As for the dread of war, which is the most important of all drawbacks to national happiness, the inferiority of the English in land armies subjects them to occasional panics about the possibility of a French invasion, and has led them, as all know, to forbid the execution of the Channel Tunnel, though they would not have been more exposed by its means than the French to an English invasion. Since then, it has been conclusively proved that the use of the steam-engine in warships has made the offensive stronger than the defensive by permitting the choice of a landing-place, and therefore much of the former security of an insular kingdom has been taken away. The feeling that invasion was possible formerly afflicted only the timid, but now the bravest are fully aware that it is so, and sleep, like good watch-dogs, with an eye open. [Sidenote: The Dread of War in France.] The position of France is still more precarious. On both sides of a perfectly artificial frontier two armies have been watching each other for seventeen years as they watch for a night in war-time. The slightest imprudence of one or the other Government, even the zeal of some subordinate official, may at any moment precipitate that conflict which both alike look forward to, and which both nations equally dread. It is impossible, under such circumstances, that life in France can be happy. The war cloud is perpetually visible on the eastern horizon. Sometimes it swells and covers half the sky and darkens the land with gloom, then it lessens and seems to be more distant, _but it never wholly disappears_. CHAPTER III NATIONAL SUCCESS ABROAD [Sidenote: Vanity of National Success.] [Sidenote: The French as Judges of English Verse.] [Sidenote: Blank Verse.] [Sidenote: The Heroic Couplet.] [Sidenote: The Spenserian Stanza.] [Sidenote: Jurien de la Gravière.]