towards the stature of grace. It was man who could suffer, who
could reign; since he only who knows his weakness, dares to be
strong. . . . _Vicisti Galilaee!_

(II)

Slowly then he had come to see that, as had been told him long
before, the kingdoms of this world were already passing into the
hands of a higher dominion--and this was the significance of this
microcosm of those kingdoms that now lay before his bodily eyes.

There, opposite to him, in the blaze of sunlight, stood the
throne that for a thousand years had faced the throne of the
Fisherman, now as a dependant, now as a rebel--stable and fixed
at last in its allegiance. Here beneath him lay London, the
finest city in the world, where, if ever anywhere, had been tried
the experiment of a religion resting on the strength of a
national isolation instead of an universal supernationalism;--it
had been tried, and found wanting. Beneath him lay his own
cathedral, already blazing within like a treasure-cave, ready for
its consummation, without, tranquil and strong; behind him the
ancient Abbey once again in the hands of its children; far away
to the right, seeming strangely near in this lucid atmosphere,
hung, like a bubble, the great dome below which, as he knew,
stood the first basilican altar in London, newly consecrated as a
sign of its papal dignities and privileges. And beyond that again
London; and yet again London, a wonderful white city, gleaming at
a thousand points with cross and spire and dome and pinnacle,
patched with green in square and park and open space--London come
back again at last to her ancient faith and her old prosperity.

But this was not all.

For he knew and his imagination circled out wider and wider that
he might take it in--he knew that Europe itself at last dwelt
again with one mind in her house. There beyond the
channel--across which ten minutes ago, as the thunder of guns had
told him, the Arbiter of the World had come at last with his
train of kings behind him--there lay the huge continent, the
great plains of France, the forests of Germany, the giant tumbled
debris of Switzerland, the warm and radiant coasts, the ancient
world-stage of Italy, passionate Spain which never yet had wholly
lost her love. There all lay, at one at last, each her own, with
her own liberties and customs and traditions, yet each in the
service of her neighbour, since each and all alike lay beneath
the Peace of God.

Still wider fled his though