the national councils, and would have made an enemy deadly and permanent—permanent until such time as the question were set at rest for ever by some catastrophe nearer home and more fatal than Queenstown. But the rising generation among whose pioneers Lesbia Newman was one, cared for no imperialism which did not benefit the races ruled; the influence of her and her like was for peace and progress, without regard to defeats or triumphs of arms belonging to the woeful past. And the nation, fitted by the trials of Revolution to imbibe the better spirit thus engendered, soon found that the source of apprehended ruin had, on the contrary, become a source of strength, the resort and the home of sound, if retrospective, patriotism and more genuine conservative instincts than during that turbulent period when it was formerly a portion of dominions on which the sun, notwithstanding the catastrophe, had not even now begun to set.
Besides, over the head of territorial questions and dynastic disputes, a feeling was gaining ascendancy, that the old-fashioned patriotism, as meaning the love of one’s country at the expense of other countries, is not so very exalted a virtue after all; that the sympathies of modern man should be cosmopolitan. For if the worship of womanhood in its apotheosis was to supersede that of the old gods, be they one, three, or more, how could any portion of the apotheosis be antagonistic to another portion? And if not, where would be room for that rivalry between nations which the old idea of patriotism implied? Before the establishment of this common bond, there had been no more fertile source of strife than religous belief; but if all creeds were to be practically fused into one, international hostility could never more take any but the most sordid ground. So the less said about patriotism in future the better. Nobler aims and higher ideals were now coming to the front; and as the
