THE BLOOD OF THE NATION. 135 



XXXVIII. What shall we say of England and her hundred petty 

 wars 'sinonlderingf in every part of the globe? 



Statistics we have none, and no evidence of tangible decline that 

 Knglishnien will not indignantly repudiate. Besides, in the struggle 

 for national influences, England has had many advantages which must 

 liide or neutralize the waste of war. In default of facts unquestioned, 

 we may appeal to the poets, letting their testimony as to the reversal 

 of selection stand for what it is worth. Kipling tells us of the cost 

 of the rule of the sea: 



"We have fed our sea for a thousand years. 

 And she calls us, still unfed; 

 Though there's never a wave of all her waves 

 But marks our English dead." 



"If blood be the price of admiralty, 

 Lord God, we have paid it in full." 



Again, referring to dominion on land, he says: 



"Walk wide of the widow of Windsor, 

 For half of creation she owns. 

 We've bought her the same with the swoid and the flame, 

 And we've salted it down with our bones. 

 Poor beggars, it's blue with our bones." 



Finer than this are the lines in the 'Eevelry of the Dying,' written 

 by a British officer, Bartholomew Dowling, it is said, who died in the 

 plague in India: 



"Cut off from the land that bore us. 



Betrayed by the land we find; 

 When the brightest are gone before us 



And the dullest are left behind. 

 So stand to your glasses steady, 



Tho' a moment the color flies, 

 Here's a cup to the. dead already 



And huzza for the next that dies!" 



The stately "Ave Imperatrix' of Oscar Wilde, the last flicker of 

 dying genius in his wretched life, contains lines that ought not to be 

 forgotten: 



"0 thou whose wounds are never healed. 



Whose weary race is never run; 

 O Cromwell's England, must thou yield 

 For every foot of ground a son? 



"What matter if our galleys ride 

 Pine forest-like on every main ; 

 Ruin and wreck are at our side. 

 Stem warders of the house of pain. 



