comes when they wish to hand on that impression to others. Then they attempt to explain it on material grounds, and it is lost in legend, which soon ceases to awaken any response. The original charm evaporates; and subsequent generations, failing to find it in the crude records which remain, disregard it altogether, or explain it away by a process as wrongly mechanical as that which gave it shape. We may be sure that no man was revered without in some way deserving it. It is the wisest plan to try and discover what was the secret of his influence, what was the fragrance attaching to the memory which he left behind.
Edward lived in difficult times, and he was both by education and temperament unable to deal with those difficulties in the practical form in which they were presented to him. Indeed, it is impossible for us to discover the secret of England's helplessness before its Danish conquerors at the end of the tenth century. Perhaps it was greatly due to the fact that progress in civilisation had been too rapid, and changes in the surroundings of social life followed too quickly. The English were not a quick or sharp-witted people. They were solid enough and vigorous, but they needed time to adapt themselves to changes, more time than events allowed. The impulses which they received from without were too rapid and too imperative. Their original institutions, simple in themselves, became complicated from too frequent demands for readjustment. The unity of the nation had come too speedily; the people had not risen to a sense of what it entailed. In the face of an invading foe organisa-
