great crises, England has not brought forth clearly representative characters. Oliver Cromwell, for instance, was the executor rather than the representative of the principles of the Great Rebellion. They were never definite enough to be summed up by any individual. However highly we may rate Cromwell's capacity, we cannot make him out as eminently picturesque, or place him by the side of Napoleon.
We may, I think, go a step further. The ideas on which national life are founded may be ultimately reduced to the national conception of liberty. Ultimately, each man values the society of which he forms part for the opportunities which it affords him of doing or being what he wishes to do or be.
Now there is a difference, which is not always recognised, in the meaning of liberty to different peoples. It would be a long matter to attempt to explain this difference in detail and account for it. But we may say generally that it depends on the way in which the rights of the individual are regarded in relation to the rights of the community. Let me apply this to the instances of picturesqueness which I have taken. In Italy, in the sixteenth century, the communities were so small, and their position was so precarious, that men longed for the growth of a national spirit, as the limits in which their actual life was lived were too narrow to express that life in its fulness. A nation could only be formed by the power and influence of a dominant and resolute personality. Hence, men were so interested in the development of such a personality, that they were ready to watch various experiments and to endure
