Our American rivals may be more active and enterprising than we are—they certainly are not cumbered to the same extent by the traditions and inheritances of feudal times—but they are as yet not sufficiently numerous to compete with us as regards the totality of work done. They have scarcely been able hitherto to ascertain the material resources of the country in which they have made their home. “Old Europe,” where every clod of earth has its history, where every man is the heir of a hundred successive generations, therefore still maintains the first place, and a comparative study of nations justifies us in the belief that its moral {4} ascendancy and industrial preponderance will remain with it for many years to come. At the same time, we must not shut our eyes to the fact that equality will obtain in the end, not only between America and Europe, but also between these two and the other quarters of the world. The intermingling of nations, migrations which have assumed prodigious proportions, and the increasing facilities of intercourse must in the end lead to an equilibrium of population being established throughout the world. Then will each country add its proper share to the wealth of mankind, and what we call civilisation will have “its centre everywhere, its periphery nowhere.” The central geographical position of Europe has undoubtedly exercised a most favourable influence upon the progress of the nations inhabiting it. The superiority of the Europeans is certainly not due to the inherent virtues of the races from which they sprang, as is vainly imagined by some, for in other parts of the ancient world these same races have exhibited far less creative genius. To the happy conditions of soil, climate, configuration, and geographical position the inhabitants of Europe owe the honour of having been the first to obtain a knowledge of the earth in its entirety, and to have remained for so long a period at the head of mankind. Historical geographers are, therefore, right when they insist upon the influence which the configuration of a country exercises upon the nations who inhabit it. The extent of table-lands, the heights of mountain ranges, the direction and volume of rivers, the vicinity of the ocean, the indentation of the coast-line, the temperature of the air, the abundance or rarity of rain, and the correlations between soil, air, and water—all these are pregnant with effects, and explain much of the character and mode of life of primitive nations. They account for most of the contrasts existing between nations subject to different conditions, and point out the natural highways of the globe which nations are constrained to follow in their migrations or warlike expeditions.