Bristol, the Exeter, and the Salisbury Royal Mails, all
their passengers on board, and canvas spread, swept in, swept round, and
swept out at full gallop; the proximate object being to publish the
grandeur of his premises, the ultimate object to publish himself.
[13] 'Dependent upon _physical_ circumstances,' and, amongst those
physical circumstances, intensely upon climate. The Jewish ordinances,
multiplied and burthensome as they must have been found under any
mitigations, have proved the awfulness (if we may so phrase it) of the
original projectile force which launched them by continuing to revolve,
and to propagate their controlling functions through forty centuries
under all latitudes to which any mode of civilization has reached. But
the _Greek_ machineries of social life were absolutely and essentially
limited by nature to a Grecian latitude. Already from the earliest
stages of their infancy the Greek cities or rural settlements in the
Tauric Chersonese, and along the shores (Northern and Eastern) of the
Black Sea, had been obliged to unrobe themselves of their native Grecian
costumes in a degree which materially disturbed the power of the Grecian
literature as an influence for the popular mind. This effect of a new
climate to modify the influence of a religion or the character of a
literature is noticed by Mr. Finlay. Temples open to the heavens,
theatres for noonday light and large enough for receiving 30,000
citizens--these could no longer be transplanted from sunny regions of
Hymettus to the churlish atmospheres which overcast with gloom so
perpetual poor Ovid's sketches of his exile. Cherson, it is true, in the
Tauric Chersonese, survived down to the middle of the tenth century; so
much is certain from the evidence of a Byzantine emperor; and Mr. Finlay
is disposed to think that this famous little colonial state retained her
Greek 'municipal organization.' If this could be proved, it would be a
very interesting fact; it is, at any rate, interesting to see this saucy
little outpost of Greek civilization mounting guard, as it were, at so
great a distance from the bulwark of Christianity (the city of
Constantine), under whose mighty shadow she had so long been sheltered,
and maintaining _by whatever means_ her own independence. But, if her
municipal institutions were truly and permanently Greek, then it would
be a fair inference that to a Grecian mechanism of society she had been
indebted for her Grecian tenac
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