revolutionised. France, England, Spain, become nearer to America and
India than Italy; so Italy declines; while the Atlantic states usurp the
first place as the centres of civilisation.

Our own age brings fresh seas into the circle once more. It is no longer
the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, or the Indian Ocean that alone count;
the Pacific also begins to be considered. China, Japan, the Cape; Chili,
Peru, the Argentine; California, British Columbia, Australia, New
Zealand; all of them are parts of the system of to-day; civilisation is
world-wide.

Has this change of area altered the central position of England? Not at
all, save to strengthen it. If you look at the hemisphere of greatest
land, you will see that England occupies its exact middle. Insular
herself, and therefore all made up of ports, she is nearer all ports in
the world than any other country is or ever can be. I don't say that
this insures for her perpetual dominion, such as Virgil prophesied for
the Roman Empire; but I do say it makes her a hard country to beat in
commercial competition. It accounts for Liverpool, London, Glasgow,
Newcastle; it even accounts in a way for Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds,
and Sheffield. England now stands at the mathematical centre of the
practical world, and unless some Big Thing occurs to displace her, she
must continue to stand there. It takes a great deal to upset the balance
of an entire planet.

Is anything now displacing her? Well, there is the fact that railways
are making land-carriage to-day more important relatively to
water-carriage than at any previous period. That may, perhaps, in time
shift the centre of the world from an island like England to the middle
of a great land area, like Chicago or Moscow. And, no doubt, if ever the