aspiration to actuality, but the results of their fulfilment have been
so disappointing as to make us wonder whether it is really worth while
to pray, when to have our prayers granted carries the world so very
slight a way forward. The Austrian is no longer in Italy; the Pope has
ceased to be master in Rome; the patriots of Hungary are now in
possession of their rights, and have become friends of their old
oppressors; the negro slave has been transformed into an American
citizen. At home, again, the gods have listened to our vows. Parliament
has been reformed, and the long-desired mechanical security provided for
the voter's freedom. We no longer aspire after all these things, you may
say, because our hopes have been realised and our dreams have come true.
It is possible that the comparatively prosaic results before our eyes at
the end of all have thrown a chill over our political imagination. What
seemed so glorious when it was far off, seems perhaps a little poor now
that it is near; and this has damped the wing of political fancy. The
old aspirations have vanished, and no new ones have arisen in their
place. Be the cause what it may, I should express the change in this
way, that the existing order of facts, whatever it may be, now takes a
hardly disputed precedence with us over ideas, and that the coarsest
political standard is undoubtingly and finally applied over the whole
realm of human thought.

The line taken up by the press and the governing classes of England
during the American Civil War may serve to illustrate the kind of mood
which we conceive to be gaining firmer hold than ever of the national
mind. Those who sympathised with the Southern States listened only to
political arguments, and very narrow and inefficient political
arguments, as it happened, when they ought to have seen that here was an
issue which involved not only political ideas, but moral and religious
ideas as well. That is to say, the ordinary political tests were not