At the north, England had not governed her Thirteen Colonies well. But she had at least protected them. There had never been on their part any fear that she would abandon them to some other conqueror, or that they would be taken from her by force, or sold or traded away. The British colonists knew that in the last emergency the whole power of the United Kingdom would be exerted for their protection. Yet even so they revolted against misgovernment, and declared their independence. How much more, almost infinitely more, cause had Cubans for alienation from Spain! She had given them no such protection. Her policy suggested always the possibility of their transfer in some way to some other sovereignty. And her misgovernment had been immeasurably worse than that of England. If Cuba was more patient than the Thirteen Colonies at the north, that was another of the paradoxes of history--that the impulsive, hot-blooded Latin of the south should be more deliberate and conservative than the cool and phlegmatic Anglo-Saxon of the north. This very quality of patience was, indeed, the saving virtue of the Cuban character. Quijano Otero wrote of Colombia, at the very time of her revolt against Spain and the establishment of her independence, that she "had lived so fast in her years of glory and great deeds that, though still a child, she was already entering a premature decrepitude." Not so Cuba. It is true that, as we have seen, she had imbibed enough of the spirit of Spain and of other lands to be measurably saturated with their customs, even their luxurious vices and follies. Yet she did not live fast. She did not grow prematurely old. In so far as she adopted the customs of Europe, she adapted them to herself, not herself to them. The result was that after three centuries, she still had the ingenuousness and spontaneity of youth. She might almost have said, in paraphrase of a great captain's epigram, "I have not yet begun to live!" Half unconsciously, however, she had made an exceptionally complete preparation for the life that was to come as a nation. She had already become international in the scope of her vision, in the range of her sympathies, and in her intellectual and social culture. Many of her sons had studied abroad, acquiring the learning of the best European schools. If the world at large knew little about Cuba, Cuba knew much about the world at large. Though indeed the world did know something about Cuba, and took a lively and intelligent interest in her. This we have endeavored to indicate in these pages by our numerous citations of authorities, observers and writers of various lands, who found in the Queen of the Antilles a theme worthy of their most interested attention. More and more, as the unimproved estates of the world were partitioned among the powers, the transcendent value of this island was recognized, and more and more covetous gaze was fixed upon it by the nations which were extending their empires instead of losing them.