yet endowed with the pulses of human feeling, gentle in spirit and blessed with the better sentimentalities of religion, visited the poor, and dropped lunch baskets at their doors, and assumed the fine benison of stooping angels--a shallow thoughtlessness which did nothing for the regeneration of permanent social outrages. The unemployed might clamor, the poor might continue to multiply, and the young and ambitious might sail away on white wings to the new life of America, but the lord and landlord must still remain, because in the sight of the Lord God Almighty the lord and the landlord are part and parcel of the eternal order of things, an appanage of His eternal throne and a reflection of the rule of Heaven. And beneath all this was the sickly obsequiousness and snuffling adoration of ordinary men, which of course the lord and ladies despised, but which after all was helpful in keeping up the distinguished humbug. This on its best side, but there was a worse side. There was moral depravity; there was ruthless wickedness; there was a set so smart that they defied decency and rectitude, and travelled on the currents of their passions to all the maelstroms of moral rottenness. The King himself had violated the measures of sobriety and faithfulness. And this imposing and historical structure, must now totter to its fall before the drifting snowflake. Truly the simple shall confound the wise. Leacraft turned from his melancholy thoughts to the friendly face of Sir John, who, catching his eye, resumed his conversation. “This map will make it quite plain that the position of our nation as a commercial, as a political fabric, is a geographical absurdity, a necessary paradox. Look!” and Sir John pinned down the map on the table, and drew Leacraft down towards its attentive examination. “Here! is an occular demonstration of our false position, a charted proof that we are in a wrong place, a spot of possible change, that will reverse all previous experiences if the right conditions supervene. The change has come, and Scotland returns to its appointed allegiance. It belongs to the Kings of the Ice. See,” and he leaned over the map in a kind of ecstacy of despair, speaking rapidly as his fingers traced the lines he indicated. “See! consider these enormities. Land’s End and the Scilly Islands, where palms grow, are on the degree of 50 degree north latitude, which is the same as Notre Dame Bay in New Foundland, the same as Manitoba, the same as the most northern Kurile Islands. Do you know what the temperature of these places are? I will tell you. The average winter temperature of northern New Foundland is 10 degrees, that of Manitoba 9 degrees, and that of the Kurile Islands, 12 degrees.