In the early ’seventies of last century there was staged in London a very amusing musical comedy called _The Happy Land_, the scene being laid in Paradise. Among the principal characters were extremely skilful and poignant burlesques of Mr. Gladstone, Prime Minister at the time, Mr. Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Ayrton, First Commissioner of Works. The piece had but a short, though brilliant, run in the metropolis; for the Lord Chamberlain ordered it off the stage, not on the grounds of what is usually implied by immorality, but because it brought Her Majesty’s Ministers into contempt by mordant caricature of their features and action.[3] It is not known--to me, at least--which of the three victims set the censorship in motion. Certainly it was not ‘Bob’ Lowe, who was gifted with a fine strain of humour. Probably it was done at Mr. Ayrton’s instance, he being destitute of that saving grace, and, besides, having been more mercilessly satirised in the play than his colleagues. He had outraged public feeling, if not public taste, by some acts of his administration as ædile, notably by painting grey some of the fine stone-work in the lobbies of the Houses of Parliament. I forget the libretto of _The Happy Land_; but this much I remember, that, whereas in the first act the scenery of Paradise appeared glowing with rainbow radiance and shimmering with gems, in the second act it represented the effect of Ayrton’s régime--everything had been painted ‘government grey.’ All this was brought to mind by the change wrought upon the appearance of the British Army after the outbreak of the South African war in 1899. By a wave of his wand or a scratch of his quill the Secretary of State for War, Mr. St. John Brodrick (now Viscount Midleton) quenched all gaiety of colour in the fighting dress of our troops; the historic thin red line was to be seen no more; the glittering squadrons were doomed to ride in raiment as sombre as the dust of their own raising; henceforward standards and regimental colours were to be returned to store before the troops went on active service.