The Mediterranean from the very earliest epochs of civilisation has
been a chief highway of trade, and along its shores every sort of
commercial activity has been prosecuted. For centuries and centuries
the nations upon the borders, especially those upon its northern
borders, were the leading nations of the world, and their empire,
indeed, comprised the empire of the world. But during the last two or
three centuries, and especially during the nineteenth century,
commercial pre-eminence and pre-eminence in empire have departed from
the Mediterranean. Italy, the ruler of the whole ancient world, and
even in modern times a ruler of almost equal potency; Turkey, during
the middle ages a chief power both in Europe and in Asia; Spain, for
two centuries at the beginning of our modern epoch a chief power in
Europe and the mistress of almost the whole Western world as
well,--these countries have all sunk to positions of comparative
insignificance, and Italy alone shows signs of effectual regeneration.
And yet on the whole earth's surface there are no lands more richly
endowed by nature as abodes for man than Italy, Turkey, and Spain.