I was telling Mr. Milverton the interest I had felt in the conversation of yesterday about the choice of gifts from the benevolent fairy. “Well,” he said, “if you like this kind of fanciful discussion, we will have another. What shall we choose? I think it would call out all Ellesmere’s comicalities, if we were to ask what he would do if his life were to be prolonged to the length of those of the patriarchs.”

When two people have resolved that a conversation shall come to a particular point, they can always manage to effect their object. Accordingly, when we next met, Mr. Milverton and myself soon contrived to place the question before Sir John Ellesmere in the manner that we had proposed, and the conversation proceeded thus:--

_Ellesmere._ I am to have a 900 years’ life. Let me see, what age did I convince you all the other day that I was? I think thirty-seven. Well, then, in the first place, I decline to live 863 years with Lady Ellesmere. You know, my dear, you are a most agreeable woman; but in the course of a few hundred years, always struggling, as you do, for mastery, you would be sure to gain complete power over me, and I object to being such a slave as you would then make of me.

_Lady Ellesmere._ There was nothing said, John, about my having the same term of life as yours. No person, even in imagination, could be so cruel as to make a poor woman live for hundreds of years with you.

_Sir Arthur._ Pray let these interesting conjugal remarks cease; and let us hear what you would aim at, Ellesmere, if you had before you this great length of life.

_Ellesmere._ I have no objection to tell you. But you must not fancy that everything I say is a joke. I do not like being always the funny man of the company. If I say something which I really mean, but which does not happen to fit in with your small notions of wisdom and propriety, you laugh your silly laughs, and have not the slightest faith in the earnestness of what I say.

_Cranmer._ We will believe in you, Sir John, as much as we possibly can.

_Milverton._ Now then, Ellesmere, proceed.

_Ellesmere._ In the first place, I would abolish the penny post.

_Milverton._ That we knew before.

_Ellesmere._ In the next place I would disinvent telegraphic communication.

_Milverton._ Good. That we knew too.

_Ellesmere._ When I say I would do this thing, or that thing, you must readily see that I should have the power to do it, because, outliving the rest of mankind, I should get the whip-hand of the whole nation. My experience would prevail over theirs, and I should be universally listened to and respected.

I should abolish bells, and so win Sir Arthur’s heart. I mean out-of-door bells. I never met with any sensible person who liked these noises.

_Milverton._ True: but really, Ellesmere, what small things you are proposing.

_Ellesmere._ Well, I will come to much greater, then. I would set my face against the growth of great cities. People laugh at James the First, and think him a pedant and a fool; but I have always thought him very wise in his strong objection to the increase of London. If you allow cities to increase in this way, you ultimately get them so big that it is impossible to have fresh air. I am as serious as I ever was in my life, when I say that the perpetual and rapid increase of London is a grief to me.

_Milverton._ I quite agree with you.

_Ellesmere._ Well, then, I would build a house--a model house. I really think that a great many of the evils that afflict mankind are to be traced to the badness of habitations. I do not bother myself with what your sanitary reformers say about things; but I can see that nine-tenths of your difficulties would vanish if good houses and cottages were built.

_Cranmer._ But what do you mean by a good house?

_Ellesmere._ Well, if you must know, I mean, in the first place, a washable house--washable thoroughly, inside and outside. Building, as I should, for 800 years, I should resolve to be free from paperers and painters and plasterers, and, in short, from repairers of all kinds.

_Sir Arthur._ But, Ellesmere, as Milverton says, you have hitherto mentioned such trivial things--mere mint and cummin.

_Ellesmere._ I would reform dress. Is that a small thing?

Again: I would establish recreation--such recreation as has never hitherto been thought of. There should be no town, however small, which should not have its appointed place for recreation--for indoors and out-of-doors recreations. In every town--yes, almost in every village--there is musical talent enough to form the delight of the population if it were well developed.

_Milverton._ I really think that Ellesmere is upon the right tack now.

_Ellesmere._ I would also provide medical aid and service for almost every centre of population, however small.

By the way, I would certainly set up an Ædile.

_Mrs. Milverton._ I am very ignorant, but I do not know what an Ædile is. I suppose it is a person, not a thing. And if it is a person, what duties has he to perform?

_Ellesmere._ It is said that the late Bishop of London being asked by some inquisitive foreigner (what a nuisance it is when people are always wanting information) what an English Archdeacon had to do, judiciously replied, “Oh, an Archdeacon is a person who performs Archidiaconal duties.” So I say an Ædile was a person who performed Ædilian duties. Seriously, I am afraid, in the presence of these learned men, to undertake to give a full account of an Ædile’s duties. I may say briefly that he was the arch-putter-down of nuisances. If there was such an officer now--mark you, he was a very powerful man--I should not be plagued with street cries, with the howling of my neighbour’s dog, with unwholesome odours of all kinds; and it would be his business to see that I was generally made comfortable. Only tell him that you suspected that your goods were dealt out to you with false weights and measures, and he would soon settle that matter for you. No Boards, nor Commissioners, nor people of that kind to consult, and to receive dreary official letters from; but you would have a swiftly-perambulating Lord Mayor with plenary authority. London would require a good many Ædiles.

_Cranmer._ Would you abolish lawyers?

_Ellesmere._ This is a very painful question; but I think I would. In the course of 800 years, using the legal talents of each generation, I should be able to arrange and codify the law; and then I would only have public notaries.

_Sir Arthur._ What about war?

_Ellesmere._ Here I should shine. Here would come in that practical good sense of which I possess so large a share. We are such a set of foolish, quarrelsome little beasts, and we derive so much pleasure from hearing about sieges and battles, and knowing of the miseries of our fellow-creatures, that I should not endeavour to abolish war altogether. But what I should do is this. I should reduce the European armies in the following proportion. I should allow them one man for each thousand that they now possess. France, for instance, should have 700 soldiers; Austria, about the same number; Prussia, 600; England, 450; Russia, 800; and the United States, 900.[31] The great naval powers should be allowed a ship apiece, and one or two gun-boats. These little armies and navies should go about fighting away like fun, and undertaking what would then be thought great battles and sieges. The newspapers would still be well fed with interesting events; and taxation for war purposes would be insignificant. I should have outside the great cities little model cities, which should represent them for warlike purposes--a neat little Paris outside Paris: and I should scatter some squalidity in the way of building about Wimbledon Common, and call it in military despatches, London.

Footnote 31:

It must be remembered that this conversation took place some time ago.

Again, another reform I should institute of the utmost magnitude is this: I should abolish after-dinner speeches.

_Sir Arthur._ The world would be grateful to you for that.

_Ellesmere._ Then I should bring my enormous power and experience to bear upon all literature. I should reduce three-volume novels to one.

_Cranmer._ But about the newspaper press? What should you do with that?

_Ellesmere._ For the sake of freedom, I should allow one article in each newspaper to be published without signature. To all the others I should require signature. I should make the newspapers into an octavo shape, with the leaves cut.

_Johnson._ What about the Church?

_Ellesmere._ I should forbid any one to preach a sermon more than once in three weeks. I would make sermons, instead of being nuisances, things to which the congregation would look forward with expectation, and listen with delight.

_Mauleverer._ What about education?

_Ellesmere._ Oh, in that matter I would institute reforms that would astound you. I would organize bands of well-instructed persons who should go about the country and teach everybody everything; and not merely teach in the ordinary way, but exemplify.

_Cranmer._ And this is your practical man, who laughs at theorists and enthusiasts!

_Ellesmere._ Recollect I have 800 years and more to work in. I should be able to organize a system which, if it were well developed, would far surpass the present. I would have people who could teach the rudiments of the best arts in life--who could instruct in cookery, in natural history--in the properties of earth, air, and water. I know what is to be said in respect of the shallowness that may result from mere lecturing; but, on the other hand, I have observed how greatly those people are enlightened, elevated, and instructed, who have had only what is called a smattering of knowledge, derived from judicious lectures. And then, look at this. There is a genius in some remote place or obscure position--one of those people described in Gray’s Elegy,--

“Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear,”--

and the good seed of instruction falls upon his or her mind; and then we have an inventor. The consideration of Newton’s life has always weighed much with me. It has been a great blessing to mankind that that wonderful man was not a labourer’s child. Being a farmer’s son, he got the _rudiments_ of education, and upon that small platform what a building did he not erect! I mean my peasants’ children to have, at least, all the advantages that Newton had.

_Sir Arthur._ I declare, Sir John, you are becoming quite eloquent.

_Ellesmere._ Oh! I should mainly rely upon education. That is the chief fulcrum upon which we could raise society.

_Cranmer._ What about political economy?

_Ellesmere._ Don’t be unhappy, Cranmer. In the course of 800 years--about the 781st--I would settle the Bank Charter Act, and there should be no more of these absurd panics.

_Milverton._ What about government?

_Ellesmere._ I would in this respect institute reforms of which you are now only dreaming. Do you think I would be plagued to death with distant peoples’ affairs? Not I. Do you think, as Sydney Smith says, I would have upon every bare rock, where a cormorant can hardly get its living, a Governor, and a Bishop, and an Attorney-General? Not but what the last-named officer would be useful anywhere; but still we must do without even him when we cannot afford to have him.

_Milverton._ I beg you all especially to remember what Ellesmere has just now said.

_Ellesmere._ Then, as to home government; I would abolish bribery and suppress bores in the House of Commons.

A man should prove to me that he knew something about government before he should govern; and not even Milverton himself, with all his schemes, should educe a more comprehensive form of official government than I, in my 800 years, would strive to create. You do not think I would have a Lord Privy Seal, do you, when the Privy Seal had ceased to be an entity of any importance?

_Cranmer._ What about the House of Lords?

_Ellesmere._ I would certainly make my House of Lords a senate consisting of the wisest and ablest men who had filled public functions, and also consisting of those men who, from their education, their health--or rather, their want of health--and their peculiar nature, were not especially fit to solicit popular suffrages, but were justly fitted to become members of a legislative assembly.

_Milverton._ What would you do about the poor?

_Ellesmere._ Well, I feel that the labouring poor have an immense claim upon us. I would render smooth and happy their lives in their latter days. I believe that we could well afford to do so, and that these poor people have the greatest claim upon us. If a man or woman has worked, we will say, for fifty or sixty years, in the production of the fruits of the earth for us, we are bound, I think, to render happy, as far as we can, the last years of this poor person’s life.

_Sir Arthur._ I must still say, Sir John, that your inventive genius does not take great flights. You would crush the penny post, disinvent--I think that was the word--the telegraph, build a house, abolish bell-ringing, and send round lecturers, who--if I make out right--were chiefly to be good cooks, improve the House of Lords, and a few other little transactions of that kind. But the human mind----

_Ellesmere._ Wait a bit, Sir Arthur. I am going to take the human mind, or rather the human soul, in hand presently. You may depend upon it, however, that the human body needs our first attention. How can a man be virtuous in a smoky house, listening to the noise of those detestable bells, startled by the penny postman’s rap, delivering bills all the day, and being threatened by those alarming telegraph envelopes?

But now for the human mind. I shall put down jealousy. I do not mean man-and-woman jealousy; but all that misery which arises from sensitive people being afraid that they are not liked enough, that they are not made enough of, that they are neglected, that somebody is foolish enough to prefer somebody else to them.

_Milverton._ Your 863 years will be full of work, I see.

_Ellesmere._ I am discontented with that word jealousy. Give me another word, Milverton.

_Milverton._ Claimfulness?

_Ellesmere._ Not a bad idea; but the word is an ugly word, and will not do.

_Milverton._ Claimativeness, then?

_Ellesmere._ That is better.

Now the reason that Milverton and I have been such good friends from boyhood upwards is, that we are both so free from jealousy, or, to use his own word, claimativeness.

This is no merit on his part; but a great one on mine. Of course Milverton has great faults in my eyes. He always likes everybody. He has fewer dislikes than any man I ever met with. Whereas I own to having a good many hearty dislikes--and he never partakes them with me. I might have been jealous or claimative a thousand times, seeing him take to people whom I cannot endure, and whom I might fancy he prefers to me.

You come and complain to him that So-and-So is a horrid bore, and Milverton replies:--“Well, but he has built a great many cottages on his estate,”--or “he is very kind to his three maiden aunts,”--or “he is very great in Byzantine literature,”--or “his views upon the digamma are sound,”--or “he is a great natural historian, supereminent in moths,”--or “he knows which are the edible fungi; and the poor would gain so much if the right fungi were brought into fashion.”

Well, I distrust fungi: I do not care much for moths, they are sure to worry one by burning themselves in the candle as a poor clergyman is to invest his savings in Poyais Bonds or any other destructive security. I loathe the digamma, which I believe to have been a thing invented by schoolmasters to plague mankind, or rather boykind. I am not attracted by the three maiden aunts, and I am not going to live in So-and-So’s cottages; but I know that So-and-So is an egregious bore, and I might naturally be jealous of Milverton’s making so much of this man.

I am really so free from jealousy or claimativeness, that if I were to find that Milverton had invited a very agreeable party to Worth Ashton, and I was not asked, I should not feel that I was neglected; but should conclude at once that there was good reason for my not being asked--that the digamma man was to be there, and it was thought that I should speak irreverently of the digamma, or that there was scarlatina in the village, and that no risk was to be run for dear little Johnny. In a word, I should firmly believe that Milverton would long to have me with him; but could not manage it. I should not be in the least claimative. Indeed the more I consider myself, which I seldom have time to do sufficiently, the more I perceive that I am really a very great man (though Lady Ellesmere does not think so); and in the course of these 863 years I should make other people as great as myself.

_Mr. Cranmer._ But how is this to be done, Sir John?

_Ellesmere._ Why, man, I should direct all literature and all education, and all sermonizing; and I should have claimativeness written, talked, educated, and sermonized down.

_Sir Arthur._ Does it ever enter into your imagination, Sir John, that this claimativeness, which you inveigh against, proceeds from modesty?

_Ellesmere._ I hate modesty.

_Lady Ellesmere._ No wonder.

_Milverton._ But, seriously, my dear fellow, do consider that you have always been a successful man; that you have good health; that your enemies would say--not that I say it--that you have a little touch of hardness in your character; and that, perhaps, you do not make sufficient allowance for humble, timid, sensitive people, who are naturally prone to think they are neglected.

_Ellesmere._ It is all selfishness or immoderate self-esteem. That, too, is the cause of shyness. I am not shy.

_Lady Ellesmere._ Oh yes, you are, John. I do not know anybody who is more shy when he is in the company of those who do not sympathise with him, or understand him.

_Ellesmere._ Well, in the course of the 863 years I will get rid of shyness, and modesty, and claimativeness, and all my other vices--if I have any; and I will become a great man, and will bring all other people up to my level.

_Sir Arthur._ You are gradually to rule all literature. You kindly intimated to us that you would reduce all three-volume novels to one. How is this to be done?

_Ellesmere._ I am an outrageous and immoderate reader of fiction. I admire, as I have told you, the writers of fiction amazingly; but I have great faults to find with them, especially with their incidents.

Now, there is dear old Sandy there. He is just the sort of quiet, observant fellow to be mapping all our characters down, and forming us into a novel. I will address him as if he were an arch-novel writer, and will give him such a lecture as will make him the first novel-writer of his time.

_Johnson._ Pray, do, Sir John, for then my fortune is made.

_Ellesmere._ Now, Sandy, you are the arch-novel writer, and I am the hero of the novel.

In the first place I decline to go to a picnic party. You novel-writers always make something very important occur at a picnic, whereas in real life I have never found anything important occur, except that the earwigs are mixed up with the salt. I will not go to a picnic.

_Johnson._ Yes, sir.

_Ellesmere._ I will not be upset from a boat. No sooner do I read in any novel that there is a river, or a lake, near the principal house, than I know that I, the hero, am to be upset from a boat. Matilda and Louisa are to be with me. Matilda I really love, Louisa I am engaged to. In rescuing these two dear creatures I am to throw Louisa carelessly into the bottom of the boat, while I am to support Matilda in my arms, and to whisper to her (loud enough to be heard by Louisa), “Matilda, dearest, open your eyes once more, and gaze upon your beloved Augustus.” I object, in this damp fashion, to be brought to betray my affections and to lengthen out the second volume. Do you hear, Mr. Novel-writer?

_Johnson._ I do, Mr. Hero. You shall not be upset from a boat.

_Ellesmere._ Thank you. Well then, sir, I decline, after having enjoyed my property for twenty years, to have a will of my great-uncle’s discovered in an old book, which should dispossess me of the property, and make me liable for the back rents received during those twenty years.

_Johnson._ The great-uncle’s will shall not be found, Sir John.

_Ellesmere._ Thank you. Again, I do not wish my uncle in India, Mr. Currie Pudder, to have made a fortune and to leave it to me exactly at the right moment. I can do without my uncle.

_Sir Arthur._ There are few people who can.

_Johnson._ I must not be rash. I cannot promise you, Sir John, that you are not to have Mr. Currie Pudder as your rich uncle in India; and if you please, I must kill him when I choose, and not when it is perfectly convenient to you.

_Ellesmere._ Very good. There is one comfort, Master Sandy, that _you_ are not going to live for 863 years.

I am now going to impress upon Mr. Novel-writer one of my strongest objections to his usual mode of proceeding. I have declined many pleasant things; and now I decline to be made successful in any calling or profession upon having merely distinguished myself upon one occasion. In your novel, Johnson, if I, the hero, make a speech, as a lawyer or a politician, produce a remarkable sermon as a clergyman, cure one difficult case as a doctor--all of a sudden, honours, dignities, and riches pour in upon me like a flood, and Matilda’s father withdraws all his objections. If I am a poet, and write a sonnet; if I am a prose-writer, and write an essay; the great publishers all at once besiege my doors--that is, in the novel, for in real life I never experienced anything of the kind. My early sonnets were laughed at, and my first speeches were said to be “very well for a young man;” but Pump Court was not inundated by attorneys’ clerks inquiring the way to Mr. Ellesmere’s chambers.

The truth is, the world is very hard, and yet a somewhat elastic substance; and you have to hit it many consecutive blows, and to keep on hitting it, before you produce any such impression as will create for you a serviceable reputation.

Why, in a novel I have known Mr. Hero rise suddenly from being a private secretary to being a Cabinet Minister; but nothing like this happens in real life. When you see a successful man, you generally find him middle-aged, slightly bald, very haggard-looking, and generally with dints in his face which show how much he has endured and laboured. He is a much battered-about individual, and not at all like the young man who rejoices in Matilda’s love, and who has suddenly, at one bound, prevailed over adverse fates, and conquered fortune.

Now, without any joking, it is a very mischievous thing to misrepresent life as novelists often do in this respect, and so to indicate that success is to be attained by anything but hard, long, and continuous effort.

Mr. Novel-writer, I would rather you would overwhelm me with rich uncles, or make me pick up treasure in Oxford Street, than delude me by making me put forth an all-commanding speech, sonnet, essay, or sermon. What do you say to this, Sandy?

_Johnson._ I really am placed in very unpleasant and difficult circumstances. My hero is without any money; and Matilda’s father is obdurate. My hero has gone forth to seek his fortune in the world; and I really cannot wait until he is slightly bald and somewhat “battered,” to use Sir John’s expression, and Matilda has grown very stout, before they are to be married. What is to be done? There must certainly be an unlimited supply of uncles, or on that little bit of land which my hero has retained out of all his possessions, and which lies on the top of a down, a coal-mine must be discovered. I am not to be bullied by geology, at any rate.

_Ellesmere._ Well, discover your coal-mine for me, Sandy, in preference to your making statesmen and attorneys and publishers act contrary to their natures.

Well, then, I absolutely refuse to have a brain-fever brought on by change of circumstances and unaccustomed work at a critical time of my fortunes. I never had a brain-fever--even when Lady Ellesmere, benighted woman, at first refused to have anything to say to me. Have you had a brain-fever? or you, or you, or you, or you, or you? [turning to us all.]

We all answered in the negative.

Then why should I have one; and why should I reveal in moments of delirium my especial regard for Matilda--and her blue-grey eyes, black eyelashes, and auburn hair?

_Johnson._ I am very sorry not to be able to oblige a gentleman-hero in your position; but I am not sure that I can carry on my novel without your having a brain-fever.

_Ellesmere._ What tyrants and pedants these novel-writers are!

Well, one thing I protest against, namely--Matilda’s coming and nursing me when I have the brain-fever. I cannot imagine a more disagreeable thing for a poor hero, when he is ill, than having the young woman he keeps company with come to look after him in his dangerous illness.

Would you like to hear the passage in the novel which describes the unpleasant transaction?

[We said that we should.]

“Edwin”--I like the name of Edwin better than Augustus--“had for a month been hovering between life and death. Dimly, during the last four days, he had been conscious of a presence which had seemed to him like a beautiful vision. On the fifth day he opened his eyes, and discerned a creature of joy and beauty which reminded him of his Matilda, but which he thought to be an angel.

“On the sixth day with a sigh he opened his eyes, regarded the vision steadily, and exclaimed, ‘Matilda!’

“Later in the day he uttered the words, ‘Again, again!’ This was in reality a demand for more chicken broth, but was supposed by the bystanders to be a demand for the reappearance of his Matilda--especially as he stretched out his white and wasted hand as if to have it clasped in hers.”

I cannot go on any more. My feelings overpower me; but to speak plainly, Matilda is a nuisance in the sick-room. Now I am getting used to Lady Ellesmere; but if I were to tell the honest truth, I should prefer being nursed by Peter Robinson, my old clerk, to anybody in the world. Peter does not mind one’s fractiousness. Scold Peter ever so much about the gruel, and he would only move up and down his bushy eyebrows and wink at you, as much as to say, “You are very tiresome; but I don’t mind it a bit.” Now Lady Ellesmere would go and cry--Yes, my dear, you know you would--and would never recognise the fact that an invalid is a tiresome, querulous, irritable, unreasonable being.

No: as the hero of the novel, I take my stand upon this. I will go to a picnic; I will be tumbled out from a boat; I will be dispossessed of my property; I will spring into full success at one bound; I will have a brain-fever; but I will not be nursed by the young woman that I keep company with. Don’t talk to me about Richard Swiveller and the Marchioness. The Marchioness was accustomed to squalidity and misery; but my Matilda has been brought up in the best circles, and I cannot be plagued with her in a sick-room.

_Johnson._ I will be merciful, Sir John. You shall not be plagued with Matilda when you have a brain-fever.

_Ellesmere._ I could go on throughout the whole evening, cutting down the incidents which form the ordinary staple of modern novel-writers. For example, I would insist that when the novel-writer has brought eight or ten characters upon the scene, he shall not contrive their movements in such a way as that whether the hero or heroine remain in England, or go to Australia, or to India, he or she shall always find himself or herself surrounded by the same people.

Now I have said enough, I think, to show that if I could eliminate these foolish and unreasonable accidents and incidents, we should have no more three-volume novels; and by the time I had lived through my eight hundred and sixty-three years, all fiction would be so much like fact that there would be no more occasion for any biographers or historians; and if that would not increase the happiness of the world, I do not know what would.

But I have not done yet. I should devote myself greatly to instructing the people in the arts of reading and writing. In the course of 800 years I should persuade the English to open their mouths, and speak plainly. This would be a grand improvement.

Then, as to writing, I would insist upon everybody being able to write clearly. I am “lost in astonishment,”--do you know that phrase of Milverton’s which he is so fond of, and also that other one of “humanity shudders when it contemplates?” Well, I am going to borrow them both for the occasion. I say that I am “lost in astonishment” at the audacity of people who write letters to me which I cannot read. And “humanity shudders when it contemplates,” or at least it ought to “shudder when it contemplates,” how very badly, all over the world, it writes. It is all the fault of that villain who invented a fine up-stroke.

There have been one or two sneers at my having mentioned only small matters. Did you hear that I meant to put down the bores in the House of Commons? Do you call that a small thing? Why, all the other things I should accomplish in the first 300 years; and the remaining 500 I should devote to putting down bores and sending up balloons. Not easy matters, either of them; but still, I believe, within the reach of human power.

_Sir Arthur._ You said something about reforming dress, Ellesmere?

_Ellesmere._ Yes; the lion should have his mane again.

_Cranmer._ I haven’t a conception what he means.

_Ellesmere._ Why, that the male creature should dress well.

_Mrs. Milverton._ But what about us?

_Ellesmere._ My dear Blanche, I should devote thirty solid years to your improvement; and, in the course of those thirty years, I should institute two such great reforms in your nature, that I should make you all both perfectly lovable and perfectly lovely.

I should make each woman not to be afraid of all other women. They are to fear us, and not their own sex--consequently a woman should not be ashamed of going out five times following to parties in the same dress, if the dress were becoming, and pleased her husband, her brother, or her lover.

_Lady Ellesmere._ The second great reform?

_Ellesmere._ I should develop vanity amongst women--personal vanity--which seems now to be so dead amongst them.

_Sir Arthur._ I have always prided myself upon having the greatest admiration for women, and never uttering any foolish sneer against them; but Sir John goes far beyond me. I did imagine, I dare say without due thought, that they had vanity enough.

_Ellesmere._ No, no, Sir Arthur, you are quite mistaken. Each woman sacrifices her own personal appearance to the conceits of fashion--whereas, when I had properly developed every woman’s personal vanity, she would only think how she could dress herself in the manner that would be most becoming to her. At present, they are all sadly deficient in a care for their own especial beauties.

_Mrs. Milverton._ There is a great deal of truth in what Sir John says.

_Ellesmere._ I believe there is, but I have yet a great deal more to say.

I would make everything in the way of festivity shorter and earlier. Balls should begin at eight o’clock in the winter, and nine in the summer. Dinners should never last more than two hours, concerts be abridged by one hour. There should never be performed more than one play at a time. As for evening parties, unless they are very much improved in the course of these 900 years, I shall abolish them altogether.

At remote railway stations, I shall have lending libraries. Is there anything more suicidal in its tendency than having to wait at one of these stations for two mortal hours?

Now I come to what I suppose you will call a great thing, as if the things I have just proposed were little things! I shall do away with the adulteration of food and drugs. I believe I could do that now, with my present term of life, if I could only get one or two clever young members of Parliament to back me, and get up the facts, leaving me to see how the matter could be dealt with legally.

_Milverton._ This is really good, Ellesmere.

_Ellesmere._ Now I don’t take that as any compliment--just as if the other things were not good!

Why, man! do you suppose that there are not as many lives injured or lost by ill-managed festivity as even by the adulteration of food? And recollect this, that I mean to take care of the recreation of the poor, and not allow them to bolt down their beer and their spirits without tempering it with plenty of real recreation--open air, music, dancing, quoits, bowls, and cricket; and for quiet people, like Milverton, dominoes, backgammon, and whist.

I shall set my face against hurry.

Lastly, I shall put down parentheses, snub fine writing of all kinds, and make people say what they have to say in clear, distinct sentences, with a proper nominative, verb, and accusative; and nobody shall use words of which he does not understand the meaning; consequently, the words “objective” and “subjective” will be banished from the language.

I have said my say.

_Sir Arthur._ I must sum up, for I have noted down the great labours which Ellesmere purposes for himself in these 863 years.

You will observe that three-fourths of them have reference to getting rid of something tiresome, and indicate the natural wishes of a man who, unhappily for himself in this tiresome world, is easily bored.

He would abolish the penny post, disinvent the telegraph, silence bell-ringing, stop the growth of great cities, build a good house, reform dress (chiefly by making women more vain), abolish lawyers and substitute notaries, reduce armies 999 per 1000, send lecturers on practical subjects throughout the country, put down bores in the House of Commons and set up balloons, crush all jealousy, do away with after-dinner speeches, reduce all three-volume novels to one volume, make everybody write well, make everything in the way of recreation shorter and earlier, prevent the adulteration of food, provide lending libraries at remote stations, set his face against hurry, and put down parentheses.

Goodly work, all of it! Let us hope that he will make a beginning of some of this work during his natural lifetime.

_Ellesmere._ One thing more! My afterthoughts are, perhaps, the best of my thoughts. I will have it declared, absolutely and finally, that this nation does not undertake to protect missionaries who go into distant countries with which we have no settled diplomatic relations.

Great will be the joy of the Three per Cents, as Sydney Smith would say, when I have brought the nation to this most needful resolve.

More last words! I have a brilliant idea. Indeed I am as full of ideas as an egg is of meat.

I told you that I should make a small London for military purposes, out of London--on Wimbledon Common, I think. Well, I shall remove most of the London statues to that small town. If the enemy should be of an æsthetic turn of mind, and should gain entrance into the town, they will be so disgusted, horrified, and amazed by these statues that they will fall an easy prey to our troops. On the other hand, if they should survive the shock, and take the town, they will carry off the statues as trophies taken from the barbarians. At any rate, we shall get rid of the statues from London proper.

Now, is it not desirable that I should have this long life, which Milverton and Sandy are kind enough to arrange for me, if only to effect this grand reform?

I end with what I began with--that Milady must not have this length of life too. You know women are so persevering, and so one idea’d. Men can be bored out of anything. I do feel that if you gave her the same vitality as I am to have, it would be Lady Ellesmere, and not Sir John, who would govern the world. And I leave you to guess how it would then be governed. Eventually, she would put down smoking, and take away from the male part of the human race the chief element of consolation--the one thing which enables men to bear their troubles with an equal mind.

Our conversation had now lasted so long that it was getting towards evening, and the gong began to sound for dressing. Mr. Mauleverer, who had hitherto been silent, now burst out with the exclamation,--“Oh, what dinners we should have, if Sir John could rule us for eight hundred and sixty-three years! What a pretty idea that was of his to send about the country consummate cooks as lecturers. But humanity, as I have always told you, is a poor creature. And even in the greatest characters,--Sir John’s, for instance,--there are sad defects and shortcomings. The remarks he made about edible fungi were those of a man, comparatively speaking, small-minded, prejudiced, and ignorant.”

We all laughed at Mr. Mauleverer’s enthusiasm, and then separated to dress for dinner.