eonardo da Vinci, Goethe, Balzac, Darwin, and other sages,
for having been so concentrated on this or that eternal verity in art
or science or philosophy, that they paid no heed to alarums and
excursions which were sweeping all other folk off their feet. It is
with some shame that I haunt the tape-machine whenever a General
Election is going on.

Of politics I know nothing. My mind is quite open on the subject of
fiscal reform, and quite empty; and the void is not an aching one: I
have no desire to fill it. The idea of the British Empire leaves me
quite cold. If this or that subject race threw off our yoke, I should
feel less vexation than if one comma were misplaced in the printing of
this essay. The only feeling that our Colonies inspire in me is a
determination not to visit them. Socialism neither affrights nor
attracts me--or, rather, it has both these effects equally. When I
think of poverty and misery crushing the greater part of humanity, and
most of all when I hear of some specific case of distress, I become a
socialist indeed. But I am not less an artist than a human being, and
when I think of Demos, that chin-bearded god, flushed with victory,
crowned with leaflets of the Social Democratic League, quaffing
temperance beverages in a world all drab; when I think of model
lodging-houses in St. James's Park, and trams running round and round
St. James's Square--the mighty fallen, and the lowly swollen, and, in
Elysium, the shade of Matthew Arnold shedding tears on the shoulder of
a shade so different as George Brummell's--tears, idle tears, at sight
of the Barbarians, whom he had mocked and loved, now annihilated by
those others whom he had mocked and hated; when such previsions as
these come surging up in me, I do deem myself well content with the
present state of things, dishonourable though it is. As to socialism,
then, you see, my mind is evenly divided. It is with no political bias
that I go and hover around the tape-machine. My interest in General
Elections is a merely 'sporting' interest. I do not mean that I lay
bets. A bad fairy decreed over my cradle that I should lose every bet
that I might make; and, in course of time, I abandoned a practice which
took away from coming events the pleasing element of uncertainty. 'A
merely dramatic interest' is less equivocal, and more accurate.

'This,' you say, 'is rank incivism.' I assume readily that you are an
ardent believer in one political party or another, and