To the influences of geographical position, soil, and race is to be added, to complete the account of the physical heritage, the influence of climate. But in the case of the British Islands we must speak not of climate, but of climates, for within the compass of one small realm are climates moist and comparatively dry, warm and cold, bracing and enervating, the results of special influences the range of which is limited. Civilized man to a great extent makes a climate for himself; his life in the North is spent mainly indoors, where artificial heat replaces the sun. The idea which still haunts us, that formidable vigour and aptitude for conquest are the appanage of Northern races, is a survival from the state in which the rigour of nature selected and hardened the destined conquerors of the Roman Empire. The stoves of St. Petersburg are as enervating as the sun of Naples, and in the struggle between the Northern and Southern States of America not the least vigorous soldiers were those who came from Louisiana. In the barbarous state the action of a Northern climate as a force of natural selection must be tremendous. Of the races which peopled the British Islands the most important had already undergone that action in their original abodes. They would, however, still feel the beneficent influence of a climate on the whole eminently favourable to health and to activity; bracing, yet not so rigorous as to kill those tender plants of humanity which often bear in them the most precious germs of civilization, neither confining the inhabitant too much to the shelter of his dwelling, nor, as the suns of the South are apt to do, drawing him too much from home. The climate and the soil together formed a good school for the character of the young nation, as they exacted the toil of the husbandman and rewarded it. Of the varieties of temperature and weather within the island the national character still bears the impress, though in a degree always decreasing as the assimilating agencies of civilization make their way. Irrespectively of the influence of special employments, and perhaps even of peculiarity of race, mental vigour, independence, and reasoning power are always ascribed to the people of the North. Variety, in this as in other respects, would naturally produce a balance of tendencies in the nation conductive to moderation and evenness of progress.