may remember
him as the poet who passed on to them the message of his spiritual
forefather, Shelley:

'O man, hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way;
And the billows of clouds that round thee roll
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,
When heaven and hell shall leave thee free
To the universe of destiny.'

FOOTNOTES:

[31] _The Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne._ In six volumes. With a
dedicatory epistle to Theodore Watts-Dunton. London, Chatto and
Windus, 1904.--_Edinburgh Review_, October 1906.

[32] 'Out, hyperbolic fiend! how vexest thou this man?'--_Twelfth
Night._

[33] Dedicatory Preface.

[34] Dedicatory Preface.

[35] _Holiday and Other Poems_, 1906.

[36] Note on Poetry, p. 144.

[37] _Essays and Studies_, 1867.

FRONTIERS ANCIENT AND MODERN[38]

It may be doubted whether many students of history are aware that the
demarcation of frontiers, of precise lines dividing the possessions of
adjacent sovereignties and distinguishing their respective
jurisdictions, is a practice of modern origin. At the present time it
is the essential outcome of territorial disputes, it is the operation
by which they are formally settled at the end of a war: it registers
conquests and cessions; and occasionally it has been the result of
pacific arbitration. Among compact and civilised nationalities an
exterior frontier, thus carefully defined, remains, like the human
skin, the most sensitive and irritable part of their corporate
constitution. The slightest infringement of it by a neighbouring Power
is instantly resented; to break through it violently is to be
inflicting a wound which may draw blood; and even interference with
any petty State that may lie between the frontiers of two great
governments is regarded as a serious menace.

The whole continent of Europe has now been laid out upon this system
of strict delimitation. Yet it may be maintained that among the
kingdoms of the ancient world no such exact and recognised
distribution of territory existed; and, further, that up to a very
recent period none of the great empires in Asia had any boundaries
that could be traced on a map. Their landmarks were incessantly
shifting forward or backward as their military strength rose or fell;
and where their territories marched with some rough mountainous tract
inhabited by warlike tribes, they were perpetually plagued by petty
warfare on