478 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



zation moves farther and farther north. Our oracles have been trans- 

 ferred from Delphi to Berlin, to Edinburgh and Boston. The Muses 

 and Graces are wearing fur cloaks. Has the sun of the south lost its 

 stimulating power ? The truth seems to be, that cold air is an anti- 

 dote. The antiseptic effect of a cold climate enables us to indulge 

 with comparative impunity in numerous vices which our southern 

 neighbors have paid with the loss of their moral and physical health. 

 It has been ascertained that alcoholic stimulants, instead of increasing 

 actually decrease the temperature of the system, and that cold weather 

 constitutes no valid excuse for the use of intoxicating drinks, but it 

 is equally certain that a low temperature promotes recovery from the 

 effects of intoxication. Many hyperboreans eat flesh as a stimulant 

 rather than as a medium of calefaction ; tea-drinkers contract a mor- 

 bid craving for boiling-hot beverages. But climatic influences increase 

 the activity of their digestive organs to a degree that enables Nature 

 to compromise the violation of her laws. Gluttons and topers die in 

 the south and survive in the north, not because a warm climate per se 

 is incompatible with the normal vigor of the human system, but be- 

 cause a cold winter counteracts the effects of gluttony and intemper- 

 ance in much the same way as rum counteracts the effects of a snake- 

 bite, or mercury the virus of the lues veneris. Frost is a counter-poi- 

 son. Protracted impunity tempts sinners to believe in the innocence 

 of their habits. During the two centuries when the Caesars vied in 

 the gratuitous purveyance of bread, oil, and circus-games, the Roman 

 citizens had no special reason to admit the turpitude of idleness. 

 Under the protection of the Holy Inquisition dunces were secure 

 enough against the competition of genius to consider ignorance as a 

 virtue. Thus the prophylactic influence of a frigid climate has made 

 the propriety of many of our daily sins so axiomatic that the neglect 

 of their practice excites a sort of virtuous indignation. A German 

 proverb, traced to the table-talk of an eminent reformer, denounces the 

 demerits of the man who fails to worship music, women, and wine. 

 To many minds closed bedroom-windows and three warm meals a day 

 are essential conditions of true respectability. Even in the dog-days, 

 the impropriety of Scotch knee-breeches would be thought worthy of 

 a harsher name. When financial embarrassments obliged the later 

 Caesars to abolish the free-lunch system, the astonishment of the cives 

 Romanus was only equaled by his wrath at the injustice of the in- 

 novation ; and with a similar mixture of indignation and surprise thou- 

 sands of exiles from the regions of prophylactic frost denounce the 

 malignity of a climate that fails to protect them from the logical con- 

 sequences of their sins against nature. In summer weeks, when the 

 Creoles pass the night on their flat house-roofs, with a mattress and a 

 linen bed-sheet, and regret at the necessity of adding a mosquito-cap, 

 the foreign resident insists on sleeping in a flannel undershirt, under 

 woolen blankets, and the impression that his life depends on keeping 



