the annexation of Texas; in 1846, the final settlement of the Oregon boundary; in 1848, the purchase of New Mexico and California from Mexico; in 1853, the Gadsden purchase; and in 1867 Secretary Seward negotiated the purchase, from Russia, of Alaska. This completes our present immense territory. The "Stars and Stripes" now float over a vast continent, extending from the Atlantic to the Great Ocean, and from the Gulf to the Frozen Seas of the North. The Great Republic may now be considered as embracing four nearly equal quarters, of about nine hundred thousand square miles each:-the first being the original territory east of the Mississippi River; the second, the Louisiana Purchase; the third, Texas and the Mexican Provinces; and the fourth covering Oregon and Alaska.

It is easily seen that this remarkable increase of territory has been at once the opportunity and the occasion for our rapid growth in power, resources, and wealth. It has given us the gold-mines of California, the wheat-fields of Dakota, the sealfisheries of Alaska, and the timber-regions of Puget Sound. It has offered homes and freeholds to millions of emigrants from all lands, and has increased beyond measure our productions and our exportations.

The question now confronts us, "What shall the future be?" Thomas W. Dorr, of Rhode Island, writing in 1853, used the following language:

"The world is now rapidly tending to the aggregation or consolidation of nations into a few great Empire-States. France is aiming at further accessions of territory. Germany will be, before many years, united in a confederation. Asia, west of the British dominions, will fall into the hands of Russia or England. China and Japan will be Anglicized, or Americanized. The United States will take in the whole continent of America. Nor is it less certain that our republic. . . will give the casting vote, with a mailed hand, in favor of the freedom and progress of the race. Let our republic be in readiness, when called upon in the future to decide the fate of nations, to hold up, for their imitation, the example of a state whose institutions are more conducive to the greatest freedom and welfare of mankind than all the world has ever seen."

WILLIAM AUGUSTUS MOWRY.

AMERICA AND ASIA IN THE FUTURE.—AMERICA THE "GREAT PACIFIC POWER."*

(By the Author of "The Mikado's Empire," "Corea, the Hermit Nation,” "Japanese Fairy-World," ," "Matthew Calbraith Perry," etc. For the "Patriotic Reader.")

DIVINE Providence ordained in human history two great types of civilization,-one progressive and Western, the other conservative and Oriental.

Following the course of the sun, the nations moving into Europe towards the Atlantic have had careers of rapid advancement, mastery over nature, permanency of historical monuments, but also of decay, death, ruins, silence. This we read in the history of Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Carthage, Phoenicia, Greece, and Rome.

The other peoples, moving eastward from their highland homes of Asia, have filled the peninsulas, river-basins, and plains of the continent and islands of the Pacific, settling down into fixed forms of social life that have outlasted wars, dynasties, and political revolutions. With a less rapid and brilliant history, unmarked as in the West by conquests over nature, they gave themselves to thought and work, tenaciously adhering to certain great social principles. Custom made law; writing fixed speech; the reverence of the child to the parent, the subordination of the young to the old and of innovation to ancient and hallowed custom, developed a type of civilization in which conservatism prevailed.

The salt of national preservation is the spirit of the fifth Sinai Commandment: "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Hence the long life of the national fabrics of Asia and the steady persistence of the social type. The Asiatic empires are hoary with uncounted years. Many have been the conquerors of Persia, of Arabia, of Syria; yet how little is tho type of life in those countries altered! less East come religion and wisdom. Only for a little while

Out of the change

"Great Pacific Power,"-words used by President Arthur.

does the soldier from the West disturb the student of the East. Again and again has she

"Let the legions thunder past,

Then bowed in thought again."

India, despite her strata of nations, her jungle of religions, her undergrowth of caste, is an ancient country. China is the everold empire that easily absorbs conquerors and dynasties, yet remains one, marvellous in unity. Corea claims a civilization as ancient as the Hebrews. The oldest dynasty in the world still reigns, in Ever-lasting, Great Japan!

The East, then, is stationary'; the West, progressive. Satisfaction and conservatism belong to the one; restlessness and advancement belong to the other. The former looks to the past; the latter, to the future. Are not these elements worthy of admiration and imitation, in each? Nay, more, will not the final glorious form of civilization reconcile and include both types, making one new ideal and consummation, in which all good in the past is preserved, and made the body in which the spirit of the future shall dwell?

Where do the two types meet and confront each other? On what continent will the once divergent forces of history, having reached their utmost verge at either end of the Old World, unite, and form the new resultant?

Is it a wild dream to suggest that it may be the Almighty's purpose to give this mission of harmony and reconciliation to the United States of America? Her people now face both oceans, with the Old on the East, and the Oldest on the West. In the van of the progressive movement of civilization, our country alike greets the most ancient of nations, and the social fabric whose many centuries know no change. Further, she has gathered within her borders all colors, creeds, and minds. Providence has bidden America to train, educate, uplift, blend in fraternity, eastern and western, northern and southern humanity. Here, in these United States, is the grandest school of the brotherhood of man! Here, the conscience and religion are free! Here, the Fatherhood of God is best illustrated in church, in government, and in the human institutions which interpret Him! In the old countries the people are feared or despised;

here, the people are trusted, made responsible, allowed to govern themselves. Here, in marvellous harmony, local forms of freedom are blended with central power.

Beyond her own borders, the mark which the chief nation of America leaves on the world is not that of war, conquest, or self-aggrandizement. Were her procedure that of selfish greed; were her reliance for influence on army or navy; were her methods imperial, as of Rome, Russia, Britain, we might dream, again, only of a political agglomeration, to rise and fall, as of old the robber nations and swollen empires rose and fell. Aggression, conquest, luxury, corruption, disease, decay, and death, have, in monotonous order, marked the careers of the proud nations of the past. They that have taken up the sword, for lust, have perished by the sword.

In strong contrast with such careers is the mission of the United States. Has it not been "peace on earth, good-will to men"? Is not our country worthy of the name of "The Great Pacific Power"? Are not her emissaries, teachers, missionaries, physicians, engineers,-peaceful diplomatists? Are not her institutions abroad, hospitals, schools, colleges, instead of forts, arsenals, and the apparatus of conquest?

Other civilizations have wrought out ideas that have become the permanent property of the race. Egypt gave us architecture and agriculture; the Hebrews, religion; the Phœnicians, letters; the Hindoos, philosophy; the Arabs, mathematics; the Chinese, filial reverence; the Greeks, beauty; the Romans, law; the Germanic nations, personal liberty.

America has demonstrated that self-government is possible to man. The United States declares that "man can rule himself." The people may be trusted!

A study of the history of the United States, in her home development or foreign policy, gives solid ground of hope that her mission is to blend in one the two types of civilization, and thus realize the highest, the Christian ideal, under which the earth will be replenished and subdued, and history mount to the goal. America, by her amazing mastery of physical forces, will stimulate Asia and Africa to win from the earth the almost untouched resources of two continents. The abundance of cotton, petroleum, flour, machinery, and inventions, with the constant in

crease of our national wealth, has already powerfully impressed the people and governments of Asia. It has provoked thought, and stimulated them to develop the riches beneath their feet, and in air, and sea, and cosmos, in order to lift humanity out of the curse of poverty, to feed the hungry, to enjoy life in its higher possibilities, and to resist the conqueror. Thus the primal command of the Creator is taught, to those who do not know, or have forgotten it.

Higher than these lessons in material things are the quickenings of mind. The influence of the American public school education, of the newspaper and periodical, of text-books in science, of popular and standard literature, borne over the earth by the vehicle of the English language, is already perceptible in Asia, from Japan to Syria. Ours is the one nation which does most for the people, and to us the awakening nations do and will look, for the best methods of educating the masses. Ours is the future world-language, already used, for speech or reading, by one-fourth, and in a century to be employed by two-thirds, of the people of the globe. Already the political impulse to reform, the gentle currents that awaken new pulses of life in the effete systems of despotism, have been felt by the governments of Asia. Japan has cast off feudalism and out of irresponsible monarchy is passing into representative national organization; while the old loyalty of her people has already become intelligent patriotism. The study of the political writings of American leaders, of their biographies, and of the Constitution of the United States, with the exemplars of "the Great Pacific Power,"Washington, after victory declining a crown, Grant, the leader of a million of men, yet the lover of peace and arbitration, -has already moved China's leaders. The influence of the successful American experiment of self-government, already working as leaven, is yet to move all Asia in the direction of government that shall secure "the greatest good to the greatest number."

In a word, our hope and faith is, that America, by peaceful methods, and influences not material, will, more than all other forces in the civilizations of the past, be, under Divine Providence, the means of Asia's renascence into liberty, self-government, and all that belongs to the elevation of man. The mission