forever departed away. For myself, grown too indolent for an interest
in aught beyond the sentimentalities of politics, I sorrow that this
is so. Indifference is ever conservative and hesitates at change; and,
speaking for what is within myself and not at all perhaps for that
which is best for the public, I would have preferred a continuation of
the Croker dynasty. As it is, good sooth! Mr. Croker is destroyed. And
your ruin, of whatever character, the resort of owls, the habitat of
bats, and all across it flung the melancholy ivy--that verdant banner
of victorious decay!--is, at its loveliest, but a spectacle of
depression; and one who has witnessed Mr. Croker in his vigor must be
at least dimly affected as he beholds him take his sad and passive
place with those who were. Mr. Croker is not to be blamed as the
architect of his overthrow. With what lights that shone, his conduct
was prudent enough; and his dethronement is to be charged to
destiny--to kismet, rather than to any gate-opening carelessness on
the purblind part of himself. 'Prudentia fato major,' said the
Florentine. But the Medici was wrong, and before Death bandaged his
eyes for eternity it was given him to see that Destiny, for all his
caution and for all his craft, had fed his hopes to defeat. And yet,
while Mr. Croker may not be charged as the reason of his own removal,
some consideration of causes that incited it should have a merit and
an interest. It is one vessel crashing on a reef that points a danger,
and makes for the safety of every ship that follows, and the story of
a wrecked and drowned dictatorship cannot fail to instruct ambition in
whatever field.

"Following the last presidential campaign, Mr. Croker sailed
Englandward to repose himself from his labors. For ten months did he
rest, recuperate, restrengthen and restore himself. And when he
departed, albeit he may have had no suspicion of that fact, Mr. Croker