which shall sit in majesty and power the two
Americas, Asia, Africa, and the chief colonies of Europe. God forbid
that the waters of our national life should ever settle to the dead
level of a waveless calm. It would be the stagnation of death, the ocean
grave of individual liberty.

GREATEST CONTINUOUS EMPIRE.

The Right Hon. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, the noted English statesman
and orator. Born at Liverpool, December 29, 1809. From his "Kin
beyond the Sea."

There is no parallel in all the records of the world to the case of that
prolific British mother who has sent forth her innumerable children over
all the earth to be the founders of half-a-dozen empires. She, with her
progeny, may almost claim to constitute a kind of universal church in
politics. But among these children there is one whose place in the
world's eye and in history is superlative; it is the American Republic.
She is the eldest born. She has, taking the capacity of her land into
view as well as its mere measurement, a natural base for the greatest
continuous empire ever established by man. And it may be well here to
mention what has not always been sufficiently observed, that the
distinction between continuous empire, and empire severed and dispersed
over sea is vital. The development which the Republic has effected has
been unexampled in its rapidity and force. While other countries have
doubled, or at most trebled, their population, she has risen during one
single century of freedom, in round numbers, from two millions to
forty-five. As to riches, it is reasonable to establish, from the
decennial stages of the progress thus far achieved, a series for the
future; and, reckoning upon this basis, I suppose that the very next
census, in the year 1880, will exhibit her to the world as certainly the
wealthiest of all the nations. The huge figure of a thousand millions
sterling, which may be taken roundly as the annual income of the United
Kingdom, has been reached at a surprising rate; a rate which may perhaps
be best expressed by saying that, if we could have started forty or
fifty years ago from zero, at the rate of our recent annual increment,
we should now have reached our present position. But while we have been
advancing with this portentous rapidity, America is passing us by as if
in a canter. Yet even now the work of searching the soil and the bowels
of the territory, and opening out her enterprise throughout its vast
expanse,