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COMIC DEMOCRACY 143 them to vote at all. The peasants indeed, even during the heat of a contest, are rarely aware of the names of either of the rival candidates. They have been constantly known to ask the returning officer to take their papers and do just what he liked with them. It frequently happens also that the head man of a village is begged by his fellow villagers to go and vote instead of them, and let one piece of meaningless trouble do duty for them all. No doubt it may be said that though this is true of the majority there is still a minority which under-stands its political privileges and uses them. There certainly is, and it uses them too with a vengeance, but it uses them in a way so delightfully simple and childish that, instead of infecting the air with the prose of modern Europe, as a corporate body it merely seems to the imagination to be playing the part of Bottom in ' A Midsummer Night's Dream.' This minority is composed of perhaps a couple of hundred people, all of them professional Radicals, and the greater part of them Greeks. In almost every respect they are ludicrously faithful imitations of their engaging brethren in the West ; only the imitation has this great advantage over the original, that it can hardly be called mischievous and is infinitely more amusing. The professional Cyprian patriot in the effect he produces on the mind is very much like a monkey and a parrot imitating Mr. William O'Brien, the parrot supplying the voice and the monkey supplying the gestures. Almost every device dis-

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