s the land to which the ship must go?
Far, far ahead is all the seamen know!"

Part III

"_Love's eye is not so true as all men's: no,
How can it? O how can Love's eye be true
That is so vexed with watching and with tears?_"

CHAPTER XV

London was in full season. But it was a cold May, and both the town and
its inhabitants wore a gray and pinched aspect. Under the east wind an
unsavory dust blew along Piccadilly; the ladies were still in furs; the
trees were venturing out reluctantly, showing many a young leaf bitten
by night frosts; the Park had but a scanty crowd; and the drapers,
oppressed with summer goods, saw their muslins and gauzes in the windows
give up their freshness for naught.

Nevertheless, the ferment of political and social life had seldom been
greater. A Royal wedding in the near future was supposed to account for
the vigor of London's social pulse; the streets, indeed, were already
putting up poles and decorations. And a general election, expected in
the autumn, if not before, accounted for the vivacity of the clubs, the
heat of the newspapers, and the energy of the House of Commons, where
all-night sittings were lightly risked by the Government and recklessly
challenged by the Opposition. Everybody was playing to the
gallery--_i.e._, the country. Old members were wooing their
constituencies afresh; young candidates were spending feverish energies
on new hazards, and anxiously inquiring at what particular date in the
campaign tea-parties became unlawful. Great issues were at stake; for
old parties were breaking up under the pressure of new interests and
passions; within the Liberal party the bubbling of new faiths was at
its crudest and hottest; and those who stood by the slow and safe
ripening of Freedom, from "precedent to precedent," were in much anxiety
as to what shape or shapes might ultimately emerge from a brew so strong
and heady. Which only means that now, as always, Whigs and Radicals were
at odds; and the "unauthorized programme" of the day was sending its
fiery cross through the towns and the industrial districts of the north.

A debate of some importance was going on in the House of Commons. The
Tory Government had brought in a Land Bill, intended, no doubt, rather
as bait for electors than practical politics. It was timid and
ill-drafted, and the Opposition, in days when there were still some
chances in debate, joyously meant to kill it, either by