what care I for a lord? I value a lord no more than a button top;'
whilst, in fact, he secretly reveres a lord as being usually amongst
the most ancient of landed proprietors, and, secondly, amongst
the richest. The scourge of kingship was what Cowper glanced at,
rather than the scourge of war; and in any case the condition which
he annexed to his suggestion of relief, is too remote to furnish
much consolation for cynics like myself, or the reader. If war is
to cease only when subjects become wise, we need not contract the
scale of our cannon-founderies until the millennium. Sixty years
ago, therefore, the abolition of war looked as unprosperous a
speculation as Dr. Darwin's scheme for improving our British climate
by hauling out all the icebergs from the polar basin in seasons when
the wind sate fair for the tropics; by which means these wretched
annoyers of our peace would soon find themselves in quarters too
hot to hold them, and would disappear as rapidly as sugar-candy in
children's mouths. Others, however, inclined rather to the Ancient
Mariner's scheme, by shooting an albatross:--


'Twas right, said they, such birds to shoot,
That bring the frost and snow.'


Scarcely more hopeless than these crusades against frost, were any
of the serious plans which had then been proposed for the extirpation
of war. St. Pierre contributed '_son petite possible_' to
this desirable end, in the shape of an essay towards the idea of a
perpetual peace; Kant, the great professor of Koenigsberg, subscribed
to the same benevolent scheme _his_ little essay under the same
title; and others in England subscribed a guinea each to the fund