our island is in these northern seas, cut off from all communication with other peoples, exposed to all the horrors of an hyperborean winter, in lands where the presence of dense forests spread a perpetual gloom, or where the swamp and the miasma prevented the growth of food on them, for even the scantling people; yet here, even here, man by following nature has conquered nature, has himself hung a fair and a propitious sky over his island home, has clothed his fields not only with verdure but with health and opulence; has caused each savage aspect to retire before his cultivating hand, and if removing some of those elements which seemed essential to sublimity of thought, has yet robed the country in the truest and highest grace. The Englishman's character is preeminently his own, and he impresses his character permanently wherever he moves; as of old time he was trained to rugged work, so he can work after the same fashion still; hence wherever he sets his foot, whatever he touches he moulds and fashions, it is his ancestral character, derived from Teutonic, Scandinavian, and Saracenic* forefathers. The Englishman lives thus then to move and to struggle, to conquer and to build, he is an architect; to visit all seas, to diffuse the genius of his character over all nations. Industry, Protestantism,† Liberty, seem born of the Teutonic

* I believe there can be little doubt that the Saracens are the last democratic wave of those great tribes which swept over our continent. It is pretty clear that Celt and Teutone are Asian in their origin.

+ It has often been remarked, that Protestantism has been almost exclusively confined to the Teutonic race.

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race, nor perhaps is it too much to say, that to that race God has committed the conservation as well as the spread of truth, and upon that race, therefore, mainly depends the civilization and progress of the world.

The Democracy of a nation depends upon its Industry, these two weigh each other; nor does it seem wonderful, that every advance made by man in industry, should penetrate his mind more and more with the idea of power. Already it has been said, that the battles of labour are a perpetual struggle with nature, yet that struggle in every age has led to conquest and nobility; from the first rude time, when man determining no longer to tear the ground himself for sustenance, constructed the blunt aratory instrument, and caught the wild horse or buffalo, and made it do his bidding-from that moment to this, the progress of humanity has been a continued and perpetual triumph over difficulties and obstacles; at every step he has shown his mastery, by compelling earth to help him, when he turned the courses of the waters and made them move his wheels and mills,— when he filled his sails with the sportive zephyrs or angry and chafing winds, and launching his vessel, whether it were a rude cobble, or like a mighty city sitting on the waters, imprisoned those winds to fill the canvas and bear the messenger across the deep, or taking captive the flying steam to move his myriad of spinning jennies-to send his "Iron Missionary' over the land, or his snorting sea-horse over the deep; or when seizing the light, he made it the ministrant

to his dearest joys, striking by it the portrait of affection and love. What are the wires saying, placed along our lines of railway, can we bound their significancy, are they not a prophecy of mightier things to come?

Is it wonderful that man, comprehending so much, performing so much, should believe that he is something more and better than an atheistic philosophy, or a paganized form and ritual would make him; he knows that his deeds of industry shame those proudly recorded ones of steel-clad barons, of caballing statesmen, and tinselled princes; he knows that, either by speculation or action, industry has wrought all the marvels of which civilization makes its boast; he tore up the forest that the carriage might move through it, made a highway through the old granite rock, called up the city from the desolation of the desert, with the sound of whirring wheels, tall chimnies, and smoky skies, but issuing forth bales of paper, cotton, cloth, and books, for the world's young colonies and farms: it is industry that makes the waves of the Mersey, Thames, and Tyne, each in itself a mightier poem than the waters of Helicon, or the waves of Tivoli or Pactolus. Magic! Wizardry! Who ever heard of magic like that of industry? from the breast of the barren hills, from the depths of the green sea, now picking up gems and pearls, twining them with graceful fingers into necklaces for the fair aristocratic necks of countess or duchess, while they, poor nothings, sneer at the fingers to which they owe their gewgaw beauty; the magic which descends into the quarry for the marble,

to the mine for the iron and the bronze. And lo! far off in the all but inaccessible woods, we may hearken to the ringing of the axe, while yonder, on the distant sea, a hundred sails whiten, where lone fishers watch amidst the waste and hungry waters: or stand still and look up-What hands reared that awful fabric, that noble anthem of middle-age "music frozen music into stone? Stormy old baron, he could crowd his feudal chamber with the victims of cruelty and break a lance in the lists, but he could not rear his castle and fence it round with the munitions, the towers, bastions, and barbican. And is it possible that all these could be the product of the strong arm and working of man, and man, the worker, not feel his indwelling power? Thus it was that our freedom was purchased. Industry won our national pre-eminence, in the commercial contests of the nations the burgesses of the middle-ages marked and cherished the trampled and invaded right, and from those cities where labour first exhibited its mighty triumphs, freedom first moved to lighten over the darkened and enslaved people.

The History of Britain in its noblest aspect, in the only aspect really worthy of contemplation, for that includes its domestic life, its literature, and its science, is the History of Industry. The workman endowed by nature for his long and mighty toils,the workshop with its mighty tools and utensils and means of labour, and the warehouse with its vast and wonderful stores,-the city and the capital. Industry has stood at the foundation of every state,—

but in Britain it has been the industry of necessity, not of luxury; this characteristic makes the great distinction between the ancient and the modern nations, and hence the difference of their forms of civilization; the industry of old nations purchased for them but few comforts, and these are the gauge of civilization: they had not learned to make the most of their country; we hear of their gauds and grandeur, but nothing of those more precious mementos of a nation's happiness which abound with us. "The flags of London, which occupy about onesixth of the public way, and are the sanctuary of the poor, these are better than Pentelic marble or Corinthian brass, and may the stones which form them never be dug up, though they were to be converted into edifices like the Capitol."*

If you were called on to say what, in the old world, best expressed the character of its age, you would say GOLD; if you were called to express what best characterises ours, you would say IRON; and there is a world of thought suggested by these two symbols. Our civilization and industry has stamped a value on Iron, transcendently beyond the value of the finest gold: gold is but negative, a fiction of man's invention, a ticket to the great world's play-house, it is but a symbol, and can do nothing; but Iron is positive, no fiction in it, what cannot it do? Gold is an ancient thing, and it speaks a language universally spoken and understood; but of it what more dare we say, it is brilliant,-true, the monarch's crown, the queen's

* Chenevix.