474 The Four Nations. [MAY, 



and where the native, panting and throbbing in fervent heat, is contented 

 with a subsistence small in quantity and simple in kind there is nothing 

 to call out those inventive powers of which necessity is truly the mother, 

 and there is every thing to relax and enfeeble the powers of the body. In 

 the other extreme of temperature " the thrilling regions of the thick- 

 ribbed ice" those inhospitable climes where, in the language of Milton, 

 the air 



" Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire " 



the dreary wastes of Spitzbergen ; those more dreary still, where Captain 

 Parry went to seek knowledge, and found misery ; and those, rendered 

 perchance still more unfavourable by the eternal blasts of the Australian 

 air, and the ceaseless weltering of the southern wave are all fatal to the 

 development of even the lower powers of the mind ; and they who have the 

 misfortune to dwell there seem doomed to external woe and internal weak- 

 ness, without remedy and without hope. Nor are the extremes of heat 

 and cold the only geographical circumstances which affect the character ; 

 for the man who is doomed to respire for life the miasmata of a fen, or an 

 atmosphere surcharged with excessive humidity, if he shall escape a phy- 

 sical consumption, is sure to be visited by a consumption of all the more 

 delicate feelings and more exquisite fancies of mind ; while he who treads the 

 mountain's peak, looks out during the day upon the unclouded majesty of 

 the sun, and during the night upon the sparkling glories of the starry host, 

 and who breathes an air which is kindred to that of those heavens which 

 are so displayed to his contemplation, however his frame may be shrunken 

 by the nipping of winter, has his nerves strung to an excess of vigour, and 

 his mind attuned to the warmest feelings and the most glowing percep- 

 tions. 



Nor is the influence confined to temperature and humidity ; for the 

 comparative fertility of the earth appears to have no small effect upon the 

 character of its inhabitants. Of the table which nature sets out for man, 

 as well as of that which he sets out for himself, it may with truth be said 

 that 



" dainty bits 

 Make rich the ribs, but bankerout quite the wits." 



So even-handed, indeed, is that justice which nature awards, that they who 

 enjoy the fat places of the earth are doomed intellectually to partake a 

 little of their obesity ; while they who are placed upon the bleak ridge 

 never fail to be rewarded with a portion of its firmness and elevation. Nor 

 is it difficult to find out the means by which this equalization is brought 

 about : the chemical changes which take place in the upper stratum of the 

 earth must continually evolve matters that alter the atmospheric air ; and 

 it is well known that the gases which are given out by animal and vege- 

 table substances, while undergoing the putrid fermentation, all have a per- 

 nicious effect upon the health when in largo quantities, and upon the feel- 

 ings and faculties, even though the quantities are very small. Now, in a 

 country which is very fertile, and at the same time very fiat, the putrefac- 

 tive process, and consequently its pernicious effects, will be at maximum ; 

 white, among the hard and perennial plants and naked rocks of a moun- 

 tainous country, where the water no sooner falls on the surface than it 

 floods away to the river or the lake, the air must be free from the whole 

 or the greater part of this contamination. Even the habits of the people in 

 a fertile country must dispose them less to activity and thought than those 



