clear. After a brief but painful period of hesitation and indecision, in which the King recoiled from giving the definite and formal answer which in case of a Liberal victory would compel him automatically to give effect to the advice of Ministers, the King made up his mind to grant a dissolution and to accept all the consequences. The de cision was not lightly made. The King did not for one moment blind himself as to its logical consequences. If he granted a dissolution he would in effect place his Royal prerogative in the hands of Mr. Asquith should the appeal to the country send that Minister back to power with a sufficient majority. If, on the other hand, the Opposition won the election, his course was clear. But there was an offchance that neither party would win a decisive victory. In that case the responsibility of deciding what should be done would again be placed in his hands. What he would have done in that contingency need not be discussed. But it is tolerably certain that he would have followed the example of Queen Victoria and used the influence of his high position to induce the leaders to bring the long controversy to a close by a policy of mutual compromise. The only thing certain is, that had such a crisis arisen, the King would not have hesitated to prove that the Crown was no mere cypher, but was the real balance-wheel of the State. The King granted Mr. Asquith's demands for a dissolution on Mr. Asquith's terms, and loyally waited the result of the General Election. Probably no one waited the verdict of the polls with more anxiety than King George. If the result had been indecisive, he would have been face to face with one of these supreme opportunities which make or mar a Monarchy. If, on the other hand, the Coalition came back with a three figure majority, the course of events would pass beyond his control. So far as this issue was concerned, he would sink at once into the position of an automaton, whose signature could either be withheld from the writs of summons of peers, whose only qualification was their hereditary rank, or could be affixed to patents of 500 new peerages, as Mr. Asquith directed. He might hate this automatic exercise of his prerogative by the Prime Minister; but the King is far too loyal to the Constitution, and far too good a sportsman to think of evading his obligations. The moment the result of the General Election was declared, the King recognized his position. Another dissolution was out of the question. The Opposition could not furnish him an alternative Cabinet that could face the House of Commons for a single day. Not the overbearing arrogance of a usurping Minister, but the abject and hopeless impotence of the Opposition, reduced the King to the position of an obedient automaton in the hands of Mr. Asquith. That he did not like the position may be taken for granted; but there was no help for it. And to do the King justice, whether he liked it or disliked it, he never allowed his personal feelings to appear either in public or in private. If he must for the nonce be an automaton by the inexorable law of the Constitution, King George has never allowed any one to perceive that the action of the automaton was not the free exercise of his own Royal will. Should the Peers persist in compelling the exercise of the Royal prerogative to enforce the will of the Commons, that prerogative will be exercised without tremor, or hesitation, or holding back. The King will play the great game, according to the strictest rules, loyally and royally to the end. The hotheads of the Opposition may rage, but Mr. Balfour and Lord Lansdowne know that the King has no choice but to do that which is the inevitable result of their own inability to furnish him with an alternative Cabinet. As for King George, he has no doubts. He knows his duty, and for him to know is to do. Hence the close of the first year of The Contemporary Review. the new reign finds the nation absolutely free from any anxiety or excitement. The King has shown that the balance-wheel of the Constitution is functioning with perfect regularity, and that being the case, the crisis is no crisis, but merely a Parliamentary incident, which is about to be quietly solved in a perfectly Constitutional way. A SALUTE FROM THE FLEET. I. The guns of H.M.S. Royal Sovereign. Ocean-Mother of England, thine is the crowning acclaim! Here, by our fleets of steel, silently foam into line How should we crown our king, unless with a word of Utter it, Victory! Let thy great signal flash thro' the flame! Answer, Bellerophon! Marlborough, Thunderer, Condor, II. The guns of H.M.S. Majestic. Out of the ages we speak unto you, O ye ages to be! Rocks of Sevastopol, echo our thunder-word, bruit it afar! Buffet it, Portobello, back to the Nile once more! Buffet it back from your crags and roll it over the main! Answer it, Camperdown! Answer it, answer it, Trafalgar! III. The guns of H.M.S. Rainbow. How should we crown our king, if not with a word of thine, Mother of Light and Freedom, mother of hopes unborn, Speak, O world-wide welder of nations, O Soul of the sea! Thine was the watch-word that called us of old o'er the gray sky-line: Lift thy stormy salute! For thy crown is the crown of our king! IV. The guns of H.M.S. Victory. Therefore on thee we call, O Mother, for we are thy sons! Speak, with thy world-wide voice, O wake us anew from our sleep! Speak, for the Light of the world still lives and grows on thy face! Give us the ancient Word once more, the unchangeable Word,― This that Nelson knew, this that Effingham heard, This that resounds for ever in all the hearts of our race, This that lives for a moment on the iron lips of our guns, This-that echoes for ever and ever-the Word of the Deep. V. The guns of H.M.S. Dreadnought. How shall a king be saved by the multitude of an host? Thine was the answer, O mother of all men born to be free! Thine as Freedom arose and rolled thy song from her lips, Thine when she 'stablished her throne in thy sight, on our rough rock-coast, Thine was thy lustral glory and thunder, washing the world! VI. The guns of H.M.S. Temeraire. O for that ancient cry of the watch at the midnight bell, Under the unknown stars, from the decks that Frobisher trod! Hark, Before the world?-he questions a fleet in the dark! Answer it, friend or foe! And, ringing from mast to mast, Mother, hast thou forgotten what counter-cry went past, Answering still as he questioned? Before the world? O, hark, Ringing anear, Before the world? All's well! was God! VII. The guns of H.M.S. Revenge. Raleigh and Grenville heard it, Knights of the Ocean-sea! Have we forgotten it only, we with our leagues of steel? Give us our watchword again, O mother, in this great hour! Here, as we crown our king, here as we gather our might, Here, as the five great nations beneath one crown unite, Shake our hearts with thy Word, O 'stablish our peace on thy power! 'Stablish our power on thy peace, thy glory, thy liberty, 'Stablish on thy deep Word the throne of our Commonweal! VIII. The guns of H.M.S. Leviathan. They that go down to the sea in ships-they heard it of old- Inland over the smouldering plains, till the mists unfold, IX. The guns of H.M.S. Triumph. Queen of the North and the South, Queen of our Ocean-renown, England, England, England, O lift thine eyes to the sun! Wake, for the hope of the whole world yearns to thee, watches and waits! Now on the full flood-tide of the ages, the supreme hour Beacons thee onward in might to the purpose and crown of thy power! Hark, for the whole Atlantic thunders against thy gates, Take the Crown of all Time, all might, earth's crowning Crown, Throne thy children in freedom together, O weld them in one. X. The guns of the Fleet. Mother, O gray sea-mother, thine is the crowning cry! Thine the glory for ever in the nation born of thy womb! heard, Surging in Eschylean splendor, earth-shaking acclaim! Thine the Sun and the Freedom, the God and the wind-swept sky, CHAPTER IX. FANCY FARM. BY NEIL MUNRO. Surrendering his whip at the stableyard of the Schawfield Arms to the legitimate practitioner, Tam Dunn, the baronet hurried back to Fancy Farm in a fleeting mood of humorous expectancy, picturing the astonishment of his unconscious fare, and the shocked expression of his Aunt Amelia when she learned of this latest prank of which he had hoped to keep her ignorant, since her vexation was so often the only thing to take the zest from his vagaries. But the night's adventure was well worth even Aunt Amelia's grieved expostulations: how rarely did a man experience the uncanny joy of hearing his reputation from a woman not his wife! He had no clue to her identity, but Miss Skene, her friend, had a name he seemed to half remember as pertaining to the days of Norah's absence at the school in Brussels: how those callow girls of various nations thrown promiscuously together quarrelled and schwarmed, and kept a polyglot sentimental correspondence going on for years after they had wholly lost the much-desired French accent! That there was something of a plot on the part of his aunt and Norah seemed apparent, since they had not given any warning of expected visitors or had they done so in one of his absent-minded hours? In any case, this was the proper jolly method for a guest's arrival, to delight a man like Captain Cutlass-the opportunity of the alias and the winter night; no chill formalities nor wary overtures after the parlor fashion, where people meeting for the first time pull the vizor down and prick for openings with a cold stiletto. The faintly perfumed frank Unknown, jostling him unwittingly on the highway curves, so calm and unconventional, the lonely ride together, mystery and starlight and surprise! He almost wished that he could have a carriage of his own in future, and scour the coast at nights for casual unsuspecting guests for the sake of similar experiences. Perhaps with some of them he should not come through the adventure with such small vexation to his amour propre! The dining-room was lit; its wide, low, lattice windows gushed their radiance on the snowy lawn; he saw the table set for dinner-late a little, as dinner was apt to be with him and Aunt Amelia in spite of Norah's better habits. Round at the southern gable shone the parlor windows; doubtless the women waited for him. Two steps at a stride he climbed the stair to his room to change, and Norah. crossing the hall with a glass of flowers from the small conservatory, cried after him some mocking question. "Oh, dear! I'm quite relieved to see him home," sighed Aunt Amelia, following her to the parlor. "One never can be sure what might happen in such company-a poacher, Norah!" Miss Amelia-to tell the worst of her and be done with a task unpleasantwas in no physical aspect like her nephew; the women of her family, as we used to say in Schawfield, "a' slept in short beds and grew wide-ways," and she was curt in stature though as yet without the width that was properly her due, with an eager, anxious eye that never rested long enough on anything to see its inner meaning; simple to irritation, illogical, absurd. She could not be said to talk so much as chirrup; deaf of an ear, she often heard but the half of sentences, and a million ludicrous mistakes had no way les |