[1] 'What,' says Archdeacon Wilberforce, 'is the natural root of loyalty as distinguished from such mere selfish desire of personal security as is apt to take its place in civilized times, but that consciousness of a natural bond among the families of men which gives a fellow-feeling to whole clans and nations, and thus enlists their affections in behalf of those time-honoured representatives of their ancient blood, in whose success they feel a personal interest?
Hence the delight when we recognize an act of nobility or justice in our hereditary princes '‘Tuque prior, tu parce genus qui ducis Olympo, Projice tela manu sanguis meus’ 'So strong is this feeling, that it regains an engrafted influence even when history witnesses that vast convulsions have rent and weakened it and the Celtic feeling towards the Stuarts has been rekindled in our own days towards the granddaughter of George the Third of Hanover.
'Somewhat similar may be seen in the disposition to idolize those great lawgivers of man’s race, who have given expression, in the immortal language of song, to the deeper inspirations of our nature. The thoughts of Homer or of Shakespere are the universal inheritance of the human race.
In this mutual ground every man meets his brother, they have been set forth by the providence of God to vindicate for all of us what nature could effect, and that, in these representatives of our race, we might recognize our common benefactors. ’—Doctrine of the Incarnation, pp. 9, 10.
[2] Εἰκος δέ μιν ἦν καὶ μνημόσυνα πάντων γράφεσθαι. Vit. Hom. in Schweigh. Herodot. t. iv. p. 299, sq. § 6. I may observe that this Life has been paraphrased in English by my learned young friend Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, and appended to my prose translation of the Odyssey. The present abridgement