82 ON LIFE AND ORGANIZATION. 
44 The climate of our own country is certainly not to be boasted 
of for its perpetual serenity, and it has had no lack of abuse from our 
own countrymen and others. We are, none of us, without a pretty 
lively memory of its freaks and changes, its mists and tempests, its 
severe winters, and its springs that are often so late in their arrival 
that they find summer standing in the gate, to tell them that they 
are no longer wanted. All this we know ; yet which of us is not 
ready to forgive all these, and to say, with a full heart, 
4 England, with all thy faults, I love thee still’ ? 
Which of us is not grateful and discerning enough to remember, that 
even our fickle and imperfect climate has qualities to which England 
owes much of its glory 1 Which of us can forget that this abused 
climate is that which has not enervated by its heats, has not se- 
duced by its pleasures, has not depopulated bv its malaria, so that 
under its baneful influence we have become feeble, listless, reckless 
of honour or virtue — the mean, the slothful, the crouching slaves 
of barbarians, or even effeminate despots. Our climate has done 
none of these things, produced no such effects as these ; but is that 
which has raised millions of frames, strong, muscular, and combat- 
ant, and enduring as the oaks of its rocky hills ; that has nerved 
those frames to the contempt of danger and effeminacy, and has 
quickened them with hearts full of godlike aspirations after a vir- 
tuous glory. What a long line — what ages after ages of invincible 
heroes, of dauntless martyrs for freedom and religion, of solemn 
sages and lawgivers, of philosophers and poets. What a long line 
of these has flourished amid the glooms and severities of this abused 
climate, and — while Italy has sunk into subjection, and Greece has 
lain waste beneath the feet of the Turk — has piled up, by a suc- 
cession of matchless endeavours, the fame and power of England to 
the height of its present greatness ; — 
4 In our halls are hung 
Armoury of the invincible knights of old. 
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue 
That Shakspeare spake ; — the faith and morals hold 
Which Milton held. In every thing we are sprung 
Of Earth’s best blood, have titles manifold.’ 
And will any man tell me that the spirit of our climate has had 
nothing to do with begetting and nourishing the energy which has 
borne on to immortality these great men ; which has quickened us 
with 4 earth’s best blood;’ which has given us 4 titles manifold’ 1 I 
believe that we are indebted to our climate for a mass of good and 
a host of advantages of which we little dream*.” 
This variety of organization, corresponding to the variety of cli- 
* Howitt. 
