Again, the Red Sea is a passage apparently created to connect Europe with the great Eastern world; and as the power of steam gradually increases in its stride, it is evident that by this gulf, or natural canal, much of the produce of India eventually will easily flow into the Mediterranean Sea.
Finally, it might likewise be shown, that much of the commerce of Asia Minor and Europe, either by great rivers or otherwise, naturally moves towards this central point; but besides these sources of external wealth, the Mediterranean, as we all know, is most romantically studded with an Archipelago and other beautiful islands, the inhabitants of which have the power not only of trading on a large scale with every quarter of the globe, but of carrying on in small open boats a sort of little village commerce of their own. Among the inhabitants of this sea are to be found at this moment the handsomest specimens of the human race; and if a person not satisfied with the present and future tenses of life, should prefer reflecting or rather ruminating on the past, with antiquarian rapture he may wander over these waters from Carthage to Egypt, Tyre, Sidon, Rhodes, Troy, Ephesus, Athens, Corinth, Argos, Syracuse, Rome, &c., until tired of his flight he may rest upon one of the ocean-beaten pillars of Hercules--and seated there, may most truly declare that the history of the Mediterranean is like the picture of its own waves beneath him, which one after another he sees to rise, break, and sink.
In the history of this little sea, in what melancholy succession has nation and empire risen and fallen, flourished and decayed; and if the magnificent architectural ruins of these departed states mournfully offer to the traveller any political moral at all, is it not that homely one which the most common tomb-stone of our country churchyard preaches to the peasant who reads it?
"As I am now, so you will be, Therefore prepare to follow me!"
However, fully admitting the truth of the lesson which history and experience thus offer to us--admitting that no one can presume to declare which of the great Mediterranean powers is doomed to be the next to suffer--or what new point is next to burst into importance; yet if a man were forced to select a position which, in spite of fate or fortune, feuds or animosities, has been, and ever must be, the nucleus of commerce, he would find that in the Mediterranean Sea that point, as nearly as possible, would be the little island of Malta; and the political importance of this possession being now generally appreciated, it is curious rapidly to run over the string of little events which have gradually prepared, fortified, and delivered this valuable arsenal and fortress to the British flag.