And this impulse is all the more vivid, immediate,
and pure, in proportion as the great events are recent
and near home. Lengthen the line either way, and
its slackness is wonderfully increased. It is the old
problem of the Mandarin which we find in Balzac. Let
anyone balance the emotions he feels on reading of an
accident which caused the death of twenty persons at
a distance, with that which he feels from seeing one
man lying in the road gravely hurt. It is the near,
the immediate, which, out of all proportion, tells.
Now, I suppose, in spite of aU the talk we exercise
our imaginations with on the subject of invasion, there
is no life more easy and certain, and therefore more
uninspiring, than life in an EngUsh country house. Our
walks, our meals, our pleasures, our engagements, may



INTRODUCTION 27

be mapped out with certain freedom from interference
by any other t3nrants than bad weather and ill-health.
The butcher or fishmonger may forget to call ; but that
is the worst act — Is it of God or the King's enemies ? —
that can affect us.^ Then, further, consider that this
state has been developing to its present perfection for
hundreds of years ; that to the origin of our court, our
Parliament, our system of justice, no living man's
grandfather is any nearer than we are; that the last
exchange of musketry by banded armies on English
soil was in the year 1685 : and I suppose your
resultant is a state of things unequalled among all
that is peaceable, easy-going, complaisant; unmatched
as narcotic to all great emotion, and therefore to
all great art.
