tion of the New World had, in real measure, been the
emancipation of the Old. Very many of the inventions of the nineteenth
century, which were the threads of modern progress, were to have their
origin in the New World. She would heap coals of fire on the head of the
Old.

How, to help this girdling of the whole world with beneficent influences,
through the medium of the Anglo-Saxon? Sir George turned him on his Mount
Pisgah, first in New Zealand, later in South Africa. He had been looking
at the scored, furrowed, violent past. It had worked out its meaning, nor
was there doubt as to the bearing of that message upon the future.

At Pisgah's highest peak the sun shone, only there were mists, which it
did not pierce, in the valleys below. Just, it caught one wisp of the
vapour, and twirled it about in the wind. The errant thing flung into a
sign--Federation of the English-speaking People; and was gone.

Sir George Grey dipped for a Grand Pacific Isles Protectorate, and a red
noose from Downing Street strangled it. He dipped for a Federated South
Africa, and the red noose caught himself. That is, he was recalled from
his Cape Governor-ship on account of his projects. Ah, that he had been
permitted to go on with them! All the gold of the Randt would not have
weighed in the scales like that.

True, he was returned to South Africa, which clamoured angrily at his
recall, but, as he said, 'It was with strict injunctions to stop my
federation schemes, for these would not be tolerated.'

They were a generation too soon. Yet, their author had already drawn on
posterity in order to develop English colonies. Was it right to tax
posterity? High talk turned on this at a dinner in London, where Sir
George met Gladstone, Macaulay, and other celebrities. 'Certainly,' Sir
George argued, 'if some large expense is undertaken which will benefit
those to come after us, as well as those already here, it is more equity
that the former should be charged with their share.' The principle had
been put into practice in the Colonies, and he imagined that this dinner
helped its advance in the Old Country. Especially, he applied that
opinion to the taking over, by Government, of the English telegraph
lines.

'I recall very well,' Sir George stated, 'the picturesque way in which
Macaulay expressed our common trait of being interested in trifles that
affect us closely, to the neglect of large happenings which are distant.
"Here," he said, about som