frontiers, to cry halt to the divergence of nations, and to draw all men unto it. The love of self, which in its highest phase is nationality, bowed for a time before the love of beauty, which in its highest phase is art. Lit by the hand of genius, the fire of Apollo outshone, even for us barbarians, the fire of war.
Thus France denationalised Germany. Till 1760 at any rate, and the rise of Lessing, the Teuton owned the dominion of the Latin, and even Lessing avowed himself a cosmopolitan, that is, a Frenchman. The outbreak of the Revolution found a Germany more French than German in its patriotism. Her weightiest minds, Herder and Schilling, Kant and Hegel and Goethe, taught Germans to look with reverence across the Rhine.
To apply, however, these considerations to England, it must be confessed that, substantially, it is not to any such magnetism of personality that she owes her weight and vogue among mankind. And this is true whether we have regard to our monarchy as the embodiment of our national personality, or to the nation itself.
It must be held, indeed, that the most recent occupants of the throne have played their part in softening the antipathies, and even in procuring for us the goodwill, of continental powers. Outside Europe, too, our self-governing dominions, who can look over the head of Parliaments, but not over the head of kings, have felt the spell.
