[11] The preliminaries to the Peace of Amiens were signed on October 1st, 1801. Parliament opened on October 29th, and after the King's speech, Windham compared his position amid the general rejoicings of the House at the prospect of an end to the war, to Hamlet's at the wedding-feast of Claudius. In the debate of November 3rd, Pitt declared himself resigned to the loss of the Cape by the retention of Ceylon, while the opinion of Fox was, that by this surrender we should have the benefit of the colony without its expenses. Nelson, with the glory of his victory at Copenhagen just six months old, maintained that in the days when Indiamen were heavy ships the Cape had its uses, but now that they were coppered, and sailed well, the Cape was a mere tavern that served to delay the voyage. The opening of Windham's speech on the 4th, "We are a conquered nation, England gives all, France nothing," defines his position (_Parl. Hist._ xxxvi, pp. 1-191). Windham was one of the few statesmen who, even before the consulate had passed into the Empire, understood the gravity of our relations to France. Every month added proof of the accuracy of his presentiments, but once understood by England there was no faltering. Prussia, Austria, the Czar, all acknowledged the new Empire, and made peace or alliance with its despot, but from the rupture of the Peace of Amiens England waged a war without truce till Elba and Ste. Hélène. LECTURE III THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAL [_Tuesday, May_ 22_nd_, 1900] In the history of the religion of an imperial race, it is not only the development of the ideal within the consciousness of the race itself that we have to consider, but the advance or decline in its conceptions of the religions of the peoples within the zone of its influence or dominion. For such a study the materials are only in appearance less satisfactory than for the study of the political ideal of a race. It is penetratingly observed by La Rochefoucauld that the history of the Fronde can never be accurately written, because the persons in that drama were actuated by motives so base that even in the height of performance each actor of the deeds was striving to make a record of them impossible. The reflection might be extended to other political revolutions, and to other incidents than the Fronde. Ranke's indefatigable zeal, his anxiety "in history always to see the thing as in very deed it enacted itself," never carried him nearer his object than the impression of an impression. No State papers, no documents, the most authentic, can take us further.