CLIMATE AND CHARACTER.
THE last day of January throughout the greater part of England was like a very beautiful spring day. In the country not only the snowdrops but the crocuses were in full bloom, the catkins were hanging out their fresh greens, a clear sweet atmosphere and a delicately tinted sky were adding to the joy of life. Such a mild winter has scarcely ever been known. London has not been disturbed by the flutter of a single snowflake, while in Scotland September has been up to the present the severest month since the departure of summer. The sheltered Southern counties of England have during the last few weeks been actually warmer than Seville and Granada ; and it is more than probable that Mr. Glad- stone would have done better in Cornwall than at Cannes. We have experienced some severe storms on our coasts, but apart from these, the so-called winter has been winter only in name. We have had no climatic forces to contend against, save and except the dreary fogs which .coincided with anti-cyclonic conditions. A startling contrast to this state of things is reported from New England and New York, where a terrific blizzard has been raging around New York, Boston, and Provi- dence. We hear of snow-drifts 12 ft. high, of trains buried in snow. Eight thousand 'men have been engaged in clearing New York streets of the'utiwelcome accumula- tion. In Providence the streets have been 3 ft. deep in snow. But above all other places Boston seems to have suffered most. The railway traffic was entirely suspended, and all telegraphic communication was cat off,—we presume owing to the fallen wires; and messages from New York had to be sent by way of London. The wires of the electric street railways fell down, doing severe damage, and the streets were rendered impassable. All this took place in a latitude much further south than our own, while England was lapped in the air of a balmy spring.
It is commonly held in America that the climate is less rigorous than it was even within the lifetime of many people still living. The winter is now usually open along the Atlantic coast until Christmas at least, though in New England the "storm-windows" are generally put in by the end of November so as to be ready for anything of an unusual nature on the part of a peculiarly treacherous climate. In Washington bright spring-like weather is quite usual in December. In the North-Western States, however, the cold is generally intense, the winds cut like knives, and in Duluth, at the head of Lake Superior, which boasts the honour of being the coldest city in the United States, the winter season is no joke. While it seems certain that, on the whole, the climate has become less severe, it is at the same time treacherous and swift in. its changes to a degree which we rarely know in England. The present writer has known the ground iron-bound with ice in Vermont at six in the morning, while a fierce blazing sun was shining over Montreal at ten ; he has known it impossible to walk in Boston at midday for the heat, and to shiver under several degrees of frost at night ; he has been suffocated in St. Louis one day and nearly frozen the next. We are inclined to attribute the extremely sudden climatic changes in America to the fatal policy of cutting down the forests ; an operation which has made a few "lumber" millionaires, but which has impoverished the country. The blizzard and the cyclone have had a much freer course since the task of denuding the great Central States of their forests has been entered upon on a gigantic scale,—a, penny-wise, pound-foolish policy which is now beginning to be re- gretted. But there can be little doubt, we suppose, that America was always the theatre of greater and more sudden climatic changes than Europe, especially our part of Europe. Russia and Hungary more closely reproduce the physical and climatic conditions of the central parts of the United States, though the summer heat rarely attains the same extreme as in America. Western Europe is so broken up by channels, gulfs, and bays that the moderating influence of the sea does not permit the sudden changes so common in America. For a thoroughly healthy person the American climate, except in the Gulf States, has many attractions. It is clear, dry, with a sharp, bracing crispness in the air at certain times of the year almost unknown in England, France, or Germany, where the sea air produces mild and somewhat damp con- ditions. But each kind of climate has its own attractions; for while America can yield crispness and gorgeous sun- sets, Europe gives that purple haze which lends poetry and mystery to the aspect of Nature. Beyond the ques. tion of beauty or of health lies, however, the question of the influence of climate on character.
That human character is largely moulded by geo- graphical conditions is so manifest as to need no proof. The Greeks would not have been the Greeks had they lived in the centre of Russia. In his famous speech Pericles connects the intellectual qualities of his country- men with the "most pellucid air" of Attica ; and in the same way we can connect many of the characteristic traits of our own countrymen with the physical conditions of England. The most obvious of these conditions is the perpetual nearness of the sea to every islander,—a fact which has stamped our history with a character unique among modern nations. We live in the centre of the modern highways of the nations, and we have been familiar with the sea for a thousand years ; therefore we could not choose but to be a seafaring and colonising people ; the choice was practically made for us, as it was made for Greece and Carthage. But while this fact has been widely recognised, it has not been seen with equal clearness how much we owe to fairly calm and settled weather conditions. There have been great and. sudden storms in English history, such as that noted by Addison, or the great blizzard of January 18th, 1881, which certainly caught us napping ; but, speaking generally, we have not in these islands to contend with sudden and unusual outbursts of natural force. We do not know whether it will be a wet or a hot summer, but we do know that earthquakes and cyclones will not wreck. our cities, and that armies of locusts will not eat up every green thing. We feel, on the side of Nature, a certain security, a certain assurance ; even our rough ocean, as Coleridge says, "speaks safety to his island child." Can it be doubted that this smooth uniformity of climate has imparted to the men of England a certain calm which is not seen in the inhabitants of treacherous climes ? The melancholy of the Slav is traced to his deep forests and , boundless steppes ; the quick energy and the suspicious caution of the Southern Italian to his volcanic hills ; and
the uniform course of Nature in these islands has given to the Englishman his calm, his patient energy, his sure com- mand of himself. Whether the race will maintain this character under such different climatic conditions as are afforded by Australia or Africa it is too soon to say at present. But that this character of calm confidence has been associated with the English people in their history a thousand incidents proclaim. We do not disturb ourselves or make much fuss ; and, in spite of that " spleen " which we were long ago discovered to possess in an abnormal measure, we are never melancholy as is the Slay. Our Puritanism did not breed suicide or mutilation ; the worst it did was to give us a gloomy Sunday. We have contrived to keep our balance because for ages we have felt safe and assured in the arms of Nature.
But there are advantages, too, in the more checkered course of the American climate. It has killed off many weaklings, but it has developed a resourceful character, a mind ready for sudden emergencies. Nature must have begun this educating influence immediately the Pilgrims landed on the bleak New England shore ; for they assuredly could not have survived at all unless they had been able to accommodate themselves to the caprices of that exacting climate so amusingly described by Mark Twain. Many improvements in ways of living, in houses, and in dress have been introduced into America as the result of the educating influence of climate. The mind has been quickened, the character made both more eager and more inventive by the pressure of natural forces. On the other hand, just as Englishmen are in danger of stolidity as the extreme of their calm confidence, so Americans are in danger of violent nervous tension as the outcome of a climate full of surprises. The sudden political excite- ments of America, so often inexplicable on purely political lines, may perhaps be explained on the hypothesis of an organism subjected to severe overtension ; and the sudden violence of American labour disputes, like a bolt from the blue, may be due to the same cause. Hamlet asked whether he was a pipe to be played on ; but to some extent we are all pipes to be played on by the mysterious forces, both natural and spiritual, which, unseen or only partly known, are all around us. The evolu- tion of races for special functions in the world is at least in part determined by the soil on which a particular race grows ; and by "soil" we mean the general physical characteristics of the country in which the race lives. Our own race has in this island home slowly drawn in from the soil and climate an immense stock of vigorous energy, but energy dominated by calm directive force. Rome had a similar power, and hence Rome and England have, in two distinct orders of civilisation, been able to spread, to organise, and to command throughout vast regions of the world. For this quality we may partly thank the favourable physical conditions which have obtained here. The American branch of our stock has, on the other hand, been com- pelled to face new climatic conditions, which have developed ingenuity and resource, but at the expense of nerves. Each type of character has its own strength and validity, and each is competent to effect a great work in the world.
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