2 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
absolutely at least if not always relatively. It is far greater 
now than it was in the eighteenth century; it was far 
greater in the eighteenth century than in the seventeenth, 
far greater in the seventeenth than in the sixteenth. 
The prodigious greatness to which it has attained makes 
the question of its future infinitely important and at the 
same time most anxious, because it is evident that the 
great colonial extension of our state exposes it to new 
dangers, from which in its ancient insular insignificance 
it was free. 
The interest of English history ought therefore to 
deepen steadily to the close, and, since the future grows out 
of the past, the history of the past of England ought to 
give rise to a prophecy concerning her future. Yet our 
popular historians scarcely seem to think so. Does not 
Aristotle say that a drama ends, but an epic poem only 
leaves off? English history, as it is popularly related, 
not only has no distinct end, but leaves off in such a 
gradual manner, growing feebler and feebler, duller and 
duller, towards the close, that one might suppose that 
England, instead of steadily gaining in strength, had been 
for a century or two dying of mere old age. Can this be 
right ? Ought the stream to be allowed thus to lose itself 
and evaporate in the midst of a sandy desert ? The ques 
tion brings to mind those lines of Wordsworth : 
It is not to be thought of that the flood 
Of British freedom, which to the open sea 
Of the world’s praise, from dark antiquity 
Hath flowed 'with pomp of waters unwithstood’, 
Boused though it be full often to a mood 
Which spurns the check of salutary bands, 
That this most famous stream in bogs and sands 
Should perish, and to evil and to good