The Mexican, like the Asiatic of India, being addicted to pleasure, was
sunk in effeminacy; and in the neighbourhood of the wild and the free, had
suffered to be raised on his weakness a domineering superstition, and a
permanent fabric of despotical government.
Great part of Tartary lies under the same parallels with Greece, Italy, and
Spain; but the climates are found to be different; and while the shores,
not only of the Mediterranean, but even those of the Atlantic, are favoured
with a moderate change and vicissitude of seasons, the eastern parts of
Europe, and the northern continent of Asia, are afflicted with all their
extremes. In one season, we are told, that the plagues of an ardent summer
reach almost to the frozen sea; and that the inhabitant is obliged to
screen himself from noxious vermin in the same clouds of smoke in which he
must, at a different time of the year, take shelter from the rigours of
cold. When winter returns, the transition is rapid, and with an asperity
almost equal in every latitude, lays waste the face of the earth, from the
northern confines of Siberia, to the descents of Mount Caucasus and the
frontier of India.
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