imagination of Windsor. But whatever was prosaic in Potsdam was already
established at Windsor; the economy of cold mutton, the heavy-handed
taste in the arts, and the strange northern blend of boorishness with
etiquette. If Bolingbroke's ideas had been applied by a spirited person,
by a Stuart, for example, or even by Queen Elizabeth (who had real
spirit along with her extraordinary vulgarity), the national soul might
have broken free from its new northern chains. But it was the irony of
the situation that the King to whom Tories appealed as a refuge from
Germanism was himself a German.

We have thus to refer the origins of the German influence in England
back to the beginning of the Hanoverian Succession; and thence back to
the quarrel between the King and the lawyers which had issue at Naseby;
and thence again to the angry exit of Henry VIII. from the mediaeval
council of Europe. It is easy to exaggerate the part played in the
matter by that great and human, though very pagan person, Martin Luther.
Henry VIII. was sincere in his hatred for the heresies of the German
monk, for in speculative opinions Henry was wholly Catholic; and the two
wrote against each other innumerable pages, largely consisting of terms
of abuse, which were pretty well deserved on both sides. But Luther was
not a Lutheran. He was a sign of the break-up of Catholicism; but he was
not a builder of Protestantism. The countries which became corporately
and democratically Protestant, Scotland, for instance, and Holland,
followed Calvin and not Luther. And Calvin was a Frenchman; an
unpleasant Frenchman, it is true, but one full of that French capacity
for creating official entities which can really act, and have a kind of
impersonal personality, such as the French Monarchy or the Terror.
Luther was an anarchist, and therefore a dreamer. He made that which is,
perhaps, in the long run, the fullest and most shining manifestation of
failure; he made a name. Calvin made an active, governing, persecuting