Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/93

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
SIR HENRY PARKES IN ENGLAND
61

secluded from the world now than when the world's travellers had to journey by the common road."

With a personal apology to Mr. Ruskin, we must here part with the distinguished Australian, who surely in fancy was for a while once again a Warwickshire lad.

I have had a purpose in view in emphasising Sir Henry Parkes' impressions of English public opinion at the time of the American Civil War. Some of the quotations from his letters that I have given—and there is much more and even stronger writing to be found in the originals—might well have been supposed to emanate from the indignant pen of some itinerant New-Englander. Yet Sir Henry Parkes knew no country but England up to the time of his early manhood, and since then his career has formed a part of the history of a great English colony.

To my mind, the passing impressions of such an Australian in England are of intrinsic historic value. Being removed from the unconscious partiality even of the cultured Englishman, and free from the unsympathetic superciliousness of the "intelligent foreigner," they are allied to the impartial judgments of posterity. Viewed in this light the