Of the most important theme of all—­our national advance in religion, morality, and the principles of humane living—­I have spoken in previous chapters, and this is not the occasion for anything but the briefest recapitulation.  “Where is boasting?  It is excluded.”  There is much to be thankful for, much to encourage:  something to cause anxiety, and nothing to justify bombast.  No one believes more profoundly than I do in the providential mission of the English race, and the very intensity of my faith in that mission makes me even painfully anxious that we should interpret it aright.  Men who were undergraduates at Oxford in the ’seventies learned the interpretation, in words of unsurpassable beauty, from John Ruskin:—­

“There is a destiny now possible to us—­the highest ever set before a nation, to be accepted or refused.  We are still undegenerate in race; a race mingled of the best northern blood.  We are not yet dissolute in temper, but still have the firmness to govern and the grace to obey.  We have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now finally betray or learn to defend by fulfilling.  And we are rich in an inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour, should be the most offending souls alive.

“Within the last few years we have had the laws of natural science opened to us with a rapidity which has been blinded by its brightness, and means of transit and communication given to us which have made but one kingdom of the habitable globe.  One kingdom—­but who is to be its King?  Is there to be no King in it, think you, and every man to do that which is right in his own eyes?  Or only kings of terror, and the obscene Empires of Mammon and Belial?  Or will you, youths of England, make your country again a royal throne of Kings, a sceptred isle, for all the world a source of light, a centre of peace; mistress of learning and of the arts; faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent and ephemeral visions; faithful servant of time-tried principles, under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in her strange valour of good will towards men?”

FOOTNOTES: 

[25] Sunday, June 20, 1897.

XXII.

“PRINCEDOMS, VIRTUES, POWERS.”

The celebrations of the past week[26] have set us all upon a royal tack.  Diary-keepers have turned back to their earliest volumes for stories of the girl-queen; there has been an unprecedented run on the Annual Register for 1837; and every rusty print of Princess Victoria in the costume of Kate Nickleby has been paraded as a pearl of price.  As I always pride myself on following what Mr. Matthew