often be on the conquering side something very different from a manly self-assertion--viz. self-aggrandisement at the expense of an innocent neighbour, greed of territory, lust of power, and the vanity of mere military glory, which our brilliant neighbours the French were so fond to have in their mouth. The virtue of war as a training school of civic manhood does by no means exclude the operation of many forces far from admirable in their motive; and it is the presence of these unholy influences, no doubt piously brooded over, that has generated in the breasts of our mild friends the Quakers that anti-bellicose gospel which they preach with such lovable persistency. But whatever the motives of famous conquerors have been, the results of their achievements in the great history of society have been most important. The imposition of a foreign type on the peoples of Western Asia by the brilliant conquests of Alexander the Great, gave to the whole of that valuable part of the world, along with the rich coast of Northern Africa, a common medium of culture of the utmost importance to the future civilisation of the race. The imposition of the Norman yoke 900 years ago on this island gave to the contentious Saxon kingdoms, by a single vigorous stroke from without, that social consistency which the bloody strife of five centuries of petty kings and kinglets among themselves had failed to produce; while in India the imposition of the most highly advanced mercantile and Christian civilisation of the West on crude masses of an altogether diverse type of Asiatic society, presents to the thoughtful student of history a problem of assimilation of an altogether unique character, the final solution of which, under the action of many complex forces, no most sagacious human intellect at the present moment can divine. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the blessings which conquest brings with it, when vigorously managed and wisely used, are lightly turned into a bane whenever the power which has the force to conquer has not the wisdom to administer; of which unblissful lack of administrative capacity and assimilating genius the conquests of the Turks in Europe, and of the English in Ireland, present a most instructive example.