Great Britain on the Map of the World
We see two little spots huddled up in a corner, awkwardly shot off to a side, as it were, yet facing the great sea, on the very verge of the great waste of waters, with nothing to protect them: not like Greece, or Italy, or Egypt, in a Mediterranean bounded by a surrounding shore, to be coasted by timid mariners, but on the very edge and verge of the great ocean, looking out westward to the expanse. If she launch at all, she must launch with the fearless heart that is ready to brave old ocean,—to take him with his gigantic western waves—to face his winds and hurricanes—his summer heats of the dead-still tropics—his winter blasts—his fairy icebergs—his fogs like palpable darkness—his hail-blasts and his snow. Britain has done so. From her island-home, she has sailed east and west, north and south. She has gone outwardly, and planted empires. The States themselves, now her compeer, were an offshoot from her island territory. Her destiny is to plant out nations, and the spirit of colonization is the genius that presides over her career. She plants out Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Cape. Ceylon and the Mauritius she occupies for trade. India she covers with a network of law, framed and woven in her Anglo-Saxon loom. She clutches China, and begins at last to break up the celestial solecism. She lays hold of Borneo, and straightway piratical prahus are seen wrecked and stranded on the shore, or blown to fragments in the air. She raises an impregnable fortress at the entrance of the Mediterranean, and another in its centre, as security to her sea-borne trade. She does the same in embryo at the entrance to the Red Sea. Westward from Newfoundland, she traverses a continent, and there, in the Pacific, Vancouver’s Island, which may one day become the New Great Britain of new Anglo-Saxon enterprise, destined to carry civilization to the innumerable islands of the great sea—bears the union-jack for its island banner, and acknowledges the sovereignty of the British Crown. At Singapore, she has provisionally made herself mistress of the Straits of Malacca; and thousands of miles away on the other hand, at the Falkland Islands, near to the Land of Fire, the British mariner may hear the voice of praise issuing in the Anglo-Saxon tongue. In addition to this, she has representatives at every court, and consuls at every sea-port. Her cruisers bear her flag on every navigable sea. Europeans, Asiatics, Africans, Americans, and Australians, are found wearing her uniform, eating her bread, bearing her arms, and contributing to extend her dominion.—North British Review.