In Tennyson's _Princess_ we find an echo of these words, where the
poet, in contrasting England and France, monarchy and republic--much
to the disadvantage of the latter--says:
God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off,
And keeps our Britain, whole within herself,
A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled.
But at a later date, in an "Epilogue to the Queen," at the close of
the _Idylls of the King_, Tennyson has said farewell to his narrow
insular views, and speaks of
Our ocean-empire with her boundless homes
For ever-broadening England, and her throne
In our vast Orient, and one isle, one isle,
That knows not her own greatness: if she knows
And dreads it we are fall'n.
He had come to recognize the necessity for guarding and maintaining
the Empire, with all its greatness and all its burdens, as part of
this country's destiny.
It is a little difficult to realize that the British Empire, as we
now know it, has been created within only the last hundred years.
Beaconsfield, in his novel _Contarini Fleming_, describes the
difference between ancient and modern colonies. "A modern colony,"
he says, "is a commercial enterprise, an ancient colony was a
political sentiment." In other words, colonies were a matter of
'cash' to modern nations, such as the Spaniards: in the time of the
ancients there was a close tie, a feeling of kinship, and the colonist
was not looked upon with considerable contempt and dislike by the
Mother Country.
Pages:
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116