actions or no, I am sure it is
so in States to honour them."--SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.

There is one story of the wars of Rome which I have always very much
envied for England. Germanicus was going down at the head of the legions
into a dangerous river--on the opposite bank the woods were full of
Germans--when there flew out seven great eagles which seemed to marshal
the Romans on their way; they did not pause or waver, but disappeared
into the forest where the enemy lay concealed. "Forward!" cried
Germanicus, with a fine rhetorical inspiration, "Forward! and follow the
Roman birds." It would be a very heavy spirit that did not give a leap
at such a signal, and a very timorous one that continued to have any
doubt of success. To appropriate the eagles as fellow-countrymen was to
make imaginary allies of the forces of nature; the Roman Empire and its
military fortunes, and along with these the prospects of those
individual Roman legionaries now fording a river in Germany, looked
altogether greater and more hopeful. It is a kind of illusion easy to
produce. A particular shape of cloud, the appearance of a particular
star, the holiday of some particular saint--anything, in short, to
remind the combatants of patriotic legends or old successes--may be
enough to change the issue of a pitched battle; for it gives to the one
party a feeling that Right and the larger interests are with them.

If an Englishman wishes to have such a feeling, it must be about the
sea. The lion is nothing to us; he has not been taken to the hearts of
the people, and naturalised as an English emblem. We know right well
that a lion would fall foul of us as grimly as he would of a Frenchman
or a Moldavian Jew, and we do not carry him before us in the smoke of
battle. But the sea is our approach and bulwark; it has been the scene
of our greatest triumphs and dangers; and we are accustomed in lyrical
strains to claim it as our own. The prostrating experiences of
foreigners between Calais and Dover have always an agreeable side to
English prepossessions. A man from Bedfordshire, who does not know one
end of the ship from the other until she begins to move, swaggers among
such persons with a sense of hereditary nautical experience. To suppose
yourself endowed with natural parts for the sea because you are the
countryman of Blake and mighty Nelson is perhaps just as unwarrantable
as to imagine Scotch extraction a sufficient guarantee that you will
look well