The fervid eloquence of Daniel Webster, in 1834, described that empire as "a power dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England."[196] [196] Speech, May 7, 1834. If this heart-rousing testimony of the majesty of the empire, of which the dominions and colonies form a part, had been given by one of ourselves, it might have been tinged with the suspicion of self-glorious boasting; but springing from the lips of so distinguished a citizen of the United States, its fervid utterance is the candid acknowledgment of a nation wider than his own, whose grandeur compelled his admiration. If over half a century ago this ascription was true, how much more so is it in these later days when the ideal of the "morning drum-beat" has been transmuted into actual fact in the "continuous and unbroken strain" of the "_Diamond Anthem_" of the rejoicings at the Jubilee of Queen Victoria,[197] when, commencing at Suva at 4 p.m. on that Sunday afternoon, the National Anthem was taken up in the assemblies in almost every place in the outer British Dominions as the sun came over them in succession around the world, until it had come back again to Fiji on the following day. [197] Appendix D.--The "Diamond Jubilee Anthem" of 1897. Those "possessions" which fired the statesman's imagination have marvellously increased; that "power" has expanded beyond his utmost dreams. Since that time no nation, not even his own, has progressed like has the British nation. Canada, then lost to view in a solitude of far-off forests or of pathless plains, has arisen like a young lion, and carrying the Union Jack in continuous line of government from the Atlantic to the Pacific, has gripped the American continent from sea to sea. Australasia and New Zealand have risen beneath the southern star, India in itself has become an empire, and Africa, youngest born of all the lion's brood, is welding fast another continent beneath the imperial sway. These are the nations of the Union Jack, the galaxy of parliaments of free men, which have arisen round the centre isles and the throne of Her who, with Her statesmen, "Knew the seasons when to take Occasion by the hand and make The bounds of freedom wider yet." In this Nation of nations, brothers join hands with their brothers around the world, and raise aloft the Union Jack of itself, and in their ensigns as the glad emblem of their united allegiance, a union for which the Britains beyond the seas have proved their faith, and ever stand in foremost rank ready and willing to defend.