nature, the temperate continents are the most perfectly organized for the development of man. They are opposed to each other, as the body and the soul, as the inferior races and the superior races, as savage man and civilized man, as nature and history. This contrast, so marked, cannot remain an open one; it must be resolved. The history of the development of human societies will give us the solution, or at least will permit 13 to obtain a glimpse of the truth.

LECTURE XI

The continents of the North considered as the theatre of historyAsia-Europe; contrast of the North and South; its influence in history; conflict of the barbarous nations of the North with the civilized nations of the South-Contrast of the East and West Eastern Asia a continent by itself and complete; its nature; the Mongolian race belongs peculiarly to it; character of its civilization ·Superiority of the Hindoo civilization; reason why these nations have remained stationary- Western Asia and Europe; the country of the truly historical races· Western Asia; physical description;

its historical character; Europe—the best organized for the development of man and of societies; America-future to which it is destined by its physical nature.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

The result of the comparison we have made between the northern continents and the southern continents, in their most general characteristics, has convinced us, if I do not deceive myself, that what distinguishes the former is, not the wealth of nature and the abundance of physical life, but the aptitude which their structure, their situation, and their climate, give them, to minister to the development of man, and to become thus the seat of a life much superior to that of nature. The three continents of the North, with their more perfect races, their civilized people, have appeared as the historical continents, which form a marked contrast to those of the South, with their inferior races and their savage tribes.

Since his is the salient and distinguishing feature, securing to them decidedly the first place, we shall this evening proceed to study them more in detail as the theatre of history.

We know beforehand, gentlemen, that the condition of an active, complete development is the multiplicity of the contrasts, of the differences, springs of action. and reaction, of mutual exchanges exciting and manifesting life under a thousand diverse forms. To this principle corresponds, in the organization of the animal, the greater number of its special organs; in the contirents, the variety of the plastic forms of the soil, the Iccalization of the strongly characterized physical districts, the nature of which stamps upon the people inhabiting them a special seal, and makes them so many complicated but distinct individuals.

The various combinations of grouping, of situation, with regard to each other, placing them in a permanent relation of friendship or hostility, of sympathy or of antipathy, of peace or of war, of interchange of religions, of manners, of civilization, complete this work, and give that impulse, that progressive movement, which is the trait whereby the historical nations are "ecognized.

We may, then, expect to see the great facts of the life of the nations connect themselves essentially with these differences of soil and climate, with these contrasts, that nature herself presents in the interior of the continents, and whose influence on the social development of man, although variable according to the times, is no less evi dent in all the periods of his history.

Let us commence our inquiry with the true theatre of history with Asia-Europe.

We have already had occasion to call attention to the unity of plan exhibited in this great triangular mass, which authorizes us to consider it as forming, in a natural point of view, a single continent, whose subdivisions bear the imprint of only secondary differences. We have also indicated, as the most remarkable trait of its structure, that great dorsal ridge, composed of systems of the loftiest mountains, traversing it from one end to the other in the direction of the length, which may even be regarded as the axis of the continent. It is, in fact, on the two sides of this long line of more than 5,000 miles, on the north and south of the Himalaya, of the Caucasus, of the Balkan, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, that the high lands of the interior of the continent extend. It splits Asia-Europe into two portions, unequal in size, and differing from each other in their configuration and their climate. On the south, the areas are less vast; the lands are more indented, more detached the whole, perhaps, more elevated; it is the maritime zone of peninsulas. On the north, the great plains prevail; the peninsulas are rare, or of slight importance, the ground less varied.

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But what chiefly distinguishes one of the two parts from the other, what gives to each a peculiar nature, is he climate. Those lofty barriers we have just named almost everywhere separate the climates, as well as the areas. The gradual elevation of the terraces towards the south, up to this ridge of the continent, by prolong'ng in th southern direction the frosts of the north,

augments still further, in Eastern Asia and in Europe, the difference of temperature between their sides, and renders it more sensible. Thus, almost everywhere, the transition is abrupt, the two natures wide apart. These high ridges arrest at once the icy winds of the poles, and the softened breezes of the south, and separate their domains. The Italian of our days, like the Roman of former times, boasts of his blue sky and his mild climate, and speaks with an ill-concealed contempt of the frosts and the ice of the countries beyond the Alps.

To the father of the Grecian poets, to Homer, who knows only the Ionian sky, the countries beyond the Hæmus are the regions of darkness, where rugged Boreas reigns supreme. At the northern foot of the Caucasus, the dry steppes of the Manytsch are swept by the frozen winds of the north; on the south, the warm and fertile plains of Georgia and of Imereth, feel no longer their assaults. In Eastern Asia, finally, the contrast is pushed to an extreme. The traveller, crossing the lofty chain of the Himalaya, passes suddenly from the polar climate of the high table lands of Tubet, to the tropical heats and the rich nature of the plains of the Indus and the Ganges. Yet, as we have said, this great wall, which separates the North from the South, is rent at several points. Between the Hindo-Khu and the Caucasus, the depressed edge of the table land of Khorasan, between the Caucasus and the Balkan, the plains of the Black Sea and of the Danube, open wide their gates to the winds and to the nations of the shores of the Caspian and the Volga. Between the Pyrenees and the Alps, the climates and the peoples of the South penetrate into the North.