ime, which was often exaggerated into a superstition; but never--thanks
to their own innate force--degenerated into a bondage.

Pardon me this somewhat dry prooemium; and pardon me, too, if it leads me
on to a compliment to the American people, which I trust you will not
think impertinent.

For I have seen, and seen with joy, a like spirit in those Americans whom
it has been my good fortune to meet in my own land. I mean this:--That I
found in them, however self-teaching and self-determining they might be,
that genial reverence for antiquity which I hold to be the sign of a
truly generous--that is in the right sense of the grand old word--a truly
high-bred, nature. I have been touched, and deeply touched, at finding
so many of them, on landing for the first time at Liverpool, hurrying off
to our quaint old city of Chester to gaze on its old girdle of walls and
towers; Roman, Mediaeval, Caroline; its curious 'Rows' of overhanging
houses; its fragments of Roman baths and inscriptions; its modest little
Cathedral; and the--really very few--relics of English history which it
contains. Even two banners of an old Cheshire regiment which had been in
the Peninsular war were almost as interesting, to some, as an illuminated
Bible of the early Middle Age. More than once have I had to repress the
enthusiasm of some charming lady and say, 'But this is nothing. Do not
waste your admiration here. Go on. See the British Museum, its marbles
and its manuscripts--See the French Cathedrals; the ruins of Provence and
Italy; the galleries of Florence, Naples, Rome.'

'Ah, but you must remember,' was the answer, 'these are the first old
things I ever saw.'

A mere sentiment? Yes: but as poets know, and statesmen ought to know,
it is by sentiment, when well directed--as by sorrow, when well used--by
sentiment, I say, great nations live. When sentiment dies out, and mere
prosaic calculation of loss and profit takes its place, then comes a
Byzantine epoch, a Chinese epoch, decrepitude, and slow decay.

And so the eagerness of those generous young souls was to me a good
augury for the future, of them, and of their native land. They seemed to
me--and I say again it touched me, often deeply--to be realising to
themselves their rightful place in the community of the civilised nations
of all lands, and of all times--realising to themselves that they were
indeed

Heirs of all the ages, foremost in the ranks of time;

and minded,