Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/220

 marck was not then forthcoming, and so the great empire fell. We had to content ourselves with having enriched history on behalf of some future Gibbon, who was to describe the decline and fall of yet one more of the world's great empires. We had no longer indeed the dreads of war to cause us to regret that the powerful co-operating arms of our colonies were lost to us; but, in other respects, our shorn condition came home but too plainly to our national pride. The greatest and most ]progressive empire of modern times had crumbled to pieces in our hands, and with additional disappointment were we aware that our transatlantic cousinhood were now indisputably topass us, in assuming the first position in the English speech. In short, we had been trifling with the grandest position in the world, and we had irrevocably lost it.