d hope successfully to dispute the control of the
Mediterranean with Great Britain. That nationality not only dominates
the great marine highway of the south of Europe, but also the coast of
Asia.

Malta is situated in the middle of the great highway of commerce between
the East and the West, and is the most southerly land in Europe, on
about the 36th parallel of north latitude, its longitude being 15 deg.
east. The neighboring nations have often and fiercely contested for the
sovereignty of Malta, until its soil has been irrigated by the life-tide
of human beings. How strange the history it presents to us, what ages of
melodramatic vicissitudes, emphasized by the discord of warring cannon
and of dying men! How many and how varied the changes it has known in a
period of thrice ten hundred years! Mutability is written on all things
human, while Time, the remorseless iconoclast, performs the bidding of
Destiny.

It would naturally be expected that the language of a people who have
had such a peculiar experience as the Maltese should be a conglomerate,
formed from various Asiatic and European tongues. It seems to be a
mixture of Italian and Arabic, mingled with the patois which is common
in the Grecian Archipelago; but English being the current official
language, it prevails among the educated classes, and is also in general
use for business purposes, especially in the retail shops of Valletta,
the capital. The language of Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto is still
unknown to the common people, though generally understood and spoken in
society. The masses adhere tenaciously to their native dialect, even
after they have emigrated to other countries. In Gibraltar they pick up
just enough of Spanish to make their wants known, as they do in other
Mediterranean ports to which chance has brought them.

As is often the case in Eastern countries and oceanic islands, Malta is
used both for the name of the island and that of the capital. The one
collective term answers for the entire group; so with the beautiful
island of Ceylon; people do not usually speak of Colombo, its capital,
but of Ceylon, as designating the whole island. Martinique is
sufficiently distinctive as regards that picturesque West Indian island;
St. Pierre and Fort de France, the commercial and political capitals,
are rarely mentioned. Thus Valletta has little significance to the world
at large, while Malta is familiar enough.

The Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the