My original intention was to include this dialogue in my book of _Dethronements_; but I was warned by a good authority that if I did so the interest of my commentators would be largely diverted from the political theme to the personal; there was also a certain objection to including in a set of purely imaginary dialogues another which was so largely founded on fact. I decided, therefore, to let this other “dethronement” stand alone in its first appearing, as different in kind from the rest. But though different, my reason for writing it was precisely the same. It is, like those others, a record of failure; and failures interest me more, generally, than success. If I am asked why, my answer is that they seem to reveal human nature more truly, and, on the whole, more encouragingly, than anything else in the world. The way a man faces failure is the best proof of him. What he has done before matters little, or only in a minor degree, if as the outcome of all, in the grip of final and irretrievable ruin, he retains the stature of a man. That places him far more truly than the verdicts of juries, or the judgment of contemporary society. Sometimes he may prove his worth more surely by failure than by success, sometimes may only just manage to hold his ground; but if he is able to do that without complaint or greedy self-justification, and without speaking bitterly of those who have compassed his downfall, even so something stands to his credit, and there is a balance on the right side. And so, the longer I live, the more do failures attract me, making me believe not less in human nature, but more. There are financial vulgarians of our own day whom, in prison, one might find lovable—and so be brought nearer to the great common heart which, with its large tolerance for ill-doers in their gambling day of success, has found them lovable even when they were at their worst. For it is not only Art which holds up the mirror to Nature, or reflects most flatteringly the coarsest of its features. The British public flourishes its mirror, with all the self-satisfaction of a barber displaying his own handicraft, before characters of a certain type; and a man may follow a thoroughly vicious career with great success, so long as he does it in a thoroughly British way. But what a pity that the mirror should cease from its obsequious civility just when its hero, overwhelmed in failure and disgrace, becomes so much more worthy of study and deserving of sympathy than ever before.