state that could possibly be gathered together from the four quarters
of the globe as witnesses to the immolation of two young human lives on
the grim sacrificial stone of a Dynasty; and both prince and princess
accepted their fate with mutually silent and civil resignation. Their
portraits, set facing each other with a silly smile, or taken in a
linked arm-in-arm attitude against a palatial canvas background,
appeared in every paper published throughout the world, and every
scribbler on the Press took special pains to inform the easily deluded
public that the Royal union thus consummated was 'a romantic love-
match.' For the People still have heart and conscience,--the People,
taken in the rough lump of humanity, still believe in love, in faith,
in the dear sweetness of home affections. The politicians who make
capital out of popular emotion, know this well enough,--and are careful
to play the tune of their own personal interest upon the gamut of
National Sentiment in every stump oration. For how terrible it would be
if the People of any land learned to judge their preachers and teachers
by the lines of fact alone! Inasmuch as fact would convincingly prove
to them that their leaders prospered and grew rich, while they stayed
poor; and they might take to puzzling out reasons for this inadequacy
which would inevitably cause trouble. For this, and divers other
motives politic, the rosy veil of sentiment is always delicately flung
more or less over every new move on the national debating-ground,--and
whether marriageable princes and princesses love or loathe each other,
still, when they come to wed, the words 'romantic love-match' must be
thrown in by an obliging Press in order to satisfy the tender scruples
of a people who would certainly not abide the thought of a Royal
marriage contracted in mutual aversion. Thus much soundness and right
principle there is at least, in what some superfine persons call the
'common' folk,--the folk whose innermost sense of truth and
straightforwardness, not even the proudest statesman dare outrage.