complicated experience. That consciousness separates them from other nations who do not share those interests, and are consequently termed foreigners.
Our current conceptions of Europe and of European nations have grown up to account for a state of things which has gradually developed from something in which those conceptions had no place. When the northern folk invaded the Roman Empire, their leader, in the first exuberance of strength and spirits, proposed to turn Romania into Gothia. But when he learned that "the Goths would obey no laws on account of the unrestrained barbarism of their character, yet that it was wrong to deprive the commonwealth of laws, without which it would cease to be a commonwealth," he resolved to restore the Roman name to its old estate by adding Gothic vigour to its declining power. This conception of a united commonwealth of Romania corresponded to the needs and possibilities of the time, and found its expression in the theory of the Empire and the Papacy. Of this commonwealth the English formed part, and fully accepted all its benefits; but they seem to have set to work almost at once to creep out of their obligations towards it. No sooner was England united under one ruler than there was some sort of feeling that it was a kind of empire by itself, and was not subject to any foreign superior. I do not attach undue weight to the assumption of the imperial title by early kings; but it meant something, and indicated a native conception which steadily grew, till it found its final expression in the document which announced that England had entirely shaken off the mediæval theory of politics: "Where by divers
