issue of national folly; for which reason I have said of them
elsewhere, "Visible governments are the toys of some nations, the
diseases of others, the harness of some, the burdens of more."

But I have no words for the wonder with which I hear Kinghood still
spoken of, even among thoughtful men, as if governed nations were a
personal property, and might be bought and sold, or otherwise
acquired, as sheep, of whose flesh their king was to feed, and whose
fleece he was to gather; as if Achilles' indignant epithet of base
kings, "people-eating," were the constant and proper title of all
monarchs; and the enlargement of a king's dominion meant the same
thing as the increase of a private man's estate! Kings who think
so, however powerful, can no more be the true kings of the nation
than gadflies are the kings of a horse; they suck it, and may drive
it wild, but do not guide it. They, and their courts, and their
armies are, if one could see clearly, only a large species of marsh
mosquito, with bayonet proboscis and melodious, band-mastered
trumpeting, in the summer air; the twilight being, perhaps,
sometimes fairer, but hardly more wholesome, for its glittering
mists of midge companies. The true kings, meanwhile, rule quietly,
if at all, and hate ruling; too many of them make "il gran rifiuto;"
and if they do not, the mob, as soon as they are likely to become
useful to it, is pretty sure to make ITS "gran rifiuto" of THEM.

Yet the visible king may also be a true one, some day, if ever day
comes when he will estimate his dominion by the FORCE of it,--not
the geographical boundaries. It matters very little whether Trent
cuts you a cantel out here, or Rhine rounds you a castle less there.
But it does matter to you, king of men, whether you can verily say
to this man, "Go," and he goeth; and to another, "Come," and he