was the Atlantic, and to the east and south the land extended as far as the Mediterranean and the steppes of Asiatic Russia. The North Sea was a broad open valley studded with a few fresh-water lakes, like the meres of East Anglia, traversed by the Thames and other eastern rivers, as well as by the Rhine and the Elbe, all of which discharged their waters northwards into the Scandinavian Gulf, as it may be termed. A long line of chalk downs, reaching from Folkestone and Margate across to St. Pot and Sangatte, formed the watershed separating the valley of the North Sea from that of the Channel, through which the rivers of the southern counties and of northern France poured their waters into the Atlantic. A broad valley, too, stretched between Ireland and our western coast, with a deep and narrow loch, some hundred and fifty fathoms deep, severing it from Scotland. The wild animals of the Continent, tempted by the woodlands and pastures of these fertile valleys, freely passed into Britain, and have left their remains in the river beds of gravel and loam, not merely on the land, but under the sea, from which they have been dredged in vast numbers.* Besides the familiar animals above-mentioned, there were lions, panthers, hyænas, hippopotami, and others now only met with in warm countries; reindeer, musksheep, and wolverenes, now only found in the far north; horses, bisons, and elks, now living in temperate regions, as well as strange extinct animals, such as the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, and the cave bear. These animals migrated north and south, according to the season, across the valleys of the North Sea and of the Channel; and, just as the migratory herds in America are followed by the Red Indian, and those of northern Asia by the Siberian hunters, so were they followed by the River-drift hunter, whose implements lie scattered over the whole of Europe south of the latitude of Yorkshire. In the course of time, too, the more highly equipped Cave-man crossed over to this country, and used the caverns for habitations. While southern and eastern Britain was the home of man and the animals he hunted, the higher parts of Wales, Cambria, and of Scotland, and the greater portion of Ireland, were covered by glaciers, which crept down into the lower grounds, offering an impenetrable barrier to migration, and leaving behind the transported blocks and grooved rock-surfaces which enable us to map their ancient extent.

We come now to the time when the western coast-land of Europe became almost, but not quite, what it is now. At the close of the pleistocene age the area of the British isles gradually sank, and the Atlantic slowly crept up the lower portions of the valley of the English Channel and swept round, Ireland, and beat against the rocky shores of Scotland, very nearly as at the present day. The Scandinavian Gulf, too gradually encroached on the bottom of the valley of

In the North Sea.

the North Sea, and ultimately united with the English Chanuel, over the chalk-downs now forming the bottom of the Straits of Dover. By this gentle downward movement Britain was severed from the Continent, and the "Silver Streak" occupied the lower grounds and flowed over the watershed between the submerged valleys of the North Sea and the Channel.

This great change in the geography produced a corresponding change in the animal life. The seasonal migrations could no longer be carried on, the southern animals disappeared, and the northern were only represented by the reindeer, which lingered in Caithness till the middle of the twelfth century, A.D., and the blue or varying hare of Ireland and the Scotch Highlands. The Paleolithic, River-drift and Cave men, too, disappeared, and some animals became extinct, such as the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. The climate also became warmer and the glaciers melted away.

These profound changes in climate and geography in North-Western Europe were accompanied by similar changes in the middle and south of the continent. Africa was separated from Spain and Italy by the sinking of the land some 400 fathoms below the Mediterranean, and the mountains of the Eastern Mediterranean became islands. The glaciers, too, shrank to their present size in the Alps and Pyrenees, and the peculiar group of animals characteristic of the pleistocene age disappeared from Europe. The northern and southern animals were for the most part weeded out, leaving the fauna as we know it in the pages of history.

On the new Europe thus formed a new race of men appears from Central Asia the Neolithic grazier and farmer, with his horses, oxen, sheep, goats, and dogs, bringing along with him wheat, barley, and flax, and the arts of pottery making, mining, weaving, and of hollowing out trees into canoes. He gradually spread over the Continent, crossed the "Silver Streak," and took possession of the British Isles with his flocks and herds. He belonged to the non-Aryan section of the human race, and is represented among the present European populations not merely by the small, dark Basques, but by the small, dark population of the Scotch Highlands, of Wales, of the west of Ireland, of Brittany, and of south-western France and Spain. The domestic animals which he introduced ran wild, and the occurrence of their remains in the forests, now submerged to an extent of about ten fathoms below low water off most of our shelving coasts, point to the important fact that those forests then offered shelter and food at a time when the Isles of Wight and Anglesey were parts of Britain, and a belt of woodland, composed of oaks, Scotch firs, yews, and birches, sloped from the present shores to the ten-fathom line. The depression of the land went on after the arrival of the Neolithic herdsman, until this low-lying tract became covered with sea, and

the contour of Britain became what it is now.

The sea, however,

has since gashed the sides of the valley with cliffs, and the swinging of the tides has deepened the shallower parts, while in others it has accumulated mud, sand, and shingle banks. The submerged chalk downs, however, in the Straits of Dover are as free from superficial accumulations as those portions which still remain above water in France and Britain.

We have next to record the crossing of the "Silver Streak" by another race of invaders. The Celts, the vanguard of the Aryans, had fought their way through Germany into Gaul and Spain in the Neolithic age, and had driven the non-Aryan, Iberic peoples, to the west. They held the districts nearest to Britain, but they did not risk the chances of an invasion until they were masters of all the advantages which arose from the introduction of the knowledge of bronze. Then they crossed over the Channel with bronze weapons. in their hands, and repeated the conquest of Gaul and Spain in Britain and in Ireland. And long ages afterwards, just as the Celts had displaced the Iberic peoples in Gaul, and followed them over into Britain, so did the Belga drive out the Celts on the side of the Rhine, and cross over into Britain during the Iron age, before the dawn of our history. At the time of Cæsar's invasion they were pushing their conquests to the north and west. Thus in the long pre-historic interval, separating the written history of Britain from the remote Pleistocene age, the "Silver Streak" has been crossed by three sets of invaders, Iberic, Celtic, and Belgic. It certainly retarded the Celtic, but it appears not to have retarded the Belgic invasion, since both Gaul and Britain were in the same stage of conquest when further invasion was arrested by the Roman arms. Nor has the "Silver Streak" protected this country from invasion when the Roman eagles reached the shores of the Channel. Still less was it a protection in later times against the Angle, Saxon, Jute, Dane, or the Norman, but quite the reverse. . The masters of the sea have always been the masters of Britain, and the masters of Britain must. for their own security be masters of the sea. The sea is either an element of weakness offering avenues of attack to our enemies on every side, or it becomes for us a most powerful means of aggression, as has been the case in our history since the English have been in these islands.

It

What then, it may well be asked, has our isolation from the Continent done for us? The influence of the "Silver Streak" on the national character appears to me to have been greatly overrated. is asserted that we are what we are, mainly because we have been kept from our enemies by our position. "It is the insular character of Britain," writes Mr. Freeman, "which has, beyond anything else, * CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, June, 1882, p. 1042.

made the inhabitants of Britain what they are." It seems to me that in taking this view, we are ascribing to our surroundings a large share of the credit which is due to our race. What qualities are there which flourish in our islands, and which we can claim to be peculiarly our own? I know of no English qualities which have not been imported by our ancestors from the Continent, and which have not been conspicuously shown by our race in other lands, from the days when Arminius destroyed Varus and his legions in the Teutoburg forest, down to the time when the descendants of the Dutch showed what is called "true English grit" at Majuba Hill. The Dutch in their own country, whether it be in fighting for liberty against the Spaniard, or in wrestling with the waves of the sea with their wonderful dykes, have proved themselves to possess qualities equal, to say the least, to our own. The main difference between us and our continental kinsmen appears to me not to be due to our being protected from our enemies by our position, but to the fact that there are more of us here than on the Continent. We are what we are because of our glorious inheritance of valour, self-reliance, and of liberty brought by our ancestors from over sea. And those who stayed behind in the old homes have a like share in the common patrimony. The "Silver Streak" has obviously done us incalculable service in rendering large standing armies unnecessary, but it has compelled us to have a large navy. It has marked off our literature from that of our kinsmen on the Continent. It has done something, too, to develop in our characters the quality which Mr. Matthew Arnold terms "Philistinism," and to give us the Pharisaic affectation of superiority which makes our neighbours say of us that "every Englishman is an island to himself." To inquire what would have happened had the "Silver Streak" not been is an idle speculation. It is quite as likely that we should have conquered our neighbours as that they would have conquered us.)

The obstacle to trade and free intercourse with the Continent presented by the "Silver Streak" has long been felt, and many plans have been proposed for reducing it to a minimum. At the end of the last century M. Mathieu proposed to make two galleries beneath the sea, the upper for traffic, and the lower for drainage, and he estimated that the passage could be made with relays of horses in the short space of one hour. Following him, suggestions were made from time to time of a colossal bridge, of a ferry, and of huge ships. In 1834 an eminent French engineer, M. Thomé de Gamond, suggested an iron tube, and in 1858, Mr. James Young, of Glasgow, independently suggested the same means of connecting the two countries. Some years before, however, De Gamond definitely adopted the idea of a tunnel, and persistently devoted all his energies. to putting it into a practicable shape. His idea was taken up in

England, and in 1866-7 Sir John Hawkshaw and others tested the geological structure of the sides of the Channel by a boring at St. Margaret's to the east of Dover, and at Calais, and collected sufficient information about the sea-bottom to make it probable that the rocks were continuous. Mr. Lowe, also, an English engineer at Wrexham, laid before the French Emperor his plans for a double tunnel. By this time public opinion both in France and England was strongly in favour of a tunnel, and the scheme was so popular in this country that in 1868 a petition was presented to the Emperor of the French in its favour, on the grounds that it would facilitate the social intercourse and develop the trade and commerce between the two countries. The numerous signatures attached to it represent all shades of political opinion, and belong to men for the most part versed in practical affairs. They include the present Archbishop of York, the Dukes of Sutherland and Argyll, the Earl of Denbigh, twelve Lords, eight Baronets, two Major-Generals, one Admiral, and fifty-three Members of Parliament, besides the Chairmen of Chambers of Commerce, Stock Exchanges, and Bank Directors. There was then no sign of dissent on the part of those who now oppose the tunnel on the score of patriotism. On comparing this strongly worded petition for, with the recent equally strong petition of Mr. Knowles in the Nineteenth Century against, a tunnel, it is interesting to remark that the name of the Archbishop of York stands at the head of both. The latter also contrasts with the former in the signatures being in the main those belonging to the professional as distinguished from the commercial classes.

The project was seriously taken up in France and in England, and in 1870 an application was made by the French to the English Government to ask the views of the latter, and whether they would regulate by a diplomatic agreement the construction of a tunnel and the working of a railway between the two countries. The negotiations, broken by the Franco-German war, were carried on up to 1875, and resulted in the English Government informing the French that they saw "no objection in principle to the proposed tunnel," "and that the advantages which would attend its completion leave room for little doubt."* On the strength of these negotiations two companies were formed, the French company receiving their concessions, and the English Channel Tunnel Company obtaining their Bill for preliminary works at St. Margaret's east of Dover. A joint commission also was appointed by which details were settled as to the working of the tunnel and the French and English jurisdiction, which was to cease in the centre of the tunnel halfway between the low-water mark in each country, as well as to the rights which each country had to block it in its own interests. The conclusions were accepted

*Blue Book, C. 3,358 (1882), pp. 18, 19.