resque candour. In a very interesting poem, he
says that--

"If England was what England seems"

--that is, weak and inefficient; if England were not what (as he
believes) she is--that is, powerful and practical--

"How quick we'd chuck 'er! But she ain't!"

He admits, that is, that his devotion is the result of a criticism, and
this is quite enough to put it in another category altogether from the
patriotism of the Boers, whom he hounded down in South Africa. In
speaking of the really patriotic peoples, such as the Irish, he has
some difficulty in keeping a shrill irritation out of his language. The
frame of mind which he really describes with beauty and nobility is the
frame of mind of the cosmopolitan man who has seen men and cities.

"For to admire and for to see,
For to be'old this world so wide."

He is a perfect master of that light melancholy with which a man looks
back on having been the citizen of many communities, of that light
melancholy with which a man looks back on having been the lover of many
women. He is the philanderer of the nations. But a man may have learnt
much about women in flirtations, and still be ignorant of first love; a
man may have known as many lands as Ulysses, and still be ignorant of
patriotism.

Mr. Rudyard Kipling has asked in a celebrated epigram what they can
know of England who know England only. It is a far deeper and sharper
question to ask, "What can they know of England who know only the
world?" for the world does not include England any more than it
includes the Church. The moment we care for anything deeply, the
world--that is, all the other miscellaneous interests--becomes our
enemy. Christians showed it when they talked of keeping one's self
"unspotted from the world;" but lovers talk of it just as much when
they talk of the "world well lost." Astronomically speaking, I
understand that England is situated on the world; similarly, I suppose
that the Church was a part of the world, and even the lovers
inhabitants of that orb. But they all felt a certain truth--the truth
that the moment you love anything the world becomes your foe. Thus Mr.
Kipling does certainly know the world; he is a man of the world, with
all the narrowness that belongs to those imprisoned in that planet. He
knows England as an intelligent English gentleman knows Venice. He has
been to England a great many times; he has stopped there for long
visits. But he does not belong to it,