“It is not to be supposed that his daughter, who spoke with such incredulous scorn of the interference of parents, would not have sufficient influence with her Royal Father to save me from the combustion to which Aph-Lin would condemn my form.  And if I were exalted by such an alliance, who knows but what the Monarch might elect me as his successor?  Why not?  Few among this indolent race of philosophers like the burden of such greatness.  All might be pleased to see the supreme power lodged in the hands of an accomplished stranger who has experience of other and livelier forms of existence; and once chosen, what reforms I would institute!  What additions to the really pleasant but too monotonous life of this realm my familiarity with the civilised nations above ground would effect!  I am fond of the sports of the field.  Next to war, is not the chase a king’s pastime?  In what varieties of strange game does this nether world abound?  How interesting to strike down creatures that were known above ground before the Deluge!  But how?  By that terrible vril, in which, from want of hereditary transmission, I could never be a proficient?  No, but by a civilised handy breech-loader, which these ingenious mechanicians could not only make, but no doubt improve; nay, surely I saw one in the Museum.  Indeed, as absolute king, I should discountenance vril altogether, except in cases of war.  Apropos of war, it is perfectly absurd to stint a people so intelligent, so rich, so well armed, to a petty limit of territory sufficing for 10,000 or 12,000 families.  Is not this restriction a mere philosophical crotchet, at variance with the aspiring element in human nature, such as has been partially, and with complete failure, tried in the upper world by the late Mr. Robert Owen?  Of course one would not go to war with the neighbouring nations as well armed as one’s own subjects; but then, what of those regions inhabited by races unacquainted with vril, and apparently resembling, in their democratic institutions, my American countrymen?  One might invade them without offence to the vril nations, our allies, appropriate their territories, extending, perhaps, to the most distant regions of the nether earth, and thus rule over an empire in which the sun never sets. (I forgot, in my enthusiasm, that over those regions there was no sun to set).  As for the fantastical notion against conceding fame or renown to an eminent individual, because, forsooth, bestowal of honours insures contest in the pursuit of them, stimulates angry passions, and mars the felicity of peace—­it is opposed to the very elements, not only of the human, but of the brute creation, which are all, if tamable, participators in the sentiment of praise and emulation.  What renown would be given to a king who thus extended his empire!  I should be deemed a demigod.”  Thinking of that, the other fanatical notion of regulating this life by reference to one which, no doubt, we Christians firmly believe in, but never take into