England and the English [pp. 233-247]

ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH.
northern cliffs, and from its vernal lungs there proceeds a breath
which redeems England from its penalties of latitude.
Its mineral resources enable it to enter the hardware markets
of the world, and distance competition. Beneath its upper crust
of earth, teeming with fruit and grain, is a grim subsoil of iron
and coal, richer thani the bowels of California. Its quality of
clay is such, that English bricks contest with stone itself the
palm of durability, and its sea coasts are one vast and continuous
fishery.
The ambition which Nature fosters for this little island, becomes clearer when we contemplate its situation. The cardinal
facts of that situation are its insulation and its geographical relations. The salt-water highway which lies between it and
France is a theory of defence more profound than has ever emanated from the Engineer's art. Anchored solidly in its ocean
home, England watches the tremendous developments in projectile power, with comparative indifference. A stranger for centuries to a foreign war, except upon an enemy's territory, her social life, her agriculture, her manufacturing interests, and every
element of her industrial economy, have obeyed an energetic law
of development. With domestic peace thus guarantied, and
planted intermediately in the great Trade Path between the eastern and western hemispheres, England is by force of position
the commission merchant, the common carrier, and the political
broker of the civilized world.
The race on this island, are the legitimate offspring and just
complement of that partial Nature, which speaks to us so forcibly
in the climate, the situation, and the geologic formations. Ages
of political freedom and constant success in war and all the
walks of civil life, approve their title to a supreme, if not the
supreme, type of manhood.
Covering an area of 122,000 square miles they rule a territory
of 5,000,000 square miles. Constituting in all about 40 millions
of souls, they dictate laws to 225 millions of people. Possessinga
soil largely sandwiched with leanness, and eye-sored by great fens
and marshes, they have drained, and manured, and spaded, and
sown, until it is emerald with verdure, fragrant with flowers, and
laughs in fat abundance. Over-canopied by a cloudy heavens,
and swathed in fog, they have evoked an ethereal element from
their rugged beds of coal, and blasphemously claim that gas is
cheaper in London than daylight. With no native breed of horse
to speak of, they have so generously imported, and so judiciously
crossed, that they challenge the universe to match their horses
in strength, symmetry, speed and bottom. A non-producer of
cotton, they clothe the world in cotton fabrics. Shut out by latitude and clouds from a tropical sun, they take nature haughtily
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