the Continent not to be essentially a part of the European system,
England has yet been a peculiar and semi-independent part of it. In
European progress she has often acted as a balancing and moderating
power. She has been the asylum of vanquished ideas and parties. In the
seventeenth century, when absolutism and the Catholic reaction prevailed
on the Continent, she was the chief refuge of Protestantism and
political liberty. When the French Revolution swept Europe, she threw
herself into the anti-revolutionary scale. The tricolor has gone nearly
round the world, at least nearly round Europe; but on the flag of
England still remains the religious symbol of the era before the
Revolution.

The insular arrogance of the English character is a commonplace joke. It
finds, perhaps, its strongest expression in the saying of Milton that
the manner of God is to reveal things first to His Englishmen. It has
made Englishmen odious even to those who, like the Spaniards, have
received liberation or protection from English hands. It stimulated the
desperate desire to see France rid of the "Goddams" which inspired Joan
of Arc. For an imperial people it is a very unlucky peculiarity, since
it precludes not only fusion but sympathy and almost intercourse with
the subject races. The kind heart of Lord Elgin, when he was Governor-
General of India, was shocked by the absolute want of sympathy or bond
of any kind, except love of conquest, between the Anglo-Indian and the
native, and the gulf apparently, instead of being filled up, now yawns
wider than ever.

It is needless to dwell on anything so obvious as the effect of an
insular position in giving birth to commerce and developing the
corresponding elements of political character. The British Islands are
singularly well placed for trade with both hemispheres; in them, more