The England around us becomes our own England, an England whose chief forces are industry and science, the love of popular freedom and of law, an England which presses steadily forward to a larger social justice and equality, and which tends more and more to bring every custom and tradition, religious, intellectual, and political, to the test of pure reason.—John Richard Green.

From the words of this great historian our thoughts inevitably drift to the famous statesmen who have steered the British ship of state through the troubled waters of the past few centuries and whose work has helped to mould the Empire to its present state of elastic unity. The following sketches contain some glimpses of the leading figures in this gallery of the illustrious.