the shame of foreign
defeat, so that Rheims, Chatillon, Wakefield, Barnet, and Tewkesbury,
with other less remembered woes, seem like moments in one long tempest
of fiery misery that breaks over England, stilled at last in the
desperate lists at Bosworth.

This period neglected, perhaps wisely neglected, by the political
historian, is yet the period to which we must turn for the secret
sources of that revolution in its political character which, furthered
by the incidents that fortune reserved for her, has gradually fashioned
out of the England of the Angevins the Imperial Britain of to-day.

In England it is possible to trace the operation of this transforming
power, which I have compared to the transforming power of tragedy, in a
very complete manner. It reveals itself, for instance, in two
different modes or aspects, which, for the sake of clearness, may be
dealt with separately. In the first of these aspects, deeply and
permanently affecting the national consciousness, which as we have seen
is distinct from the sum of the units composing it, the law of tragedy
appears as the influence of suffering, of "terror" in the mystic
transcendental sense of the word, of reverent fear, yet with it, serene
and dauntless courage. This influence now makes itself felt in English
politics, in English religion, in English civic life.

If we consider the history of England prior to this epoch, it might at
first sight appear as if here were a race emphatically not destined for
empire. Not in her dealings with conquered France, not in Ireland, not
in Scotland, does England betray, in her national consciousness, any
sympathy even with that aspiration towards concrete justice which marks
the imperial character of Persia and of Rome. England seems fated to
add but one record more to the tedious story of unintelligent tyrant
States, illustrating the theme--+hubris phyteuei tyrannon+--"insolence
begets the tyrant!" Even to her contemporary, Venice, the mind turns
from England with relief; whilst in the government of Khorassan by the
earlier Abbassides we encounter an administration singularly free from
the defects that vitiate Imperial Rome at its zenith. And now in the
days of the first Tudors all England's efforts at empire have come to
nothing. Knut's empire sinks with him; Norman and Plantagenet follow;
but of their imperial policy the dying words of Mary Tudor, "Calais
will be found graven on my heart," form the epitaph. It