Although there are obvious difficulties in the way of writing at once without fear and without favour of a man who is unquestionably one of the great ones of the earth while he is still alive, there are yet two very cogent reasons why Cecil Rhodes should be the subject of this concluding essay. In the first place, he is the last of our Empire-Makers in order of time, and, in the second place, he has done his empire-making in the last region of the earth in which this empire, or any other, can be extended without coming into direct armed conflict with the great Powers of the earth. If you get a map of Africa published thirty years ago, and lay it beside a quite recent one, a very little intelligent observation will enable you to see, at any rate, what I may be allowed to call _prima facie_ evidence of the magnificent work which this last of our Empire-Makers has done, not so much for this generation, perhaps, as for the next, and the next. It is all very well for the goose that has never seen over its own farmyard wall to assume a lofty, and possibly sincere, contempt for the vast stretches of prairie and forest land that may lie outside. He is quite justified in saying to his brother geese: “This is our home; all our wants are supplied here. What do we want to go and lose ourselves for in the long grass, or expose ourselves to the wild animals that may be lurking about the dark depths of the forest? This farmyard where we have lived all our lives, and where our long and honourable ancestry has lived before us, is surely enough for us. There is a nice pond yonder fringed with succulent mud. It has nice worms and other things in it, and there doesn’t seem any prospect of our general supply of goose-food coming to an end. What do we care about what there is outside? Why should we trouble ourselves about the fortunes of silly birds who go and fly over the wall, and lose themselves in the wilderness? Let them go. What are they to us, even if they were born in the same farmyard?” That is all very well as far as it goes, but there comes a time when the farmyard fills up, and the duck-pond becomes over-crowded, and worms and goose-food, &c., have to be scrambled for, and sometimes even fought for, and it is just here that the larger wisdom of those who not only look over, but fly over, the farmyard wall comes in.