The same qualities in soil and climate which affect vegetation, likewise powerfully influence the character and temperament of men and animals. It is, for example, well known in the Levant, that the Bedouins inhabiting Arabia Proper and the Eastern Desert degenerate both in character and physical organisation when transplanted to the Libyan wastes on the western banks of the Nile. But if particular soil and situation engender particular diseases; if the air of fens and marshes blunt the senses and paralyse, to a certain degree, the intellectual faculties, the converse of the proposition must also hold good; so that it is conceivable that the light soil and pure air of Greece may have produced corresponding effects on the bodies and minds of its inhabitants. The experiment, in fact, is made daily; for strangers arriving there with the germs of disease in their constitution, are, in most cases, speedily destroyed by the force of the climate; while the healthy and vigorous acquire the vivacity, the cheerfulness, the nervous and impetuous energy of the natives themselves, and, like them, extend the term of life to its utmost span. Greece, indeed, has always been the habitation of longevity; its philosophers in antiquity,—its monks, anchorites, and rural population in modern times, furnishing, perhaps, more examples of extreme old age than could be found on the same extent of territory in any other part of the globe. Now this excess of vitality, this superabundance of the principle of life, which constitutes what we intend by physical or moral energy, almost inevitably produces, among an ill-governed, ill-educated people, a large harvest of crime, and, accordingly, the modern Greeks have often been distinguished for audacious villany; the intrepid vigour of their character, controlled neither by religion nor philosophy, easily breaking through the restraints of tyranny and unjust laws in the chase after power or excitement. That Frenchman spoke more truly than he thought, who said the Greeks were still the same “canaille” as in the days of Themistocles: for, give them the same laws, the same education, the same incentives to virtue and to heroism, and they will probably be again as virtuous, as wise, and as heroic as their illustrious ancestors. I judge in this way partly from my own experience, for I have seldom become acquainted with a Greek,—and I have known many,—who has not improved upon acquaintance, won my esteem, and, in most cases, my affection, and impressed me with the firm belief that there is no nation in the varied population of Europe which, if ruled with wisdom and justice, would exhibit loftier or more exalted qualities. In these views I am happy to be borne out by the testimony of Monsieur Frederic Thiersch, whose facilities for studying the modern Greek have been far more ample than mine, and whose opinions are marked by the cautious acuteness of the statesman with the depth and originality of the philosopher.