remarkable that at the same moment Paris contemplated the funeral of the
Italian de Brazza and the death of the Cuban Heredia. It is probable
that those of us who are still young will live to see either name at the
head of a new tradition. Heredia proved it possible not so much to
imitate as to recapture the secure tradition of an older time. Perhaps
the truest generalization that can be made with regard to the French
people is to say that they especially in Western Europe (whose quality
it is ever to transform itself but never to die) discover new springs of
vitality after every period of defeat and aridity which they are
compelled to cross. Heredia will prove in the near future a capital
example of this power. He will increase silently in reputation until we,
in old age, shall be surprised to find our sons and grandsons taking him
for granted and speaking of him as one speaks of the Majores, of the
permanent lights of poetry.




Normandy and the Normans


There is no understanding a country unless one gets to know the nature
of its sub-units. In some way not easy to comprehend, impossible to
define, and yet very manifest, each of the great national organisms of
which Christendom is built up is itself a body of many regions whose
differences and interaction endow it with a corporate life. No one could
understand the past of England who did not grasp the local genius of the
counties--Lancashire, cut off eastward by the Pennines, southward by the
belt of marsh, with no natural entry save by the gate of Stockport;
Sussex, which was and is a bishopric and a kingdom; Kent, Devon, the