From the time of Columbus down to the middle of the nineteenth century, five nations, all on the western side of Europe, were mainly concerned in carrying European trade, conquest, and settlement into other parts of the world. They were the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, and the English. Of these five nations, the Spaniards had what may be called a continental career. They overran and mastered an immense area of mainland. The Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English, on the other hand, while they differed from each other in many points, were alike in this, that they were traders and seafarers, not so much attempting an inland dominion, as securing footholds on sea coasts, peninsulas, and islands. The French stood midway between the Spaniards and the other three nations. They were not {330} continental conquerors to the same extent as the Spaniards, they did not confine themselves to the fringes of the land to the same extent as the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English. They were what France made them to be. [Sidenote: _Twofold character of France and the French._] France is an integral part of the continent of Europe; but it is also, with the exception of the Spanish peninsula, the westernmost province of that continent; and it has a long indented seaboard open to the Atlantic. The country has a double outlook, its people have had a twofold character and a double history. It is noteworthy that, while the French, to judge from the greatest event in their history--the French Revolution--and to judge from their writing and thought, have been the most thorough and logical, the most uncompromising of peoples, their record has yet been in a sense one of continual compromise, or at least one of perpetual combination of opposite extremes. The northern and southern races, the northern and southern religions, have had their meeting-ground in France. France, which has been notable for violent political changes, had and has the strongest element of conservatism in its population. No nation is more quick-witted than the French, yet in none is there more plodding industry. [Sidenote: _Canada well suited to be a sphere of French colonization._]