and Great Britain will be allied in amity as firm as that which now
holds together those Federated States. The thing is too vast, it is
too important, to be achieved in a day, or in a generation. But it
will come--it will come; it must come--it must come; Asia and Europe
may become Chinese or Cossack, but our people shall rule over every
other land, and all the islands, and every sea.

II.-THE LAND OF REALITY

When a man has received kindnesses unexpected and recognition unlooked
for from strangers and people in a foreign country on whom he had no
kind of claim, it seems a mean and pitiful thing in that man to sit
down in cold blood and pick out the faults and imperfections, if he
can descry any, in that country. The 'cad with a kodak'--where did I
find that happy collocation?--is to be found everywhere; that is quite
certain; every traveller, as is well known, feels himself justified
after six weeks of a country to sit in judgment upon that country and
its institutions, its manners, its customs and its society; he
constitutes himself an authority upon that country for the rest of his
life. Do we not know the man who 'has been there'? Lord Palmerston
knew him. 'Beware,' he used to say, 'of the man who has been there!'
As Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs he was privileged to make
quite a circle of acquaintance with the men who 'had been there'; and
he estimated their experience at its true value.

The man who has been there very seldom speaks its language with so
much ease as to understand all classes; he has therefore no real
chance of seeing and understanding things otherwise than as they seem.
When an Englishman travels in America, however, he can speak the
language. Therefore, he thinks that he really does understand the
things he sees. Does he? Let us consider. To understand the true
meaning of things in any strange land is not to see certain things by
themselves, but to be able to see them in their relation to other
things. Thus, the question of price must be taken with the question of
wage; that of supply with that of demand; that of things done with the
national opinion on such things; that of the continued existence of
certain recognised evils with, the conditions and exigencies of the
time; and so on. Before an observer can understand the relative value
of this or that he must make a long and sometimes a profound study of
the history of the country, the growth of the people, and the presen