North Germany commences as soon as you leave behind you Nurenberg and
Cassel. Cassel, in comparison with Hamburg resembles an Italian town.
The Thuringian Forest separates north and south. The north is a
coast-land, commerce its destination; the south inland: hence
agriculture and industry are more suitable. The spirit of the South
German is more directed to what is domestic: a fruitful soil rewards his
labour, and alleviates it by the juice of the grape. The mouths of his
rivers and his harbours allure the North German into foreign lands; his
father-land is there, where he finds what he seeks, and what his own
country has denied him. The South German must hence be more
self-dependent, for he has a father-land at home full of blessing and
beauty;--the North German has to seek one elsewhere; and this makes him
more pliant, more polished, more active; but also more ostentatious,
less to be confided in, more adventurous. This distinction is primeval.
The North Germans mingled themselves with the Britons, Gauls, Italians,
and Slavonians; the Alemanni and Bavarians remained in their native
country.

The southern sky draws forth a vegetable world more luxuriant, fierier,
spicier; the northern, a much duller, waterier, colder, and the men are
so too, except where government and education have powerfully
encroached. In the north the people have evidently less fancy and
feeling, less genialness and versatility, even flatter, duller
physiognomies, but also evidently greater intelligence, more
consideration, seriousness, and constancy. The wastes, storms, and
floods, the unthankful, sandy, moory country, must of themselves make
the people more serious, more enterprising, more capable of contentment
than in the south, where Nature is not so like a step-mother, nay, has
flattered her favourites, thereby rendering them light-minded, indolent,
and desirous of enjoying. Here the flesh triumphs over the spirit; there