A conflict of opposing
ambitions wears out the moral no less than the material forces of a
people, but the ferment of hostile ideas and convictions may realize
resources of character which before were only potential, may transform a
merely gregarious multitude into a nation proud in its strength, sensible
of the dignity and duty which strength involves, and groping after a
common ideal. Some such transformation had been wrought or was going on
in England. For the first time a distinct image of her was disengaging
itself from the tangled blur of tradition and association in the minds of
her children, and it was now only that her great poet could speak
exultingly to an audience that would understand him with a passionate
sympathy, of
"This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in a silver sea,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
England, bound in with the triumphant sea!"
Such a period can hardly recur again, but something like it, something
pointing back to similar producing causes, is observable in the revival
of English imaginative literature at the close of the last and in the
early years of the present century. Again, after long fermentation, there
was a war of principles, again the national consciousness was heightened
and stung by a danger to the national existence, and again there was a
crop of great poets and heroic men.
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