Note 126 — Chapter VI · COLONIES—EMPIRE—FOREIGN POLICY

“Say what they like,” so “Herbert” in Venetia, “there is a spell in the shores of the Mediterranean Sea which no others can rival. Never was such a union of natural loveliness and magical associations! On these shores have risen all that interests us in the past—Egypt and Palestine, Greece, Rome, and Carthage, Moorish Spain and feudal Italy. These shores have yielded us our religion, our arts, our literature, and our laws. If all that we have gained from the shores of the Mediterranean was erased from the memory of man, we should be savages.”