It is the most fruitful and the most beneficent of exaltations. It bridges the ford, as Kipling has so finely said; it imposes law; it is creating a new and happy world from the west of Ireland to Pùtti-Ghâl. There is something awful and mysterious about it. As it sweeps by, this missionary creed, this determination and confidence of a whole people, a plain man’s spirit feeling it comes very near to the Hosts of the Lord. On Monday the 31st, the shares were at eight and a quarter, and there they stopped, up, poised upon a summit, as genius poises upon the columns of conquerors: hovering in bronze. It is not in humanity—even in ours—to bear these moods for ever undisturbed. Some moments of doubt, but not of despair—perhaps it is juster to say some moments of repose will overtake the temper of the firmest race. On Tuesday, the 1st of September, the shares were at six and three-quarters. On Thursday, the 3rd, they were a fraction below five. But something rallied in the soul of England; the country clergy read in the _Standard_ of Saturday morning with something of the throb a trumpet peal evokes, that M.D.D.’s had gone ’way up over seven at the close of the yesterday’s market. By what avenue shall I approach the analysis of that vast agglomeration of subconscious national forces? Any single method seems crude and petty in the presence of such a complex and Overpowering Whole ... perhaps it is most reasonable to follow the fortunes of one block of shares. For, when great states are fermenting towards ripeness, men are but atoms whirled hither and thither. Economic necessities drive them, and these necessities in their turn are but the expression of some historic will.... Yes, it is better to follow the fortunes of a block of shares than of an individual shareholder: for men pass, but the Company remains.... I will consider the one thousand shares originally allotted to the first cousin of the Secretary for the Fine Arts.