speculating upon the elementary forces of a nation's grandeur, and upon the contrivance in combining them to make them operate in a direction desired. This theory was founded upon the possibility of tracing these forces in history, and of discovering the operation of these laws under conditions which had actually determined the course of mankind and nations in definite directions. The text of his theory was the history of the world's seas. History had taught him that the grandest achievements of man had been associated with the shores of the world's seas. To go back no further than the beginning of the Christian era, the most sacred, solemn story of the hopes of man had been written in wanderings on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. With the progress of Christian civilization, thus sea-born, the advancing tide of human progress was staid by the banks of the Mediterranean. It was along the borders of this sea that the Byzantine Empire flourished and was destroyed; that Rome attained her supremacy, and fell. With the progress of time, and the advance of civilization westward, the Atlantic took the place of the Galilean Sea and of the Mediterranean. It is the sea of the present. But unless the laws of political geography are false, the contests of the future are to be around the shores of the "still sea," now our own Pacific. The nation of the future is the nation that holds the key of those waters. The purchase of Alaska has given our Republic a foothold on both sides of that sea. It is a geographical impossibility that any other nation can occupy a position in its own territory upon both sides of the Pacific. This is the theory of the purchase. It secures the control of the Pacific to the young Republic. It assures the future of the world's dominion to Yankee civilization. This was the theory. And his outlook, said General Garfield, with enthusiasm, was grand. In his political horoscope, he saw the Republic enjoying a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had furnished no example; he saw our country rising to the place of umpire among the world's powers; he saw how, by wise statesmanship, our material prosperity and peaceful conquests grew together; how our increasing commerce made us mistress of the seas; how Western civilization and Oriental decrepitude were staid upon the borders of that Pacific sea, and compelled to render homage to Young America, who had become the keeper of the world's keys.