over their own hearts
it was all-powerful. The very vividness with which they conceive the
ideal, and the noble constancy with which they pursue it, link the high
purposes of these two men to the purposes of Milton, of Cromwell, of
Selden, and of Falkland. The perfect State, the scope of its laws,
government, religion, to each is manifest, though the path that leads
thither may seem now through Monarchy, now through a Republic, or at
other times indistinct, or lost altogether in the bewildering maze of
adverse interests. From the remote nature of their quest arises much
of the apparent inconsistency in the political life of that era. The
parting of Pym and Strafford acquires an added, a tragic poignancy from
the consciousness in the heart of each that the star which leads him on
is the star of England's destiny.

Hence, too, the suspicion attached to men like Selden and Falkland of
being mere theoricians in advance of their time,--an accusation fatal
to statesmanship. But the advent of that age was marked by so much
that was novel in religion,[9] in State, in foreign and domestic
policy, the new direction of imperial enterprise, the unity of two
nations, ancient and apparently irreconcilable foes, the jarring
creeds, convulsing the life of both these nations, for both were deeply
religious, that it were rash to accuse of rashness any actor in those
times. But it is the adventurous daring of their spirits, the swift
glance searching the horizons of the future, it is that very energy of
the soul of which I have spoken which render these statesmen obnoxious
to the suspicion of theory. The temper of Selden, indeed, in harmony
with the thoughtful and melancholy cast of his features, disposed him
to subtlety and niceness of argument, and with a division pending,
often deprived his words of a force which homelier orators could
command. And yet his career is a presage of the future. Toleration in
religion, freedom of the press, the supremacy of the seas, the _habeas
corpus_, are all lines along which his thought moves, not so much
distancing as leading the practical statesmen of his generation. And
there is a curious fitness in the dedication to him in 1649 of Edward
Pococke's Arabic studies, which nearly a century and a half later were
to form the basis of Gibbon's great chapters. But the year of _Mare
Clausum_ is at once the greatest in Selden's life, and the last months
of greatness in the life of his royal maste