al voice behind him:

"Profanum vulgus! Come to listen to the finest piece of music ever
written! Folk whom you wouldn't trust a yard to know what was good for
them! Deplorable sight, isn't it?"

He made no answer. The first slow notes of the seventh Symphony of
Beethoven had begun to steal forth across the bank of flowers; and, save
for the steady rising of that bluefish vapour, as it were incense burnt
to the god of melody, the crowd had become deathly still, as though one
mind, one spirit, possessed each pale face inclined towards that music
rising and falling like the sighing of the winds, that welcome from death
the freed spirits of the beautiful.

When the last notes had died away, he turned and walked out.

"Well," said the voice behind him, "hasn't that shown you how things
swell and grow; how splendid the world is?"

Miltoun smiled.

"It has shown me how beautiful the world can be made by a great man."

And suddenly, as if the music had loosened some band within him, he began
to pour forth words:

"Look at the crowd in this street, Courtier, which of all crowds in the
whole world can best afford to be left to itself; secure from pestilence,
earthquake, cyclone, drought, from extremes of heat and cold, in the
heart of the greatest and safest city in the world; and yet-see the
figure of that policeman! Running through all the good behaviour of this
crowd, however safe and free it looks, there is, there always must be, a
central force holding it together. Where does that central force come
from? From the crowd itself, you say. I answer: No. Look back at the
origin of human States. From the beginnings of things, the best man has
been the unconscious medium of authority, of the controlling principle,
of the divine force; he felt that power within him--physical, at
first--he used it to take the lead, he has held the lead ever since, he
must always hold it. All your processes of election, your so-called
democratic apparatus, are only a blind to the inquiring, a sop to the
hungry, a salve to the pride of the rebellious. They are merely surface
machinery; they cannot prevent the best man from coming to the top; for
the best man stands nearest to the Deity, and is the first to receive the
waves that come from Him. I'm not speaking of heredity. The best man is
not necessarily born in my class, and I, at all events, do not believe he
is any more frequent there than in other classes."

He stopped as s