350 Plants, characteristic of Different Nations. 



kinds are introduced into the north of Europe, (the cabbage, 

 turnip, carrot, and asparagus are perhaps indigenous, but 

 then they are of less importance.) Here then, we find a 

 grand proof of the mental superiority of these people, who 

 at the same time have exemplified that the poor man's child 

 endowed by nature with rich mental gifts, may get on in 

 the world better than even the rich heir himself. I am not 

 sure whether there might not be some one or another, who, 

 in this revolution, either fancies he beholds a dangerous 

 disturbance in nature, or fears, that the nations, by gradually 

 appropriating the peculiarities of their neighbours, might 

 sink more and more into a dull uniformity. Similar fearful 

 forebodings greet our ears now and then, and complaints 

 have been heard, that the journals of modern travellers con- 

 tain fewer and fewer interesting sketches of the most differ- 

 ent nations. Not only in Europe have vanished so many 

 national characteristics, that being in a saloon in Moscow, one 

 might easily fancy oneself in Paris, but those charming pic- 

 tures of the Southern Islanders, which we received from the 

 first circumnavigators, are now changed into reports of how 

 the natives dress in European style, launch ships, erect 

 schools on the Pestalozzian principle, and found churches. 



High up in the Himalayas, some 7000 feet above the sea, 

 where the wilds of nature were seldom visited except by a few 

 Hindoo pilgrims, a sanitarium, or a Spa, has been erected, 

 with numerous European houses, where, as Jacquemont 

 informs us, the elite of fashion, dressed in pumps and silk 

 stockings, ride in their britzkas to stylish dinner parties, 

 and feast on champaign and hock.* Where not long ago 

 nature remained in her aboriginal grandeur in New Hol- 

 land, where savages on the lowest step of culture used 

 a few branches to protect themselves against the vicissitudes 

 of the weather, and fed upon sea-shells, the scene has 



* May we hope to see the seats of British rule in India, character- 

 ised by higher instances of European improvement than this ?— -Ed. 



