Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 20.djvu/28

 venient to travel in Sweden by night as by day. For want of pasture, the cattle there are smaller than in the more southern parts of Europe; but the men are of a large stature, healthy from the purity of the air, and strong from the severity of the climate; they live to a great age, unless enfeebled by the immoderate use of wines and strong liquors, of which the northern nations seem to be the more fond, the less nature has indulged them with these commodities.

The Swedes are well made, strong, and active, and capable of enduring the greatest fatigue, want, and hunger. Born with a military genius, and high spirit, they are more brave than industrious, having long neglected, and even at present but little cultivating the arts of commerce, which alone can supply them with those productions in which their country is deficient. It was chiefly from Sweden , they say—one part of which is still called Gothland—that those swarms of Goths issued forth, who like a deluge overran Europe, and wrested it from the Romans, who had usurped the dominion of that vast country, which they continued for the space of five hundred years to harass by their tyranny, and to civilize by their laws.

The northern countries were much more popu-