VIRILE SENTIMENT 123 



throughout the world ; with a Scientific Hierarchy 

 the greatest of its Age ; with a Landed Gentry, the 

 blood of whose sons has been shed in their country's 

 welfare on the torrid deserts, fertile plains, and 

 frozen snows of every Continent, and whose deeds of 

 valour, codes of honour, and conceptions of duty 

 have furnished an example to every age that shall 

 look back to them for inspiration ; with an Aristocracy 

 that has succeeded beyond all others in the govern- 

 ment of diverse peoples, England is blessed with 

 that combination of qualities that should render her 

 invincible against the world. And yet, mighty 

 though she inherently is, sound in sinew, strong of 

 intellect, and prolific of wealth, she lies prostrate 

 before the fetich of a lower caste Democracy ; her 

 splendour sullied, her energies paralysed, her culture 

 forgotten, her knowledge neutralised, and her tradi- 

 tions ignored, amid the blatant din of government by 

 untruthful mural posters, by uncouth and pyrocephalic 

 demagogues careless of veracity, and by newspaper 

 placards that shamel essly and ostentatiously offer bribes 

 to the lowest and least worthy of English society. Truly 

 the hour and its running sands call for leaders who, 

 like Pitt and Wellington, the Aristocrats, shall think 

 of country before salary, of honour before the acclama- 

 tion of a multitude, of principle before expediency, 

 and of the preservation of the Fit, not the bribery 

 of the Unfit ; who shall put Biology before Sentiment, 

 and, wedding the former to History, shall build anew, 

 with the aid of a more virile people, the foundations 

 of a yet greater Empire. But if she is to accomplish 



