“By Jove! are you aware that this day is the 24th of June? the day on which the Coronation was to be held?” The three men paused; they looked round in wonderment. Birds were singing merrily as they hopped on the Landseer lions, the soft breeze wrinkled the surface of the water in which lads and lassies were ducking, and splashing each other in merry laughter. “Do you not hear, in your mind’s ear,” sententiously spoke Danford, “the distant rumble of drums and metallic strains of military bands? Does not your mind’s eye perceive in the distance the glittering of swords in the sunshine, and the variegated uniforms of Colonial and Indian armies? Slowly comes the procession up Parliament Street, furrowing its way through an ebbing and flowing wave of humanity. The great of the land are all there, labelled with their uniforms. There, look, comes a gilded coach. In that coach I can see two figures, systematically bowing on either side of the carriage. What is the meaning of these two figures got up like dolls for the occasion?” “My poor Dan, there is no meaning in them. They are the symbol of past inconsistency,” replied Sinclair. “How was it,” asked Lionel, “that with all that science was doing for the progress of the modern world, and with all that art was creating to make life beautiful, how was it we never came any nearer to happiness?” “My dear Lionel,” answered Sinclair, “because we wanted to reconcile our modern world with the old one. Steering our way back into the past against the current which carried us on to the future was hard work, very often a perilous expedition; we travestied barbarous passions with new garments, to make them more presentable to our modern world; and the thirst for conquest and wealth was disguised under the mask of political philanthropy. Vice had its fur-lined overcoat; ruthless money-diggers and empire-makers stalked through the town as modern Aladdins; sometimes even, they raised their own eyes to the exalted position of God’s A.D.C. Prostitution left street corners to mount the marble steps of palaces, where the hand of the clergy helped it to enter the precincts of social Paradise—” “Listen, my lord,” interrupted Danford. “Do you hear the tramping of horses’ hoofs? Conquering heroes, whose glory is written on the sands of life, are coming.” “Posterity with her broom and shovel will clear away the dust of their rubbish,” said Lionel. “It will collect in its dust-pan some strange manifestations: Cæsar, Napoleon, Marlborough—” “Leave out the more recent names,” broke in Sinclair; “they are too near to us.”