every breath of wind. The costly table on which this particular Majesty
of a nation occasionally wrote his letters, would, if sold, have kept a
little town in food for a year,--the rich furs at his feet would have
bought bread for hundreds of starving families,--and every delicious
rose that nodded its dainty head towards him with the breeze would have
given an hour's joy to a sick child. Socialists say this kind of thing
with wildly eloquent fervour, and blame all kings in passionate
rhodomontade for the tables, the furs and the roses,--but they forget--
it is not the sad and weary kings who care for these or any luxuries,--
they would be far happier without them. It is the People who insist on
having kings that should be blamed,--not the monarchs themselves. A
king is merely the people's Prisoner of State,--they chain him to a
throne,--they make him clothe himself in sundry fantastic forms of
attire and exhibit his person thus decked out, for their pleasure,--
they calculate, often with greed and grudging, how much it will cost to
feed him and keep him in proper state on the national premises, that
they may use him at their will,--but they seldom or never seem to
remember the fact that there is a Man behind the King!

It is not easy to govern nowadays, since there is no real autocracy,
and no strong soul likely to create one. But the original idea of
sovereignty was grand and wise;--the strongest man and bravest, raised
aloft on shields and bucklers with warrior cries of approval from the
people who voluntarily chose him as their leader in battle,--their
utmost Head of affairs. Progress has demolished this ideal, with many
others equally fine and inspiring; and now all kings are so, by right
of descent merely. Whether they be infirm or palsied, weak or wise,
sane or crazed, still are they as of old elected; only no more as the
Strongest, but simply as the Sign-posts of a traditional bygone
authority. This King however, here written of, was not deficient in