Excerpt from An Oration Pronounced at Cambridge, Before the Society of Phi Beta Kappa: August 27, 1824 In the full comprehension of the terms, the motives to intellectual exertion in a country embrace the most important springs of national character. Pursued into its details, the study of these springs of national character is often little better than fanciful specula tion. The questions, why Asia has almost always been the abode of despotism; 'and Europe more pro pitious to liberty why the Egyptians were abject and melancholy; the Greeks inventive, elegant, and ver satile; the Romans stern, saturnine, and, in matters of literature, for the most part servile imitators of a people, whom they conquered, despised, and never equalled; why tribes of barbarians from the north and east, not known to differ essentially from each other at the time of their settlement in europe, should have laid the foundation of national charac ters so dissimilar as those of the Spanish, French, German, and English nations; these are questions to which a few general answers may be attempted, that will probably be just and safe, only in r0portion as they are vague and comprehensive. Difficult as it is, even in the individual man, to oint out precisely the causes, under the influence 0 which' members of the same community and of the same family, placed apparently in the same circumstances, grow up with characters the most diverse; it is infinitely more dif ficult to perform the' same analysis on a subject so vast as a nation; where it is first not a small question what the character is, before you touch the inquiry into the circumstances by which it was formed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.