THOUGHTS ON THE MORAL ORDER OF NATURE. BY ANNA MARIA WINTER. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. II. DUBLIN: JOHN CHAMBERS, 4, ABBEY-STREET. THOUGHTS ON THE MORAL ORDER OF NATURE. BOOK II. INTRODUCTION. I SHALL now interrupt my dissertation on national characters, to treat of a topic that will help to throw light on the peculiar aspect, under which I survey them; and that will, also, explain the kind of meditations in which, before I quit my country, I was habituated to indulge, and which, as I afterwards found, prepared me for being peculiarly struck, on going abroad, by the expression of national physiognomies different from those that I was accustomed to see in my country. The topic, to which I allude, is the reflections which I began early to make, on the impressions made on me by the atmosphere surrounding me. Few persons, I believe, have their mind so disengaged from cares, as to pay a close attention to the sensations produced in them by the circumambient air, and to feel uneasy, as being somehow out of their element, on removing to a country, even though it be situated under a finer sky, whose climate differs from the one to which they had been originally accustomed. However, though most persons be thus inattentive to the impressions made on them by the surrounding air, I am well convinced, that such impressions take as much effect on their A 2 VOL. II. |