, and then do not be astonished when I tell you he is a Chillingly.

The Chillingly race culminates in him, and becomes Chillinglyest. In
fact, it seems to me that we live in a day precisely suited to the
Chillingly idiosyncrasies. During the ten centuries or more that our
race has held local habitation and a name, it has been as airy nothings.
Its representatives lived in hot-blooded times, and were compelled to
skulk in still water with their emblematic daces. But the times now, my
dear father, are so cold-blooded that you can't be too cold-blooded to
prosper. What could Chillingly Mivers have been in an age when people
cared twopence-halfpenny about their religious creeds, and their
political parties deemed their cause was sacred and their leaders were
heroes? Chillingly Mivers would not have found five subscribers to
"The Londoner." But now "The Londoner" is the favourite organ of the
intellectual public; it sneers away all the foundations of the social
system, without an attempt at reconstruction; and every new journal set
up, if it keep its head above water, models itself on "The Londoner."
Chillingly Mivers is a great man, and the most potent writer of the age,
though nobody knows what he has written. Chillingly Gordon is a still
more notable instance of the rise of the Chillingly worth in the modern
market.

There is a general impression in the most authoritative circles that
Chillingly Gordon will have high rank in the van of the coming men. His
confidence in himself is so thorough that it infects all with whom he
comes into contact,--myself included.

He said to me the other day, with a _sang-froid_ worthy of the iciest
Chillingly, "I mean to be Prime Minister of England: it is only a
question of time." Now, if Chillingly Gordon is to be Prime Minister, it
will be because the increasing cold of our moral and social atmosphere
will exactly suit the development of his talents.

He is the man above all others to argue down the declaimers of
old-fashioned sentimentalities,--love of country, care for its position
among nations, zeal for its honour, pride in its renown. (Oh, if
you could hear him philosophically and logically sneer away the word
"prestige"!) Such notions are fast being classified as "bosh." And
when that classification is complete,--when England has no colonies to
defend, no navy to pay for, no interest in the affairs of other nations,
and has attained to the happy condition of Holland,--then Chi