determinants of English destiny.

What, politically speaking, are the special attributes of an island? In
the first place, it is likely to be settled by a bold and enterprising
race. Migration by land under the pressure of hunger or of a stronger
tribe, or from the mere habit of wandering, calls for no special effort
of courage or intelligence on the part of the nomad. Migration by sea
does: to go forth on a strange element at all, courage is required; but
we can hardly realize the amount of courage required to go voluntarily
out of sight of land. The first attempts at ship-building also imply
superior intelligence, or an effort by which the intelligence will be
raised. Of the two great races which make up the English nation, the
Celtic had only to pass a channel which you can see across, which
perhaps in the time of the earliest migration did not exist. But the
Teutons, who are the dominant race and have supplied the basis of the
English character and institutions, had to pass a wider sea. From
Scandinavia, especially, England received, under the form of
freebooters, who afterwards became conquerors and settlers, the very
core and sinews of her maritime population, the progenitors of the
Blakes and Nelsons. The Northman, like the Phoenician, had a country too
narrow for him, and timber for ship-building at hand. But the land of
the Phoenician was a lovely land, which bound him to itself; and
wherever he moved his heart still turned to the pleasant abodes of
Lebanon and the sunlit quays of Tyre. Thus he became a merchant, and the
father of all who have made the estranging sea a highway and a bond
between nations, more than atoning by the service thus rendered to
humanity, for his craft, his treachery, his cruelty, and his Moloch-
worship. The land of the Scandinavian was not a lovely land, though it
was a land suited to form strong arms, strong hearts, chaste natures,
and, with purity, strength of domestic affection. He was glad to