56 HEREDITY. 



leader of the liberal party in English politics. (See 

 report in Tribune of Dec. 15, 1874.) The haughty 

 and. cautious British press emphatically praised the 

 scheme as practicable, and to England desirable. 

 Even so conservative a paper as the London Spec- 

 tator says that such an alliance would, for geo- 

 graphical reasons, be utterly beyond attack from 

 any first-class power, unless China should ever be- 

 come one ; and that, except in India, it could be 

 attacked only by fleets which eighty millions of men, 

 always foremost in naval warfare or maritime enter- 

 prise, could with no great or exhausting effort brush 

 away from the seas. It would be open to such a 

 league, without dangerous interventions, to secure 

 permanent peace among nearly half mankind. Dream 

 though it may be, this possible future naturally rises 

 before our thoughts in the jubilant Christmas season, 

 the first occurrence of which Milton describes in 

 words which, God grant, may yet be true of time to 

 come : — 



" No war or battle's sound 

 Was heard, the world around ; 

 The idle spear and shield were high uphung ; 

 The hooked chariot stood 

 Unstained by hostile blood ; 

 The trumpet spake not to the armed throng ; 

 And kings sat still with awful eye, 

 As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by." 



Hymn to the Nativity. 



What would be some of the rules of such an alli- 

 ance, Anglo-American and Australian, if the nations 

 should ever be wise enough to enter upon its organ- 



