He has lived a beautiful life, and has left a beautiful field; he has sacrificed the hour to give service for all time; he has entered the company of the great, and with them he will be remembered for ever.

He is the practical man in the true sense.
But there is the other self-styled practical man, who thinks all this proceeding foolish, and cries out for the expedient of the hour.

Has he ever realised the promise of his proposals?
No, he is the most inefficient person who has ever walked the earth.

But for a saving consideration let him go contemplate the wasted efforts of the opportunist in every generation, and the broken projects scattered through the desert-places of history.
IV Still one will look out on the grim things of the hour, and hypnotised by the hour will cry: "See the strength of the British Empire, see our wasted state; your hope is vain." Let him consider this clear truth: peoples endure; empires perish.

Where are now the empires of antiquity?
And the empires of to-day have the seed of dissolution in them.