"In the east, there is arising a colossal centaur called the Russian Empire. With a civilized head and front, it has the sinews of a huge barbaric body. There one man's brain moves 70,000,000. There all the traditions of the people are of aggression and conquest in the west. There but two ranks are distinguishable--serfs and soldiers. There the map of the future includes Constantinople and Vienna as outposts of St. Petersburg. "In the west, an opposing and still more wonderful American Empire is emerging. We islanders have no conception of the extraordinary events which amid the silence of the earth are daily adding to the power and pride of this gigantic nation. Within three years, territories more extensive than these three kingdoms [Great Britain, Ireland, and Scotland] France and Italy put together, have been quietly, and in almost 'matter of course' fashion, annexed to the Union. "Within seventy years, seventeen new sovereignties, the smallest of them larger than Great Britain, have peaceably united themselves to the Federation. No standing army was raised, no national debt sunk, no great exertion was made, but there they are. And the last mail brings news of three more great States about to be joined to the thirty: Minnesota in the north-west, Deseret in the south-west, and California on the shores of the Pacific. These three States will cover an area equal to one-half the European continent." Mitchel, in his School Geography (4th revised edition), p. 101, speaking of the United States, says:-- "When it is considered that one hundred years ago the inhabitants numbered but 1,000,000, it presents the most striking instance of national growth to be found in the history of mankind." Let us reduce these general statements to the more tangible form of facts and figures. A short time before the great Reformation in the days of Martin Luther, not four hundred years ago, this Western Continent was discovered. The Reformation brought out a large class of persons who were determined to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. Being fettered and oppressed by the religious intolerance of the Old World, they sought, in the wilds of America, that measure of civil and religious freedom which they so much desired. A little more than two hundred years ago, Dec. 22, 1620, the Mayflower landed one hundred of these voluntary exiles on the coast of New England. Here, says Martyn, "New England was born," and this was "its first baby cry, a prayer and a thanksgiving to the Lord." Another permanent English settlement was made at Jamestown, Va., in 1607. In process of time other settlements were made, and colonies organized, which were all subject to the English government till the declaration of Independence July 4, 1776.