North-South synergy

I obviously don’t subscribe to this kind of over-familiar nonsense, but here anyway is Dickens in Household words (via Google Print) in 1856:

There have not been wanting theorists who have recognised in the apparently constant opposition of the north and south a kind of natural law, by which both are destined to be regulated, and to which the whole of history may be made to bear witness… [Celts, Gaul, Rome, Greece]

This interpenetration of the south and north–this yielding of the more civilised to the barbarian power–is to be historically regarded as having been appointed for the interest of humanity. It was needed that the fresh vitality of the northmen should, like new sap, circulate through the old and enfeebled empires; while in modern Europe the continued struggle of physical and intellectual energy ended in the better culture of both worlds. Conquerors and conquered–the civilised and the barbarians–alike melted down into one and the same people, and rose to a far superior civilisation, uniting the free and intelligent thinker of the north with the artistic and impassioned superstitionist of the south.

Writers who are disposed to the fullest recognition of the law at which we have above hinted, remark, that both in Asia and in Europe there alike exist both a northern and a southern world. The fields of Lombardy answer to the tropical plains of India; the Alps to the Himalayas; and the plateau of Bavaria to those of Tibet.

I refer you to a post somewhere on cycling to Budapest using a map of the Home Counties.

Trevor @ 7 June 2006 5:33 PM

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