her foot on, and there teaching these her
colonists that their chief virtue is to be fidelity to their country,
and that their first aim is to be to advance the power of England by
land and sea: and that, though they live on a distant plot of ground,
they are no more to consider themselves therefore disfranchised from
their native land, than the sailors of her fleets do, because they
float on distant waves. So that literally, these colonies must be
fastened fleets; and every man of them must be under authority of
captains and officers, whose better command is to be over fields and
streets instead of ships of the line; and England, in these her
motionless navies (or, in the true and mightiest sense, motionless
_churches_, ruled by pilots on the Galilean lake[179] of all the
world), is to "expect every man to do his duty";[180] recognizing
that duty is indeed possible no less in peace than war; and that if we
can get men, for little pay, to cast themselves against cannon-mouths
for love of England, we may find men also who will plough and sow for
her, who will behave kindly and righteously for her, who will bring up
their children to love her, and who will gladden themselves in the
brightness of her glory, more than in all the light of tropic skies.

But that they may be able to do this, she must make her own majesty
stainless; she must give them thoughts of their home of which they can
be proud. The England who is to be mistress of half the earth, cannot
remain herself a heap of cinders, trampled by contending and miserable
crowds; she must yet again become the England she was once, and in all
beautiful ways,--more: so happy, so secluded, and so pure, that in her
sky--polluted by no unholy clouds--she may be able to spell rightly of
every star that heaven doth show; and in her fields, ordered and wide
and fair, of every herb that sips the dew;[181] and under the green
avenues of her enchanted garden, a sacred Circe, true Daughter of the
Sun, she must guide the human arts, and gather the divine knowledge, of
distant nations, transformed from savageness to manhood, and redeemed
from despairing into Peace.

You think that an impossible ideal. Be it so; refuse to accept it if
you will; but see that you form your own in its stead. All that I ask
of you is to have a fixed purpose of some kind for your country and
yourselves; no matter how restricted, so that it be fixed and
unselfish. I know what stout hearts are in you, to a