better command is to be over fields and streets instead of ships of the line; and England, in these her motionless navies (or, in the true and mightiest sense, motionless churches, ruled by pilots on the Galilean lake[179] of all the world), is to “expect every man to do his duty";[180] recognizing that duty is indeed possible no less in peace than war; and that if we can get men, for little pay, to cast themselves against cannon-mouths for love of England, we may find men also who will plough and sow for her, who will behave kindly and righteously for her, who will bring up their children to love her, and who will gladden themselves in the brightness of her glory, more than in all the light of tropic skies.

But that they may be able to do this, she must make her own majesty stainless; she must give them thoughts of their home of which they can be proud.  The England who is to be mistress of half the earth, cannot remain herself a heap of cinders, trampled by contending and miserable crowds; she must yet again become the England she was once, and in all beautiful ways,—­more:  so happy, so secluded, and so pure, that in her sky—­polluted by no unholy clouds—­she may be able to spell rightly of every star that heaven doth show; and in her fields, ordered and wide and fair, of every herb that sips the dew;[181] and under the green avenues of her enchanted garden, a sacred Circe, true Daughter of the Sun, she must guide the human arts, and gather the divine knowledge, of distant nations, transformed from savageness to manhood, and redeemed from despairing into Peace.

You think that an impossible ideal.  Be it so; refuse to accept it if you will; but see that you form your own in its stead.  All that I ask of you is to have a fixed purpose of some kind for your country and yourselves; no matter how restricted, so that it be fixed and unselfish.  I know what stout hearts are in you, to answer acknowledged need; but it is the fatallest form of error in English youth to hide their hardihood till it fades for lack of sunshine, and to act in disdain of purpose, till all purpose is vain.  It is not by deliberate, but by careless selfishness; not by compromise with evil, but by dull following of good, that the weight of national evil increases upon us daily.  Break through at least this pretence of existence; determine what you will be, and what you would win.  You will not decide wrongly if you resolve to decide at all.  Were even the choice between lawless pleasure and loyal suffering, you would not, I believe, choose basely.  But your trial is not so sharp.  It is between drifting in confused wreck among the castaways of Fortune, who condemns to assured ruin those who know not either how to resist her, or obey; between this, I say, and the taking of your appointed part in the heroism of Rest; the resolving to share in the victory which is to the weak rather than the strong; and the binding yourselves by that law, which, thought on through lingering night and labouring day, makes a man’s life to be as a tree planted by the water-side, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season;—­