was common to them all and this that they never had about them any notions as to 'Sons of Empire' or (saving perhaps Virginia which is a British colony no more) any poetical idea about 'founding a new England across the seas.' The settler went much as he might have migrated from Northumberland to Cornwall because he considered that he would better himself by doing so. It has been reserved for the present age to discover the 'Sons of the Empire,' 'Britain beyond the Seas,' 'the men who can ride and shoot,' and all those other phrases which sound so big and mean so little because the day of them is passing. When the colonies were peopled by emigrants from home there was no occasion to create sentiments on imperial lines, the colonist was an Englishman and had no more need to proclaim the fact than the man in Cornwall. His descendants, however, are not Englishmen, they are Australians, Canadians, South Africans, or whatever the colony may be, with essentially different interests. A stream of fresh emigrants serves to preserve something of the Old Country sentiment, but the native-born Australian is Australian, reared under a different climate and different conditions. He is 'Britain beyond the Seas' when sensible of advantages to be derived therefrom, but quite ready to 'cut the painter' and cease to be a 'Son of the Empire' when his material advantages run in that direction. And it must be confessed that he could hardly be a good colonist or a logical one without being so. He may
