334 A Walk from 



struggle over again ; and yet ninety-nine in a hundred 

 of intelligent and reading people, with the history 

 of British and French Border-lands before them, 

 seem to think that a new and strange thing has 

 happened under the sun. Full that proportion of 

 our English-speaking race, in both hemispheres, closing 

 the volume of its own annals, have made up their 

 minds to the belief that these Border-lands between 

 German and Magyar, Teuton and Latin, Buss and 

 Pole, bristle with antagonisms the like of which 

 never were subdued, and never ought to be subdued 

 by human means or motives. To them, naturally, the 

 half century of this hissing and seething, insurrection 

 and repression, is longer than the five hundred years 

 and more it took to fuse into one the nationalities of 

 England and Wales. What a point of space is a 

 century midway between the ninth and the nineteenth ! 

 Few are long-sighted enough in historic vision to 

 touch that point with a cambric needle. It may seem 

 unfeeling to say it or think it ; still it is as true as 

 the plainest history of the last millenium. There is 

 a patriotism that looks at the future through a gimlet 

 hole, and sees in it but a single star. That patriotism 

 is a natural and most popular sentiment. It was 

 strong in the Welshman's breast a thousand years 

 ago, and in the Scotsman's half that distance back 



