SCENE V.
THE BRITISH ISLES DISCOVERED.
At this stage of the proceedings the Sage Oseba seemed to be in fine form and in most cheerful spirits.
He remarked that he was now to give his people a brief view of the “Country of Countries,” an island region, just off the humming hive of uniformed Europe. Here the globe revolved until the British Isles were conspicuously in view.
“This,” said Oseba, “of all the fertile dirt on the surface of Oliffa, is the most interesting. This, among the countries of the Outeroos, is the classic land of liberty, the sheet-anchor of Europe for more than three hundred years. These rock-bound Isles, with a fertile soil, a salubrious climate, indented shores—fortunately placed geographically—are by nature the best suited for the development of the ideal man of any spot on the surface of Oliffa, and having been peopled by sturdy tribes, all the suggestive hopes of Nature have been realised.”
He told his people that the British Isles embraced 124,000 square miles, and contained 40,000,000 inhabitants; and that, on these few acres, there were more muscle and brain, and intellectual force and stubbornness and haughty pretension, than on any other spot of like dimensions on the surface of Oliffa.
Mount Egmont.
“These sturdy Britons, my children, who have resistlessly held these historic Islands against all comers for many centuries, have done more to elevate, to educate, to emancipate, to civilise and to unite humanity; to free the brain from superstition, the limbs from fetters, and the world from bondage, than any other nation or race that ever inscribed its achievements on the pages of human history.
“Britain, my children, has conquered many foes, but her chief glory has been her conquests in the arts of peace. She has conquered climate, and famine, and pestilence, and the idolatry that would crucify the new upon the mouldering cross of the old régime.