Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1872-07-22

From the London Spectator.


Mr.. Sala's amusing preface to his new collec-
ton of sketches, Under the Sun" comes out
just at the wrong time. Just when all English
men are suffering under a few unusually hot
days, and declaring that the heat takes all
energy out of them, that they can not work
and that they understand why tropical people
are so easily conquered, he comes forward to
tell them OF his love for heat, of his preference
for glare, OF bis hunger when lad for more
warmth, oil suffering he underwent from fool
with theory who thought he could "harden"
him by exposure TO cold water, cold rain, and
cold wind, and only succeeded in implanting
the seeds of rheumatism which has lasted
through life. lie should have issued his pre-
face in March, when EngliShmen, chilled to the
bone by the east wind, full of aches from the
cold draughts, and dspirted by the cold rain,
are sometimes almost inclined to believe that a
little warmth, little pressure of light, a little
sottneSs in the air, would be endurable
even if slightly immoral innovations.
Even then, however, they would only sympa-
thize with him in part, would regard his love of
the sun as indicative of latent tendencies to
yoluptuous ness, and would resolutely maintain
that his Dedagogue was only not in the right
because of the southern blood in mis- victims
veins. The belief that there is something NOR
ally good in bad weather; that the great races
have come from goldfish cimes; that sleet is an
aid TO manliness; that a POlyneSan luxury of
weather breeds Polynesian laXitY of life, is
4
strengthened by all he reads of Bengal. and
penetrates his entire theory of social life. at
is the hard gray weather makes hard English
men, says Kingsley, and it is difficult to con-
vince an average Englishman that an athletic
or marital, or industrious race can grow up
under blazing sky, or the sweet soft air of the
tropics, or inlany climate so perfect that it suf
fees by itself to supply the need OF enjoy.
ment. The notion that man dourishes best in
temperate cline survives all evidence TO
the contrary, and will be repeated with
perfect GOODNESS by the man who has Just in
formed you that the two most perfect of
earthly climates, Tasmanian, which is the En-.
glish climate etherialised, and the Californian,
which is the Greek climate cooled produce the
ieeblest races of mankind. The native Tasmani.
an and the Digger Indian are, with the Veddab,
the lowest specimens Of humanity hitherto OBJ
served SO far as the very imperfect evidence
attainable will prove, the physical qualities,
strength, size, courage, aud perhaps industry
we doubt If that is physical quality bur il is
counted as One-are independent of climate nj
together, and specially independent of the Their
mOmeter. The biggest and strongest race of
earth, the Nubian Of the Upper Nile fourishes
in a heat which almost boiled Verne, the travel
or who has most carefully observed his wonder.
full muscular development, and can live and
grow fat in stoke rooms from which the most
powerful Englishmen are carried out lainUug
and half dead. Kaiser Williams Pomeranians
and are not when they choose more stead.
lily industrious. A humal of Constantine
pie or Cairo would carry railway porter on
his shoulders and all his baggage besides,
and Bengalee boatman would row q London
waterman, as far as endurance Is concerned,
into an apopleic IT. The Bengalee Is weak
and the Peguan is not brave, but the MALAY.
born under precisely the same conditions, the
| very conditions TO which Maeaulay attributed
the efeminacy of the Bengalees has the Qourape
OF ferret, the activity Of a monkey. and the
endurance OF thoroughbred horse. Some dny
or other when we reign in Cairo, Englishme1
| will officer an army Of Arabs men bred in n
| desert where the sun seems to hate humanIhe.
| ings and pursue them with kind of conscious
| pitilessness, and then Asia will know once moro
| why the Moor seemed to the mailed knights of
France and Spain so terrible an enemy. Few
human beings are so powerful us the Parsees.
whose wrestlers defeat picked men from the
British army, and they have dwelt for ages in a
climate to which that Of Italy Is cold, and for
two centuries in Western India; aud none
are so industrious as the Chinese of
the south, the mon Of those steam.
ing superheatcd Deltas, where the earth
being water, the men, on the popular
theory, should be women. The Peruvian is
soft creature, but his climate is cooler than that
F, Of the regions Of Panama aud Guiana, where the