to abolish discipline of all sorts, the views of the Continental anarchists are slowly filtering into our great towns, and, as soon as such a move is safe, we shall have a large number of people who will not scruple to cry out for free land, no taxation, free everything.  We have heard so much about rights lately that some of us are beginning to question within ourselves as to what rights really are.  If a gentleman, no matter how bookish or eloquent he may be, desires to do away with discipline altogether, I will give him credit for all the tongue-power which he happens to possess; but I must ask leave to think for myself in old-fashioned grooves just a little longer.  After all, a system which—­for civilized countries—­has been growing gradually for more thousands of years than we dare compute cannot be entirely bad, no matter what chance faults we may see.  The generations that have flown into the night may not have possessed complete wisdom, but they adapted their social systems step by step to the needs of each new generation, and it requires very little logic to tell that they would not be likely always to cast out the good.  The noisy orator who gets up and addresses a London crowd at midnight, yelling “Down with everything!” can hardly know what he means to destroy.  We have come a long way since the man of the swamps hunted the hairy elephant and burrowed in caves; that very structure in which the anarchists have taken to meeting represents sixty thousand years of slow progression from savagery towards seemliness and refinement and wisdom; and therefore, bitterly as we may feel the suffering of the poor orator, we say to him, “Wait a little, and talk to us.  I do not touch politics—­I loathe place-hunters and talkers as much as you do; but you are speaking about reversing the course of the ages, and you cannot quite manage that.  Let us forget the windy war of the place-hunters, and speak reasonably and in a broad human way.”

I do not by any means hold with those very robust literary characters who want to see the principle of stern Drill carried into the most minute branchings of our complex society. (By-the-way, these robust gentry always put a capital “D” to the word “Drill,” as though they would have their precious principle enthroned as an object of reverence, or even of worship.) And I am inclined to think that not a few of them must have experienced a severe attack of wrath when they found Carlyle suggesting that King Friedrich Wilhelm would have laid a stick across the shoulders of literary men had he been able to have his own way.  The unfeeling old king used to go about thumping people in the streets with a big cudgel; and Carlyle rather implies that the world would not have been much the worse off if a stray literary man here and there could have been bludgeoned.  The king flogged apple-women who did not knit and loafers who were unable to find work; and our historian apparently fancies that the dignity of kingship would