ng race does not
become permanently inhabitant. You are not to call Libya Vandalia, nor
India England, because these countries are temporarily under the rule
of Vandals and English; neither Italy Gothland under Ostrogoths, nor
England Denmark under Canute. National character varies as it fades
under invasion or in corruption; but if ever it glows again into a new
life, that life must be tempered by the earth and sky of the country
itself. Of the twelve names of countries now given in their order,
only one will be changed as we advance in our history;--Gaul will
properly become France when the Franks become her abiding inhabitants.
The other eleven primary names will serve us to the end.

17. With a moment's more patience, therefore, glancing to the far East,
we shall have laid the foundations of all our own needful geography. As
the northern kingdoms are moated from the Scythian desert by the
Vistula, so the southern are moated from the dynasties properly called
'Oriental' by the Euphrates; which, "partly sunk beneath the Persian
Gulf, reaches from the shores of Beloochistan and Oman to the mountains
of Armenia, and forms a huge hot-air funnel, the base" (or mouth) "of
which is on the tropics, while its extremity reaches thirty-seven
degrees of northern latitude. Hence it comes that the Semoom itself (the
specific and gaseous Semoom) pays occasional visits to Mosoul and
Djezeerat Omer, while the thermometer at Bagdad attains in summer an
elevation capable of staggering the belief of even an old Indian."[26]

[Footnote 26: Sir F. Palgrave, 'Arabia,' vol. ii., p. 155. I gratefully
adopt in the next paragraph his division of Asiatic nations, p. 160.]

18. This valley in ancient days formed the kingdom of Assyria, as the
valley of the Nile formed that of Egypt. In the work now before us, we
have nothing to do with its people, who were to the Jews merely a
hostile power of captivity, inexorable as the clay of their walls, or
the stones of their statues; and, after the birth of Christ, the
marshy valley is no more than a field of battle between West and East.
Beyond the great river,--Persia, India, and China, form the southern
'Oriens.' Persia is properly to be conceived as reaching from the
Persian Gulf to the mountain chains which flank and feed the Indus;
and is the true vital power of the East in the days of Marathon: but
it has no influence on Christian history except through Arabia; while,
of the northern Asiatic trib