outer world by elevated summits. Other
continents are somewhat peninsulated; Asia approaches Europe in that
respect; North America has a few great dependencies in its larger
islands and considerable promontories; but Africa, South America, and
Australia are singularly united lands.

The highly divided state of Europe has greatly favored the development
within its area of isolated fields, each fitted for the growth of a
separate state, adapted even in this day for local life although
commerce in our time binds lands together in a way which it did not of
old. These separated areas were marvelously suited to be the cradles of
peoples; and if we look over the map of Europe we readily note the
geographic insulations which that remarkably varied land affords.

Beginning with the eastern Mediterranean, we have the peninsula on which
Constantinople stands--a region only partly protected from assault by
its geographic peculiarities; and yet it owes to its partial separation
from the mainlands on either side a large measure of local historic
development. Next, we have Greece and its associated islands, which--a
safe stronghold for centuries--permitted the nurture of the most
marvelous life the world has ever known. Farther to the west the Italian
peninsula, where during three thousand years the protecting envelope of
the sea and the walls of Alps and Apennines have enabled a score of
states to attain a development; where the Roman nation, absorbing, with
its singular power of taking in other life, a number of primitive
centers of civilization, grew to power which made it dominant in the
ancient world. Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, have each profited by their
isolation, and have bred diverse qualities in man and contributed
motives which have interacted in the earth's history. Again, in Spain we
have a region well fitted to be the cradle of a great people; to its
geographic position it owed the fact that it became the seat of the most
cultivated Mahometanism the world has ever known. To the Pyrenees, the
mountain wall of the north, we owe in good part the limitation of that
Mussulman invasion and the protection of central Europe from its forward
movement, until luxury and half-faith had sapped its energies. Going
northward, we find in the region of Normandy the place of growth of that
fierce but strong folk, the ancient Scandinavians, who, transplanted
there, held their ground, and grew until they were strong enough to
conquer Brit