THE KING
The man was speaking about things that belonged to the ritual of the throne as though the monarch in him were a thing apart, another ego. For he was to me at that moment the man only, the man who had paced the quarter-deck, the sportsman who walked the turnips and cut out clean rights and lefts from the coveys of little brown birds, or stopped rocketing pheasants in a gale of wind. He could throw off kinghood with the robes of the Star and Garter, and assume simple manhood with a blue serge coat and a billycock hat.
And yet withal that spiritual presence of the monarch made itself felt, for without a vestige, that was apparent, of the bearing, the tone of voice, or the other conventional things that one usually associates with princes, and of which some cannot divest themselves, the august presence of the chief among princes impressed one with a sense of awe.
True kingship is a spiritual thing. From the time of the rule of the Priest-Kings to Julius Cæsar, with the civil sceptre in one hand, and the pontifical sacrificing knife in the other, the spiritual nature of the chief of the state was married to the civil nature, and in modern times the little father of all the Russians was not only the head of the Church but also the chief magistrate, with universal jurisdiction over the civil courts. The divorcement of the civil from the religious power has left some trace of each in the other, and will do, so long as parenthood, with its obligations, its joys, and its sorrows, continues to be the basis of human institutions.
The institution of monarchy is pivotal. The nation may loyally revolve around its centre in a cohesive mass—the attraction to the centre following the analogy of the
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