We read in the Journal of Eugénie de Guerin: "With the rain, cold winds, wintry skies, the nightingales singing from time to time under the dead leaves, we have a gloomy month of May. I wish my soul were not so much influenced by the state of the atmosphere and variations of the seasons, as to be like a flower that opens or closes with the cold and the sun. It is something I do not understand, but so it is as long as my soul is imprisoned in this frail body." Ask the poets, artists, and men of thought, if a lively feeling of energy and of joy, prompting to action and labor; or, otherwise, if a certain state languor--of strange and undefinable uneasiness--does not make them dependent on the state of the atmosphere. It may be considered, then, as an established principle, that a temperate climate, mild seasons, and pure air constantly, renewed constitute not only the highest physical enjoyment but the indispensable conditions of health. The physical character of places has a truly astonishing effect upon man. A distinguished traveller, M. Trémaux, has endeavored to prove, in several _mémoires_ to the Académie des Sciences, that man be changed from the Caucasian to the negro type simply by this influence. He calls attention to the coincidences that exist between the physical types and the geological nature of the countries acting especially through their products. The least perfect, or rather, the type which is farthest removed from our own, belongs to the oldest lands, and, in a subsidiary manner, to climates the least favored. The most perfect belongs to the countries which, within the smallest limits, offer the greatest variety of formations, allowing the most recent to predominate, and, in a subsidiary manner, to the most favored climates. The type is also influenced by other causes of a more secondary nature which are very complex. {77} The geological chart of Europe, says Mr. Trémaux, shows that the greatest surface of primitive rock formations is in Lapland, which possesses also the most inferior people; going to the south of Scandinavia, gneiss and granite occupy also a great part of the country, but that region is also connected with others more varied. It contains many lakes, and its climate is more favored, as well as its inhabitants. As to the Scandinavians of Denmark, they have a purely Germanic type and are, in effect, upon the same soil. Russia possesses different formations of a medium age, but the extended surface of each kind does not permit its people to profit by the resources of those adjoining, and, consequently, they are but indifferently favored. If we turn to the countries which are in the best condition, we distinguish in general all the west and south of Europe, and more particularly France, Italy, Greece, the eastern part of Spain, and the north-east of England. It is here, in truth, that civilization and the intellectual faculties have most sway.