Although there can be comparatively little fear of intrigue arising between the King and the councillors of the second grade, yet there exists no real friendliness or confidence between us. They treat me outwardly with marked deference, whilst I in my turn always show myself cordial and polite, but I have no personal friend in the whole body except the Arch-priest, for whom I have conceived a genuine liking and respect. My intimate companions are practically confined to the nobility, and though they are ignorant and illiterate, yet I prefer their honest prattle to any cautious discussion or interchange of lofty ideas with the highly educated priesthood. Nevertheless, I cannot refrain from eulogising the unselfish devotion of these persons to their tasks of administration, which is shown equally by every member. The clique of the interior circle do not of course participate in the actual business of government, for they are presumed to have reached a higher plane of usefulness to the state, but the junior councillors pursue their avocations with unflagging zeal. The tedious work of registration, which entails constant vigilance and many journeys to remote places; the settlement of trade questions; the management of the twin departments of medicine and sanitation; the marshalling of taxation; the control of the army;--all these and many other duties occupy the whole existence of the councillors who know no rest or respite from their allotted tasks. Take the instance of hygiene alone. The accumulated wisdom of some two thousand years of the Earth's progress in the science of healing lies all at the disposal of the executive hierarchy of Meleager. And I feel compelled to pay a sincere tribute to the intelligent industry of the councillors in their untiring efforts to produce everywhere a "_corpus sanum in civitate sanâ_." The abundant water-supplies of the cities; the meticulous care wherewith every source of contamination is traced; the constant experiments that are made daily in the hospitals (less elaborately equipped than our own, but fully as clean and serviceable); the thoughtful measures to preserve existing health and to improve the physical condition of the mass of the citizens;--all testify to the common-sense and thoroughness of the means adopted by the ministers of public hygiene and eugenics. Thanks to their wise measures pure water, pure air, wholesome food, the prompt eradication of all epidemics, and the segregation of the physically or morally unsound are gradually producing a race that for health and happiness has no parallel on our progressive democratic Earth, where the boasted advance of European civilisation only conveys in its train to healthy but nominally uncivilised tribes and nations every species of moral, physical and æsthetic evil that did not exist under the old conditions of isolation and ignorance.