Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/280

 256 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, experiences the most rigorous cold. The rein deer 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^. Its effects on It is difficult to ascertain, and easy to exaggerate, t e natives, ^.j^^ 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 favourable to long life and generative vigour, that the women were more fruit- ful, 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 natives, who were, in general, of a more lofty stature than the people of the south gave them a kind of strength better adapted to violent exertions than to patient labour, and inspired them with constitutional bravery, which is the result of nerves and spirits. The severity of a winter campaign, that chilled the courage of the Roman troops, was scarcely felt by these hardy children of the north ^, who, in their turn, were unable to resist the summer heats, and dissolved away in languor and sickness under the beams of an Italian sun ^ Origin of the There is not anywhere upon the globe, a large tract Germans, ^f country, which we have discovered destitute of inha- bitants, or whose first population can be fixed with any degree of historical certainty. And yet, as the most s Charlevoix, Histoire du Canada. f" Olaus Rudbeck asserts that the Swedish women often bear ten or twelve children, and not uncommonly twenty or thirty ; but the authority of Rud- beck is much to be suspected. ' In hos artus, in hajc corpora, quas miramur, excrescunt. Tacit. Germa- nia, 3. 20 ; Cluver. 1. i. c. 14. •' Plutarch, in Mario. The Cimbri, by way of amusement, often slid down mountains of snow on their broad shields. ' The Romans made war in all climates, and by their excellent discipline were in a great measure preserved in health and vigour. It may be re- marked, that man is the only animal which can live and multiply in every country from the equator to the poles. The hog seems to approach the near- est to our species in that privilege.