nobler, because for
once it did not wait to reason, but was content to be human, and to feel.

If those men who have been so heartily loyal of late--respectable,
business-like, manful persons, of a race in nowise given to sentimental
excitement--had been asked the cause of the intense feeling which they
have shown during the last few days, they would probably, most of them,
find some difficulty in giving it. Many would talk frankly of their
dread lest business should be interfered with; and no shame to them, if
they live by business. Others would speak of possible political
complications; and certainly no blame to them for dreading such. But
they would most of them speak, as frankly, of a deeper and less selfish
emotion. They would speak, not eloquently it may be, but earnestly, of
sympathy with a mother and a wife; of sympathy with youth and health
fighting untimely with disease and death--they would plead their common
humanity, and not be ashamed to have yielded to that touch of nature,
which makes the whole world kin. And that would be altogether to their
honour. Honourably and gracefully has that sympathy showed itself in
these realms of late. It has proved that in spite of all our
covetousness, all our luxury, all our frivolity, we are not cynics yet,
nor likely, thanks be to Almighty God, to become cynics; that however
encrusted and cankered with the cares and riches of this world, and
bringing, alas, very little fruit to perfection, the old British oak is
sound at the root--still human, still humane.

But there is, I believe, another and an almost deeper reason for the
strong emotion which has possessed these men; one most intimately bound
up with our national life, national unity, national history; one which
they can hardly express to themselves; one which some of them are half
ashamed to express, because they cannot render a reason for it; but which
is still there, deeply rooted in their souls; one of those old hereditary
instincts by which the histories of whole nations, whole races, are
guided, often half-unconsciously, and almost in spite of themselves; and
that is Loyalty, pure and simple Loyalty--the attachment to some royal
race, whom they conceived to be set over them by God. An attachment,
mark it well, founded not on their own will, but on grounds very complex,
and quite independent of them; an attachment which they did not make, but
found; an attachment which