Everywhere the Official holy-of-holies was scandalously laid bare
to dogs and the profane:--Enter, all the world, see what kind of
Official holy it is. Kings everywhere, and reigning persons,
stared in sudden horror, the voice of the whole world bellowing
in their ear, "Begone, ye imbecile hypocrites, histrios not
heroes! Off with you, off!" and, what was peculiar and notable
in this year for the first time, the Kings all made haste to go,
as if exclaiming, "We _are_ poor histrios, we sure enough;--did
you want heroes? Don't kill us; we couldn't help it!" Not one
of them turned round, and stood upon his Kingship, as upon a
right he could afford to die for, or to risk his skin upon; by no
manner of means. That, I say, is the alarming peculiarity at
present. Democracy, on this new occasion, finds all Kings
conscious that they are but Play-actors. The miserable mortals,
enacting their High Life Below Stairs, with faith only that this
Universe may perhaps be all a phantasm and hypocrisis,--the
truculent Constable of the Destinies suddenly enters:
"Scandalous Phantasms, what do _you_ here? Are 'solemnly
constituted Impostors' the proper Kings of men? Did you think
the Life of Man was a grimacing dance of apes? To be led always
by the squeak of your paltry fiddle? Ye miserable, this Universe
is not an upholstery Puppet-play, but a terrible God's Fact; and
you, I think,--had not you better begone!" They fled
precipitately, some of them with what we may call an exquisite
ignominy,--in terror of the treadmill or worse. And everywhere
the people, or the populace, take their own government upon
themselves; and open "kinglessness," what we call _anarchy_,--how
happy if it be anarchy _plus_ a street-constable!--is everywhere
the order of the day. Such was the history, from Baltic to
Mediterranean, in Italy, France, Prussia, Austria, from end to