aesthetic progress. England is no longer the stupidly
inartistic country of early Victorian times; there's a true delight in
music and painting, and a much more general appreciation of the good in
literature. With all this we have been so busy that politics have
fallen into the background--politics in the proper sense of the word.
Ideas of national advance have been either utterly lost sight of, or
grossly confused with mere material gain. At length we see the
Conservative reaction in full swing, and who knows where it will land
us? It seems to be leading to the vulgarest and most unintelligent form
of chauvinism. In politics our need now is of _brains_. A stupid
routine, or a rowdy excitability, had taken the place of the old
progressive Liberalism, which kept ever in view the prime interests of
civilisation. We want men with _brains_."

"Exactly," fell from Mr. Breakspeare, who began to eye the young man
with interest. "It's what I've been preaching, in season and out of
season, for the last ten years. I heartily agree with you."

"Look at Hollingford," remarked the hostess, smiling grimly.

"Just so!" exclaimed the editor. "Look at Hollingford! True, it was
never a centre of Liberalism, but the Liberals used to make a good
fight, and they had so much intelligence on their side that the town
could not sink into utter dulness. What do we see now?" He raised his
hand and grew rhetorical. "The crassest Toryism sweeping all before it,
and everywhere depositing its mud--which chokes and does _not_
fertilise. We have athletic clubs, we have a free library, we are
better drained and cleaner and healthier and more bookish, with all,
than in the old times; but for politics--alas! A base level of selfish
and purblind materialism--personified by Robb!"

At the name of the borough member, Lady Ogram's dark eyes flashed.

"Ah, Robb," interjected Lashmar. "Tell me something about Robb. I know
hardly anything of him."

"Picture to yourself," returned the editor, with slow emphasis, "a man
who at his best was only a stolid country banker, and who now is sunk
into fatuous senility. I hardly know whether I dare trust myself to
speak of Robb, for I confess that he has become to me an abstraction
rather than a human being--an embodiment of all the vicious routine,
the foul obscurantism, the stupid prejudice, which an enlightened
Liberalism has to struggle against. There he sits, a satire on our
parliamentary system. He can't put t