“Deep on their troubled souls the shadow lies; And in that shadow come and go-- While fitful lightnings write upon the skies, And mystic voices chant the coming woe-- Titanic phantoms swathed in mist and flame, The mighty ghosts of things without a name, Mingling with forms more palpably defined, That whirl and dance like leaves upon the wind; Who marshal in array their arrowy hosts, And rush to battle in a cloud-like land; Thick phalanx’d on those far aërial coasts, As swarms of locusts plaguing Samarcand. ‘Oh, who would live,’ they cry, ‘in time like this! A time of conflict fierce, and trouble strange; When Old and New, over a dark abyss, Fight the great battle of relentless change?’ And still before their eyes discrownèd kings, Desolate chiefs, and aged priests forlorn, Flit by--confused--with all incongruous things, Swooping in rise and fall on ponderous wings.” No one, even with the most persistent cheerfulness of disposition, can say the political outlook is otherwise than stormy, or the social one otherwise than depressing. Half the country is in mourning for itself as well as for the Queen; so many loved ones have been lost on the field of battle that there is scarcely a home to which grief has not brought a cup of cruel bitterness during the past year. On the one side is a section of humanity overbalanced with excess of money and love of luxury; on the other an infinitely larger mass which is struggling night and day for the barest means of subsistence, and between these two is the strong wedge of a steady thinking, hardworking middle class, whose vote of preference, if asked for, would unquestionably be given to their poorer rather than their richer brethren; and over them all the Heavens flame “War!” War means taxation; War means loss of able-bodied men, and, therefore, loss of trade; War means to some people, who can barely afford to buy bread in time of peace, sheer famine. But, say the militarists, War means conquest; War means gold! So thought Rome in her palmy days;--even so, Rome fell! “One might have thought,” wrote Sir George Mackenzie, in the sixteenth century, “that as the world grew older luxury would have been more shunned; for the more men multiplied, and the greater their dangers grew, they should have been the more easily induced to shun all expense, that they might the more successfully provide against those inconveniences. But yet it proved otherwise, and luxury was the last of all vices that prevailed over mankind; for after riches had been hoarded up, they rotted, as it were, into luxury; and after that tyranny and ambition had robbed many poor innocents, luxury, more cruel than they, was made use of by Providence to revenge their quarrel, and so triumphed over the conquerors. Thus, when Rome had by wit and courage subdued the world, it was drowned in that inundation of riches which these brought upon it.”