Leaves from a Madeira Garden 



is staled by custom. Here six days of calm, 

 broken only by inadequate press telegrams 

 from Lisbon, which are generally more con- 

 cerned with the numbers drawn in the State 

 lottery, and such matters of urgent local in- 

 terest, than with the politics of Europe, are 

 succeeded by a day of shock. Some persons 

 of well-regulated mind are able to read their 

 papers in due succession, one a day, and so 

 to take their daily dose of news like civilized 

 folk. The more usual practice is to swallow 

 the whole lot — to sup full of horrors — within 

 an hour or two of the arrival of the mail. 

 This spring we have scarcely recovered from 

 the threat of Armageddon in Eastern Europe 

 when we are confronted with the naval crisis, 

 and our flesh is made to creep more than ever. 

 The change which has come over the spirit 

 and temper of our people in the last few years 

 is extraordinary. Mr. Rudyard Kipling was 

 perhaps not alone in deprecating the swagger 

 and bounce of the Jubilee period, but his 

 magnificent " Recessional " was the only urgent 

 note of warning. Throughout history such 

 insolence (in the Greek sense) has ever pro- 

 voked a retribution. We paid our penalty in 



240 



