The Elections are now nearing an end, and it is possible to summarise
the results. It is not surprising that our opponents should be
reduced to the lowest depths of despair. They counted with the utmost
certainty on a majority of two hundred. But, as matters stand, it
is out of the question that their preponderance should exceed fifty.
Where are now the confident boastings with which they inaugurated the
campaign? They have confused the judgment of the electors with every
kind of side-issue. Misrepresentations have been sown broadcast, and
have, in too many instances, succeeded. But the great heart of the
country is still sound. Votes must be weighed as well as counted, and
it is safe to assume that, with a paltry and heterogeneous majority
of merely fifty, the advocates of revolution will be reduced to
impotence, even if they can succeed in forming a Government at all.
The result is one on which our Party may well congratulate themselves.
They have worked hard, and the solid fruit of their efforts is now
within their reach. We may safely say that the Irish policy of our
opponents has received its death-blow.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "THERE HE BLOWS!"
(_The German Emperor has gone Whaling in the North Seas._)]
"There he blows! There he goes!" Like a Titan in throes,
With his wallopping tail, and his wave-churning nose,
The spouting Cetacean Colossus!
Eh? Harpoon that Monster! The thought makes one pale,
With one thundering thwack of that thumping big tail,
To the skies in small splinters he'd toss us!
Rolling in foaming wild billows, ice-laden
He goes, like the "boisterous sea" (_vide_ HADYN!)
"Upheaved from the deep," swift, tremendous,
Leviathan sports on the far-foaming wave.
If _he_ runs athwart us, what power shall save,
From the doom to which promptly he'd send us?
His "soundings," or "diggings," are many and deep;
But would that his "three-hundred fathoms" he'd keep,
Below in the ocean's cold quiet.
But no, not at all; he's not _that_ sort of whale!
He must breathe, he must blow, he must roar, till the gale
Is charged with the sound of his riot.
Leviathan loves the wild turmoil of strife,
And lashing the billows to him is true life;
Behold how he buffets and scourges them!
Chase him? The Captain (though also a Kaiser),
Might think that his course to avoid him were wiser,
Until sheer necessity urges them.
And yet whales _are_ beaten--by narwhals and men,
And other mere pigmies. 'Tis said, now and then,
E'en sword-fish can compass their ruin,
By stabbing together--in _Cassius's_ way
With _Cæsar_. Leviathan, dead, is a prey
To dog-fish, and sea-birds, or Bruin.
There he blows! There he goes! Would an amateur Whaler,
Like WILHELM, that fine blend of Statesman and Sailor,
Incline to the chase and the capture
Of such a huge, wandering, wallopping whale,
To whom "Troubling the waters" with blow-holes and tail
Seems a source of such riotous rapture?
* * * * *