Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, BY WILLIAM D. TICKNOR & Co., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. TO THE READER. This Lecture was written more than a year ago, and without any expectation of its ever being published. This is the reason why references are not made to the various authorities, consulted in its preparation. To go over it again for that purpose is a task which would require more time than I now have to bestow. I can only say that I was careful to make no statement which was not supported by what seemed to me to be good authority. It will be seen that I have been largely indebted to the labors of others, and that I can lay claim to little else than the arrangement. I acknowledge especially my obligations to that excellent work, the larger Geography of the late Mr. Woodbridge. The Lecture is now published upon the assurance of those, whose judgment and candor are entitled to equal respect, that it would be of some service to the cause of education. BOSTON, JANUARY, 1846. G. S. H. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. GEOGRAPHY, as commonly taught, is one of the dryest and least profitable of studies. It is a mere bead-roll of names, dates and distances. It has no animating principle of life. It is the skeleton and not the living body; the hortus siccus of dried plants and not the garden. But viewed in connection with man, and the history of man, it becomes a pursuit alike attractive and instructing. The breath of life is thus breathed into it. Without it, history itself can be but imperfectly understood. To comprehend the biography of nations, we must know the physical structure and properties of the regions they occupy, their relations to the sea, the character and di |