ilors; and instantly in the North seas
you are beaten among the ice, and before the very Gods of Nile, beaten
among the sand. Agriculture, then, by the hand or by the plough drawn
only by animals; and shepherd and pastoral husbandry, are to be the
chief schools of Englishmen. And this most royal academy of all
academies you have to open over all the land, purifying your heaths and
hills, and waters, and keeping them full of every kind of lovely natural
organism, in tree, herb, and living creature. All land that is waste and
ugly, you must redeem into ordered fruitfulness; all ruin, desolateness,
imperfectness of hut or habitation, you must do away with; and
throughout every village and city of your English dominion there must
not be a hand that cannot find a helper, nor a heart that cannot find a
comforter.

"How impossible!" I know, you are thinking. Ah! So far from impossible,
it is easy, it is natural, it is necessary, and I declare to you that,
sooner or later, it _must be done_, at our peril. If now our English
lords of land will fix this idea steadily before them; take the people
to their hearts, trust to their loyalty, lead their labor;--then indeed
there will be princes again in the midst of us, worthy of the island
throne,

"This royal throne of kings--this sceptred isle--
This fortress built by nature for herself
Against infection, and the hand of war;
This precious stone set in the silver sea;
This happy breed of men--this little world:
This other Eden--Demi-Paradise."

But if they refuse to do this, and hesitate and equivocate, clutching
through the confused catastrophe of all things only at what they can
still keep stealthily for themselves--their doom is nearer than even
their adversaries hope, and it will be deeper than even their despisers
dream.

That, believe me, is the work you have to do in England; and out of
England you have room for everything else you care to do. Are her
dominions in the world so narrow that she can find no place to spin
cotton in but Yorkshire? We may organize emigration into an infinite
power. We may assemble troops of the more adventurous and ambitious of
our youth; we may send them on truest foreign service, founding new
seats of authority, and centres of thought, in uncultivated and
unconquered lands; retaining the full affection to the native country no
less in our colonists than in our armies, teaching them to maintain
allegiance to their fat