"The English ought to welcome, although to combat the rise of Germany. They imagine that their principal force comes from their colonies. It will come, not from their colonies, which is geographically impossible, but from their perennial rivalry with great Continental Powers. These rivalries made England, made her colonies. To give up these rivalries, to cease combating great Continental Powers, will be the end both of England and her Empire. In my time I, together with all my friends, gloried in my long-drawn conquest of Gaul, and my final victory over the leader of the Gauls, Vercingetorix. I now wish I had been defeated at Alesia, and a strong and united Gaul had been established under my unlucky adversary. What inestimable centre of healthy rivalry would Gaul not have been for us! To try to conquer it was right; to have definitely deprived it of independence was a disaster. Strifeless bliss prospers only in Olympus." THE SIXTH NIGHT APOLLO AND DIONYSUS IN ENGLAND[1] It is many years ago that in the Bodleian at Oxford I was shown into the beautiful room where John Selden's noble library is placed. It is a lofty, well-proportioned room, and on the walls are arrayed the silent legions of the great scholar's books. At that time I was still fonder of books than of realities, and with breathless haste I ran over the title-pages and contents of the grand folios in over fifteen languages, written by scholars of all the Western nations and of many an Oriental people. Then I paused before the fine oil-painting near the entrance of the room representing the face and upper body of the scholar-patriot. The face is singularly, touchingly beautiful. The delicately swung lines of the lips tell at once, more especially in their discreet corners, of the deep reticence and subtle tact of the man. No wonder my Lady Kent loved him. The combination of political power, boundless erudition, and charming male beauty could not but be pleasing to a knowing woman of the world. His eyes, big and lustrous, yet veil more than they reveal. He evidently was a man who saw more than he expressed, and felt more than he cared to show. Living in the troublous times of James the First and Charles the First, he worked strenuously for the liberties of his country, while all the time pouring forth works of the heaviest erudition on matters of ancient law, religions, and antiquities. His printed works are, in keeping with the custom of his day, like comets: a small kernel of substance, appended to a vast tail of quotations from thousands of authors. Like the unripe man I was, I liked the tail more than the kernel. Yet I had been in various countries and had acquired a little knowledge of substance.