Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

i8o The English Admirals
very timorous one that continued to have
any doubt of success. To appropriate the
eagles as fellow-countrymen was to make
imaginary allies of the forces of nature ; the
Roman Empire and its military fortunes, and
along with these the prospects of those
individual Roman legionaries now fording a
river in Germany, looked altogether greater
and more hopeful. It is a kind of illusion
easy to produce. A particular shape of
cloud, the appearance of a particular star,
the holiday of some particular saint, anything
in short to remind the combatants of patriotic
legends or old successes, may be enough to
change the issue of a pitched battle ; for it
gives to the one party a feeling that Right
and the larger interests are with them.
If an Englishman wishes to have such a
feeling, it must be about the sea. The lion
is nothing to us ; he has not been taken to
the hearts of the people, and naturalised as
an English emblem. We know right well
that a lion would fall foul of us as grimly as
he would of a Frenchman or a Moldavian