Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/700

 . 14, 1861.] “The Lady in Blue turned with a face of horror. It was a disagreeable insect, there is no denying that. It was—to tell you the truth,” said the little Old Lady, nodding over her spectacles. “I am not an American, but an old-fashioned Englishwoman, and I always like to call things by their right names. If there is any fine, long Latin word for the insect, I don’t know it, and I shouldn’t use it if I did. It was what is vulgarly called a bug.

“When the Lady in Blue had recovered herself a little, her first impulse was to look for the gentlemanly stranger, but he was gone. And very proper of him too, she thought; a great proof of delicacy and good breeding. But the thing—the insect! To be actually on her shawl! How did it get there? Where had that shawl been, and how was such a calamity possible? Did any one see the transaction? These were questions of terrible import, and unanswerable. Her walk lost its languid ease; Trovatore had no longer any charms for her. A sensation of horrible discomfort lingered about that shawl, and the hum of the human hive, which before had been soothing, seemed like a chorus of distant voices lifted up on the subject of that disagreeable insect. When would her friends join her? At any rate it must be long past the time appointed. Thinking thus, she began fumbling nervously at her watch-chain; at least in the direction of the chain. For you see the chain itself was gone, and the watch was gone; and when she searched her pocket, she found that her purse was gone too. And by this time her face of dismay, and her exclamations had attracted the policeman, whose appearance in such a place had seemed to her as unnecesary a short time before.

“Other curious individuals also began to gather round her; in fact, the poor Lady in Blue thought all the world was coming to chatter about her, and add to her confusion, which was quite a superfluous attention on the world’s part; and to the question, ‘When did you miss the articles?’ she could only put her hand to her head in a distracted manner, and utter disjointed signals of distress.

‘Miss them! I don’t know—I—’

‘When did you have them last?’

‘I really cannot tell. I—yes, now I know. I am quite sure. I looked at my watch just before that strange gentleman spoke to me about—’

‘What gentleman?’

‘A stranger to me, quite. He—why, there he is again! that one with the white hat. Ah, he is gone! I don’t see him now.’

“But before this speech was ended the policeman was gone too; and if any one is anxious as to the fate of the missing articles, I beg to reassure them.

“The gentlemanly stranger encountered an unexpected friend at the door of the popular resort, who kindly relieved him of a burden which must have been heavy. Besides the jewellery of the Lady in Blue, the stranger was found to have about his person several watches and chains, and a goodly array of purses. Also, he had in his waistcoat pocket—a little box of bugs.”

2em

description of every political agitator, by friends and enemies, is the same from age to age, and in all countries. Partisans of course think him a born ruler, a patriot, and a hero: and the rest of society calls him a demagogue, and assumes him to be ignorant. “An ignorant demagogue,” is the intellectual hieroglyphic which stands for the political agitator from generation to generation. For any description so permanent there must be a reason; and to ascertain how much reason there is in this particular case, we have only to observe in what points eminent agitators have been all alike; and especially how far they have, each and all, succeeded or failed. When we have satisfied ourselves that single agitators invariably fail in their express object sooner or later, we shall see that there must be some justice in the imputation of ignorance. There must have been a screw loose somewhere; for in political action knowledge is power; and the leader who sinks in weakness has obviously been out in his calculations about other people or himself. The truth is, it is scarcely possible for any man who lives and moves among the people, occupied as they are with the business and pleasures of their lives, to know much of the facts and reasons of the few whose business and pleasure it is to transact public affairs. If those few are precluded from ever holding the point of view of the many, and are liable to grow narrow, and exclusive, and unfit at last for the work of ruling, yet more is every man of the many unable to enter into half the reasons the executive government may have for its views and actions. Thus it is that politicians in opposition seem under a doom to disappoint their supporters as soon as they are in power, or near enough to it to overlook the field in which the administration (whatever may be its form) has to act. Hence, also, the supreme value of representative institutions, which favour the freest attainable intercourse between the rulers and the ruled, and by which power is prevented remaining too long in the same hands. Under any other institutions or forms of society, “demagogues” must be more “ignorant” than in parliamentary states: but the description is not laid aside, nor seems likely to be laid aside, in the freest of constitutional countries.

The invariable failure affords another item of description. It is not understood by this that a single obnoxious law or method may not be got rid of by a particular agitator, and his special agitation; nor is it denied that a party of agitation may gain some one point for which the time is ripe. By the failure of demagogues is meant the constant fact that that sort of man always finds at last that his object is not so desirable, or so feasible, as he thought it was; or that he is unable to work it out when he seems in full possession of the opportunity.

This reminds us of another feature common to so nearly all political agitators, that it may be admitted into the constant description:—viz., their being paralysed when the moment arrives