418 DIFFERENCES IN 



shades of distinction, whether placed under the snows of 

 Imaus, or the vertical sun of the torrid zone, has, in. every 

 part of these diversified climates, been occasionally roused 

 to achievements of valour, and deeds of desperation, not 

 surpassed in the heroic ages of the western world. The 

 reflections naturally arising from these facts are obviously 

 sufficient to extinguish a flimsy and superficial hypothesis, 

 which would measure the human mind by the scale of a 

 Fahrenheit's thermometer *." 



White nations have kept up their character under every 

 form of government. Science and literature have flourished 

 in monarchies as well as in republics. Yet, let us never 

 forget that the principal and the richest portion of our intel- 

 lectual treasure consists of the literature and history of two 

 nations of antiquity, whose astonishing superiority seems to 

 have arisen principally from their having enjoyed freedom. 



The white nations may degenerate, as in the case of tlie 

 Greeks and Romans ; but the qualities, which distinguished 

 them in their proudest state, are still visible. The senate, 

 the forum, and the capitol, which were trodden by SciPios, 

 Brutuses, and Catos, by Pompey, Caesar, and Cicero, 

 by Virgil, Horace, Livy, and Tacitus, have been long 

 defiled by a vermin of priests and monks, of eunuchs and 

 singers : the processions and fooleries of a despicable super- 

 stition have succeeded to the three hundred and twenty 

 triumphs which gave to a small spot in Italy the command 

 of the world, proclaiming conquests generally as beneficial 

 to the conquered as glorious to the victor. Italy, altogether, 

 has groaned for centuries under the domestic fetters of 

 monkery and priestcraft, and the still more galling yoke of 

 foreign rule: yet the classic ground has ever produced, and 

 still continues to produce, men worthy of the race that 

 realized and long maintained universal empire. What other 

 people has sent forth, within the same period, or even in 

 any wider range, men equal in force of genius and variety 

 of excellence to the immortal names which Italy can boast 



* WiiKs, Historical Sketches of the South of India; v. i, p. 22, 26. 



