623.
The fact in the text has been neglected by most historians.] To this
war, however, Warwick was inflexibly opposed. He pointed out the
madness of withdrawing from England all her best-affected chivalry, at
a time when the adherents of Lancaster, still powerful, would require
no happier occasion to raise the Red Rose banner. He showed how