Nor were the arts of peace neglected by our fathers during that
stirring period. While France was wasted by war, till she at
length found in her own desolation a miserable defence against
invaders, the English gathered in their harvests, adorned their
cities, pleaded, traded, and studied in security. Many of our
noblest architectural monuments belong to that age. Then rose
the fair chapels of New College and of Saint George, the nave of
Winchester and the choir of York, the spire of Salisbury and the
majestic towers of Lincoln. A copious and forcible language,
formed by an infusion of French into German, was now the common
property of the aristocracy and of the people. Nor was it long
before genius began to apply that admirable machine to worthy
purposes. While English warriors, leaving behind them the
devastated provinces of France, entered Valladolid in triumph,
and spread terror to the gates of Florence, English poets
depicted in vivid tints all the wide variety of human manners and
fortunes, and English thinkers aspired to know, or dared to
doubt, where bigots had been content to wonder and to believe.
The same age which produced the Black Prince and Derby, Chandos
and Hawkwood, produced also Geoffrey Chaucer and John Wycliffe.

In so splendid and imperial a manner did the English people,
properly so called, first take place among the nations of the
world. Yet while we contemplate with pleasure the high and
commanding qualities which our forefathers displayed, we cannot
but admit that the end which they pursued was an end condemned
both by humanity and by enlightened policy, and that the reverses
which compelled them, after a long and bloody struggle, to
relinquish the hope of establishing a great continental empire,
were really blessings in the guise of disasters. The spirit of