not simply the usurpation of the English crown but the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition at Westminster Hall.  Nor can we forget with what longing eyes the Corsican barbarian who wielded for mischief the forces of France in 1805 looked across from Boulogne at the shores of the one European land that never in word or deed granted him homage.  But in these latter days England has had no need of stormy weather to aid the prowess of the sea-kings who are her natural defenders.  It is impossible for the thoughtful student of history to walk across Trafalgar Square, and gaze on the image of the mightiest naval hero that ever lived, on the summit of his lofty column and guarded by the royal lions, looking down towards the government-house of the land that he freed from the dread of Napoleonic invasion and towards that ancient church wherein the most sacred memories of English talent and English toil are clustered together,—­it is impossible, I say, to look at this, and not admire both the artistic instinct that devised so happy a symbolism, and the rare good-fortune of our Teutonic ancestors in securing a territorial position so readily defensible against the assaults of despotic powers.  But it was not merely in the simple facility of warding off external attack that the insular position of England was so serviceable.  This ease in warding off external attack had its most marked effect upon the internal polity of the nation.  It never became necessary for the English government to keep up a great standing army.  For purposes of external defence a navy was all-sufficient; and there is this practical difference between a permanent army and a permanent navy.  Both are originally designed for purposes of external defence; but the one can readily be used for purposes of internal oppression, and the other cannot.  Nobody ever heard of a navy putting up an empire at auction and knocking down the throne of the world to a Didius Julianus.  When, therefore, a country is effectually screened by water from external attack, it is screened in a way that permits its normal political development to go on internally without those manifold military hinderances that have ordinarily been so obstructive in the history of civilization.  Hence we not only see why, after the Norman Conquest had operated to increase its unity and its strength, England enjoyed a far greater amount of security and was far more peaceful than any other country in Europe; but we also see why society never assumed the military type in England which it assumed upon the continent; we see how it was that the bonds of feudalism were far looser here than elsewhere, and therefore how it happened that nowhere else was the condition of the common people so good politically.  We now begin to see, moreover, how thoroughly Professor Stubbs and Mr. Freeman are justified in insisting upon the fact that the political institutions of the Germans of Tacitus have had a more normal and uninterrupted development