This play might have been written eight hundred years ago. And whatever happens to the world, as long as men exist, it will be understood. It could be played in Chinese without losing one jot of its import or its message; it is outside of time and place, independent of man’s fleeting customs and various manners, for it merely repeats the cry of pain uttered in sublime accents by the Hebrew poet, and re-echoed by all suffering singers in all times and countries, from Aeschylus to Leopardi. But it only shows one side of the mysterious medal; there is another, a shining side which other poets have seen and sung: Dante, Goethe, and Shelley, for instance, in his “high and passionate” “Adonais,” when he says-- “Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.” A DREAM IN THE DUMA In the following paper I have attempted to transplant the facts and atmosphere of recent Russian history into English surroundings: to imagine the Russian Revolution happening in England. Two or three days ago, while I was listening to a Ministerial explanation in the Duma, I fell asleep and dreamt a strange dream which I will now relate. I dreamt I was in a third-class carriage in England on the South-Western line; the train was evidently going to London, and we were somewhere between Cobham and Surbiton. In the carriage there was a mixed collection of persons. A clerk going up to the City, two workmen, a gay man in flannels with a straw hat, an elderly man with grey hair and spectacles, a young lady wearing a cotton blouse and a straw hat, carrying a hamper with flowers sticking out of it, a middle-aged man who looked like a commercial traveller, and a young mechanic. “The _Morning Post_ out again to-day,” said the mechanic to the workman. “Oh! ah!” said the workman. “Under its own name?” asked the elderly gentleman. “Yes,” said the mechanic, “they fixed it up with Scotland Yard.” “Why was it stopped?” asked the young man in flannels. “In the personal column there was a paragraph,” said the mechanic, “saying as Lord Kitchener was living like at Buckingham Palace--which he was--and at Scotland Yard they said as this was an instigation like to kill him.” “I suppose they’re sure to kill him some time,” said the young man in flannels. “Yes,” said the commercial traveller, “they’ll probably shoot him in the back; cowards and swine I call ’em. If only we had a strong Government they’d all be ’ung.” “I suppose you think that is less cowardly than shooting down the workmen in Manchester,” said the young lady in great indignation. “’Ere, ’ere,” said the workman. “Got what they jolly well deserved,” said the commercial traveller. “In what other country would they stand workmen making barricades in the street and trying to kidnap the Governor, I should like to know.”