Douro, was for ages one of the great maritime powers of Europe. In the bleak north, the coast of Norway, with its innumerable ports, has been always a nursery of bold seamen. Manufactures may prosper in countries remote from the sea and from navigable rivers, and even on the mountains of Switzerland, as manufactures chiefly depend on the supply of fuel and water, and of the raw materials, which often are produced near the spot. In the case of bulky raw materials being brought from distant parts, the disadvantage of a remote internal manufacturing site is much greater. Those manufactures which, having these supplies at hand, are at the same time situated near the sea or a navigable river, must have a great advantage over all others. England unites all these requisites above every other country in Europe; its configuration, long line of coast, numerous natural harbours and navigable rivers, its inexhaustible supply of coals, its iron and tin mines, all these have established its supremacy in manufactures and maritime trade, and this supremacy it must retain as long as it retains its independence as a nation.

The natural elements of a country, by determining the industry of the people, influence at the same time their social and moral habits. The shepherd who grazes his flocks for one half of the year in the solitude of the Alps, the Apennines, and the Pyrenees, is a being of simpler habits, fewer ideas, and fewer words, than the labourer or artizan who lives in the crowded towns or villages of the plain. The nomadic Arab, being obliged to wander in quest of pasture for his cattle, lives constantly encamped, ever on the watch, and prepared for defence. He acquires habits of alertness and courage and of extreme sobriety. Milk and a few dates

are his general food. The Sheiks of the wandering Arab tribes, having no fixed habitations, no castles, or prisons, can only enforce their authority by popular consent. Hence the independent spirit of the nomadic Arabs, and the impossibility of conquering them, or at least of keeping them in subjection.

As we advance towards the pole, heat, as a general law, decreases, and the duration of daylight during one half of the year becomes more and more contracted: this occasions additional wants of fuel, warm clothing, and artificial light. The labourers of southern countries have fewer wants than those of northern ones, and therefore are less inclined to work hard. The precocity of women, and their early decay, in the countries near to or within the tropics, may account in a great measure for the custom of polygamy among many tropical nations, though polygamy is not confined to the natives of hot countries. The appearance of the sky influences the taste of the people for the arts. The sky of Greece and that of Southern Italy, their rich tints and brilliant appearance, the cheerfulness which they seem to spread over all nature, have impressed the people of those countries with a lively sense of beauty, and have contributed to form the style of their music, their poetry, and their architecture.

Climate affects the productions of a country, the habits of the people, and their commercial relations. The temperature of a country may be the result of the following circumstances: latitude, elevation of the surface, aspect or exposure to a particular point of the horizon, situation with regard to some great range of mountains, or to a sea or lake, prevailing winds, &c. The effects of mere latitude are often counteracted by

some other of the above causes: thus Bogota, Quito, and other places within the tropics, enjoy a temperate climate. The French side of the Pyrenees experiences a severer winter than the Spanish side of those mountains; the same difference exists between the Swiss and the Italian sides of the Alps. In Italy, the valleys on the Genoese and Tuscan side of the Apennines partake of the nature of southern countries; the lemon, orange, fig, and olive-tree grow there in full luxuriance, while the northern slope of the same range, in the countries of Parma and Modena, is subject to a long and bleak winter, and can raise none of the above-mentioned products.

The configuration of a country and the nature of its boundaries have a powerful influence on its political condition. There can hardly be a doubt that the insular position of England has greatly contributed to the preservation of its national independence. Where did Napoleon's armed myriads stop? On the shores of the British Channel, and on those of the Baltic Sea. It was the Baltic that saved Sweden from a visitation, after the conqueror had overrun Pomerania. Gioia, the Italian economist, observes that the Italian peninsula being long and narrow, with an enormous line of coast, is assailable on innumerable points from the sea; whilst on the land side, the line of defence formed by the Alps is weakened by the wide crescent form of that range of mountains, which offers numerous passes to invaders. Again, the great length of the same peninsula, intersected by the lofty Apennines, is a great obstacle to a unity of government, to the choice of a common capital, and to the amalgamation of its various populations. The difference in the climate, nature of the soil and

its productions, and consequently in the habits of the people, is very great between north and south Italy; Naples and Milan are countries quite different from each other.

Rivers and mountains are the common demarcations of political boundaries. Of the two, mountains form the more durable and secure line of frontier. Mountains generally separate races and languages, for the social and commercial relations of men mostly follow the direction of the waters that flow from each side of a mountain range. Hence arise similarity of interests, habits, sympathy, and a feeling of mutual defence.

A knowledge of the local circumstances of various countries is essential not only to the statesman and the politician, but to the merchant, the traveller, the soldier, and the general student. The merchant, by being acquainted with them, will avoid bad speculations, such as sending to tropical climates goods which are only fit for northern latitudes, for instance, stoves and thick woollen cloths to Brazil, and even, as we have heard it asserted, skates to Buenos Ayres, where it never freezes. Such blunders could only take place where men were very ignorant; and though they might not occur now as to places known by experience to the merchant, we may safely say that, if the whole coast of China were at once opened to foreign trade, very few mercantile men would be sufficiently masters of such facts as are already ascertained about China, to make a profitable use of them. A similar want of knowledge occasioned ludicrous but expensive mistakes in the mining speculations of Mexico and South America: steam-engines were sent to be worked on the mountains, in places almost accessible, where there was no fuel to put them in

motion, and no timber suitable for the most necessary purposes. Napoleon committed a great statistical error by remaining at Moscow after the town was burnt, and till the winter set in. He became convinced, when too late, of the fact that men and horses bred in a more southern latitude, and in the more western parts of Europe, cannot bear exposure to a Russian winter. By a knowledge of localities, blunders will be avoided in speaking or writing, such as talking of the trees bearing fruit in Biscay in the month of March, or of the smiling plains of the south in summer, where the fields, unless they can be artificially irrigated, are parched and withered by a burning sun. With regard to southern countries, people are too apt to indulge in gorgeous visions of a luxuriant vegetation, odoriferous groves, of seas ever blue, weather always genial, and breezes ever soft; they forget the summer drought, the want of water, the torments of thirst, the clouds of dust and sand, the swarms of flies, musquitoes, and locusts, and numerous poisonous creeping things, the summer storms and hurricanes, the scirocco and the khamsin, the malaria exhalations, the enervation produced by the climate, the consequent indolence of the people, and their early old age; they forget that a sun constantly bright in a sky constantly blue, month after month, produces at last a sense of weariness as great as that occasioned by a gloomy northern winter, and that the appearance of the equinoctial clouds, slowly and darkly piled one above the other on the verge of the horizon is as welcome to the inhabitants of those latitudes as the first warm days of spring to those of the British isles. The author of "Recollections of the Persian Gulf," quoted by Balbi, observes that the brilliant descriptions which several