or disguises of these traits which are found in formal religions, and in institutions of caste or slavery.  The rigor of Northern climates produces, on the other hand, in the long run, hardy physical constitutions among men, with determined individuality of character.  It produces, therefore, freedom even to democracy in politics, protestantism even to rationalism in religion, and grim perseverance even to the bitter end in war.  A certain stern morality, often amounting to asceticism, is imposed on Northern constitutions.  So superficial is it, so much a creature of circumstance, that Norman, Scandinavian, Goth, or Icelander, deserves no sort of credit for it.  All history shows that it vanishes before the temptations of any Vinland which the frozen barbarians stumble upon.  None the less does it give them vigor of muscle, and power to endure hardship, which, in the end, tells, over the accomplishments of the most warlike Romans, Greeks, Persians, or other Southrons.  “Fight us, if you like,” said Ariovistus to Caesar; “but remember that none of us have slept under a roof for fourteen years.”  That sort of people are apt to succeed in the long run.

When they succeed, as we have said, they advance civilization.  To begin with the farthest East, all such strength as the Chinese Empire has to-day is due to the Tartar cross in its blood; that is, it results from the conquest of imbecile China by Northern Tartar tribes.  One or two more such invasions, followed by colonization of Northern emigrants, would have made China a much stronger power this day than she is, and a nation of higher grade.  The history of Indian civilization, again, is a history of Northern conquests.  They tell us, indeed, that the Indian castes may be resolved into so many beach-marks of the waves of successive invasions from the North, the highest caste representing the last innovation.  When Abraham crossed from Ur of the Chaldees into Canaan, when Cambyses broke open the secrets of Egyptian civilization, when Alexander first opened to the world Egyptian science, these were illustrations of the same thing,—­Canaan, Egypt, and the world were all improved by those processes.  Greece died out, and has never yet reestablished herself, because she never had a complete infusion of Gothic blood in her worn-out system.  Italy, on the other hand, had a new birth, and at this moment has a magnificent future, because Goths and Lombards did sweep in upon her with their up-country virtues and wilderness moralities.  What the Ostrogoths did for Spain, what the Franks did for Gaul, what the Northmen did for England, are so many more illustrations.  What Gustavus Adolphus would have done for Germany, if he had succeeded, would have been another.

What we are to do in the South, when we succeed, will be another.  It makes the subject of this paper.

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