Anglophone world

“ And where is the blood to be fired?
England made better use of Latin, of Greek mind, than other races, by incorporating them into daily life. She made of them an integral part of the nation. Wide-spread mental contact, with such great races, which were both old and enriched with much experience, ripened her ahead of time, strengthened her, gave her most of what she has best. England set about forming life and mind upon some of the finest thinkers the world has seen. That was her master-stroke of diplomacy. She transposed geniuses into living, breathing ideals. ”

“ What a monster and a beast of many heads is the Englishman now become! To whom may he be compared worthily but to Æsop's crow, for as the crow decked herself with the feathers of all kinds of birds to make herself beautiful, even so doth the vain Englishman for the fond apparelling of himself borrow of every nation to set himself forth gallant in the eyes of the world. ”

“ All the rest of the world then know they must do what the English say—Germans, Italians, Russians, Yankees, Canadians. Now I'm a cosmopolitan, I am. All kind of folk look good to me."
"But England ruling the world means universal peace," I said enthusiastically. "Free trade, equal rights, all the grand altruistic English ideals established forever and ever! Adam, let England have it! You'll be remembered as the greatest benefactor of humanity. ”

“ The great product of England is not so much its institutions, its empire, its commerce, or its literature, as it is the individual Englishman, who is moulded by all these influences, and is the ultimate test of their value. He exists as a recognisable type of character, with special aptitudes and capacities, to be appraised ultimately, if you will, by reference to your conception of the goal of the world's progress. ”

“ Is this from any lack of power in the English as compared with the German mind? The countrymen of Grote and of Mill, of Faraday, of Robert Brown, of Lyell and of Darwin, to go no further back than the contemporaries of men of middle age, can afford to smile at such a suggestion. England can show now, as she has been able to show in every generation since civilization spread over the West, individual men who hold their own against the world, and keep alive the old tradition of her intellectual eminence. ”

“ The growing consciousness in the people at large of a new greatness, its instinctive prevision of the coming of a time when England was to play a foremost part in the history of the world, the upgrowth of a nobler and loftier temper which should correspond to such a destiny, all were alike unintelligible to him. ”

“ What are the elements of that power which the English hold over other nations? If there be one test of national genius universally accepted, it is success; and if there be one successful country in the universe that country is England.
The culture of the day, the thoughts and aims of men, are English thoughts and aims. A nation considerable for a thousand years has in the last centuries obtained the ascendant, and stamped the knowledge, activity, and power of mankind with its impress. ”

“ The Englishman makes less noise over it. In his provokingly calm manner, he is perfectly persuaded that England is the first country in the world, and that everybody admits it, and the idea of asking an outsider for his opinion of it would never enter his head. ”

“ The irresistible genius and propagation of the English race are fast Anglicizing the world, and thus centering it around the heart of civilization and commerce. Under the sceptre of England alone, there live, it is said, one hundred and forty million of human beings, embracing all races of men, dwelling between every two degrees of latitude and longitude around the globe. And there is the Anglo-American hemisphere of the English race, doubling its population every twenty-five years, and propelling its propagation through the Western World. ”

“ In fact, he has, in captivating English society,—harder, perhaps, to cultivate, considering the vast variety of culture it contains, than any other society in the world,—in making every Englishman who met him wish that he were an Englishman too, performed a feat such as no diplomatist, we believe, ever performed before. ”

“ Is it what you call civilisation that makes England flourish? Is it the universal development of the faculties of man that has rendered an island, almost unknown to the ancients, the arbiter of the world? Clearly not. It is her inhabitants that have done this; it is an affair of race. ”

“ Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro—
And what should they know of England who only England know?—
The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag,
They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English
Flag! ”

“ O, let us pay the time but needful woe, Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs. This England never did, nor never shall, Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, But when it first did help to wound itself. Now these her princes are come home again, Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true. ”

“ They ended by adopting England as their country, and glorifying it above all others. "There is no land in the world," writes a poet of the thirteenth century, "where so many good kings and saints have lived as in the isle of the English. Some were holy martyrs who died cheerfully for God; others had strength or courage like to that of Arthur, Edmund and Cnut."
This poet, who was a Norman monk at Westminster Abbey, wrote about the glories of England in the French language, and celebrated as the national heroes a Celt, a Saxon and a Dane. ”

“ Nothing tempts him to forego his Anglicism. He breakfasts on a steak in India, as he does on Ludgate Hill, and has made the establishment of butchers’ shops in the Asiatic possessions of England an important item of legislation;—he has established coffee-houses in Paris, where you get, par excellence, a biftec à l’anglaise—he has established Hotels d’Angleterre in every habitable town and village of Europe, and he has colonized the world with English shoemakers, tailors, and other artisans of every description. ”

“ The narrow- minded would ascribe all that was attempted to the grasping propensity of the English. But the motives that actuate many in England, both in public and private life, are much more noble than the world gives them credit for. ”

“ But now, few nations of the world but are a mixed seed; the people of England especially: the Britons, Picts, Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, by a wonderful providence of God, being become one English people. ”

“ This article relates not at all to opinion, but only to facts.
"I will conclude the Anglo-American case with a metaphor. Britain is like a Grand Old Dame, well preserved and still maintaining the vigour and activity of her youth. Her eye is not dimmed by age; her strong hand is not weakened by the lapse of centuries. She has been the mother of many children, and has sometimes had troubles in her family. But in recent times she has been on good terms with all her offspring, all over the world. She would not suffer them to be beaten in the race of nations. ”

“ We English have no very strong attachment to the soil, we can make ourselves at home in any part of the world, but the French, I think, have an attachment to their country which is almost a physical bond. They're never really at ease when they're out of it. ”

“ He made a blushing cital of himself,
And chid his truant youth with such a grace
As if he master’d there a double spirit
Of teaching and of learning instantly.
There did he pause: but let me tell the world,
If he outlive the envy of this day,
England did never owe so sweet a hope
So much misconstrued in his wantonness. ”

“ “Ay, noble sir,” said Wamba, “and thence goes the proverb—
'Norman saw on English oak, On English neck a Norman yoke; Norman spoon in English dish, And England ruled as Normans wish; Blithe world to England never will be more, Till England's rid of all the four.'”
“Thou dost well, De Bracy,” said Front-de-Boeuf, “to stand there listening to a fool's jargon, when destruction is gaping for us! ”

“ The sight of London to my exil'd eyes Is as Elysium to a new-come soul: Not that I love the city or the men, But that it harbours him I hold so dear,— The king, upon whose bosom let me lie, And with the world be still at enmity. ”

“ Small time, but in that small most greatly liv'd
This star of England: Fortune made his sword,
By which the world's best garden he achiev'd, 7
And of it left his son imperial lord.
Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd King
Of France and England, did this king succeed;
Whose state so many had the managing, 11
That they lost France and made his England bleed:
Which oft our stage hath shown; ”

“ “The furtherance of the British Empire, for the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire. What a dream! but yet it is probable. It is possible.” ”

“ But of all nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a nation of pure philosophers. ”

“ From purest wells of English undefiled
None deeper drank than he, the New World's child,
Who in the language of their farm-fields spoke
The wit and wisdom of New England folk,
Shaming a monstrous wrong. ”

“ I do assure thee that thou hast no reason to be displeased, inasmuch as there are no countries in the world less known by the British than these selfsame British Islands, or where more strange things are every day occurring, whether in road or street, house or dingle. ”

“ In 1763 the English were the most powerful nation in the world. ”

“ And dreaming there by the Yukon bank, with lazy eyes blinking at the fire, these sounds and sights of another world would make the hair to rise along his back and stand on end across his shoulders and up his neck, till he whimpered low and suppressedly, or growled softly, and the half-breed cook shouted at him, “Hey, you Buck, wake up!” Whereupon the other world would vanish and the real world come into his eyes, and he would get up and yawn and stretch as though he had been asleep. ”

“ All the world knows that France sneezes when England takes a pinch of snuff. ”

“ While a popular French author sums up the elements of life in England as being la vie de famille, la politique, et les affaires,—'domestic life, politics, and business,'—he complacently infers that le fond du caractère Anglais, 'the basis of the English character,' is nothing more nor less than le manque de bonheur—'a want of anything like happiness.' An English thinker, on the other hand, finds in the very language of France the evidence of superficial emotion and unaspiring, irreverent intelligence. ”

“ There was no darkness in the world, but only warm, mysterious shadows, and all the leaves and spikes were edged and lined with iridescent jewels of dew. The night was warmer than any night had ever been, the heavens by some miracle at once vaster and nearer, and, spite of the great ivory-tinted moon that ruled the world, the sky was full of stars. ”

“ You think because I see some spots on the sun of the English character, I don't love Englishmen. Why, how can any man who speaks the English tongue, and boasts one drop of English blood in his veins, not be proud of England? England, the mother of poets and thinkers; England, that gave us Newton, Darwin, Spencer; England, that holds in her lap Oxford, Salisbury, Durham; England of daisy and heather and pine-wood! Are we hewn out of granite, to be cold before England? ”

“ In the quiet quaintly-named streets, in town-mead and market-place, in the lord's mill beside the stream, in the bell that swung out its summons to the crowded borough-mote, in merchant-gild, and church-gild and craft-gild, lay the life of Englishmen who were doing more than knight and baron to make England what she is, the life of their home and their trade, of their sturdy battle with oppression, their steady, ceaseless struggle for right and freedom. ”

“ The House of Peers, throughout the war,
Did nothing in particular,
And did it very well:
Yet Britain set the world a-blaze
In good King George's glorious days! ”

“ I am only a woman! But rather than let my love ruin you, make a traitor of you and lose you in this world and the next, my soul shall go first--life, soul, honour, everything! You shall not do it! You think that you love me more than I love you, but you do not. For to save you as you are, I love you so dearly that I will leave you--leave you to honour, leave you to your King, leave you to the undying glory of the life you have lived, and will live, in memory of my love! ”

“ Even the national temper was fully formed. Civilization, letters, science, religion itself, have done little to change the inner mood of Englishmen. That love of venture and of toil, of the sea and the fight, that trust in manhood and the might of man, that silent awe of the mysteries of life and death which lay deep in English souls then as now, passed with Englishmen to the land which Englishmen had won. ”

“ Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world's tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!
No later light has lighten'd up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee.
But when the days of golden dreams had perish'd,
And even Despair was powerless to destroy;
Then did I learn how existence could be cherish'd,
Strengthen'd and fed without the aid of joy. ”