Let the blood of her hundred thousands Throb in each manly vein, And the wits of all her wisest Make sunshine in her brain. And each shall care for other, And each to each shall bend, To the poor a noble brother, To the good an equal friend. A blessing through the ages thus Shield all thy roofs and towers! GOD WITH THE FATHERS, SO WITH US, Thou darling town of ours! [Illustration: (decorative banner)] BOSTON. The old physiologists said, “There is in the air a hidden food of life;” and they watched the effect of different climates. They believed the air of mountains and the seashore a potent predisposer to rebellion. The air was a good republican, and it was remarked that insulary people are versatile and addicted to change, both in religious and secular affairs. The air that we breathe is an exhalation of all the solid material globe. An aerial fluid streams all day, all night, from every flower and leaf, from every water and soil, from every rock-ledge; and from every stratum a different aroma and air according to its quality. According to quality and according to temperature, it must have effect on manners. There is the climate of the Sahara: a climate where the sunbeams are vertical; where is day after day, sunstroke after sunstroke, with a frosty shadow between. “There are countries,” said Howell, “where the heaven is a fiery furnace, or a blowing bellows, or a dropping sponge, most parts of the year.” Such is the assimilating force of the Indian climate, that, Sir Erskine Perry says, “the usage and opinion of the Hindoos so invades men of all castes and colors who deal with them that all take a Hindoo tint. Parsee, Mongol, Afghan, Israelite, Christian, have all passed under this influence and exchanged a good part of their patrimony of ideas for the notions, manner of seeing, and habitual tone of Indian society.” He compares it to the geologic phenomenon which the black soil of the Dhakkan offers,—the property, namely, of assimilating to itself every foreign substance introduced into its bosom. How can we not believe in influences of climate and air, when, as true philosophers, we must believe that chemical atoms also have their spiritual cause why they are thus and not other; that carbon, oxygen, alum and iron, each has its origin in spiritual nature? Even at this day men are to be found superstitious enough to believe that to certain spots on the surface of the planet special powers attach, and an exalted influence on the genius of man. And it appears as if some localities of the earth, through wholesome springs, or as the _habitat_ of rare plants and minerals, or through ravishing beauties of Nature, were preferred before others. There is great testimony of discriminating persons to the effect that Rome is endowed with the enchanting property of inspiring a longing in men there to live and there to die.