enterprising race, the most hardy and enterprising again renewed their westward movement. All the while the characteristics of the advancing race were being confirmed and strengthened; the infirm and feeble in body or purpose were ever being left behind, and the primeval and now hereditary impulse to move on at all risks was becoming in those who from time to time sought new homes an ever-strengthening instinct. At last—and this is when ordinary history first takes cognisance of them—we find them settled on the southern and northern shores of the Baltic. [Sidenote: _The Cause of American Progressiveness._] After a time the day arrives for another movement, for another winnowing and sifting, far more searching than any of the previous ones. Greater hardihood and enterprise are needed than were ever called for in any of their past movements. The sea has now to be crossed—a new form of danger to be confronted. Those who venture in their open and half-open boats on this great enterprise, to establish a new home for themselves on the other side of the storm-swept waste of waters, must be men who know no fear, and in whom the instinct of moving onward is irrepressible. The result of this supreme effort is the great English nation—the product of all that is best in Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Danes, and Northmen. Such was the long process by which the men were formed who fought at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt; at Blenheim, and Ramilies, and Malplaquet; at Trafalgar, and at Waterloo; on the Ganges, the Nile, and the St. Lawrence; who produced a Bacon, a Shakespeare, and a Newton; who first tried men by their peers, and first governed themselves by their representatives; who broke the papal yoke, and established freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, and of commerce. In their little island they proved themselves the grandest race the world had seen. But the great drama was not yet complete. The original impulse had ever been gaining strength, and now appeared to culminate. But it was not so. One more effort had to be made. In grandeur and hardihood it transcended all that had yet been achieved. Not a narrow sea, but the broad Atlantic had to be crossed; not a small island, but a new world had to be occupied. The English race must itself be sifted, and none but those who have nerve as firm as that of the Pilgrim Fathers, and the most active instinct of progression, can take part in this mighty enterprise. And so it comes to pass that America is peopled with that which is most enterprising and progressive in that race in which these qualities had been most highly developed. In these respects she receives the cream of the cream, the purest selection of that which was most select. [Sidenote: _The Cause of American Progressiveness._]