Ces sont bien des conquérants._ But beyond these superficial truculencies the observer may find a deeper interpretation of the cause of these triumphs. He sees the English, in these new Englands that they have made abroad, less intelligent, less generally cultivated than the French; less cultivated, less scientific, artistic, and laborious than the Germans. Yet it is these “barbarians,” not the French or the Germans, who have attained, almost without effort, the overlordship of the world. He ascribes this attainment to the fact that to-day the English are the only people who have truly national manners and characteristics. In a different order of things, but in equal measure, they exercise upon the manners of the world the Authority which the French exercised in the eighteenth century; when even those who hated them were compelled to copy them. “Manners and Customs in France,” he asks dejectedly, “what is it that can be developed to-day under this title? We have no longer ‘Manners and Customs.’ But the English retain their manners and customs with a stubborn placidity.” “You can love--more or less--certain qualities of this conquering people,” he concludes, “but how is it possible not to admire its strong national discipline?” “That is what ought to be learnt from it,” he exhorts his fellow-countrymen, “rather than ways of smoking or rules of play.” There is much sound common sense under this quiet irony and badinage. The qualities which have produced an English domination of Biarritz or Cannes are the qualities which have given to the race an Empire dominant over four hundred millions of variegated peoples. The qualities which have made them respected rather than loved at the continental watering-places are the qualities which would cause their subject peoples for the most part to contemplate the abandonment of their rule without regret. Strength, energy, and a certain crudity make up the blend of all Imperial races. It was so with the Romans: a conspicuous efficiency, a justice equally impartial and indifferent; aloofness with a certain disdain in it; an exercise of power almost startling in the disproportion of end to means. It is the vigour of a clumsy giant; sometimes exercising his strength in beneficent enterprise, in effecting desirable acts which no weaker agent can perform; sometimes--and generally unwittingly--crushing with heavy hoof things of whose value he has no conception. No Conquering Race can possess much power of introspection, of self-examination. “They do not fret and whine about their condition,” says Whitman of the animals. He could equally have said it about the English. No Conquering Race can possess patience: else it passes into the acquiescence of the South, whose favourite word is “to-morrow,” or the acquiescence of the East, which is content to let the thundering legions pass, and to plunge in thought again. No Conquering Race can possess irony: else it will