r, like 'kind Hunt,' been in prison, nor do we fear for him a charge
of treason. Moreover, chemical science has discovered new and ingenious
ways of destroying principalities and powers. You would be interested in
the methods, but your peaceful Revolutionism, which disdained physical
force, would regret their application.

Our foreign affairs are not in a state which even you would consider
satisfactory; for we have just had to contend with a Revolt of Islam,
and we still find in Russia exactly the qualities which you recognised
and described. We have a great statesman whose methods and eloquence
somewhat resemble those you attribute to Laon and Prince Athanase. Alas!
he is a youth of more than seventy summers; and not in his time will
Prometheus retire to a cavern and pass a peaceful millennium in twining
buds and beams.

In domestic affairs most of the Reforms you desired to see have been
carried. Ireland has received Emancipation, and almost everything else
she can ask for. I regret to say that she is still unhappy; her wounds
unstanched, her wrongs unforgiven. At home we have enfranchised the
paupers, and expect the most happy results. Paupers (as Mr. Gladstone
says) are 'our own flesh and blood,' and, as we compel them to be
vaccinated, so we should permit them to vote. Is it a dream that Mr.
Jesse Collings (how you would have loved that man!) has a Bill for
extending the priceless boon of the vote to inmates of Pauper Lunatic
Asylums? This may prove that last element in the Elixir of political
happiness which we have sought in vain. Atheists, you will regret to
hear, are still unpopular; but the new Parliament has done something for
Mr. Bradlaugh. You should have known our Charles while you were in the
'Queen Mab' stage. I fear you wandered, later, from his robust condition
of intellectual development.

As to your private life, many biographers contrive to make public as
much of it as possible. Your name, even in life, was, alas! a kind of
_ducdame_ to bring people of no very great sense into your circle. This
curious fascination has attracted round your memory a feeble folk of
commentators, biographers, anecdotists, and others of the tribe.
They swarm round you like carrion-flies round a sensitive plant, like
night-birds bewildered by the sun. Men of sense and taste have written
on you, indeed; but your weaker admirers are now disputing as to whether
it was your heart, or a less dignified and most troublesome o