This race of men, in their rude state, fly to the desert for
freedom, and in roving bands alarm the frontiers of empire, and strike a
terror in the province to which their moving encampments advance.
[Footnote: D'Arvieux.] When roused by the prospect of conquest, or disposed
to act on a plan, they spread their dominion, and their system of
imagination, over mighty tracts of the earth: when possessed of property
and of settlement, they set the example of a lively invention, and superior
ingenuity, in the practice of arts, and the study of science. The
Laplander, on the contrary, like the associate of his climate, is hardy,
indefatigable, and patient of famine; dull rather than tame; serviceable in
a particular tract; and incapable of change. Whole nations continue from
age to age in the same condition, and, with immoveable phlegm, submit to
the appellations of _Dane_, of _Swede_, or of _Muscovite_, according
to the land they inhabit; and suffer their country to be severed
like a common, by the line on which those nations have traced their limits
of empire.
It is not in the extremes alone that these varieties of genius may be
clearly distinguished.
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