whether the race which constructed them was exterminated, or has emigrated, or has relapsed into barbarism. We can only say that a people of eminent architectural genius, and wielding great resources, and probably Buddhist in faith, once occupied these regions, and that its place is now taken by a mongrel population of the Chinese type, and which has contributed nothing to the world's history.
The illustrations of complete ruin in the cases of Rome, Peru, and Cambodia, may seem to belong to times when the forces of the world were not properly equipoised, and when it was impossible to predict how the balance of strength would ultimately incline. At present, large states are very much contained within natural boundaries, and there is a general consent that none shall be aggrandised by inordinate extensions of territory. Napoleon himself, though he was ruined by aiming at too much, did not propose to keep Spain, or any large part of Germany in his own hands; and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by conquest may still be regarded as a hazardous experiment. Those who think in this way, may turn profitably to two instances of comparatively modern history.
The Spain of Queen Elizabeth's time possessed Portugal, Naples, Milan, Franche-Comte, and Flanders in Europe; the greater part of what is now called Spanish America, and a line of important settlements in Africa, India, and Malaysia.[1] Its European dominions included
- ↑ "From Borneo to California the great ocean was but a Spanish lake." Motley's United Netherlands, iii. p. 485.
between 1295 and 1373. Mr. Wallace notices similar ruins in Java, and states that they far surpass those of Central America, perhaps even those of India. He also notices that the present inhabitants " look upon these relics of their forefathers with ignorant amazement, as the undoubted productions of giants or of demons."—Wallace's Malay Archipelago, pp. 104-106.
