It is impossible here to avoid saying--what every one else writing on this subject has already said--something about the extent and population of the British Empire. Under the Union Jack at this moment there lie the British Islands, Egypt, India, Burmah, a part of Borneo, Australia, New Zealand, the Dominion of Canada, the West Indies, South, East, and West Africa, with innumerable islands scattered over the face of the whole globe. A great deal of this territory has been acquired since the year 1837: at that time vast tracts of it were worthless deserts, for which no one ventured to predict a future. Australia contained a few thousand whites; New Zealand, not half a dozen; South Africa was the Cape and nothing more; Canada contained only the two divisions; there was no emigration--there was no thought of emigration. The exports and imports of the country, though they were thought large at the time, were only worth a hundred millions sterling, against four hundred millions at the present day. The national debt in 1837 amounted to 30 per cent of the wealth of the whole country: at present it is 7¼ per cent on that wealth. In 1837 there were 28,000 merchant ships belonging to Great Britain and her colonies: at present there are about the same number, but with four times the tonnage. And so on with tables of figures which show the advance made by the country in every branch of industry and enterprise. Above all things, we may look round and observe that, just as on the site of Fort Dearborn of 1837 now stands the splendid city of Chicago of 1897, so, where there was nothing in 1837 but wild plain and lonely hill, there now stand crowded and busy cities like Melbourne and Sydney: there now lie bathed in the golden sunlight populous colonies like Manitoba and British Columbia: there now look upward in their youth of hope nations like New Zealand. Great Britain in sixty years has become the mother of four nations. Yet a little while, a few years, and these nations--federated Canada, federated Australia, federated South Africa, United New Zealand--will be four independent nations, proud, strong, eager to meet whatever fortune may send them, with the prayers and the blessings of the little Island whence they sprang. [Illustration: KENSINGTON PALACE IN 1897] It remains to be seen what reception they will get from the United States; whether there will be only five independent Anglo-Saxon countries allied with each other and the mother country by bonds never to be broken, while the sixth still holds aloof; or whether the five shall become six, all independent, neither one before nor after the others, and so the unity of the race be preserved, and its destiny as the leader of the world be assured.