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 nor for a minority; he can and does speak for the nation where it is unanimous, or nearly unanimous, in feeling. Queen Victoria almost created a style for this purpose, combining with singular felicity the personal and the Royal, and she never forgot the Queen in the woman or the woman in the Queen. During her long reign the sphere of the Crown became fully defined. It is easier now to fulfil the character of a 'patriot King' than when it was delineated by Lord Bolingbroke. The part has, as it were, been created by history, and is assumed by the reigning King at his accession. If one side of the King's activity consists of the discharge of official acts whereby the unity, in form, of power throughout the Empire is maintained, on the other side he maintains a unity in personal relations. In touch with statesmen of both parties in England, he insures a certain degree of continuity in the tone of administration; he receives Viceroys and Governors when they leave for their governments or return from them. Colonial Prime Ministers when they are in England, Indian Princes, and great African Chiefs. It is difficult to measure the political value of such receptions by the Sovereign as those given to the chiefs of Bechuanaland, Barotseland, and Abeokuta.

The rise of the British Empire has immensely increased the significance and importance of these functions, formal and personal, of the Crown. This vast aggregation of sea-divided races, religions, languages, degrees of civilization, laws, and customs, does not rest upon those natural foundations upon which States like England, France, or Germany have been built. Force can annex territory or coerce rebellious minorities; it cannot by itself hold together an empire. If a people, or at any rate the great bulk of a people, is descended from the same ancestors, or follows the same religion, or speaks the same language, or is not divided by the sea or by high mountains, it has the something in common upon which a political union may arise. If it has all these conditions, a nation of the