All flat countries—Belgium, Holland, Egypt—are deficient in men of genius; so also with those, like Switzerland and Savoy, which, being enclosed between very high mountains, are endemically afflicted with cretinism and goître; marshy countries are still poorer in genius. The few men of genius possessed by Switzerland were born when the race had conquered the goitrous influence through admixture of French and Italian immigrants—Bonnet, Rousseau, Tronchin, Tissot, De Candolle, Burlamagni, Pestalozzi, Sismondi. Urbino Pesaro, Forlì, Como, Parma, have produced men of genius in greater number and of greater fame than Pisa, Padua, and Pavia, three of the most ancient and important university towns of Italy; it is enough to name Raphael, Bramante, Rossini, Morgagni, Spallanzani, Muratori, Falloppio, Volta.
But, to come to more definite examples, we find that Florence, enjoying a mild temperature and in special degree a city of the hills, has furnished Italy with her most splendid cohort of great men: Dante, Giotto, Machiavelli, Lulli, Leonardo, Brunellesco, Guicciardini, Cellini, Fra Angelico, Andrea del Sarto, Nicolini, Capponi, Vespucci, Viviani, Lippi, Boccaccio, Alberti, Dati, Alamanni, Rucellai, Ghirlandajo, Donati; Pisa, on the other hand, with scientific conditions at least as favourable as Florence, being the seat of a flourishing university, only offers us—if we except a few soldiers and statesmen of no great number and worth who were unable, even with powerful allies, to prevent her fall—Pisa only offers us Nicola Pisano, Giunta, and Galileo who, although born there, was of Florentine parentage. Now Pisa only differs from Florence by being situated on a plain.
In Lombardy, the regions of mountain and lake, like Bergamo, Brescia, and Como, have produced more great men than the flat regions. I will mention Bernardo Tasso, Mascheroni, Donizetti, Tartaglia, Ugoni, Volta, Parini, Appiani, Mai, Cagnola; while Lower Lombardy can only bring forward Alciato, Beccaria, Oriani, Cavalleri, Aselli, and Bocaccini. Verona, a town of the hills, has produced Maffei, Paolo Veronese, Catullus, Pliny, Fracastoro, Bianchini, Sammicheli, Cagnola, Tiraboschi, Brusasorsi, Lorgna, Pindemonte; and not to speak of artists, economists, and thinkers of the first order (it is enough to name Trezza), I note that, in a very accurate document,[236] it appears that in 1881, there were 160 poets at Verona, many rising considerably above mediocrity. On the other hand, the wealthy and learned Padua has only given to Italy Livy, Cesarotti, Pietro d’Abano, and a few others.
Genoa and Naples, which unite the advantages of a climate at once warm, maritime, and hilly, have produced men of genius at least as remarkable as those yielded by Florence, if not in such great number; such are Columbus, Doria, Mazzini, Paganini, Vico, Caracciolo, Pergolese, Genovesi, Cirillo, Filangeri.
In Spain, the influence of a warm climate is evident. The whole of Catalonia, including Barcelona, though inhabited by a serious race, has not produced artists, having yielded only a single poet, an imitator of Petrarch. Seville, on the contrary, has produced Cervantes, Velasquez and Murillo; Cordova has yielded many men of genius, such as Seneca, Lucan, Morales, Mina, Gongora and Céspedes, at once painter, sculptor, and poet.
In the United States, Beard remarks,[237] the influence of a dry and changeable climate favours in the North a remarkable spirit of progress, the love of knowledge, the agitation of public life and a great desire for novelty; while in the South, the moist and but slightly varying climate develops eminently conservative tendencies, so that manufacturers in Georgia have great difficulty in finding a market there for new stuffs or machines; these are refused, not because they are not good or useful, but because they are new.
In Germany it has been observed that regions enjoying a mild and healthy climate, by reason of protecting mountains, have produced the greatest poets and in greatest number. The regions of the Main and the Neckar are renowned for their mild climate, luxuriant vegetation, and fertility, and the greatest German poets come from these regions. The Main gave us the greatest of German poets, Goethe, and many other dii minorum gentium, genial and noteworthy poets, although beneath that giant, men such as Klinger, Börne, Rückert, Bettina von Arnim (née Brentano), &c. In the favoured region of the Neckar were born Schiller and Victor von Scheffel, and throughout the Swabian land, we meet with many other great poets and thinkers, such as Wieland, Uhland, Justinus Kerner, Hauff, Schubart, Mörike, G. Schwab,
