Again, many of the oriental or native races respect our monarchy as an institution common and congenial both to east and west. Thus the line of Egbert affiliates antagonistic ages and sundered worlds.
But, though this is the case at present, we must remember that such sentiments are of comparatively recent date. It may fairly be said that from the close of the sixteenth to the close of the nineteenth century none of our monarchs, except Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria, had the spirit calculated thus to attract. For between the reigns of these queens neither the House of Stuart nor the House of Hanover produced princes either capable of such insight or otherwise than indifferent and even hostile to such sympathies.
If we revert, then, from these representatives of the nation to the nation itself, and ask whether our ascendency may be ascribed to the fascination of our national characteristics, such an inquiry can only be made to be put aside. As Lord Salisbury, commenting on the "root of bitterness against England" so implanted in foreign soil, has said, "This country has been cast out with reproach in almost every literature in Europe."
If, not contenting ourselves with so general a verdict, we look more closely at the European view of England as expressed in its literature, it seems that we have been generally adjudged unreliable, proud, selfish, and quarrelsome. As far back as the seventeenth century the first of these
