d a conviction, which I will not believe to be a dream, that
the destinies have still in store for her a yet grander future. The
units of us come and go; the British Empire, the globe itself and all
that it inherits, will pass away as a vision.

[Greek: essetai emar hotan pot' ololei Hilios hire,
kai Priamos kai laos eummelio Priamoio.]

The day will be when Ilium's towers may fall,
And large-limbed[17] Priam, and his people all.

But that day cannot be yet. Out of the now half-organic fragments may
yet be formed one living Imperial power, with a new era of beneficence
and usefulness to mankind. The English people are spread far and wide.
The sea is their dominion, and their land is the finest portion of the
globe. It is theirs now, it will be theirs for ages to come if they
remain themselves unchanged and keep the heart and temper of their
forefathers.

Naught shall make us rue,
If England to herself do rest but true.

The days pass, and our ship flies fast upon her way.

[Greek: glaukon huper oidma kuanochroa te kumaton
rhothia polia thalassas.]

How perfect the description! How exactly in those eight words Euripides
draws the picture of the ocean; the long grey heaving swell, the darker
steel-grey on the shadowed slope of the surface waves, and the foam on
their breaking crests. Our thoughts flow back as we gaze to the times
long ago, when the earth belonged to other races as it now belongs to
us. The ocean is the same as it was. Their eyes saw it as we see it:

Time writes no wrinkle on that azure brow.

Nor is the ocean alone the same. Human nature is still vexed with the
same problems, mocked with the same hopes, wandering after the same
illusions. The sea affected the Greeks as it affects us, and was equally
dear to them. It was a Greek who said, 'The sea washes off all the ills
of men;' the 'stainless one' as AEschylus called it--the eternally pure.
On long voyages I take Greeks as my best companions. I had Plato with me
on my way home from the West Indies. He lived and wrote in an age like
ours, when religion had become a debatable subject on which every one
had his opinion, and democracy was master of the civilised world, and
the Mediterranean states were running wild after liberty, preparatory to
the bursting of the bubble. Looking out on such a world Plato left
thoughts behind him the very language of which is as full of
application to our