n idea of his own strength
and has no reliance on his own judgment. Men obey a general impulse,
they bow before an external necessity, whether for resistance or action.
Individuality is dead; there is a want of inward and personal energy
in man; and that is what people feel and mean when they go about
complaining there is no faith.'

'You would hold, then,' said Henry Sydney, 'that the progress of public
liberty marches with the decay of personal greatness?'

'It would seem so.'

'But the majority will always prefer public liberty to personal
greatness,' said Lord Marney.

'But, without personal greatness, you never would have had public
liberty,' said Coningsby.

'After all, it is civilisation that you are kicking against,' said
Vavasour.

'I do not understand what you mean by civilisation,' said Tancred.

'The progressive development of the faculties of man,' said Vavasour.

'Yes, but what is progressive development?' said Sidonia; 'and what are
the faculties of man? If development be progressive, how do you
account for the state of Italy? One will tell you it is superstition,
indulgences, and the Lady of Loretto; yet three centuries ago, when all
these influences were much more powerful, Italy was the soul of Europe.
The less prejudiced, a Puseyite for example, like our friend Vavasour,
will assure us that the state of Italy has nothing to do with the
spirit of its religion, but that it is entirely an affair of commerce; a
revolution of commerce has convulsed its destinies. I cannot forget that
the world was once conquered by Italians who had no commerce. Has the
development of Western Asia been progressive? It is a land of tombs and
ruins. Is China progressive, the most ancient and numerous of existing
societies? Is Europe itself progressive? Is Spain a tithe as great as
she was? Is Germany as great as when she invented printing; as she was
under the rule of Charles the Fifth? France herself laments her relative
inferiority to the past. But England flourishes. Is it what you
call civilisation that makes England flourish? Is it the universal
development of the faculties of man that has rendered an island, almost
unknown to the ancients, the arbiter of the world? Clearly not. It is
her inhabitants that have done this; it is an affair of race. A Saxon
race, protected by an insular position, has stamped its diligent and
methodic character on the century. And when a superior race, with
a superior idea to work a