And first, every breath of American air helps to make him the American Man. The atmosphere of America was early noted as a wonder-worker. Ten years subsequent to the landing at Plymouth, the Rev. Francis Higginson, an acute observer, wrote to the mother country,--"A sup of New England air is better than a whole flagon of old English ale." Jean Paul says that the roots of humankind are the lungs, and that, being rooted in air,--we are properly children of the aether. Truly, children of the aether,--and so, children of fire. For the oxygen, upon which the lungs chiefly feed, is _the_ fiery principle in Nature,--all that we denominate fire and flame being but the manifestation of its action. We are severe upon fire-eaters, Southern and other; yet here are we, cool Northerns, quaffing this very principle and essence of fire in large lung-draughts every moment, each of us carrying a perpetual furnace in his bosom. Now it is doubtless true that we inhale more oxygen, or at least inhale it less drenched with damp, than the people of Europe, and are, therefore, more emphatically children of fire than they. Be this, or be some other, the true theory of the fact, the fact itself unquestionably is, that our climate produces the highest nervous intensity. As there are conditions of atmosphere in which the magnetic telegraph works well, and others in which it works ill, so some conditions stimulate, while others repress nervous action. The air of England seems favorable to richness and abundance of blood; there the life-vessels sit deep, and bring opulent cargoes to the flesh-shores; and the rotund figure, the ruddy solid cheek, and the leisurely complacent movement, all show how well supported and stored with vital resources the Englishman is. But to the American's lip the great foster-mother has proffered a more pungent and rousing draught,--not an old Saxon sleeping-cup for the night, but a waking-cup for the bright morning and busy day. It is forenoon with him. He is up and dressed, and at work by the job. Bring an Englishman here, and nothing short of Egyptian modes of preservation will keep him an Englishman long. Soon he cannot digest so much food, cannot dispose of so much stimulant; his step becomes quicker, his eye keener, his voice rises a note on the scale, and grows a trifle sharper. In fine, the effects observed in our autumn foliage may be traced in the people themselves, a heightening of colors; and while this accounts for much that is prurient and bizarre, it infolds also the best promise of America.