The best illustration of the comparative degree of mental excellence
between the southern and northern nations, is, perhaps, that of Bishop
Berkeley, who compares the southern wits to cucumbers, which are commonly
all good of their kind, but at best an insipid fruit; while the northern
geniuses are like melons, of which not one in fifty is good; but when it
is so, it has an excellent relish. Now it is not probable that the same
climate which is favourable to the study of the sciences and to the
reasoning powers, would prevent their being pushed to the utmost extent;
and the solution of this difference may, perhaps, depend on the question,
whether a general diffusion of learning among a people is a state of
things usually accompanied by a remarkable perfection in particular
persons. A man of ordinary acquirements in the present day might have
passed for a prodigy in the thirteenth century; and the novelty and
distinction attaching to one who rises above the rest, is, of course,
more difficult to attain in an age where knowledge is possessed
universally. Inasmuch, therefore, as the liberal arts have been imported
to us from the south, and their progress is as yet not so extensive in
cold countries, the stimulus to their cultivation in the latter is so
much the greater; which is one way of accounting for the giants in
science that have appeared in the north, It is moreover remarkable, that
the northern nations have a stronger apprehension of abstract
propositions, and a greater fondness for generalizing, than seems to be
the case in the south. The difference between a Frenchman and a German is
observable in this particular, by any one who attends to their manner of
telling stories. The former, in giving you an account of his being robbed
by a servant to whom he had been particularly kind, first tells you the
facts, and concludes with a reflection, "_Voila que le monde est ingrât!_"
The German, on the other hand, in order to prove to you the general
proposition of the unthankfulness of men to their benefactors, gives you