“I don’t altogether say that. It is not with countries as with individuals; the latter always pass from their second childhood into their graves. But for nations, who can say that there is not reserved a second youth? though history does not record an instance of any nation having ever attained to it. The process is probably a slow one; but in these days of rapid development, to say nothing of evolution, we cannot be sure even of that.” “Still,”I pursued, a little nettled at the severity of his judgment in regard to my own country,—I did not care what he said about Russia, of which I was in no position to judge,—“I should like to know upon what grounds you base your opinion that England is an old idiot. The expression, I think, is scarcely parliamentary.” “In using the term to which you object,” said Ivan,—“which, after reading the language recently used in debate in your House of Commons, I maintain is strictly parliamentary,—I was not so much alluding to England as to its Government; and I will endeavor to explain to you the reasons which lead me to think that the expression is not misapplied. There are at the present day, including the population of the United States, between eighty and ninety millions of people who owe their origin to the British Isles; who speak the English language as their mother-tongue; who possess in a more or less degree the national characteristics of the race from which they have sprung; who exercise an influence over a greater area of the surface of the earth than that of any other race upon it; who directly control over 250 millions of people not of their own race, and indirectly control many millions more; whose commercial relations are more extensive than those of all the other nations of the world put together; whose wealth is unrivalled; whose political institutions have hitherto served as a model, as they have been the envy of less favored peoples; and who may be said, without fear of contradiction, to lead the van of the world’s civilisation. It is difficult, when we spread a map out before us, to realise that so small a dot as Great Britain appears upon it, should have given birth to these stupendous forces; and one is led to examine into the processes by which so marvellous a position has been achieved in the world’s history as that which these small islands must occupy, even though that position seems now about to be destroyed by what appears to an outsider to be a combination of national decrepitude and administrative impotence,—for it is only when a nation has itself lost its vigor, that it tolerates imbecility on the part of its rulers. The greatness of England has been built up, not on the conquests of its neighbors, or of nations equally civilised with itself, as we have seen occur in the cases of other great empires, but in the comparatively easy subjugation of barbarous peoples; in the occupation and colonisation of countries sparingly inhabited by savage races; in