Bourbon without money, without his patrimony, keeping up apathetic viceroys, and fighting six campaigns between the Marne and the Scheldt: the first commanding a great and victorious army before the enemy he has always beaten; the second with his handful of Frenchmen beside the adversaries of yesterday, and confronting troops and generals whom it was his wont to lead to victory!'

As we have said, we protest against this comparison, and the reasons of our protest are not doubtful. Hannibal is almost lost in the night of time, but his gigantic figure is still seen to be that of one of the greatest men of all ages. Napoleon has placed him at the head of the masters of war, and his march across the Pyrenees and thence over the Alps, his moves at the Trebbia, Trasimenus, and Cannæ, his influence over his Gallic auxiliaries, his perfect appreciation of the strength and the discipline of that matchless infantry the legionaries of Rome, and the use he made of the Numidian horsemen, prove that as a strategist and a tactician Hannibal has scarcely an equal. Condé is not to be named with such a warrior. But the comparison is even more inapposite when we think of Hannibal and Condé as leading men of a State. The most illustrious scion of the great house of Barca was a patriot of the highest type, and the warrior who for many years kept the subject cities of Rome in constant revolt, and mastered them by the spell of his will, must have had supreme political genius. Condé was a rebel, and a bad rebel; and in all that relates to affairs of State he sinks to the level of the thoughtless noblesse of the Fronde. We have said thus much as a homage to truth, but our general judgement on this work must not be mistaken. We have occasionally differed from the Duc d'Aumale, but the present, we repeat, is his best volume; it is a noble ornament of the literature of France-a natural and worthy tribute to an illustrious race from its most eminent living representative.

ART. IV.-1. Das Mittelmeer und seine Seestrategie. Aus dem Nachlasse des verstorbenen EDUARD RÜFFER. Prag: 1879.

2. Les Guerres navales de demain. Par Commandant Z. et H. MONTÉCHANT. Paris: 1891.

SPEAKING of the influence of contiguity to the Mediterra

nean Sea on the progress of civilisation and on the history of celebrated nations, a writer in this Journal,* more than thirty years ago, observed that it was difficult to touch 'upon the subject generally without becoming too rhetorical.' The subject is indeed an animating one, and the study of it is full of lessons even for us of the present day. It is remarkable that the importance in international affairs of the Mediterranean, which was immense in past ages, has not in the least diminished in our own. On the contrary, its importance is now greater than ever because of the increased number of independent States that border its waters. If it were possible to represent graphically on the map of the world the field of modern international aspirations and the magnitudes and directions of the forces arising from them, we should have to put the mark indicating the 'mean centre' at some point within the great area of enclosed water which separates Africa and Western Asia from Europe. History, we are told often enough, has a tendency to repeat itself; which is, after all, but a slipshod mode of stating the truth or truism that action, under similar conditions, produces the same results. It is a striking illustration of this so-called tendency that the centre of possible disturbance lies as near to Rome now as it did when the first Africanus started for the campaign of Zama.

This persistence of the importance of the Mediterranean may be traced to a cause by no means obscure :—viz. the expansion of modern States beyond what might appear to be their natural limits. Had France, Italy, Spain, Russia, or Great Britain been content to remain confined to the territories which those designations in strictness denote, the importance of the Mediterranean would, no doubt, still be considerable; but it would be chiefly local and much inferior to what it actually is. Each of the Continental States named

Edinburgh Review, vol. cvi.: The Mediterranean Sea.' The article was written by the eminent physician and traveller, Sir Henry Holland, and was republished in his Essays on Scientific and other Subjects,' London, 1862.

either has outlying possessions or cherishes hopes of territorial expansion on the non-European side of this great inland sea and its appendages. The Mediterranean interests of Great Britain are of a different kind; but their magnitude is indisputable, though the elements of which they are composed are too often inadequately appreciated.

The position in the Mediterranean at present differs from that which existed during any earlier period of modern history-if the term be permissible. Whatever she may become in future years, Spain does not now count amongst the leading naval powers. France is seated in Africa, and has absorbed a great stretch of littoral which in former contests between Europeans was always virtually neutral. In the central, and strategically the most commanding, situation there is now a united Italy wielding forces both naval and military which justify her claim to be included amongst the Great Powers. Further east we find Austria now appearing as a maritime State with a respectable fleet. Turkey has shrunk to a shadow of her former self; whilst a whole series of independent monarchies have been formed of the provinces detached from her. It need not be specially urged that the decay of the Ottoman Empire as a Mediterranean factor is a matter of grave international importance. Russia has crept further and further round the eastern end of the Black Sea till she has thrust herself into Armenia. England holds not only Gibraltar, but the other great naval fortress of Malta as well, and is hampered rather than strengthened by the possession of Cyprus. It will be seen at once how greatly these conditions differ from those which prevailed in the time of Charles V., or even of Napoleon.

It is seldom remembered that England is not only one of the great, but is the greatest, of Mediterranean powers. In everything except extent of coast-line she takes the foremost place. As regards coast-line-if that is to be accepted as the standard of precedence --Turkey would rank before France, so also would Italy, whilst England would be but little in advance of Montenegro or Monaco. The mere statement of their relative positions shows the absurdity of basing the classification of nations upon the number of miles of seaboard that each may call its own. The trade of the United Kingdom alone with the Mediterranean* countries is almost exactly equal to that of France, whilst

* Perhaps it should be said that the phrase Mediterranean countries' is here used to denote these which are such by situation.

VOL. CLXXVI, NO. CCCLXII,

D D

the trade of the British Empire with the same countries is but little short of that of both France and Italy. The United Kingdom trade passing through the Mediterranean, and carried on with places lying beyond the Sea, exceeds the similar trade of all the Mediterranean countries put together. In the ports of the latter English transactions are not only the greatest-they also, as a rule, enormously exceed those of other competitors. England does a larger trade with the ports of Italy than France, notwithstanding the latter's nearness. With Greece, Turkey, Roumania, Egypt, and Morocco, the trade of the British Empire is greatly in excess of that of any other Power. Even in the case of Algeria, the commerce between the United Kingdom and that French dependency is exceeded only by that between Algeria and France herself. The statistics of British shipping-especially in the harbours of the Levant-look enormous by the side of the statistics of any other flag. If we add to all this the possession of two naval stations, which are amongst the busiest ports of call in the world, we shall be able to see both that the predominance is ours and that it puts us far before any other nation. There are ample reasons why Englishmen should pay profound and vigilant attention to the state of affairs in the Mediterranean.

The unaccountable indifference of English historians to the rise of our maritime greatness is in nothing more fully exemplified than in the silence which prevails concerning the slow and gradual conquest of our present position in the vast inland sca. It is often asserted that the appearance of England as a Mediterranean power dates from the Treaty of Utrecht. The truth is that during the war of the Spanish Succession she had simply obtained securities for the interests which she had acquired long before and had persistently extended. The voyages of Vasco da Gama and Columbus were incidents of high dramatic brilliancy which lent themselves with special facility to literary treatment. But not very much inferior to them in the importance of their ultimate results were the voyages of the forgotten navigators who laid the foundations of English commerce in the Mediterranean Sea. Before Columbus had sailed from Palos, even before Bartholomew Diaz had sighted the Cape of Storms, Englishmen were in a fair way to grasp the maritime sceptre which was slipping from the hands of Catalonians and Genoese. They had established themselves as merchants in Italy, and

had begun to compete, on the others' own ground, with the carriers of the merchandise imported and exported on their behalf. They soon extended their enterprise and activity to the Levant, and entered into rivalry with the Venetians. The wealth and experience thus gained enabled our fellow-countrymen to further enlarge the circle of their operations, including within it distant parts of the newly opened world. This was done, not in a spasmodically brilliant fashion, but by steadily adhering to the plan of securing each foothold before taking a further step.

It is this characteristic which distinguishes the maritime proceedings of the English from those of nearly every other people. Portuguese, Spaniards, and French sought to found a great and lasting dominion beyond the seas without securing the intermediate avenues. The English, as has just been intimated, adopted a system of progressive expansion, first making sure of what lay nearest, and then gradually moving further on. Their procedure may be called instinctive. It was not formally approved or adopted by their rulers till long after it had become established and, as it were, traditional. It was instinct also, rather than studied policy, which led them to increase their naval strength concurrently with the advance of their ocean trade. The spectacle presented in our own day of the people demanding, and the Government first resisting and then yielding to the demand for, an adequate navy to protect their maritime interests is a familiar one in English history. To the constancy with which this system was followed we must attribute the tenacity of the grasp in which we have held our share of the advantages of intercourse with the Mediterranean countries. The Empire, or Arragon, or France--Hapsburg, or Bourbon, or Bonaparte-might try to convert the Western basin into a lake belonging to a single nation; but, in spite of all their efforts, our progress has been scarcely interrupted, and has never as yet met with any long-lasting check. The causes which have made England a Mediterranean power have been at work for centuries. Her position as such is so deeply wrought into the structure of European polity that to change it would be to shake the whole edifice of international relations and to threaten the welfare of peoples in every quarter of the world.

Let us examine separately the present position of each of the leading States. If there be one country more than another on which nature would seem to have bestowed the primacy of the Mediterranean, it is Italy. Her situation is