That we have by no means exhausted this portion of our subject is patent from the fact that in a book before us that is specially devoted to these house flags seven hundred and eighty-two examples are given, wherein we find not only stripes, crosses, and such-like simple arrangements, but crescents, stars, anchors, lions, stags, thistles, castles, bells, keys, crowns, tridents, and many other forms.
In earlier days merchant ships flew rather the flag of their port than of their nation, so that a vessel was known to be of Plymouth, Marseilles, Dantzic, or Bremen by the colours displayed. Thus the flag of Marseilles was blue with a white cross upon it; Texel, a flag divided horizontally into two equal strips, the upper being green and the lower black; Rotterdam was indicated by a flag having six horizontal green stripes upon it, the interspaces being white; Cherbourg, blue, white, blue, white, horizontally arranged; Riga, a yellow cross on a blue ground.
The British Empire--the Greater Britain across the seas, some eighty times larger in area than the home islands of its birth--must now engage our attention. Its material greatness is amazing, far exceeding that of any other empire the world has ever seen, and its moral greatness is equal to its material. Wherever the flag of Britain flies, there is settled law, property is protected, religion is free; it is no mere symbol of violence or rapine, or even of conquest. It is what it is because it represents everywhere peace, and civilization, and commerce. Protected by the _Pax Britannica_ dwell four hundred millions out of every race under heaven, the { 76} Mother of Nations extending to Jew, Parsee, Arab, Chinese, Blackfoot, Maori, the liberties that were won at Runnymead and in many another stern fight for life and freedom. In every school-room in the United States hangs the flag of their Union, the Stars and Stripes; and devotion to all that it symbolises is an essential part of the teaching. We in turn might well in our systems of education give a larger space to the history, laws, and literature of our great Empire, taking a more comprehensive view than is now ordinarily the case, studying the growth of the mighty States that have sprung into existence through British energy, and attaching at least as much importance to the lives of the men who have built up this goodly heritage as to the culinary shortcomings of Alfred or the schemes of Perkin Warbeck.