Page:Historical Lectures and Addresses.djvu/248

 of national greatness in an altered world. I need not pursue this subject. It is enough to call your attention to the slow and deliberate way in which, since then, England has weighed, and valued the productions of continental thought, literature and art, and has selected from them just what she needed. It stands in striking contrast to the rapidity with which other nations have received impulses from England, and have at times been dominated by them.

I have been attempting to show that, on whatever side you approach English history, you find Englishmen always animated by a stubborn determination to manage their own affairs in their own ways, according to their own needs. To this definite end their energies have always been directed. They have not been desirous that things should look well or be capable of clear explanation, so much as that they should work well. They have paid little heed to fashions in thought or activity, but have insisted on looking into things and considering what they were worth to themselves; and, at the same time, they have always been ready to take what they thought was worth having. Consider that remark about stalwart and handsome foreigners, which seemed so characteristic to the Venetian Ambassador: "It is a pity he is not an Englishman". The Venetian regarded it as an expression of national arrogance. Surely it was an expression of a large-hearted appreciation of excellence, wherever it was to be found—an appreciation which at once assumed the practical form of a readiness to appropriate. Combined with a ready recognition of the man's charm went a regret that that charm