in England than anywhere else.  Nowhere, indeed, in the whole history of the human race, can we point to such a well-rounded and unbroken continuity of political life as we find in the thousand years of English history that have elapsed since the victory of William the Norman at Senlac.  In England the free government of the primitive Aryans has been to this day uninterruptedly maintained, though everywhere lost or seriously impaired on the continent of Europe, except in remote Scandinavia and impregnable Switzerland.  But obviously, if in the conflict of ages between civilization and barbarism England had occupied such an inferior strategic position as that occupied by Hungary or Poland or Spain, if her territory had been liable once or twice in a century to be overrun by fanatical Saracens or beastly Mongols, no such remarkable and quite exceptional result could have been achieved.  Having duly fathomed the significance of this strategic position of the English race while confined within the limits of the British islands, we are now prepared to consider the significance of the stupendous expansion of the English race which first became possible through the discovery and settlement of North America.  I said, at the close of my first lecture, that the victory of Wolfe at Quebec marks the greatest turning-point as yet discernible in all modern history.  At the first blush such an unqualified statement may have sounded as if an American student of history were inclined to attach an undue value to events that have happened upon his own soil.  After the survey of universal history which we have now taken, however, I am fully prepared to show that the conquest of the North American continent by men of English race was unquestionably the most prodigious event in the political annals of man kind.  Let us consider, for a moment, the cardinal facts which this English conquest and settlement of North America involved.

Chronologically the discovery of America coincides precisely with the close of the Middle Ages, and with the opening of the drama of what is called modern history.  The coincidence is in many ways significant.  The close of the Middle Ages—­as we have seen—­was characterized by the increasing power of the crown in all the great countries of Europe, and by strong symptoms of popular restlessness in view of this increasing power.  It was characterized also by the great Protestant outbreak against the despotic pretensions of the Church, which once, in its antagonism to the rival temporal power, had befriended the liberties of the people, but now (especially since the death of Boniface VIII.) sought to enthrall them with a tyranny far worse than that of irresponsible king or emperor.  As we have seen Aryan civilization in Europe struggling for many centuries to prove itself superior to the assaults of outer barbarism, so here we find a decisive struggle beginning between the antagonist tendencies which had grown up in the midst