present position as a government and a society with what it was when
Liberty Bell announced the dismemberment of her empire. Her rank among
the nations has notably improved. The population of England, Scotland
and Wales was then estimated below eight and a half millions--a
numerical approximation, by the way, to the three millions of the
colonies not sufficiently considered when we measure the stoutness
of her struggle against them with France and Holland combined. Of the
continental powers, the French numbered perhaps twenty-two millions,
Spain twelve, the Low Countries six, Germany thirty, Prussia seven,
and so on. From the ratio of one to nearly three, as compared with
France, she has, if we include pacified and assimilated Ireland--an
element now of strength instead of weakness--advanced to an equality.
She has equally gained on the others, except Prussia, with its
aggregation of new provinces. She may, furthermore, in the event of an
internecine conflict with a combination, count upon the unwillingness
of America to see her annihilated; not the least just of Tallyrand's
observations expressing his conviction that, though the two great
Anglo-Saxon powers might quarrel with each other, they would not push
such a dispute for the benefit of a third party. But, dismissing
the question of mere brute strength, Britain's sentiment of pride is
conciliated by the spectacle of an advance in the numbers speaking her
tongue from eleven or twelve to eighty millions within the century,
and that in considerable part at the expense of other languages;
millions of foreign immigrants, parents or children, having abandoned
their vernacular in favor of hers.

Let us now essay a light sketch of the stream at whose source we have
glanced. Light and superficial it must be, for to attempt more were
to confront the vast and many-sided theme of modern civilization.
The nineteenth century, the child of history, has the stature of