486 Mr. R. Monckton Milnes [May 2, 



and political conditions which alone rendered possible such an event as 

 this. It had been written with sufficient accuracy for verse, that — 



" The total surface of this sphered earth 



Is now surveyed by philosophic eyes ; 

 Nor East nor West conceals a secret worth — 



In the wide ocean no Atlantis lies : 

 Nations and men, that would be great and wise, 



Thou knowest, can do no more than men have done ; 

 No wond'rous impulse, no divine surprise, 



Can bring this planet nearer to the sun, — 



Civilization's prize no royal road has won. 



The accessibility of the ocean-waters of the globe was a first neces- 

 sity to this end, and this had been now accomplished from the ice-bound 

 fires of Mount Erebus to the grave of Franklin. We could not say 

 quite as much of our knowledge of the land of the world, but we per- 

 fectly understood the limits of our ignorance, and could fairly assume 

 that there was no position of the earth yet unsurveyed which could in 

 any notable degree add to our physical science, or extend our observa- 

 tion of the habits and destinies of mankind. 



Although great continents are represented in our Exhibition only by 

 their fringes, we can hardly contemplate any such conversion of nature 

 or man as should people the sandy spaces of Africa, the vast pastoral 

 steppes of central Asia, or those huge fields of the unlimited liberty 

 of animal and vegetable life which stretch in South America from the 

 tropics to the polar snows, with the higher forms of industry, art, and 

 civilization. It is enough that no longer can Tartar hordes swoop 

 down on richer and fairer lands, and that the sage and saleratus prairies 

 of North America cannot check the enterprising outgrowth of the 

 Anglo-Saxon race. 



And this brings us to another necessary condition of our Exhibi- 

 tion, the security of the seas, and the general facility of commercial 

 intercourse. The exceptional piracy which obstructs the trade of the 

 waters of Oceania, and which the energy of Sir James Brooke has 

 done much to repress, was once the custom of the world, and carried 

 with it no notions of cruelty or disgrace. This evil was partially re- 

 medied by placing commerce under the safeguard of religion. Where 

 the modern state establishes a factory or a free port, the old state built 

 a temple. Thus the Tyrian Hercules linked together the trade of 

 Greece and Phoenicia in a common worship : thus the fane of Jupiter 

 Ammon was the great resting-place and protection of the caravans of 

 the desert : thus the lines of the chief Catholic pilgrimages were the 

 paths not only of all travellers but of all merchants in the middle ages. 

 The interchange of the gifts of God was sanctioned by Pagan and by 

 Christian piety, and the notion of connecting trade with any inferiority 

 of social station or intellectual power is a perverted remnant of the 

 feudal system, where the jealousy between town and country tended to 

 discredit labour and to idealize brute force. 



The speaker proceeded to draw the distinction between ancient and 



