America is supposed to be given over to ugliness. There are a good many ugly things there and the ugliest are the most pretentious.

The father of confederation is deadlock.

No student of history can fail to see the moral interest of the Middle Ages, any more than an artist can fail to see their aesthetic interest.

Who can doubt that between the English and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences of character which have profoundly affected and still affect the course of history?

Never had there been such an attempt to make conquest the servant of civilization. About keeping India there is no question. England has a real duty there.

Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches.

The Roman legions were formed in the first instance of citizen soldiers, who yet had been made to submit to a rigid discipline, and to feel that in that submission lay their strength.