296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Ten Thousand Years ! " or like those some two years since addressed by 

 the Bulgarians to the Emperor of Russia " O blessed Czar ! " " Bliss- 

 ful Czar ! " " Orthodox powerful Czar ! " or like those with which, in 

 the past, speeches to the French monarch commenced " O very be- 

 nign ! O very great ! O very merciful ! " And then along with these 

 propitiations by direct flattery there go others in which the flattery is 

 indirectly conveyed by affected admiration of whatever the ruler says : 

 as when the courtiers of the King of Delhi held up their hands, crying, 

 " Wonder, wonder ! " after any ordinary speech : or in broad day, if he 

 said it was night, responded, " Behold the moon and the stars ! " or as 

 when Russians in past times exclaimed, " God and the prince have 

 willed ! " " God and the prince know ! " 



Eulogistic phrases, first thus used to supreme men, of course descend 

 to men in less authority, and so downward. Illustrations are supplied 

 by those current in France during the sixteenth century to a cardinal, 

 " the very illustrious and very reverend ; " to a bishop, " the very rev- 

 erend and very illustrious ; " to a duke, " the very illustrious and very 

 reverend lord, my much-honored master ; " to a marquis, " my very 

 illustrious and much-honored lord ; " to a doctor, " the virtuous and ex- 

 cellent." And from our own past days may be added such compliment- 

 ary forms of address to those of lower rank as " the right worshipful," 

 to knights and sometimes to esquires ; " the right noble," " the honor- 

 able-minded," used to gentlemen ; and, even to aldermen and men ad- 

 dressed as Mr., such laudatory prefixes as " the worthy and worshipful," 

 " the worshipfull, vertuous, and most worthy." Along with flattering 

 epithets there spread flatteries more involved in form, especially ob- 

 servable in the East, where both are extreme. On a Chinese invitation- 

 card the compliment, gravely addressed to an ordinary person, is "To 

 what an elevation of splendor will your presence assist us to rise ! " 

 Tavernier, from whom I have quoted the above example of scarcely 

 credible flattery from the court of Delhi, adds, " This vice passeth even 

 unto the people ; " and, instancing the way in which he was himself 

 classed with ancient men of the most transcendent powers, adds. that 

 even his military attendant, compared to the greatest of conquerors, was 

 described as making the world tremble when he mounted his horse : a 

 description harmonizing with the instance Mr. Roberts gives of Oriental 

 compliment to an ordinary person " My lord, there are only two who 

 can do anything for me : God is the first, and you are the second." 



On reading that in Tavernier's time a usual expression in the East 

 was __ Let the king's will be done," recalling the parallel expression 

 " Let God's will be done," we are reminded that various of the glorify- 

 ing speeches addressed to kings are identical with those addressed to 

 deities. Where the militant type is highly developed, and where 

 divinity is ascribed to the monarch, not only after death but before, as 

 of old in Egypt and Peru, and as now in Japan, China, and Siam, it 

 naturally results that the words of eulogy addressed to the visible ruler 



