ne sorrowing tear!'

CHAPTER VI. -- JUSTICE AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY.

'They will soon be here,
They are upon the road,'
John Gilpin.

'I should like,' said Queen Mab one day, 'to go and see the City. Do you
think it would be safe?'

'Yes,' said the Owl, 'if you fly out of the way of the smoke and the
net of overhead wires, and take care not to be suffocated, and not to
go near the Houses of Parliament, nor the Bank, nor St. Paul's, nor the
Exchange, nor any great public building. And if you keep clear of all
the bridges, and the railway stations, and Victoria Embankment, and go
the other way whenever you see a person carrying a black bag.'

'Why?' inquired Queen Mab, a good deal mystified.

'Because all these places,' said the Owl, 'are in danger of being blown
up. If you could get a Home Ruler to take you round now; but I'm afraid
it wouldn't do, as he might put you into an explosion and leave you
there, as likely as not. Besides, I was forgetting, you are immortal,
aren't you? You _couldn't_ be blown up? If so, it is all right.'

'I don't suppose I could,' said Queen Mab a little doubtfully, 'but
still I shouldn't care to try. What is it like?'

'I don't know,' replied her mentor. 'I have never tried it myself. You
had better ask Mr. Bradlaugh, or some eminent popular sciolist Huxley
or Spencer would do. They have been exploding or blowing up popular
theology for a number of years, and popular theology and Mr. Joseph Cook
have been exploding them. As far as I can make out, they both appear
to think it very good fun. But I was going to tell you about the
black bags, which are filled with dynamite, a very explosive
though inexpensive substance indeed, and carried by persons called
"dynamiters." These bags are left at large in public buildings, while
the dynamitards go away, and as soon as their owners turn the corner
the bags explode and blow up the buildings, and anyone who happens to be
about.'

'Why do they do it?' exclaimed Queen Mab, breathless.

'Nobody seems to know,' said the Owl. 'It is one of the problems of the
nineteenth century. Even the dynamiters themselves don't appear to have
gone into the whole logic of it I suppose that they are tired of
only blowing things up on paper, and they are people who have a great
objection to things in general. They complain that they can't get
justice from the universe in its present state of preservation, and
therefore they are going to blow