ruth
and deliberateness I say this--I do not know anything more ludicrous
among the self-deceptions of well-meaning people than their notion of
patriotism, as requiring them to limit their efforts to the good of
their own country;--the notion that charity is a geographical virtue,
and that what it is holy and righteous to do for people on one bank of a
river, it is quite improper and unnatural to do for people on the other.
It will be a wonderful thing, some day or other, for the Christian world
to remember, that it went on thinking for two thousand years that
neighbours were neighbours at Jerusalem, but not at Jericho; a wonderful
thing for us English to reflect, in after-years, how long it was before
we could shake hands with anybody across that shallow salt wash, which
the very chalk-dust of its two shores whitens from Folkestone to
Ambleteuse.

82. Nor ought the motive of gratitude, as well as that of mercy, to be
without its influence on you, who have been the first to ask to see, and
the first to show to us, the treasures which this poor lost Italy has
given to England. Remember, all these things that delight you here were
hers--hers either in fact or in teaching; hers, in fact, are all the
most powerful and most touching paintings of old time that now glow upon
your walls; hers in teaching are all the best and greatest of descendant
souls--your Reynolds and your Gainsborough never could have painted but
for Venice; and the energies which have given the only true life to your
existing art were first stirred by voices of the dead that haunted the
Sacred Field of Pisa.

Well, all these motives for some definite course of action on our part
towards foreign countries rest upon very serious facts; too serious,
perhaps you will think, to be interfered with; for we are all of us in
the habit of leaving great things alone, as if Providence would mind
them, and attending ourselves only to little things which we know,
practically, Providence doesn't mind unless we do. We are ready enough
to give care to the growing of pines and lettuces, knowing that they
don't grow Providentially sweet or large unless we look after them; but
we don't give any care to the good of Italy or Germany, because we think
that they will grow Providentially happy without any of our meddling.

83. Let us leave the great things, then, and think of little things; not
of the destruction of whole provinces in war, which it may not be any
business