climate, its protestant and progressive people,
and South America, with its tropical climate,
its catholic and stationary population.

It is not our intention to travel through
the various theories connected with this
curious subject, but our wish is simply to stimulate
the mind of the more studious of our
readers, by a few familiar suggestions, to
further investigation. Perhaps, we may wish
also to relieve the much-abused North of
some portion of its bad character, and make
a moral application of these few physical
observations.

It is plain that the man of the North
commences the game of life under various
disadvantages—the severity of the climate, and
he barrenness of the soil; but these
disadvantages are, after all, the conditions of his
future excellence. Wisely, it was ordered by
Providence that the cradle of mankind should
be placed, not at the centre of the tropical
regions, but among the continents of the
north. The latter by their forms, their
structure, and their climate, are calculated
for the development of individuals and
societies; the former by their balmy, but
enervating' and treacherous atmosphere, might
have lulled man into a death sleep, even in
his infancy. For, as it has been remarked
by one of the authors to whom we have
referred—" The man of the tropical regions is
the son of a wealthy house. In the midst of
the surrounding abundance, labour too often
seems to him useless. To abandon himself to
his inclinations is a more easy and agreeable
pastime. A slave to his passions, an
unfaithful servant, he leaves uncultivated and
unused the faculties with which God has
endowed him. The work of improvement is
with him a failure. On the other hand, the
man of the polar regions is the beggar,
overwhelmed with suffering, who, too happy if
he but gain his daily bread, has no leisure to
think of anything more exalted. But the
man born of the temperate regions is the
man born in ease, in the golden mean, which
is the most favoured of all conditions.
Invited to labour by everything around him,
he soon finds, in the exercise of all his faculties,
at once progress and well-being." On
the contrary, the man of the North must work
to live; he must cultivate, with unceasing
labour, an nntractable soil; he must
constantly contend against an inhospitable
climate; he must acquire and exercise
forecast, self-denial, and caution; storing up in
one season what will be required for another;
denying himself necessaries or luxuries when
they can be had, to save himself from hunger
and cold when they cannot be had; and he
must be ever upon the watch against his
enemies among the lower animals, whose
hunger is greater, and whose vigilance may
be as great as his.

Such a subject as the present is peculiarly
susceptible of what the clergy call improvement.
There is, in fact, a moral as well
as a physical north and south. There are
stales of society, even in temperate climates,
which are as trying to human virtue as the
frozen regions, where man has to contend
with the severity of his position, and life is
but a struggle with death; where extremest
labour can only save the individual from
perishing by hunger and want of shelter.
But these evils stimulate to exertion: and it
is from the classes thus situated that the
more favoured ranks of society get replenished
with their most active members. The
men who succeed best in the world are the
more enterprising exiles of the neglected
orders, who win a better position for
themselves in a state of society to which they
were not born; and who, while they receive
a certain degree of polish from that state,
bring to it a proportionate amount of vigour
by which it is strengthened as an institution.
The Scot and the Yorkshireman become
modified by their stay in the place of their
migration and adoption, and in turn modify by
their example, the neighbourhood which
watches their steady earnestness and their
economical perseverance. The system of
English society and the scheme of our polity,
willingly admit of these irruptions, and
gives a warm welcome to worth, as it travels
through the various degrees of endeavour,
as it strives to reach the highest point of
its special ambition. There is something,
then, to be undoubtedly thankful for in
those hard conditions of life that
promote fortitude, when they lead to results
such as we have described. We have now in
our mind's eye several individuals of our
acquaintance whose early training was
decidedly in the moral north of our social
hemisphere; but who are now living in all the
luxuries of the moral south, and who,
probably, if they had been born under the more
enervating latitudes, would have missed the
good fortune as under a different dispensation
of their lot they have now gained.

Let us, therefore, learn to stirrender some
of our prejudices against the barbarous
North, and at least confess that out of
its evils sometimes may come good. If
we are more favourably situated, it will
do us no harm to stand upon our guard,
lest the enervating conditions of our better
destiny render us incapable of maintaining
our position against the competition of
more robust aspirants, and carefully to
cultivate the habits needful for self-defence.
We shall do well to take example from the
hardy sons of the North, and practically
confess that thev have something to teach us
which for our own benefit we are willing to
learn.