ered nation, England gives all,
France nothing," defines his position (_Parl. Hist._ xxxvi, pp. 1-191).
Windham was one of the few statesmen who, even before the consulate had
passed into the Empire, understood the gravity of our relations to
France. Every month added proof of the accuracy of his presentiments,
but once understood by England there was no faltering. Prussia,
Austria, the Czar, all acknowledged the new Empire, and made peace or
alliance with its despot, but from the rupture of the Peace of Amiens
England waged a war without truce till Elba and Ste. Helene.

LECTURE III

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAL

[_Tuesday, May_ 22_nd_, 1900]

In the history of the religion of an imperial race, it is not only the
development of the ideal within the consciousness of the race itself
that we have to consider, but the advance or decline in its conceptions
of the religions of the peoples within the zone of its influence or
dominion. For such a study the materials are only in appearance less
satisfactory than for the study of the political ideal of a race. It
is penetratingly observed by La Rochefoucauld that the history of the
Fronde can never be accurately written, because the persons in that
drama were actuated by motives so base that even in the height of
performance each actor of the deeds was striving to make a record of
them impossible. The reflection might be extended to other political
revolutions, and to other incidents than the Fronde. Ranke's
indefatigable zeal, his anxiety "in history always to see the thing as
in very deed it enacted itself," never carried him nearer his object
than the impression of an impression. No State papers, no documents,
the most authentic, can take us further.

But in this very strife, this zeal for the True for ever baffled yet
for ever renewed, one of the noblest attributes of the present age
discovers itself. Indisputable facts are often the sepulchres of
thought, and truth after all, not certainty, is the historian's goal.
It might even be urged that the records of religion, the martyr's
resolution, the saint's fervour, the reformer's aspiration, the
prophet's faith, offer a surer hope of attaining this goal than the
records of politics.

Sec. 1. RELIGION AND IMPERIALISM

Religion forms an integral part of a nation's life, and in the
development of the ideal of Imperial Britain on its religious side, the
same transforming forces, the same energ