ine with understanding,
you would have known that I care no more either for Mr. D'Israeli or Mr.
Gladstone than for two old bagpipes with the drones going by steam, but
that I hate all Liberalism as I do Beelzebub, and that, with Carlyle, I
stand, we two alone now in England, for God and the Queen." After that,
though he might explain[49] that he never under any conditions of
provocation or haste, would have said that he hated Liberalism as he did
_Mammon_, or Belial, or Moloch; that he "chose the milder fiend of Ekron
as the true exponent and patron of Liberty, the God of Flies," still the
matter-of-fact Glaswegians were minded to give the scoffer a wide berth.
He was put up as an independent candidate in the three-cornered duel;
and, as such candidates usually fare, he fared badly. The only wonder is
that three hundred and nineteen students were found to vote for him,
instead of siding, in political orthodoxy, with Mr. Fawcett or the
Marquis of Bute.

[Footnote 49: Epilogue to "Arrows of the Chace."]

At last a busy and eventful year came to a close at Coniston, with a
lecture at the village Institute on his old friend Sir Herbert Edwardes
(December 22nd). His interest in the school and the schoolchildren was
unabated, and he was always planning new treats for them, or new helps
to their lessons. He had set one of the assistants to make a large
hollow globe, inside of which one could sit and see the stars as
luminous points pricked through the mimic "vault of heaven," painted
blue and figured with the constellations. By a simple arrangement of
cogs and rollers the globe revolved, the stars rose and set, and the
position of any star at any hour of the year could be roughly fixed. But
the inclement climate of Coniston, and the natural roughness of
children, soon wrecked the new toy.

About this time he was anxious to get the village children taught music
with more accuracy of tune and time than the ordinary singing-lessons
enforced. He made many experiments with different simple instruments,
and fixed at last upon a set of bells, which he wanted to introduce into
the school. But it was difficult to interfere with the routine of
studies prescribed by the Code. Considering that he scorned "the three
R's," a school after his own heart would have been a very different
place from any that earns the Government grant; and he very strongly
believed that if a village child learnt the rudiments of religion and
morality, sound