sion--fills
a striking chapter in the history of British expansion.

That keen zest for geographical discovery, which was one of the most
brilliant products of the Renaissance, was slow in making its
appearance in England. Nor are the explanations far to seek. The bull
(1494) of a notorious Pope (Alexander VI.)--lavish, as befits one who
bestows a thing which he cannot enjoy himself, and of which he has no
right to dispose--had allocated the shadowy world over the sea to
Spain and Portugal, upon a fine bold principle of division; and
immediately afterwards these two Powers readjusted their boundaries in
the unknown world by the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which could
not, however, be considered as binding third parties. The line of
longitude herein adopted was commonly held to have assigned
Newfoundland to Portugal, but the view was incorrect. England was
still a Catholic country, and for all its independence of the Pope in
matters temporal, the effects of such a bull must have been very
considerable. Nor did the personal character of Henry VII. incline him
to the path of adventure; and on the few occasions when he was goaded
to enterprise, almost in spite of himself, we are able to admire the
prudence of a prince who was careful to insert two clauses in his
charter of adventure: the first protecting himself against liability
for the cost, the second stipulating for a share of the profits. It is
to the robust insight of Henry VIII. into the conditions of our
national existence that the beginnings of the English Navy are to be
ascribed, and it was under this stubborn prince that English trade
began to depend upon English bottoms. But the real explanation of
Anglo-Saxon backwardness lies somewhat deeper. Foreign adventure and
the planting of settlements must proceed, if they are to be
successful, from an exuberant State; neither in resources, nor in
population, nor, perhaps it must be added, in the spirit of adventure,
was the England of King Henry VII. sufficiently equipped. Hence it
happened that foreign vessels sailed up the Thames, or anchored by the
quays of Bideford in the service of English trade, at a time when the
spirit of Prince Henry the Navigator had breathed into the Portuguese
service, when Diaz was discovering the Cape, and the tiny vessels of
Da Gama were adventuring the immense voyage to Cathay.

It is now clearly established that the earliest adventurers in America
were men of Norse stock. More than