Writing of that very period, in his essay on Jean Paul Richter, and referring to the British domination of the sea which Nelson had achieved, to the mastery of the lands of Europe which Napoleon had won, and to the intellectual primacy which Germany--though beaten to the dust in war--was then enjoying, Carlyle observed that "Providence has given to the French the empire of the land, to the English that of the sea, to the Germans that of--the air!" It was a fine conception, as true then as it would be untrue to-day. In a significant sense the same shrewd observation is apt to the situation of Cuba a hundred years ago. Spain held control of the material interests of the island, on sea and on land, but she could not restrain the Cubans from self-control, which meant immeasurable progress, in the air--that is, in the intellectual life. It was thus intellectually, in the only way as yet within their power, that the people of the island met the new and transcendent occasion. It was, as we have seen, a period of revolution and of counter-revolution, a time of flux, throughout the greater part of the world. The mighty liberal impulse of the French Revolution, following in the wake of the American revolution, was by no means annihilated by the infatuated imperialism of Napoleon or by the reactionary movement which prevailed for a time after his fall. It was felt, and it prevailed, in North and Central and South America, from the Golden Gate to the Strait of Magellan; and in the islands of the Caribbean and the Gulf. In Cuba, as we have seen, there seemed to be at first no response, for reasons which also we have hitherto considered. But all unconsciously the Cuban people received and felt the impulse, and answered it.