Another Secret Society which once meant practical mischief of no common kind was that of the Orangemen. Though Orangemen are nowadays vociferously loyal, their forerunners are grossly misrepresented if it is not true that, under the Grand-mastership of the Duke of Cumberland, afterwards King Ernest of Hanover, they organized a treasonable conspiracy to prevent Queen Victoria from succeeding to the Throne of her ancestors and to put her uncle in her place. For sidelights on this rather dark passage of modern history the curious reader is referred to "Tales of my Father," by "A. M. F.," and to a sensational rendering of the same story, called "God Save the Queen." My space is failing, and I must forbear to enlarge on the most familiar and least terrifying of all "Secret Societies." I hold no brief for the "Grand Orient of France," even though Pius IX. may once have belonged to this or a similar organization; but I must profess that English Freemasons are the most respectable, most jovial, and most benevolent of mankind; and I trust that they will accept in its true intention Cardinal Manning's ambiguously worded defence of their craft, "English Freemasonry is a Goose Club." III THE IRISH PEERAGE Dryasdust is proverbially a bore, and his forms are Protean. Thus there are the Jacobite Dryasdusts, who affirm that Queen Victoria had no higher dignity than that of Dowager Princess Albert of Saxe-Coburg, and deny that any act of sovereignty transacted in this country has been valid since that dark morning when James II., making the best of his way to the Old Kent Road, dropped the Great Seal into the Thames. Then there are the Constitutional Dryasdusts, who deny the existence of a Cabinet or a Prime Minister, and insist that the Privy Council is the only Ministerial body known to the law; and the Ecclesiastical Dryasdusts, who affirm that the Church of England is really free because the bishops are freely elected by the Chapters of their respective Cathedrals, acting under licence from a Sovereign who, having been anointed, is a _Persona Mixta_--part layman, part ecclesiastic. At the height of the South African War I chanced to meet an Heraldic Dryasdust, who moaned like a mandrake over the announcement that the Duke of Norfolk had just set out, with his Yeomanry, for the scene of action. "You mean," I said, "that a valuable life is needlessly imperilled?" "Not at all," replied Dryasdust, with a face as long as a fiddle-case. "A far more important consideration than the Duke's life is involved. As Earl-Marshal he is supreme commander of the forces of the Crown when engaged in actual warfare, and the moment he sets his foot on African soil Lord Roberts becomes subject to his command. There is no way out of that constitutional necessity, and I regard the outlook as very serious." And so indeed it would have been, had Dryasdust been right.