se of religion or of freedom,
have won for themselves a deathless glory, and for their nation those
privileges of free life and free institutions of which they are the
inheritors and possessors.

Nations are not to be judged by their size any more than individuals:

"it is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make Man better be."

For a nation to be great, it need not necessarily be big, though bigness
is often confounded with greatness. A nation may be very big in point of
territory and population and yet be devoid of true greatness. The people
of Israel were a small people, yet what a great life they developed,
and how powerful the influence they have exercised on the destinies of
mankind! Greece was not big: the entire population of Attica was less
than that of South Lancashire. Athens was less populous than New York;
and yet how great it was in art, in literature, in philosophy, and in
patriotism! [1022]

But it was the fatal weakness of Athens that its citizens had no true
family or home life, while its freemen were greatly outnumbered by its
slaves. Its public men were loose, if not corrupt, in morals. Its
women, even the most accomplished, were unchaste. Hence its fall became
inevitable, and was even more sudden than its rise.

In like manner the decline and fall of Rome was attributable to the
general corruption of its people, and to their engrossing love of
pleasure and idleness--work, in the later days of Rome, being regarded
only as fit for slaves. Its citizens ceased to pride themselves on the
virtues of character of their great forefathers; and the empire fell
because it did not deserve to live. And so the nations that are idle and
luxurious--that "will rather lose a pound of blood," as old Burton says,
"in a single combat, than a drop of sweat in any honest labour"--must
inevitably die out, and laborious energetic nations take their place.

When Louis XIV. asked Colbert how it was that, ruling so great and
populous a country as France, he had been unable to conquer so small a
country as Holland, the minister replied: "Because, Sire, the greatness
of a country does not depend upon the extent of its territory, but
on the character of its people. It is because of the industry, the
frugality, and the energy of the Dutch that your Majesty has found them
so difficult to overcome."

It is also related of Spinola and Richardet, the ambassadors sent by the
King of Spain to negotiate a treaty at the