an orator
born in the happier regions of Greece or Asia. But I shall select two
remarkable circumstances of a less equivocal nature. 1. The great
rivers which covered the Roman provinces, the Rhine and the Danube,
were frequently frozen over, and capable of supporting the most enormous
weights. The barbarians, who often chose that severe season for their
inroads, transported, without apprehension or danger, their numerous
armies, their cavalry, and their heavy wagons, over a vast and solid
bridge of ice. Modern ages have not presented an instance of a like
phenomenon. 2. The reindeer, that useful animal, from whom the savage
of the North derives the best comforts of his dreary life, is of a
constitution that supports, and even requires, the most intense cold.
He is found on the rock of Spitzberg, within ten degrees of the Pole; he
seems to delight in the snows of Lapland and Siberia: but at present he
cannot subsist, much less multiply, in any country to the south of the
Baltic. In the time of Caesar the reindeer, as well as the elk and the
wild bull, was a native of the Hercynian forest, which then overshadowed
a great part of Germany and Poland. The modern improvements sufficiently
explain the causes of the diminution of the cold. These immense woods
have been gradually cleared, which intercepted from the earth the rays
of the sun. The morasses have been drained, and, in proportion as the
soil has been cultivated, the air has become more temperate. Canada, at
this day, is an exact picture of ancient Germany. Although situated in
the same parallel with the finest provinces of France and England,
that country experiences the most rigorous cold. The reindeer are very
numerous, the ground is covered with deep and lasting snow, and the
great river of St. Lawrence is regularly frozen, in a season when the
waters of the Seine and the Thames are usually free from ice.

It is difficult to ascertain, and easy to exaggerate, the influence of
the climate of ancient Germany over the minds and bodies of the natives.
Many writers have supposed, and most have allowed, though, as it should
seem, without any adequate proof, that the rigorous cold of the North
was favorable to long life and generative vigor, that the women were
more fruitful, and the human species more prolific, than in warmer or
more temperate climates. We may assert, with greater confidence, that
the keen air of Germany formed the large and masculine limbs of the
nati