"England, with all thy faults, I love Thee still."
There Cowper speaks to both at once—the faults are of the men only—moral—for he does not mean fogs, and March east winds, and fever and agues. I love thee—is to the green fields and the white cliffs, as well as to all that still survives of the English heart and thought and character. And this absorption, sir, and compenetration of the two ideas—land into people, people into land—the exposition of which might, in good hands, be made beautiful—is a fruitful germ of Patriotism—an infinite blending of the spiritual and the corporeal. To Virgil, Rome the City was also Rome the Romans; and, therefore, sir, those Houses and Palaces, and that Wall, were to him, as those green fields, and hills, and streams, and towns, and those cliffs are to Us. The girdled-in compendium of the Heaven's Favour and the Earth's Glory and Power.
"Scilicet et Rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma,
Septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces."
Do you all comprehend and adopt my explanation, gentlemen?
TALBOYS.
I do.
BULLER.
I——do.
SEWARD.
I ask myself whether Virgil's "Rerum Pulcherrima" may not mean "Fairest of Things"—of Creatures—of earthly existences? To a young English reader, probably that is the first impression. It was, I think, mine. But fairest of earthly States and Seats of State is so much more idiomatic and to the purpose, that I conceive it—indubitable.