he other peninsula, that of Denmark, surrounded
and penetrated also everywhere by the sea, differs in being almost level;
rising nowhere, at its highest point, more than a thousand feet above the
ocean. Containing an area of only twenty-two thousand square miles, it is
so penetrated with bays and creeks as to have four thousand miles of
coast. Like the northern peninsula, it is also surrounded with a multitude
of islands, which are so crowded together, especially on its eastern
coast, as to make an archipelago. It is impossible to look at the map of
Europe, and not be struck with the resemblance in these particulars
between its northern and southern geography. The Baltic Sea is the
Mediterranean of Northern Europe. The peninsula of Denmark, with its
multitudinous bays and islands, corresponds to Greece, the Morea, and its
archipelago. We have shown in our chapter on Greece that modern geography
teaches that the extent of coast line, when compared with the superficial
area of a country, is one of the essential conditions of civilization. Who
can fail to see the hand of Providence in the adaptation of races to the
countries they are to inhabit? The great tide of human life, flowing
westward from Central Asia, was divided into currents by the Caspian and
Black Seas, and by the lofty range of mountains which, under the name of
the Caucasus, Carpathian Mountains, and Alps, extends almost in an
unbroken line from the western coast of the Caspian to the northern limits
of Germany. The Teutonic races, Germans, Saxons, Franks, and Northmen,
were thus determined to the north, and spread themselves along the coast
and peninsulas of the Northern Mediterranean. The other branch of the
great Indo-European variety was distributed through Syria, Asia Minor,
Greece, Southern France, Italy, and Spain. Each of these vast European
families, stimulated to mental and moral activity by its proximity to
water, developed its own peculiar forms of national character, which were
afterwards united in modern European society. The North developed
individual freedom, the South social organization. The North gave force,
the South culture. From Southern Europe came literature, philosophy, laws,
arts; from the North, that respect for individual rights, that sense of
personal dignity, that energy of the single soul, which is the essential
equipoise of a high social culture. These two elements, of freedom and
civilization, always antagonist, have been in mos