significance even that, if the country were to me mere grass and corn and vegetables, as to the man who has never read nor wished to read.  For the Poet is indeed a Maker:  above the world of sense, trodden by hidebound humanity, he builds that world of his own whereto is summoned the unfettered spirit.  Why does it delight me to see the bat flitting at dusk before my window, or to hear the hoot of the owl when all the ways are dark?  I might regard the bat with disgust, and the owl either with vague superstition or not heed it at all.  But these have their place in the poet’s world, and carry me above this idle present.

I once passed a night in a little market-town where I had arrived tired and went to bed early.  I slept forthwith, but was presently awakened by I knew not what; in the darkness there sounded a sort of music, and, as my brain cleared, I was aware of the soft chiming of church bells.  Why, what hour could it be?  I struck a light and looked at my watch.  Midnight.  Then a glow came over me.  “We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow!” Never till then had I heard them.  And the town in which I slept was Evesham, but a few miles from Stratford-on-Avon.  What if those midnight bells had been to me but as any other, and I had reviled them for breaking my sleep?—­Johnson did not much exaggerate.

XX.

It is the second Jubilee.  Bonfires blaze upon the hills, making one think of the watchman on Agamemnon’s citadel. (It were more germane to the matter to think of Queen Elizabeth and the Armada.) Though wishing the uproar happily over, I can see the good in it as well as another man.  English monarchy, as we know it, is a triumph of English common sense.  Grant that men cannot do without an overlord; how to make that over-lordship consist with the largest practical measure of national and individual liberty?  We, at all events, have for a time solved the question.  For a time only, of course; but consider the history of Europe, and our jubilation is perhaps justified.

For sixty years has the British Republic held on its way under one President.  It is wide of the mark to object that other Republics, which change their President more frequently, support the semblance of over-lordship at considerably less cost to the people.  Britons are minded for the present that the Head of their State shall be called King or Queen; the name is pleasant to them; it corresponds to a popular sentiment, vaguely understood, but still operative, which is called loyalty.  The majority thinking thus, and the system being found to work more than tolerably well, what purpose could be served by an attempt at novas res?  The nation is content to pay the price; it is the nation’s affair.  Moreover, who can feel the least assurance that a change to one of the common forms of Republicanism would be for the general advantage?  Do we find that