The stages of growth are still more clearly marked in English history. That national self-consciousness which to-day gives itself the mission of defending the liberties of mankind, and which stands in the breach undaunted and indomitable, began with that mere insular patriotism which finds such moving expression in the paean of Shakespeare: This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, . . . . . . . This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, . . . . . . . This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land. This sense of itself had been born only in the thirteenth century, and at first the growing consciousness of national power, though it soon developed an assurance of special protection--"the favour of the love of Heaven," wrote Milton in his "Areopagitica," "we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending towards us"--was tempered by that humility still to be seen in the liturgy of its Church, which ascribes its victories not to the might of the English arm, but to the favour of God. But one hundred and twenty-five years after Shakespeare, the land which the Elizabethan translators of the Bible called "Our Sion," and whose mission, according to Milton, had been to sound forth "the first tidings and trumpet of reformation to all Europe," had sunk to the swaggering militarism that found expression in "Rule, Britannia." When Britain first at Heaven's command Arose from out the azure main, This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sung this strain: Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never will be slaves. The nations not so blest as thee Must in their turn to tyrants fall; While thou shalt flourish, great and free, The dread and envy of them all. To thee belongs the rural reign, Thy cities shall with commerce shine: All thine shall be the subject main, And every shore it circles, thine.