prevails in Great Britain. We associate with a Scotchman the ideas of
shrewdness and prudence; with a Frenchman, gaiety and frivolity; with a
Spaniard, gravity and pride; with an Italian, strong passions of love
and revenge: with a German, plodding industry and habits of deep
thinking; and with the northern nations, an honest sincerity and
persevering courage. We sometimes judge with tolerable correctness; at
others are wholly mistaken, and not unfrequently run into such extremes,
that having established a principle, that a particular people are
knavish, or cowardly, or stupid, we are unwilling to admit any
exceptions, but include the whole race in our sweeping censure. We are
prejudiced at first sight against a Portuguese or Italian, and are
careful of our communications with him, even though we meet him on the
high road, or by mere accident in a public place. There can, however, be
no mistake in the common notion, that each nation has a peculiar
collection of qualities and habits, distinguishing it in a greater or
less degree from its neighbours, and the rest of the world; and it is,
therefore, at all events, an interesting, if not an useful topic, to
reflect a little how these differences arise. Not that we intend here to
give even any particular description of the various races of mankind, or
to enter into any inquiry upon the degrees of their mental and bodily
capacities; such would be foreign to our purpose, and would exceed our
limits. We shall merely hazard a few observations upon the several
causes to which the diversities in men have been referred, not
pretending to any decided opinion on so nice a point, as whether these
causes are wholly of a physical or of a moral kind, or whether they are
compounded of both. The question is, perhaps, one of the most difficult
in the whole range of philosophical experience; we say experience,
because it is obvious that all theory on the subject must be the result
of observation and analysis; and that no general principles can be laid
down in the first instance, as the ground work of any hypothesis we