The wisdom of this measure has been abundantly justified by the results--a growth in all that makes for material prosperity, a richer intellectual life, and peace. After centuries of anarchy and misrule and {297} aimless upheavals, Scotland had reached a haven. Her triumph has been a moral and an intellectual triumph, not political. In intellectual splendor her people may challenge the world, and in moral elevation and in righteousness they will find few peers. But candor compels the admission that Scotland has no more than Ireland proved herself capable of maintaining a separate nationality. Without the excuse of her sister island, never the victim of a foreign conquest, left to herself, with her own kings and government for nearly a thousand years, what do we see? A brave, spirited, warlike race with a passion for liberty dominated and actually effaced by vicious kings, intriguing regents, and a corrupt nobility; only once, under Wallace and Bruce, rising to heroic proportions, and then to throw off a foreign yoke and under leaders who were both of Norman extraction. Never once were her native oppressors checked or awed; never once did an outraged people unite under a great political leader; and only one sovereign after Bruce (James I.) can be said to have had great kingly qualities. What are we to conclude? {298} Are we not compelled to believe that Scotland reached her highest destiny when she was joined to England, and when she bestowed her leaven of righteousness and her moral strength and the genius of her sons, and received in exchange the political protection of her great neighbor? {299} SOVEREIGNS AND RULERS OF ENGLAND. ANGLO-SAXON LINE Reign began A.D. Egbert ........................................... 800 Ethelwulf ........................................ 836 Ethelbald ........................................ 857 Ethelbert ........................................ 860 Ethelred ......................................... 866 Alfred ........................................... 871 Edward the Elder ................................. 901 Athelstan ........................................ 925 Edmund ........................................... 940 Edred ............................................ 946 Edwy ............................................. 955 Edgar ............................................ 957 Edward the Martyr ................................ 975 Ethelred the Unready ............................. 978 Edmund Ironside .................................. 1016 DANISH LINE Canute ........................................... 1017 Harold I ......................................... 1030 Hardi Canute ..................................... 1039 SAXON LINE