his duty;" recognising
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; 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.

30. 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 answer acknowledged need: but it
is the fatallest form of error in English youths to hide their hardihood
till it fades for lack of sunshine, and to act in disdain of purpose,
till all purpose is vain. It is not by deliberate, but by careless
selfishness; not by compromise with evil, but by dull following of good,
that the weight of national evil increases upon us daily. Break through
at least this pretence of existence; determine what you will be, and
what you would win. You will not decide wrongly if you will resolve to
decide at all. Were even the choice between lawless pleasure and loyal
suffering, you would not, I believe, choose basely. But your trial is
not so sharp. It is between drifting in confused wreck among the
castaways of Fortune, who condemns to assured ruin those who know not
either how to resist he