arteries of the Eastern world and the nations of the Mediterranean will be included. With the increased facilities of travel afforded by steam it is an inestimable advantage to have an extensive sea-board, and the value of an insular position is at once apparent. In the general migration of nations from east to west the British Islands stand on the very highway of progress. There can be no

better centres for distributing goods and commerce to the various parts of the world than the marts of our native land. London occupies the same position now that Corinth, Venice, and Byzantium did formerly; but it has a far nobler outlook. It lies midway, as it were, between east and west; and the fact that the Czar's functionaries, who govern his eastern provinces in Asia, come through London to reach the North Pacific, is a proof not only of the immensity of the Russian empire, but also of the wonderful facility of travel afforded from London over open seas to every part of the world. Add to this the fact that our northern climate has produced a race of sailors and adventurers from the days of the Vikings to the present, inured to all the perils of the sea and the rigour of climate; and we see before us a nation which has in its physical robustness and daring spirit every element of greatness. Their only rivals are found in similar latitudes in the fiords of Norway and on the Biscayan sea-board. It is a well-known fact that the physical constitution of the Teuton is able to endure extremes of climate better than any other race. In the fifteenth century the Spanish and Portuguese led the way, but once upon the track of exploration our sailors were foremost. The perils of the Northern Sea were familiar to them, from the fact that they had long carried on a traffic with Iceland for fish.

(13) From the earliest times to the present the history of British exploration and colonisation has been

a record of chivalry and heroic stedfastness. We have every reason to be proud of the deeds of our forefathers. The type of the manly Achilles and of the much-enduring Ulysses has been reproduced again and again in our national annals. The efforts to solve the problem of the North-West Passage tested the skill of our seamen and the daring vigour of our captains to the uttermost. Many of them, like the gallant Franklin, lost their lives in those distant and ice-bound regions. In the South Pacific the voyages of Cook, Bass, Flinders and Anson read like romances. Yet the main object of such men was not a lust of empire, but a desire to lead the van amongst nations and solve a geographical point of interest to all mankind. And not only by sea but by land the first object of British exploration has been to open up the dark places of the world. Men of the type of Livingstone, who lies in Westminster Abbey, are not uncommon. In speaking of the enter prise of the hardy British stock in New England Burke said (1775), 'Pass by the other parts and look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow them amongst the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis' Straits; whilst we are looking for them beneath the Arctic Circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the Antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. The Falkland Islands, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, are but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the

line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries! no climate that is not witness to their toils!'

(14) Broadly speaking the British Empire means a Pax Britannica, in spite of numerous small campaigns which are, for the most part, surface indications of a settlingdown process. For some time past, as our possessions have become assured to us, the sense of moral obligation and responsibility has become quickened and intensified, especially since the Emancipation Act, and the dream of such an idealist as Bishop Berkeley has been partly accomplished, who foresaw, long ago, that the savage, whether Carib or Indian, whether a dweller on the Atlantic islands or a rover in the vast forests of the continent, could be taught and instructed in better things, and that this function of teaching ought to rest with Britons.

'The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime

Barren of every glorious theme,

In distant lands now waits a better time,
Producing subjects worthy fame:

Then shall be sung another golden age,
The rise of empire and of arts,
The good and great inspiring epic rage,
The wisest heads and noblest hearts.
Not such as Europe breeds in her decay;
Such as she bred when fresh and young,
When heavenly flame did animate her clay,
By future poets shall be sung.

Westward the course of empire takes its way,
The four first acts already past;

A fifth shall close the drama with the day,
Time's noblest offspring is the last.'

In these lines Bishop Berkeley struck upon a great historical truth.

The westward movement begun long ago

is still going on in Canada and the United States. The last stanza of his magnificent lyric is immortalised in a painting on the walls of the National Capitol at Washington. The signs of material progress are visible everywhere in the New World, both in the great Republic and in the great Dominion.

CHAPTER II.

The Awakening of Europe (1200-1500 A.D).

(1) THE beginnings of the magnificent Canadian Dominion-which stretches now from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, from Halifax to Vancouver, for a space of 3000 miles across the continent of North America—were laid in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Long ago, at least 500 years before the celebrated expedition of Columbus in 1492, Northmen from Greenland had reached the coast of North America. Being bold and fearless sailors, they had crossed the stormy North Sea from their native fiords and made colonies in Great Britain and Ireland, whence they sailed to the Faroes and Iceland. When in the ninth century the great feudalising movement had reached Norway, and Harold Harfager was forcing the allodial gentry to do him service, the Vikings broke away in wild freedom. They looked to the sea as a refuge, and in the spirit of true colonists turned their prows to lands where the new laws and organisation were not established. So from their settlements in the