GREEN LAND FAR AWAY 15

mined by the iconoclastic Whig contempt for royalty1 and its
pomps and gewgaws, by a race of foreign rulers on the throne and
during the last four decades by the vagaries and indecorums.of
the royal family. These had reached their climax in 1821 in the
spectacle of a stout, vulgar and hysterical German Queen vainly
attempting amid the plaudits of the mob to force an entry into
the Abbey at the coronation of her adulterous and bigamous
spouse. Since the death of Charles II. the royal England of
Elizabeth and the Plantagenets had been transformed almost
unknowingly into oligarchy. A sovereign sat on the throne
and went through ancient forms, but an aristocracy governed.
.Though the dignity with which the youfcg Queen bore her part
in the ceremonies of coronation in the summer of 1838 did some-
thing to stir deeper and latent national instincts2, the general
feeling was expressed by William Dyott when he wrote, "A very
young Queen coming to the throne of this mighty empire (just
eighteen years of age) .brought up and subject to the control of a
weak and capricious mother, surrounded by the parent's chosen
advisers . . . gives token of unpropitious times to come."

The real rulers of England were still the greater squires. In the
course of a century and a half of monopoly and splendid, unblush-
ing corruption they had inch by inch pared the powers both of the
Crown and of the smaller squirearchy.- In the latter eighteenth
century, m their hunger for ever more land, they had even
destroyed the English peasantry. They were the most accom-
plished and cultured aristocracy the world has ever seen: by their
great houses and avenues, their libraries and noble possessions and
their likenesses limned by Reynolds or Gainsborough, one can see
the manner of men they were. They left their mark on English
literature and art as the Athenian aristocracy did on that of
ancient Greece—a-mark that was both lovely and imperishable.
They increased the wealth and power of their country beyond
measure, extended her dominions into every sea, gave her arts and
industries that enriched the human race for generations, and
confronted by superior force, humbled by their inspired use of
English courage and manhood the tyranny alike of Grand

lals it true," Queen Victoria is reported .to have asked the last great Whig, Lord
John Russell, a that you hold that a subject is justified in certain circumstances in dis-
obeying his Sovereign?" "Speaking to a sovereign of the House of Hanover, your
Majesty," he replied, "I can only say that I suppose it is."

2When, pale and tremulous, she took her sceptre abd declared before the crowded
Abbey, "I have it and none shall wrest it from me," even the misanthropic Jeremialf,
Carlyle, uttered a grudging blessing.