Some time after the story of the Castle of Leaves, Mr Morgan took occasion to point out the difference between Ann speaking of the “beautiful long white beards” that men grew in those “unhappy old days,” and Mr Torrance praising the “merry” or “good old” England of his imagination. He said that from what he could gather they were merry in the old days with little cause, while to-day, whatever cause there might be, few persons the ability. He concluded, I think, that after all there was probably nothing to be merry about at any time if you looked round carefully: that, in fact, what was really important was to be capable of more merriment and less ado about nothing. Someone with a , asked if England was now anything more than a expression, and Mr Stodham preached a sermon straight away:  
 
 
“A great poet said once upon a time that this earth is ‘where we have our happiness or not at all.’ For most of those who speak his language he might have said that this England is where we have our happiness or not at all. He meant to say that we are limited creatures, not angels, and that our surroundings are enough to exercise all our of mind and body: there is no need to flatter ourselves with the belief that we could do better in a bigger or another world. Only the bad workman complains of his tools.
 
“There was another poet who hailed England, his native land, and asked how could it but be dear and holy to him, because he declared himself one who (here Mr Stodham grew very red and his voice rose, and Lewis thought he was going to sing as he recited):
 
“‘From thy lakes and mountain-hills,
Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas,
Have drunk in all my intellectual life,
All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,
All of the God in nature,
All lovely and all things,
Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
The joy and greatness of its future being?
There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul
Unborrowed from my country. O divine
 
And beauteous island! thou hast been my sole
And most magnificent temple, in the which
I walk with , and sing my stately songs,
Loving the God that made me!’
“Of course, I do not know what it all means,” he muttered, but went on: “and that other poet who was his friend called the lark:”
 
“‘Type of the wise who soar but never roam,
True to the kindred points of heaven and home.’
Well, England is home and heaven too. England made you, and of you is England made. Deny England—wise men have done so—and you may find yourself some day denying your father and mother—and this also wise men have done. Having denied England and your father and mother, you may have to deny your own self, and treat it as nothing, a conventional boundary, an , by which you are separated from the universe and its creator. To unite yourself with the universe and the creator, you may be to destroy that boundary of your own body and brain, and die. He is a bold man who hopes to do without earth, England, family, and self. Many a man dies, having made little of these things, and if he says at the end of a long life that he has had enough,[223] he means only that he has no capacity for more—he is , not the earth, not England.
 
“I do not think that a man who knows many languages, many histories, many lands, would ask if England was more than a geographical expression. Nor would he be the first to attempt an answer to one that did ask.
 
“I do not want you to praise England. She can do without receiving better than you can without giving. I do not want to shout that our great soldiers and poets are greater than those of other nations, but they are ours, they are great, and in proportion as we are good and intelligent, we can respond to them and understand them as those who are not Englishmen cannot. They cannot long do without us or we without them. Think of it. We have each of us some of the blood and spirit of Sir Thomas More, and Sir Philip Sidney, and the man who wrote ‘Tom Jones,’ and Horatio Nelson, and the man who wrote ‘Love in the Valley.’ Think what we owe to them of joy, courage, and mere security. Try to think what they owe to us, since they depend on us for keeping alive their spirits, and a spirit that can value them. They are England: we are England. Deny England, and we deny[224] them and ourselves. Do you love the ? Do you love Wales? If you do, you love what I understand by ‘England.’ The more you love and know England, the more deeply you can love the Wilderness and Wales. I am sure of it....”
 
At this point Mr Stodham ran away. Nobody thought how like a very good rat he was during this speech, or, rather, this series of short speeches interrupted by moments of excitement when all that he could do was to light a pipe and let it out. Higgs, perhaps, came nearest to laughing; for he struck up “Rule Britannia” with evident pride that he was the first to think of it. This raised my ; I could not help shouting “Home Rule for Ireland.” Whereupon Higgs swore , and I do not know what would have happened if Ann had not said: “Jessie, my love, sing Land of my Fathers,” which is the Welsh national ; but when Jessie sang it—in English, for our sakes—everyone but Higgs joined in the chorus and felt that it breathed the spirit of which Mr Stodham had been trying to express. It was without self-glorification or any other form of . It might well be the national anthem of any nation that knows, and would[225] not rashly destroy, the bonds distinguishing it from the rest of the world without it.
 
Aurelius, who had been brooding for some time, said:
 
“I should never have thought it. Mr Stodham has made me a present of a country. I really did not know before that England was not a shocking fiction of the journalists and politicians. I am the richer, and, according to Mr Stodham, so is England. But what about London fog? what is the correct attitude of a towards London fog and the manufacturers who make it what it is?”
 
Aurelius got up to look out at the fog, the many dim trees, the single gas lamp in the lane beyond the yard. Pointing to the trees, he asked—
 
“‘What are these,
So and so wild in their ,
That look not like th’ inhabitants o’ the earth
And yet are on’t?’
Even so must Mr Stodham’s patriotism, or that of Land of our Fathers, appear to Higgs. His patriotism is more like the ‘Elephant and Castle’ on a Saturday night than those trees. Both are good, as they say at Cambridge.[226]” And he went out, muttering towards the trees in the fog:
 
“‘Live you? or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
By each at once her choppy fingers laying
Upon h............