If the people of Great Britain do not build anything in a day, they have, at any rate, the good habit of not demolishing anything in a day.
The Englishman has an innate love of old walls that recall to him a historical fact, a departed grandeur, a memory of his childhood.
I have been present at many a touching scene, that has proved to me how deeply the religio loci is rooted in the heart of every true-born Englishman.
Here is one.
An old City School, dating from the fifteenth century, had just been transplanted into one of the suburbs of London.
The new building is a palace compared with the old.
Yet it was with profound sadness that old scholars learnt of the removal of the school from its time-honored home. If they could have had a voice in the matter, the change would not have taken place. The splendor of the new school was nothing to them; the name was the same, but it was their old school no more. On the day of the farewell ceremony in the City, I saw gray-headed men, who had come from distant parts of the country, on purpose to bid farewell to the venerable walls, to have one more look at them.
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If England, who only dates from the eleventh century, lives on her souvenirs and turns to them for inspiration, with what souvenirs might we inspire ourselves—we who have been a nation for twenty-three centuries?
There was no England when we were the terror of Rome. There was no England when our brave and generous ancestors went to battle to deliver or avenge an oppressed nation, or welcomed a poor stranger as a friend sent by the gods. There was no England when Vercingetorix made Cæsar tremble, nor was there yet an England when, eight hundred years later, the exploits of Roland were inspiring the poets of the whole of old Europe.