Hence, too, the suspicion attached to men like Selden and Falkland of being mere theoricians in advance of their time,--an accusation fatal to statesmanship. But the advent of that age was marked by so much that was novel in religion,[9] in State, in foreign and domestic policy, the new direction of imperial enterprise, the unity of two nations, ancient and apparently irreconcilable foes, the jarring creeds, convulsing the life of both these nations, for both were deeply religious, that it were rash to accuse of rashness any actor in those times. But it is the adventurous daring of their spirits, the swift glance searching the horizons of the future, it is that very energy of the soul of which I have spoken which render these statesmen obnoxious to the suspicion of theory. The temper of Selden, indeed, in harmony with the thoughtful and melancholy cast of his features, disposed him to subtlety and niceness of argument, and with a division pending, often deprived his words of a force which homelier orators could command. And yet his career is a presage of the future. Toleration in religion, freedom of the press, the supremacy of the seas, the _habeas corpus_, are all lines along which his thought moves, not so much distancing as leading the practical statesmen of his generation. And there is a curious fitness in the dedication to him in 1649 of Edward Pococke's Arabic studies, which nearly a century and a half later were to form the basis of Gibbon's great chapters. But the year of _Mare Clausum_ is at once the greatest in Selden's life, and the last months of greatness in the life of his royal master.[10]