THE LANGUAGE IN GREAT BRITAIN THE HERE is a wide gap between the proverb asserting that "figures never lie" and the opinion expressed now and again by experts that nothing can be more mendacious than statistics misapplied; and the truth seems to lie between these extreme sayings. Just as chronology is the backbone of history, so a statement of fact can be made terser and more convincing if the figures are set forth that illuminate it. If we wish to perceive the change of the relative position of Great Britain and the United States in the course of the centuries, nothing can help us better to a firm grasp of the exact facts of the case than a comparison of the population of the two countries at various periods. In 1700 the inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland numbered between eight and nine millions, while the inhabitants of what is now the United States were, perhaps, a scant three hundred thousand. In 1900, the people of the British Isles are reckoned at some thirty-seven millions more or less, and the people of the United States are almost exactly twice as many, being about seventy-five millions. To project a statistical curve into the future is an extra-hazardous proceeding; and no man can now guess at the probable population either of the United Kingdom or of the United States in the year 2000; but as the rate of increase is far larger in America than in England, there is little risk in suggesting that a hundred years from now the population of the American republic will be at least four or five times as large as that of the British monarchy. Just as the center of population of the United States has been steadily working its way westward, having been in 1800 in Maryland and being in 1900 in Indiana, so also the center of population of the English-speaking race has been steadily moving toward the Occident. Just as the first of these has had to cross the Alleghanies during the nineteenth century, so will the second of them have to cross the Atlantic during the twentieth century. Whether this latter change shall take place early in the century or late, is not important; one day or another it will take place, assuredly. Inevitably it will be accompanied or speedily followed by another change of almost equal significance. London sooner or later will cease to be the literary center of the English-speaking race. For many centuries the town by the Thames has been the heart of English literature; and there are now visible very few signs that the days of its supremacy are numbered. Even in the United States to-day the old colonial attitude, not yet abandoned, causes us Americans often to be as well acquainted with second-rate British authors as the British are with American authors of the first rank. Yet it is not without significance that at the close of the nineteenth century the two most widely known writers of the language should be one of them an American citizen and the other a British colonial, owing no local allegiance to London-Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling. The disestablishment of London as the literary center of English will be retarded by various circumstances. Only very reluctantly is a tradition of preeminence overthrown when consecrated by the centuries. The conditions of existence in England are likely long to continue to be more favorable to literary productivity than are the conditions in America. In a new country literature finds an eager rival in life itself, with all its myriad opportunities for self-expression. No paradox is it to say that more than one American bard may have preferred to build his epic in steel or in stone rather than in words. The creative |