“Now, though far and wide, to keep equal pace with the times, great reforms, of a verity, be needed; nowhere are bloody revolutions required.  Though it be the most certain of remedies, no prudent invalid opens his veins, to let out his disease with his life.  And though all evils may be assuaged; all evils can not be done away.  For evil is the chronic malady of the universe; and checked in one place, breaks forth in another.

“Of late, on this head, some wild dreams have departed.

“There are many, who erewhile believed that the age of pikes and javelins was passed; that after a heady and blustering youth, old Mardi was at last settling down into a serene old age; and that the Indian summer, first discovered in your land, sovereign kings! was the hazy vapor emitted from its tranquil pipe.  But it has not so proved.  Mardi’s peaces are but truces.  Long absent, at last the red comets have returned.  And return they must, though their periods be ages.  And should Mardi endure till mountain melt into mountain, and all the isles form one table-land; yet, would it but expand the old battle-plain.

“Students of history are horror-struck at the massacres of old; but in the shambles, men are being murdered to-day.  Could time be reversed, and the future change places with the past, the past would cry out against us, and our future, full as loudly, as we against the ages foregone.  All the Ages are his children, calling each other names.

“Hark ye, sovereign-kings! cheer not on the yelping pack too furiously:  Hunters have been torn by their hounds.  Be advised; wash your hands.  Hold aloof.  Oro has poured out an ocean for an everlasting barrier between you and the worst folly which other republics have perpetrated.  That barrier hold sacred.  And swear never to cross over to Porpheero, by manifesto or army, unless you traverse dry land.

“And be not too grasping, nearer home.  It is not freedom to filch.  Expand not your area too widely, now.  Seek you proselytes?  Neighboring nations may be free, without coming under your banner.  And if you can not lay your ambition, know this:  that it is best served, by waiting events.

“Time, but Time only, may enable you to cross the equator; and give you the Arctic Circles for your boundaries.”

So read the anonymous scroll; which straightway, was torn into shreds.

“Old tory, and monarchist!” they shouted, “Preaching over his benighted sermons in these enlightened times!  Fool! does he not know that all the Past and its graves are being dug over?”

They were furious; so wildly rolling their eyes after victims, that well was it for King Media, he wore not his crown; and in silence, we moved unnoted from out the crowd.

“My lord, I am amazed at the indiscretion of a demigod,” said Babbalanja, as we passed on our way; “I recognized your sultanic style the very first sentence.  This, then, is the result of your hours of seclusion.”