s. It often happens that the boundaries
set by nature, like seas, high mountains, and broad rivers, divide one
people from another. It is natural that the people of Italy, for
instance, hemmed in by the Alps to the north and by the water on all
other sides, should grow to be like each other and come to talk a
common language.

In the same way, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Spain, France, Great
Britain, and Switzerland have boundaries largely set by nature. On
this account, it is not surprising that the map of "Europe as it
should be" which unites people of the same blood under the same
government, agrees rather closely in some places with the map of
Europe as it is.

The boundaries of the kingdom of Spain and those of the kingdom of
Portugal fit pretty closely the countries inhabited by Spanish and
Portuguese peoples.

There are a few Italians in France, also a few Walloons and Flemish.
Otherwise France is largely a unit. Some of the French people are
found in Switzerland and others in that part of the German Empire
which was taken away from France after the Franco-Prussian war of
1870.

The Danes are not all living in Denmark. A great many of them inhabit
the two provinces of Schleswig and Holstein which were torn away from
Denmark by Prussia in 1864. The high mountains of the Scandinavian
peninsula separate the Norwegians from the Swedes about as well as
they divide the countries geographically.

The Hollanders make a nation by themselves, but part of the
northwestern corner of the German Empire is also peopled by Dutch. The
territory around Aix-La-Chapelle, although part of the German Empire,
is inhabited by Walloons, a Celtic people who speak a sort of French.
Belgium, small as it is, contains two different types of population,
the Walloons and the Flemish.

The German Empire does not include all of the Germans. A great many of
these are to be found in Austria proper, Styria (sty'ria), and the
northern Tyrol (ty'rol) (western counties of the Austrian Empire),
as well as in the eastern half of Switzerland and the edges of Bohemia.
Germans are also to be found in parts of Hungary; and in the Baltic
provinces of Russia there are over two million of them.

All of the Italians are not in the kingdom of Italy. The Island of
Corsica, which belongs to France, is inhabited by Italians. The
province of Trentino (tren ti'no) (the southern half of the
Austrian Tyrol) is inhabited almost entirely by Italians, as is