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The history of a nation is like the course of a mighty
river. Arising in the dark recesses of mountain solitude, it
does not reach the ocean on its own strength and fulness
alone, but receives new life, and a quickening of the old,
from numerous tributaries, partly national, partly foreign.
But whilst the tributaries of a river can be easily
ascertained, named, and measured in their width and power,
those tributaries that influence, colour, and direct the
course of a nation’s history often remain unexplored or at
best unheeded. National vanity dislikes to confess to a
powerful and steady influence from abroad, and where this
cannot be denied, it has been the watchword and the
cherished purpose of many a political writer to minimise
its character and to ridicule its importance.
In many cases, this influence of other nations on our own
history is so outspoken, the powerful commingling with the
waters of our national life so visible—as, for instance, in
the case of the German1 Reformation or the French
Revolution—that an attempt to deny it or even to weaken
it would be sheer ignorance.
But there are other cases where, as we said above, the
sources of the tributaries are unnoticed, losing themselves
underground, as it were. Here the task of ascertaining
their course and their power is very much more difficult.
An instance we had in the large emigration of the Scots
1 [It has only been discovered of late years that the great and true
authors of the English Reformation were John Wycliffe, at the close
of the XIVth century, and Dean Colet, Erasmus, and other “Oxford
Reformers ” at the beginning of the XVIth.”—Ed. J
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