“This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This fortress built by nature for herself, Against infection and the hand of war; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.” _King Richard II._ But, we confess, we rather dwell on other features in our physical and social history, as affording the best proof of our real greatness, and the best illustration of our untiring Anglo-Saxon energy. We would rather record such facts as the following, than announce any “famous victory;” we would rather turn fondly to considerations like these, than contemplate “Our sands that will not bear her enemy’s boats, But suck them to the top-mast.” “Though animal organization is beyond the constructive skill of man, he takes the elements existing in nature, and by new combinations gets new power. He keeps adding to the qualities of his noblest coursers, his fleetest dogs, and his goodliest beeves. He year by year develops the resources of the soil, reclaims the marsh from wild fowl, the heath from rabbits, and the flinty hillside from briars and thistles. He goes on multiplying the blades of grass and grains of corn, and compels an equal area to yield a twofold substance. He discovers in his raw materials unsuspected properties, until soda and sand are converted into a Crystal Palace, and water, coal, and stony ore into a train, which rushes with the might of an earthquake and the velocity of the wind. He devises fresh applications of machinery, and in the creations of his ingenuity finds a servant and a master. The broad result to England is quickly told: fifty years have doubled the population, and employment and subsistence have been doubled likewise. An engine is contrived which economises labour, and threatens starvation to the labourer; but the issue proves that the work it makes is more than it saves. Annihilate all the cranks and wheels constructed in the interval, and return our counties with their present population to the condition in which they were when the century began, and there would be nothing but famine in the land. A government wiser than man’s has provided, in the constant exertion of talent, for the increase of our race, and maintains a proportion between our wants and our progress. Every round we rise in the ladder leads to a higher; but our step is limited, or we should outstrip our needs by too prodigious a stride, and encroach on the rights of a future age.”[77]