One hundred and fifty years before them, Bodin made it the foundation of his system in his "Republic," and in his "Method of History"; he asserts that the influence of climate is the principle both of the government and the religion of nations. Diodorus of Sicily was of the same opinion long before Bodin. The author of the "Spirit of Laws," without quoting any authority, carried this idea farther than Chardin and Bodin. A certain part of the nation believed him to have first suggested it, and imputed it to him as a crime. This was quite in character with that part of the nation alluded to. There are everywhere men who possess more zeal than understanding. We might ask those who maintain that climate does everything, why the Emperor Julian, in his "_Misopogon_" says that what pleased him in the Parisians was the gravity of their characters and the severity of their manners; and why these Parisians, without the slightest change of climate, are now like playful children, at whom the government punishes and smiles at the same moment, and who themselves, the moment after, also smile and sing lampoons upon their masters. Why are the Egyptians, who are described as having been still more grave than the Parisians, at present the most lazy, frivolous, and cowardly of people, after having, as we are told, conquered the whole world for their pleasure, under a king called Sesostris? Why are there no longer Anacreons, Aristotles, or Zeuxises at Athens? Whence comes it that Rome, instead of its Ciceros, Catos, and Livys, has merely citizens who dare not speak their minds, and a brutalized populace, whose supreme happiness consists in having oil cheap, and in gazing at processions? Cicero, in his letters, is occasionally very jocular on the English. He desires his brother Quintus, Cæsar's lieutenant, to inform him whether he has found any great philosophers among them, in his expedition to Britain. He little suspected that that country would one day produce mathematicians whom he could not understand. Yet the climate has not at all changed, and the sky of London is as cloudy now as it was then. Everything changes, both in bodies and minds, by time. Perhaps the Americans will in some future period cross the sea to instruct Europeans in the arts. Climate has some influence, government a hundred times more; religion and government combined more still. _Influence of Climate._