hers, the harness of
some, the burdens of more."

43. But I have no words for the wonder with which I hear Kinghood
still spoken of, even among thoughtful men, as if governed nations were
a personal property, and might be bought and sold, or otherwise
acquired, as sheep, of whose flesh their king was to feed, and whose
fleece he was to gather; as if Achilles' indignant epithet of base
kings, "people-eating," were the constant and proper title of all
monarchs; and enlargement of a king's dominion meant the same thing as
the increase of a private man's estate! Kings who think so, however
powerful, can no more be the true kings of the nation than gad-flies
are the kings of a horse; they suck it, and may drive it wild, but do
not guide it. They, and their courts, and their armies are, if one
could see clearly, only a large species of marsh mosquito, with bayonet
proboscis and melodious, band-mastered, trumpeting in the summer air;
the twilight being, perhaps, sometimes fairer, but hardly more
wholesome, for its glittering mists of midge companies. The true
kings, meanwhile, rule quietly, if at all, and hate ruling; too many of
them make "il gran rifiuto" [18]; and if they do not, the mob, as soon
as they are likely to become useful to it, is pretty sure to make _its_
"gran rifiuto" of _them_.

44. Yet the visible king may also be a true one, some day, if ever day
comes when he will estimate his dominion by the _force_ of it,--not the
geographical boundaries. It matters very little whether Trent cuts you
a cantel out here, or Rhine rounds you a castle less there. But it
does matter to you, king of men, whether you can verily say to this
man, "Go," and he goeth; and to another, "Come," and he cometh.
Whether you can turn your people, as you can Trent--and where it is
that you bid them come, and where go. It matters to you, king of men,
whether your people hate you, and die by you, or love you, and live by
you. You may measure your dominion by multitudes better than by miles;
and count degrees of love latitude, not from, but to a wonderfully warm
and indefinite equator.

45. Measure! nay, you cannot measure. Who shall measure the
difference between the power of those who "do and teach," and who are
greatest in the kingdoms of earth, as of heaven--and the power of those
who undo, and consume--whose power, at the fullest, is only the power
of the moth and the rust? Strange! to think how the Moth-kings lay up
trea