Such excursions must, of course, lead the student far afield; he will often get quite out of sight of his starting-point, the ‘standard authority;’ but he will not on that account be lost. The fact is, that all literature teems with suggestions on this topic of politics. Just as the chance news item, the unstudied traveller’s reminiscence, the passing social or financial scandal,[A] and every hint of any present contact of men with law or authority, illuminates directly, or by inference, the institutions of our own day, similar random rays thrown across the pages of old books by the unpremeditated words of writers quite guiltless of such instructive intent may light up, for those who are alert to see such things, the most intimate secrets of state. If it be beyond hoping for to find a _whole_ Greville for every age of government, there may be found Grevillian scraps, at least, in the literature of almost every time. From men as far back and as well remembered as Cicero, down to men as recent and as easily forgotten as several who might be named, politicians have loved to explain to posterity the part they took in conspicuous affairs; and that portion of posterity which studies politics by inference ought to be profoundly thankful to them for yielding to the taste. [A] Did not the Dilke trial in London, for instance, help us to understand at least one influence that may sometimes make a lawyer Home Secretary? Approach the life of States by such avenues, and you shall be convinced of the organic nature of political society. View society from what point you will, you always catch sight of some part of government; man is so truly a ‘political animal’ that you cannot examine him at all without seeing the points--points of his very structure--whereat he touches and depends upon, or upholds, the State. In 1850, while Governor-General of Canada, Lord Elgin writes to Lord Grey: “Our Reciprocity measure was pressed by us in Washington last session, just as a railway bill, in 1845 or 1846, would have been passed in Parliament. There was no Government to deal with, ... it was all a matter of canvassing this member of Congress or the other.”[B] [B] Letters and Journals of Lord Elgin, p. 121.