Page:Types of Scenery and Their Influence on Literature.djvu/14

 TYPES OF SCENERY

AND

THEIR INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE

 several races of mankind are marked off from each other by certain bodily and mental differences which, there can be no doubt, have been largely determined by the diverse geographical conditions of the surface of the globe. We may be disposed to put aside the first origin of these racial differences, as a problem which may for ever remain insoluble. Yet we cannot refuse to admit that in the disposition of land and sea, in the form and trend of coast-lines, in the grouping of mountains, valleys, and plains, in the disposition and flow of rivers, in the arrangement of climates, and in the distribution of vegetation and of animals, a series of influences must be recognized which have unquestionably played a large part in the successive stages of human development.

Though no record of the earliest of these stages has probably survived, some of the later steps in the progress of advancement may not be beyond the reach of investigation. The connexion, for example, between