Man, in the perfection of his natural faculties, is quick and delicate in his sensibility; extensive and various in his imaginations and reflections; attentive, penetrating, and subtile, in what relates to his fellow creatures; firm and ardent in his purposes; devoted to friendship or to enmity; jealous of his independence and his honour, which he will not relinquish for safety or for profit: under all his corruptions or improvements, he retains his natural sensibility, if not his force; and his commerce is a blessing or a curse, according to the direction his mind has received. But under the extremes of heat or of cold, the active range of the human soul appears to be limited; and men are of inferior importance, either as friends, or as enemies. In the one extreme, they are dull and slow, moderate in their desires, regular, and pacific in their manner of life; in the other, they are feverish in their passions, weak in their judgments, and addicted by temperament, to animal pleasure. In both the heart is mercenary, and makes important concessions for childish bribes: in both the spirit is prepared for servitude: in the one it is subdued by fear of the future; in the other it is not roused even by its sense of the present. The nations of Europe who would settle or conquer on the south or the north of their own happier climates, find little resistance: they extend their dominion at pleasure, and find no where a limit but in the ocean, and in the satiety of conquest. With few of the pangs and the struggles that precede the reduction of nations, mighty provinces have been successively annexed to the territory of Russia; and its sovereign, who accounts within his domain, entire tribes, with whom perhaps none of his emissaries have ever conversed, despatched a few geometers to extend his empire, and thus to execute a project, in which the Romans were obliged to employ their consuls and their legions. [Footnote: See Russian Atlas.] These modern conquerors complain of rebellion, where they meet with repugnance; and are surprised at being treated as enemies, where they come to impose their tribute. It appears, however, that on the shores of the Eastern sea, they have met with nations [Footnote: The Tchutzi.] who have questioned their title to reign, and who have considered the requisition of a tax as the demand of effects for nothing. Here perhaps may be found the genius of ancient Europe; and under its name of ferocity, the spirit of national independence; [Footnote: Notes to the Genealogical History of the Tartars, vouched by Strahlenberg.] that spirit which disputed its ground in the west with the victorious armies of Rome, and baffled the attempts of the Persian monarchs to comprehend the villages of Greece within the bounds of their extensive dominion.