“Such is the position of the King in the heroic times of Greece—­the only person (if we except the herald, and priests, each both special and subordinate) who is then presented to us as clothed with any individual authority—­the person by whom all the executive functions, then few in number, which the society requires, are either performed or directed.  His personal ascendancy—­derived from Divine countenance bestowed both upon himself individually and upon his race, and probably from accredited Divine descent—­is the salient feature in the picture:  the people hearken to his voice, embrace his propositions, and obey his orders:  not merely resistance, but even criticism upon his acts, is generally exhibited in an odious point of view, and is indeed never heard of except from some one or more of the subordinate princes.”

The characteristic of the English Monarchy is that it retains the feelings by which the heroic kings governed their rude age, and has added the feelings by which the Constitutions of later Greece ruled in more refined ages.  We are a more mixed people than the Athenians, or probably than any political Greeks.  We have progressed more unequally.  The slaves in ancient times were a separate order; not ruled by the same laws, or thoughts, as other men.  It was not necessary to think of them in making a constitution:  it was not necessary to improve them in order to make a constitution possible.  The Greek legislator had not to combine in his polity men like the labourers of Somersetshire, and men like Mr. Grote.  He had not to deal with a community in which primitive barbarism lay as a recognised basis to acquired civilisation.  We have.  We have no slaves to keep down by special terrors and independent legislation.  But we have whole classes unable to comprehend the idea of a constitution—­unable to feel the least attachment to impersonal laws.  Most do indeed vaguely know that there are some other institutions besides the Queen, and some rules by which she governs.  But a vast number like their minds to dwell more upon her than upon anything else, and therefore she is inestimable.  A republic has only difficult ideas in government; a Constitutional Monarchy has an easy idea too; it has a comprehensible element for the vacant many, as well as complex laws and notions for the inquiring few.

A family on the throne is an interesting idea also.  It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.  No feeling could seem more childish than the enthusiasm of the English at the marriage of the Prince of Wales.  They treated as a great political event, what, looked at as a matter of pure business, was very small indeed.  But no feeling could be more like common human nature as it is, and as it is likely to be.  The women—­one half the human race at least—­care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry.  All but a few cynics like to see a pretty novel touching for a moment the dry scenes of the grave world.