A CINGHALESE GENTLEMAN.

VIEW FROM THE BULLER, NEW ZEALAND.

GREATER BRITAIN.

A RECORD OF TRAVEL

IN

ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES

DURING 1866-7.


BY

CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE.

TWO VOLUMES IN ONE.
W I T H   M A P S   A N D   I L L U S T R A T I O N S.

PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO.
1869.

TO

M Y   F A T H E R

I   D e d i c a t e

THIS BOOK.

C. W. D.

PREFACE.

In 1866 and 1867, I followed England round the world: everywhere I wasin English-speaking, or in English-governed lands. If I remarked thatclimate, soil, manners of life, that mixture with other peoples hadmodified the blood, I saw, too, that in essentials the race was alwaysone.

The idea which in all the length of my travels has been at once myfellow and my guide—a key wherewith to unlock the hidden things ofstrange new lands—is a conception, however imperfect, of the grandeurof our race, already girding the earth, which it is destined, perhaps,eventually to overspread.

In America, the peoples of the world are being fused together, but theyare run into an English mould: Alfred‘s laws and Chaucer‘s tongue aretheirs whether they would or no. There are men who say that Britain inher age will claim the glory of having planted greater Englands acrossthe seas. They fail to perceive that she has done more than foundplantations of her own—that she has imposed her institutions upon theoffshoots of Germany, of Ireland, of Scandinavia, and of Spain. ThroughAmerica, England is speaking to the world.

Sketches of Saxondom may be of interest even upon humbler grounds: thedevelopment of the England of Elizabeth is to be found, not in theBritain of Victoria, but in half the habitable globe. If two smallislands are by courtesy styled “Great,” America, Australia, India, mustform a Greater Britain.

C. W. D.

76 Sloane Street, S. W.
1st November, 1868.

CONTENTS

OF

THE FIRST VOLUME.