over the seas.  Endowed with this maritime supremacy, she has with an unerring instinct proceeded to seize upon the keys of empire in all parts of the world,—­Gibraltar, Malta, the isthmus of Suez, Aden, Ceylon, the coasts of Australia, island after island in the Pacific,—­every station, in short, that commands the pathways of maritime commerce, or guards the approaches to the barbarous countries which she is beginning to regard as in some way her natural heritage.  Any well-filled album of postage-stamps is an eloquent commentary on this maritime supremacy of England.  It is enough to turn one’s head to look over her colonial blue-books.  The natural outcome of all this overflowing vitality it is not difficult to foresee.  No one can carefully watch what is going on in Africa to-day without recognizing it as the same sort of thing which was going on in North America in the seventeenth century; and it cannot fail to bring forth similar results in course of time.  Here is a vast country, rich in beautiful scenery and in resources of timber and minerals, with a salubrious climate and fertile soil, with great navigable rivers and inland lakes, which will not much longer be left in control of tawny lions and long-eared elephants and negro fetich-worshippers.  Already five flourishing English states have been established in the south, besides the settlements on the Gold Coast and those at Aden commanding the Red Sea.  English explorers work their way, with infinite hardship, through its untravelled wilds, and track the courses of the Congo and the Nile as their forefathers tracked the Potomac and the Hudson.  The work of La Salle and Smith is finding its counterpart in the labours of Baker and Livingstone.  Who can doubt that within two or three centuries the African continent will be occupied by a mighty nation of English descent, and covered with populous cities and flourishing farms, with railroads and telegraphs and other devices of civilization as yet undreamed of?

If we look next to Australia, we find a country of more than two-thirds the area of the United States, with a temperate climate and immense resources, agricultural and mineral,—­a country sparsely peopled by a race of irredeemable savages hardly above the level of brutes.  Here England within the present century has planted six greatly thriving states, concerning which I have not time to say much, but one fact will serve as a specimen.  When in America we wish to illustrate in one word the wonderful growth of our so-called north-western states, we refer to Chicago,—­a city of half-a-million inhabitants standing on a spot which fifty years ago was an uninhabited marsh.  In Australia the city of Melbourne was founded in 1837, the year when the present queen of England began to reign, and the state of which it is the capital was hence called Victoria.  This city, now[16] just forty-three years old, has a population half as great as that of Chicago, has a public library of 200,000 volumes, and has a university with at least