Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1900-08-13
WHERE SUN NEVER SETS.
Countries Qualified to Put Forward
This Claim.

That the sun never sets on the Brit
iSh empire is an axiom which suggests
rather than defines the truth which in
spired it. This, of course, is by no
actness. But we all recognize the
meaning of the phrase which, like
many other rhetorical gems of his
toric interest, is very much older than
the setting in which it mas from time
to time appeared. 1t has been attritb
uted to Pitt land it no doubt received
from him splendid send-off on it's
introduction to the nineteenth century.
In allusion to British possessions and
resources the prime minister used the
then little-known expression, 'The
King of England, on whose dominiOns
the sun never SETS" That it made
great impression may well be mag
ined. Nor was this felt the least
strongly in America; for in address,
ing the senate some years afterward
the eloquent Daniel Webster reminded
his hearers that England was a power
which had dotted the surface of the
entire globe with her possessions and
military posts, whose morning drum
beat, following the sun and keeping
company with the hours, encircled the
earth daily with one continuous and
unbroken strain OF the martial airs
of England" This graphic and pic
turesque enrichment raises the figure
to a high poetic level, it itself sugges-
tive of the inspiration of a former age
And as matter of fact, England
neither coined nor adapted it for her.
sell. The figure has fallen to us as a
heritage of empire.
This is best shown by the fact that
the phrase has been a sometime pos
session of several nations. We unex-
pectedly encounter it in the works of
the quaint Thomas Fuller, who, in his
sketch of the life of Sir Francis Drake,
says that though poor private man,
the admiral hereafter undertook to
avenge himself upon so mighty a
monarch, who, as not contented that
the sun riseth and setteth in his do
minions, may seem to desire to make
all of his own where he Shineth, !"
There is no doubt about the monarch
here referred to, nor of the fervor Win
which on so many occasions Drake
'singed the Spanish kings beard" 1t
was in the reign of Philip H. that the
Spanish monarchy attained it's heign-
est point of splendor and dominion.
When the ambassador, Gondomar, was
combining business and pleasure at the
English court he babe Spanish
grandee who was returning to his own
country, remember him to the sun, :"
which he haG not seen since LIS resi-
dence in England, and which he wound
be sure to find in Spain.
The Spaniards, however, had long
been conscious that the sun was always
shining on som of their territories
In one of Howell's well-known collec-
lions of letters, published in 1923, oc-
ours this passage: I'm Philip II. S
time this crown came to his grandeur,
and truly, to give the Spaniard his due,
he is a mighty monarch, who hath
dominion in Europe, Asia, Africa and
America. ICO lie sun SlIuGS dill IuS
four and twenty hours of the natural
day upon some part or other of his
country, for part of the antipodes are
subject to him. And in his account
Of "Historic Phrases" Bunshanan
quotes the following sentence of a
Dutch author in 1860: ''The King of
Spain is a great potentate, who stands
with one foot in the east and the other
in the west, and the sun never sets
that it does not shine on some of his
dominions" The same idea also finds
expression in Guarinis Pastor Fido,"
written some seventy years earlier, in
which Catherine of Austria is spoken
of as the illustrious daughter of the
monarch on whose empire the sun
never sets.
But Portugal had also put forward
her claim to an ever-present sun, and
certainly not without some show OF