The future of France and Spain, the future of the Tropical Republics of Spanish America, is utterly blank and dark; not to be prophesied, I hold, by mortal man, simply because we have no like cases in the history of the past whereby to judge the tendencies of the present. Will they revive? Under the genial influences of free institutions will the good seed which is in them take root downwards, and bear fruit upwards? and make them all what that fair France has been, in spite of all her faults, so often in past years--a joy and an inspiration to all the nations round? Shall it be thus? God grant it may; but He, and He alone, can tell. We only stand by, watching, if we be wise, with pity and with fear, the working out of a tremendous new social problem, which must affect the future of the whole civilised world. For if the agonising old nations fail to regenerate themselves, what can befall? What, when even Imperialism has been tried and failed, as fail it must? What but that lower depth within the lowest deep? That last dread mood Of sated lust, and dull decrepitude. No law, no art, no faith, no hope, no God. When round the freezing founts of life in peevish ring, Crouched on the bare-worn sod, Babbling about the unreturning spring, And whining for dead creeds, which cannot save, The toothless nations shiver to their grave. And we, who think we stand, let us take heed lest we fall. Let us accept, in modesty and in awe, the responsibility of our freedom, and remember that that freedom can be preserved only in one old-fashioned way. Let us remember that the one condition of a true democracy is the same as the one condition of a true aristocracy, namely, virtue. Let us teach our children, as grand old Lilly taught our forefathers 300 years ago--"It is virtue, gentlemen, yea, virtue that maketh gentlemen; that maketh the poor rich, the subject a king, the lowborn noble, the deformed beautiful. These things neither the whirling wheel of fortune can overturn, nor the deceitful cavillings of worldlings separate, neither sickness abate, nor age abolish." Yes. Let us teach our children thus on both sides of the Atlantic. For if they--which God forbid--should grow corrupt and weak by their own sins, there is no hardier race now left on earth to conquer our descendants and bring them back to reason, as those old Jews were brought by bitter shame and woe. And all that is before them and the whole civilised world, would be long centuries of anarchy such as the world has not seen for ages--a true Ragnarok, a twilight of the very gods, an age such as the wise woman foretold in the old Voluspa. When brethren shall be Each other's bane, And sisters' sons rend The ties of kin. Hard will be that age, An age of bad women, An axe-age, a sword-age, Shields oft cleft in twain, A storm-age, a wolf-age, Ere earth meet its doom.