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70 ments of the life of nations some of the chiefest are the commodities of foreign lands, the infused blood of foreign people, the freshening influence of foreign thought and sentiment, and the quickening power of foreign enterprise and activity. We see, in different quarters of the globe, the scattered, broken relics of divers nations. Some, like the inhabitants of the isles of the sea, remained, untold centuries, apart from the world's civilization, until some venturesome navigation brought them into contact with cultivated man; and then they went down at once to speedy decay and swift destruction, the very atmosphere of cultivated life proving too strong for their emasculated natures. It is said that no enlightenment, no cultivation, not even Christianity, can save the Sandwich Islanders; the degeneracy of heathenism, their long isolation from the human family for so many centuries, have so lessened their vitality and vitiated their blood, that there is no hojae for them, and they must die out! With their partial civilization, the Chinese stood still for centuries, refusing commercial intercourse with the nations; and God's providence brought forth the penal fruits of their national pride and misanthropy; for, first, they were made to experience that saddest of all national ills save death, a wrested, stunted growth, the reversion of that great law of being, the law of progress and expansion—and next, turning fierce upon humanity, and refusing that interchange of thought, and sentiment, and trade, which aids the life of both men and nations, humanity rose up in the person of Britain, and inflicted upon her sore and humbling chastisement.