lace to consider the ultimate reaction of
this sacrifice upon the romance and the realities of England.

I have never counted it a patriotic part to plaster my own country with
conventional and unconvincing compliments; but no one can understand
England who does not understand that such an episode as this, in which
she was so clearly in the wrong, has yet been ultimately linked up with
a curious quality in which she is rather unusually in the right. No one
candidly comparing us with other countries can say we have specially
failed to build the sepulchres of the prophets we stoned, or even the
prophets who stoned us. The English historical tradition has at least a
loose large-mindedness which always finally falls into the praise not
only of great foreigners but great foes. Often along with much injustice
it has an illogical generosity; and while it will dismiss a great people
with mere ignorance, it treats a great personality with hearty
hero-worship. There are more examples than one even in this chapter, for
our books may well make out Wallace a better man than he was, as they
afterwards assigned to Washington an even better cause than he had.
Thackeray smiled at Miss Jane Porter's picture of Wallace, going into
war weeping with a cambric pocket-handkerchief; but her attitude was
more English and not less accurate. For her idealization was, if
anything, nearer the truth than Thackeray's own notion of a mediaevalism
of hypocritical hogs-in-armour. Edward, who figures as a tyrant, could
weep with compassion; and it is probable enough that Wallace wept, with
or without a pocket-handkerchief. Moreover, her romance was a reality,
the reality of nationalism; and she knew much more about the Scottish
patriots ages before her time than Thackeray did about the Irish
patriots immediately under his nose. Thackeray was a great man; but in
that matter he was a very small man, and indeed an invisible one. The
cases of Wallace and Washington and many others are here only mentioned,
however, to suggest an eccentric magnanimity which surely balances some
of our prejudices. We have done many foolish things, but we have at
least done one fine thing; we have whitewashed our worst enemies. If we
have done this for a bold Scottish raider and a vigorous Virginian
slave-holder, it may at least show that we are not likely to fail in our
final appreciation of the one white figure in the motley processions of
war. I believe there to be in modern E