to more than one hundred millions.  There is no rule,” he continued, “that can be laid down on this subject, to which some nations cannot be found to furnish a striking exception.  If mere difficulties were all that were wanting to call forth the intellectual energies of man, they have their full share on the borders of the Great Desert.  There are in that whitish tract which separates the countries on the southern shores of the Mediterranean from the rest of Africa, thousands of human beings at this moment toiling over that dreary ocean of sand, to whom a draught of fresh water would be a blessing, and the simplest meal a luxury.

“Perhaps, however, you will say they are so engrossed with the animal wants of hunger and thirst, that they are incapable of attending to any thing else.  Be it so.  But in the interior they are placed in parallel circumstances with the natives of Europe:  they are engaged in struggles for territory and dominion—­for their altars and their homes; and this state of things, which has made some of them brave and warlike, has made none poets or painters, historians or philosophers.  There, poetry has not wanted themes of great achievement and noble daring; but heroes have wanted poets.  Nor can we justly ascribe the difference to the enervating influence of climate, for the temperature of the most southern parts of Africa differs little from that of Greece.  And the tropical nations, too, of your own continent, the Peruvians, were more improved than those who inhabited the temperate regions.  Besides, though the climate had instilled softness and feebleness of character, it might also have permitted the cultivation of the arts, as has been the case with us in Asia.  On the whole, without our being able to pronounce with certainty on the subject, it does seem probable that some organic difference exists in the various races of mankind, to which their diversities of moral and intellectual character may in part be referred.”—­By this time the Morea and the Grecian Archipelago were directly under our telescope.

“Does not Greece,” said I, “furnish the clearest proof of the influence of moral causes on the character of nations?  Compare what that country formerly was, with what it now is.  Once superior to all the rest of the habitable globe, (of which it did not constitute the thousandth part,) in letters, arts, and arms, and all that distinguishes men from brutes; not merely in their own estimation, (for all nations are disposed to rate themselves high enough,) but by the general consent of the rest of the world.  Do not the most improved and civilized of modern states still take them as their instructors and guides in every species of literature—­in philosophy, history, oratory, poetry, architecture, and sculpture?  And those too, who have attained superiority over the world, in arms, yield a voluntary subjection to the Greeks in the arts.  The cause of their former excellence and their present inferiority, is no doubt to be found in their former freedom and their present slavery, and in the loss of that emulation which seems indispensable to natural greatness.”