Anglosphere

“ From where I sit peacefully, bringing my history uptodate and jotting these notes in my diary, I can see, faintly with the naked eye or quite distinctly through a telescope, that emerald gem set in a silver sea. The great cities are covered; the barren moors, the lovely lakes, the gentle streams, the forbidding crags are all mantled in one grassy sward. England is gone, and with it the world. ”

“ Europe, the most central of all continents, in relation to the great land-mass of the earth, and also the one most equally removed from the middle point of the great water-mass, touches the whole remaining world at the greatest number of points, and this, in conjunction with her remarkably broken coast-line, so favorable to the purposes of navigation, have given her her place of command, and have assigned to England her evident role of mistress of the seas. ”

“ Everything comes round in precisely the same time, England and Ireland and China and Australia, the mountains, and the seas, all keep their places on the Earth, just as they do on a globe of the Earth which I can turn round. ”

“ Or, to compare the continents to a still higher class of forms, Europe may be called the Face of the Old World, out of which the soul of humanity could look more clearly into the great and promising future. ”

“ It is the fate of continents, no less than of the human communities that inhabit them, to have their first origin shrouded in obscurity. When the curtain of darkness begins to rise from our primeval Europe, it reveals to us a scene marvelously unlike that of the existing continent. The land then lay chiefly to the north and northwest, probably extending as far as the edge of the great submarine plateau by which the European ridge is prolonged under the Atlantic for 230 miles to the west of Ireland. ”

“ Europe with its innumerable attractions, its Alps, Appennines and Vesuvius, its castles, palaces, walled towns, fine cities, great battle fields, ancient ruins and a thousand other milestones of civilization, lay before us; but a wide Ocean, and all the dangers and perils of a long sea voyage lay between us and that other--longed for shore. ”

“ Rivers, hills, valleys, the sea itself feel the hand of a master. The long habitation of a powerful and ingenious race has turned every rood of land to its best use, has found all the capabilities, the arable soil, the quarriable rock, the highways, the byways, the fords, the navigable waters; and the new arts of intercourse meet you every where; so that England is a huge phalanstery, where all that man wants is provided within the precinct. ”

“ The roots of England run under the ocean; they come up in Africa, India, Australia, America, in many an island of all the seas. Great fresh, living trunks grow up therefrom. One day these offshoots will become self-supporting, with new and independent roots, and ere long will separate from the parent stem; then there will be a great Anglo-Saxon trunk in Australia, another in India, another in Africa, another in the north of our own continent, and yet others scattered over the manifold islands of the sea, an Anglo-Saxon forest of civilization. ”

“ Anne. Pray, mamma, is not a continent one of the divisions of the land?
Mrs. Harley. Yes, my dear; for after we have divided the whole globe into land and water, we again subdivide the land into Continents, Islands, Peninsulas, Isthmusses, and Promontories,—the water into Oceans, Seas, Straits, Gulfs, Bays, Lakes, Rivers, and Creeks.
A Continent is a large tract of land containing several countries which are not separated by seas; as Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.
An Island, is a tract of land entirely surrounded by water, as Britain, Ireland, Sicily, &c. ”

“ Any continental country whatever stimulates and refreshes vastly more, in spite of so much strong picturesqueness here, and so beautiful a Nature. England is ungracious, unamiable and heavy; whilst the Continent is everywhere light and amiably quaint, even where it is ugly, as in many elements it is in Germany. To tell the truth, I long to steep myself in America again and let the broken rootlets make new adhesions to the native soil. A man coquetting with too many countries is as bad as a bigamist, and loses his soul altogether. ”

“ For on that day men from Europe, then the centre of civilization, first gazed on a rich new land beyond the seas, a great virgin continent, destined to become the seat of flourishing civilizations and to play a leading part in the later history of the world. ”

“ Here, in this England of ours, which is an island surrounded by water, as I suppose you all know—or, as our great poet so truthfully and beautifully expresses the same fact, 'England bound in by the triumphant sea'—what, down the long vista of years, have conduced more to our successes in arms, and arts and song, than blankets? ”

“ On I went in my journey, traversing England from west to east, ascending and descending hills, crossing rivers by bridge and ferry, and passing over extensive plains. What a beautiful country is England! People run abroad to see beautiful countries, and leave their own behind unknown, unnoticed—their own the most beautiful! And then, again, what a country for adventures! especially to those who travel it on foot, or on horseback. People run abroad in quest of adventures, and traverse Spain or Portugal on mule or on horseback ”

“ A better resting-place, when one lies down weary from the tasks and troubles of the present life, could not well be imagined. Its perpetual solitude, never profaned by the noisy feet of the busy world, draped alternately with snowy fleeces and blooming verdure, is always made musical by the solemn murmurs of the ocean. I found by the inscriptions, that England was the native country of most of those whose bones repose below, and whose names are gathering moss and lichens, while the sea, close by, sings their mournful requiem. ”

“ Contrast the complexity of Europe, its lack of symmetry, its variety, irregularity, disorder and caprice! The geography of the two continents already foreshadows the differences in their civilizations. On the one hand simplicity and size; on the other a hole-and-corner variety; there immense rivers, endless forests, interminable plains, indefinite repetition of a few broad ideas; here distracting transitions, novelties, surprises, shocks, distinctions in a word, already suggesting Distinction. Even in its physical features America is the land of quantity, while Europe is that of quality. ”

“ And England mingles with a hundred lands.
And weaving silently all far-off shores
A thousand singing wires stretch round the earth,
Or sleep still vocal in their ocean depths,
Till all lands die to make one glorious birth.
So we remote compatriots reply,
And feel the world-task only half begun:
"We are the girders of the ageing earth,
Whose veins are million, but whose heart is one." ”

“ A great rugged continent, lying hidden in the distant Pacific main, is encountered by [205] human enterprise; and in a few years we witness towns and cities thronging its seaboard, and all along the surf-beaten shores is heard the hum of industry. We mark the inalienable love of home, of the mother-country, in a thousand tokens, and find the measureless ocean bridged by sympathy and memory, and Old England renewed in such forms as make us scarcely conscious of our distance from it ”

“ For the physical geography of a country always has a great effect upon its political history, and the dispersions and movements of different nations are exactly those parts of history which have most to do with fixing the names and the boundaries of different countries at different times. England, for instance, is, in strictness, the land of the English wherever they may settle, whether in their old home on the European continent, or in the isle of Britain, or in New England beyond the Ocean. ”

“ Britain, an island in the ocean, formerly called Albion, is situated between the north and west, facing, though at a considerable distance, the coasts of Germany, France, and Spain, which form the greatest part of Europe. ”

“ Our continent is not sufficiently large and wide a field for the development, display and exercise of the Anglo-Saxon, or rather the Anglo-American mind, talents and energies: the world is that field; the entire globe, the ocean and its isles, is the field worthy of that mind which is making its power and influence felt upon the condition and character of the age. What a mission is ours! ”

“ In thinking of the life of those early days we must remember that the aspect of Britain was very different then from what it is now, for in that far-back time these islands were a part of the Continent of Europe, and the North Sea and English Channel were just valleys, with rivers flowing through them, tributaries of the Rhine. There were no insurmountable obstacles to cross between the Continent and these regions, and animals and early man gradually roamed into this part of the world. Geology teaches us a good deal concerning the changes the surface of the ground has undergone. ”

“ The third quarter of the eighteenth century thus saw the remarkable and unstable spectacle of a Europe divided against itself, and no longer with any unifying political or religious idea, yet through the immense stimulation of men’s imaginations by the printed book, the printed map, and the opportunity of the new ocean-going shipping, able in a disorganized and contentious manner to dominate all the coasts of the world. ”

“ That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's breathing, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. ”

“ Europe lies between these extremes. Limited in area, diversified in surface, and deeply indented in its coast-line, it has experienced all the advantages which a continent needs for its development, and for that historical greatness which Europe has won for itself. ”

“ After a few swift miles of country whose old walls, well-groomed meadows, and shapely forests gave a look of England, the land rose higher and higher, till the car swung out at last on a height commanding a river in the utmost contrast with England's stream. ”

“ To them it seemed a toy landscape for children to play with, but, as they passed through the big towns and cities with their tall, clustering chimneys, their crowding populations, with unmistakable evidences of great wealth, their shipping, where the harbours bit into the red coast line, there began to waken in them the thought that this tiny England, so beautifully finished, and so neatly adorned, was something mightier than they had ever known. ”

“ Fog, obscurity, cold—yes, you will find them all in the climate of Great Britain; in England, in Scotland, in Ireland, and in the mountains of Wales, the cradle of Lord Ouilliam! It is true, but it is not the only verity. Great Britain also has her moments of fine weather. There are 247 no such trees in the world as the tall poplars of my own, my beautiful France—none planted in such mathematical, such symmetrical order, so methodical, logical, and straight. Nevertheless, Nature is infinite. ”

“ You sit in your cosy parlors and offices and think of some friend or relative, perhaps a son or daughter, in the 'far West.' It seems as if a sea spread out between you, or at least the better part of a continent. ”

“ When, after months of travel, one returns to England, he can taste, smell, and feel the difference in the atmosphere, physical and moral—the curious damp, blunt, good-humoured, happy-go-lucky, old-established, slow-seeming formlessness of everything. ”

“ A foreign friend of mine insists, with some show of reason, that much as any two countries of the Continent may differ, England contrives to differ a great deal more from all of them than they can differ from each other. ”

“ Straight away from the sun on all sides, never stopping, never resting, but chasing after each other with marvellous quickness, these tiny waves travel out into space by night and by day. When our spot of the earth where England lies is turned away from them and they cannot touch us, then it is night for us, but directly England is turned so as to face the sun, then they strike on the land, and the water, and warm it ”

“ People will tell you, "Foreigners do this"; "Foreigners do that"; "Foreigners smoke so much"; "Foreigners always take coffee for breakfast." "Indeed," I love to answer; "I've never observed it myself in Central Asia." 'Tis Parson Adams and the Christian religion. Nine English people out of ten, when they talk of Abroad, mean what they call the Continent; and when they talk of the Continent, they mean France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy; in short, the places most visited by Englishmen when they consent now and again to go Abroad for a holiday. ”

“ This immense tract of land, the largest known which does not bear the name of a continent, as it is considerably larger than all Europe, is thinly inhabited, even to admiration, at least that part of it that we saw. ”

“ Throughout this long epoch western Europe is to be viewed as a peninsula, surrounded on all sides by the sea and stretching westward from the great land mass of eastern Europe and of Asia, which was the chief theatre of evolution both of animal and human life. ”

“ With the people of the south, by whom the opposite part of the earth is possessed, you have no intercourse; and by how small a tract do you communicate with the countries of the north? The territory which you inhabit is no more than a scanty island, inclosed by a small body of water, to which you give the name of the great sea and the Atlantick ocean. ”