AN EXCELLENT CUSTOM OF THE SAMNITES. The Samnites had a custom which in so small a republic, and especially in their situation, must have been productive of admirable effects. The young people were all convened in one place, and their conduct was examined. He that was declared the best of the whole assembly, had leave given him to take which girl he pleased for his wife; the second best chose after him, and so on. Admirable institution! The only recommendation that young men could have on this occasion, was their virtue, and the service done their country. He who had the greatest share of these endowments, chose which girl he liked out of the whole nation. Love, beauty, chastity, virtue, birth, and even wealth itself, were all, in some measure, the dowry of virtue. A nobler and grander recompense, less chargeable to a petty state, and more capable of influencing both sexes, could scarce be imagined. The Samnites were descended from the Lacedæmonians; and Plato, whose institutes are only an improvement of those of Lycurgus, enacted nearly the same law. The relation of the foregoing chapter to the subject indicated in the title of the book, is sufficiently obscure and remote, for a work like this purporting to be philosophical. What relation exists, seems to be found in the fact that the Samnite custom described tends to produce that popular virtue by which republics flourish. But the information, at all events, is curious and interesting. The following paragraphs, taken from the second chapter of Book XIV., contain in germ nearly the whole of the philosophy underlying M. Taine's essays on the history of literature:-- OF THE DIFFERENCE OF MEN IN DIFFERENT CLIMATES. A cold air constringes the extremities of the external fibres of the body; this increases their elasticity, and favors the return of the blood from the extreme parts to the heart. It contracts those very fibres; consequently it increases also their force. On the contrary, a warm air relaxes and lengthens the extremes of the fibres; of course it diminishes their force and elasticity.