The run of events under the handicraft system in England differs in certain consequential features from that among the Continental peoples,--consequential for the purposes of this inquiry, whether of similarly grave consequence from the point of view given by any other and larger interest. These peculiar traits of the British era of handicraft yield a side light on the methods and reach of the handicraft discipline as a factor in civilisation at large, at the same time that a consideration of them should go to show how slender an initial difference may come to be decisive of the outcome in case circumstances give this initial difference a cumulative effect. As regards the ultimately substantial grounds of the British situation, in the way of racial make-up, natural resources, and cultural antecedents, the British community has no singular advantage or disadvantage as against its Continental competitors. What is true of England in respect of peculiarly favourable natural resources later on, about and after the close of the era of handicraft, does not hold for the beginnings or the best days of that era. Racially there is no appreciable difference between the English population of that time and the population of the Low Countries, of the Scandinavian peninsulas, or even of the nearer lying German territories; and no markedly characteristic national type of temperament had at that time been developed in Great Britain, as against the temperamental make-up of its Continental neighbours,--whatever may be conceived to have become the case in the nearer past.