L—— could not have possessed that
knowledge."

"Of course not—Mr. Margrave did possess it!"

"Mr. Margrave again!—oh, sir."

I arose and moved away, with an impatient
gesture. I could not trust myself to speak.
That night I did not sleep; I watched
impatiently, gazing on the opposite wall, for the gleam
of the Scin-Læca. But the night passed away,
and the spectre did not appear.

THE DIVINE HEDGE.

WHAT is the divinity that doth hedge a king?
At one time it was almost impenetrable: a
hedge woven thick and stiff with prejudice,
assumption, arrogance, and that innate servility
of the mean which makes slaves of races,
courtiers of classes, and parasites of individuals.
Think of what that hedge of royal divinity
meant and where it led to! Think of
Shakespeare and Raleigh fawning like spaniels at
the feet of Queen Elizabeth! And think of the
crowd of crowned ruffians swarming through
every page of history, whom the upholders of
the right-divine theory worshipped as gods,
bringing them the sacrifice of their very
manhood and self-respect! And then to know, as
we do, that all this kow-towing was mainly due
to upholstery; for, would a king in a fool's cap
or a villein's russet jerkin, have been as
divinely hedged about as when in a crimson and
ermined mantle, and a crown blazing with
jewels? The hedge grew flowers which the
weaver and goldsmith originally planted, and
which the life-blood of the people fed and
watered. Yet the silly public thought them the
spontaneous gift of a generous soil, and, like
the Israelites of old, fell down and worshipped
the gold lace and embroidery wrought by their
own hands, as eagerly as if it had been a gift
sent to them direct from Heaven. Depend upon
it, kings and queens owe half their divinity to
their finery.

Even in person, kings were held to be grander
than other men; to be of nobler presence and
of more commanding beauty. Not only their
bodies but their souls were of a finer generation.
Charles the Fourth, Emperor of Germany,
declared that the souls of princes are better
endowed by the Lord than those of common people;
and Pope Alexander the Seventh preferred to
promote men of noble birth to high ecclesiastical
offices, "because he thought that, as princes of
the earth like to be served by individuals of high
families, it must be likewise pleasing to the
King of kings to be served by priests already by
their blood above the rest of men." If the souls
and bodies of kings were superior to the souls
and bodies of the common folk, what was,
according to the old creeds, their office?
Appointed by divine commission, and endued with
peculiar blessings and power, it dated as far
back as Adam. When all the meaner things of
humanity were destroyed in the flood, the
germ of future royal potentiality was saved
with Noah and the elect, from which germ the
whole earth was to be hereafter ruled and
overspread. This was Miner's notion, and
Tillotson's, and that of many more as worthy men,
keen scholars and acute thinkers. Because Adam
was appointed ruler of all created things, said
they, and was accountable to God alone, so was
the king irresponsible and without sin towards
man, since he held his commission from God
through Adam and all eldest sons: monarchy
by hereditary succession being the peculiar
ordinance of Heaven. Hence, the king was free to
govern his people ill or well, according to his
fancy; if ill, he was not accountable to man for
his actions; if well, it was by free grace, to be
repaid with gratitude and increased devotion.
The theory that power originated with the
people—which, after the facts of the Commonwealth
and that fatal scaffold at Whitehall, one
would have imagined to be pretty firmly
established here in England—was condemned as "an
abominable tenet" by the Oxford Decree of
1683; just five years before the Declaration of
Right carted down the questions of irresponsibility
and divine right to the rubbish-heap
appointed for human folly. For the nation had
gone back temporarily to its old idolatry,
forgetting the stern iconoclasm of Hampden and
Milton, Cromwell and Eliot, and Martyn and
Vane. A temporary idolatry, happily at an end
here for ever.

This theory of divine right and royal irresponsibility
was not reduced to anything very
practical in England before the time of Filmer and
the British Solomon. Bracton, Lord Chief
Justice in the Third Henry's reign, said some very
manly words on the matter: "The king ought
not to be subject to man, but to God and to the
law. For the law maketh the king. Let the
king therefore render to the law what the law
hath invested in him with regard to others:
dominion and power; for he is not truly king
where will and pleasure rule, and not the
law." Sir John Fortescue, Lord of the Laws
under Henry the Sixth (1442), said that "the
king of England must rule his people according
to the decrees of the laws thereof, insomuch
that he is bound by an oath at his coronation to
the observance and keeping of his own law."
These were brave words; braver than those of
the later generations, when the sycophancy of
what men were pleased to call "loyalty" had
eaten away the very fibres of the national
manhood. But even that assuming old pedant, who
prided himself on his kingcraft when he
snubbed his parliaments, and told his son that
he ought to thank God first for making him a
man and not a beast, and then "for that he
made you a little god to sitte on his throne and
rule over men"—even he was obliged to draw
a distinction between a king and a tyrant, with
a point of reprobation superadded. But though
Elizabeth has been worshipped and flattered
with a zeal worthy of a better object; and Henry
the Eighth had been kow-towed in a manner
that would make any honest man blush for
shame and outraged manhood; and though
other kings had been outrageously arbitrary