TO THE READER.

This Lecture was written more than a year ago, and without any expectation of its ever being published. This is the reason why references are not made to the various authorities, consulted in its preparation. To go over it again for that purpose is a task which would require more time than I now have to bestow. I can only say that I was careful to make no statement which was not supported by what seemed to me to be good authority. It will be seen that I have been largely indebted to the labors of others, and that I can lay claim to little else than the arrangement. I acknowledge especially my obligations to that excellent work, the larger Geography of the late Mr. Woodbridge. The Lecture is now published upon the assurance of those, whose judgment and candor are entitled to equal respect, that it would be of some service to the cause of education.

BOSTON, JANUARY, 1846.

G. S. H.

LECTURE IX.

ON

THE CONNECTION

BETWEEN

GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY.

BY GEORGE S. HILLARD.

GEOGRAPHY, as commonly taught, is one of the dryest and least profitable of studies. It is a mere bead-roll of names, dates and distances. It has no animating principle of life. It is the skeleton and not the living body; the hortus siccus of dried plants and not the garden. But viewed in connection with man, and the history of man, it becomes a pursuit alike attractive and instructing. The breath of life is thus breathed into it. Without it, history itself can be but imperfectly understood. To comprehend the biography of nations, we must know the physical structure and properties of the regions they occupy, their relations to the sea, the character and di

rection of their streams of water, the proportion in which the surface of the soil is distributed into mountains, plains and valleys, and their stores of mineral wealth.

The most superficial acquaintance with history reveals to us great inequalities in the fortune and condition of the various members of the human family. The countries, in which one would wish to have been born, are few, and of limited extent. The brutal savage and the half civilized barbarian form the rule, and cultivated and intelligent man, the exception. All the moral and intellectual wealth of the world has been gathered from a small portion of the earth's surface. There are vast regions-tracts which the eagle's wing cannot measure without flagging with whose people, history has as little to do, as with the squabbles of a rookery or the dynasties of a bee-hive. Among civilized and historical nations, too, we perceive peculiar characteristics which are modified, but not essentially altered by the lapse of time. Some are agricultural, some pastoral, some commercial, and some manufacturing, and the combination of two or more of these forms of industry is found only in the most favored. Some nations invariably fall an easy prey to an invading force and wear with patience a foreign yoke; others are obstinate in their resistance, and sullen and restless when subdued. In some parts, the traces of conquest are soon obliterated; in others they continue long. As nothing happens by chance, there are causes for all these differences, more or less obvious as the case may be. The dan

ger in such inquiries is that of ascribing too much importance to a single element. Most effects may be traced to a combination of causes, and men will have their attention called to one particular kind of influence rather than another, according to the direction in which their minds have been trained. There are distinctions and superiorities of race which seem to triumph over the influences of soil and climate, yet who can tell how much of this is owing to the character originally impressed upon the race, and how much, to the favorable circumstances of growth and development. We are justly proud, for instance, of the moral and intellectual superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. But that was but a narrow rivulet flowing from that great Teutonic wave which rolled in from Asia to Europe. Was that purer and better than all its kindred streams? or is the present position and influence of the race to be ascribed to their long occupation of a spot so favorable to growth and development, as Great Britain?

We easily recognise the agency of commerce in civilizing and humanizing man. The merchants are the great peace-makers, and the sails of a distant ship recall to the mind as well as the eye, the wings of a dove. But the ocean is not merely to be viewed as the great highway of commerce, and the means by which wealth is exchanged and distributed. Its influence is not confined to the maritime or the trading class. It takes part in the education of every child who is born within the roar of its waves. It spreads itself out as the commensurate antagonist of the