But, as in the life of the individual, so in the life of a race, youth consists in capacity for enthusiasm for a great ideal, capacity to frame, resolution to pursue, devotion to sacrifice all to a great political end. Russia, for instance, has only recently come within the influence of European culture, but this does not make the Slav a youthful race. The Slavonic is indeed perhaps the oldest people in Europe. Its literature, its art, its music, the characteristics of its society alike attest this. Superstition is not youth, else we might look to the hut of the Samoyede even with more confidence than to the cabin of the Moujik for the imperial race of the future. And prolificness in a race does as surely denote resignation to be governed, as the genius to govern others. And the Slav, as we have seen, has at no period of his history shown that "youth" which consists in capacity for a great political ideal, either in Poland, or amongst the Czechs, or in Russia. The present German empire assuredly exhibits in nothing the qualities of ancient lineage; yet the race which composes it is the same race as was once united under Hapsburg, under Luxemburg, under Hohenstauffen, and under Franconian, as now under the Hohenzollern dynasty. The United States as a nation bear the same relation to Britain as the Moorish kingdom in Spain bore to the Saracenic empire of Bagdad. It is a fragment, a colossal fragment torn from the central mass; but not only in its language, its literature, its religion and its laws, but in individual and national peculiarities, at least in the deeper moments of history and of life, the original stock asserts itself. The State is young; but the race is precisely of the same remoteness as Britain and the Greater Britain. Passing to the second point--at what epoch do we now stand as compared with Rome or Islam? It is not unusual to speak of Britain as an aged empire, but such estimates or descriptions commonly rest upon a misapprehension, first, of the period in which the Nation of England strictly speaking arises, and secondly, of the period in which the Empire of Britain arises.