royal man.  The massacre of the revolted peasants would afford a fine opening to a stern rhetorician; he might lead off thus—­“Dost thou think that this king cared for noble sentiment?  Thou poor creature who canst not look on a man without turning green with feminine terror, this writer begs to inform you and all creatures of your sort that law is law and discipline is discipline, and the divine origin of both is undeniable even in an age of advertised soap and interminable spouting.  Ivan had no parliamentary eloquence under his control, but he had cold steel and whips and racks and wheels, and he employed them all with vigour for the repression of undisciplined scoundrels.  He butchered some thousands of innocent men!  Ah, my sentimental friend, an anarchic mob cannot be ruled by sprinkling rose-water; the lash and the rope and the stern steel are needed to bring them to order!  When my Noble One, with a glare in his lion eyes, watched the rebels being skinned alive, he was performing a truly beneficent function and preparing the way for that vast, noble, and expansive Russia which we see to-day.  The poor long-eared mortals who were being skinned did not quite perceive the beneficence at the time.  How should they, unhappy long-eared creatures that they were?  Oh, Dryasdust, does any long-eared mortal who is being skinned by a true King—­a Canning, Koeniglich, Able Man—­does the long-eared one amid his wriggles ever recognize the scope and transcendent significance of Kingship?  Answer me that, Dryasdust, or shut your eloquent mouth and go home to dinner.”

That is quite a proper style for a disciplinarian, but I have not got into the way of using it yet.  For, to my limited intelligence, it appears that, if you once begin praising Friedrichs and Charlemagnes and Ivans at the rate of a volume or so per massacre, you may as well go on to Cetewayo and Timour and Attila—­not to mention Sulla and Koffee Kalkalli.  I abhor the floggers and stranglers and butchers; and when I speak of discipline, I leave them out of count.  My business is a little more practical, and I have no time to refute at length the vociferations of persons who tell us that a man proves his capacity of kingship by commanding the extinction or torture of vast numbers of human creatures.  My thoughts are not bent on the bad deeds—­the deeds of blood—­wrought out in bitterness and anguish either long ago or lately; I am thinking of the immense European fabric which looks so solid outwardly, but which is being permeated by the subtle forces of decay and disease.  Discipline is being outwardly preserved, but the destroying forces are creeping into every weak place, and the men of our time may see strange things.  Gradually a certain resolute body of men are teaching weaker people that even self-discipline is unnecessary, and that self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control are only phrases used by interested people who want to hold others in slavery.  In our England it is plainer