sian nor Negro. The black Indians of California are almost Negroes, while the Indians of Queen Charlotte's Island may be said to resemble Finlanders. There is, however, a still more decisive consideration, the in. portance of which was first fully perceived by Dr. Pritchard, who pointed out that varieties are not permanent, and that in the course of ages the physical features of a nation may undergo great changes. One of the most curious results of the science of comparative philology, is the light which it throws on the history of that family of mankind which Dr. Pritchard calls the Allophylian race. This race, which may once have occupied all that country from the Ganges to Ireland, and which is now the patrimony of the Indo-European family, appears to have preceded the Celtic race in Europe, and subsequently to have had its limits still more curtailed by the Germanic migrations. At present they are still numerous, and include the Laplanders, Fins, Esthonians, Permians, and Huns, besides numerous tribes on both sides of the Ural Mountains. A comparison of their languages proves that all these scattered tribes have a common origin, and we all know how diverse their features are. The mere dealer in zoological technicalities would class some of them with the Mongol stock, and others he would refer to his Cau

casian type. How different is an Esthonian from a Baskir, or from his Uralian ancestors; and we know that when the Magyars settled in Pannonia, they were a very unseemly race; but an abode of several centuries in a rich country, under a fine climate, and the influence of Christianity, have rendered the modern Hungarians a handsome race, and one of the most spirited nations of Europe. There is another and equally striking example of the fluctuation of national features afforded by the history of the Celtic and Germanic races. The late Mr. Pinkerton, whose strength of intellect and power. ful judgment, unfortunately for himself and for literature, was not regulated by a corresponding vigour of moral principle, in his usual imperious and dogmatic style, asserted that light hair and blue eyes were the preroga tive of the Goth, while dark eyes and a sallow complexion characterised the unhappy Celts.

When Mr. Pinkerton associated intellectual inferiority with dark complexions, he surely forgot Greece and Rome, Spain and Italy; Dante and Cervantes alone might have reconciled the great "king of the Goths," as he was called, to swarthy skin and black ringlets. This notion of distinguishing the two races by their complexion has misled less prejudiced writers than poor Pinkerton. It appears, however, that the ancient Gauls and other Celts had light or red hair, although their descendants are, in general, darkhaired. Niebuhr-an authority which will not be lightly esteemed-describes the ancient Gauls as yellow-haired. Ammianus, who lived among them, describes them as red-haired. As Dr. Pritchard remarks, the Gauls are universally described by the ancients, as a remarkably tall, yellow-haired, blueeyed people. As, however, Niebuhr observed, "that the Germans are no longer red-haired, so the Gauls, or their descendants, have lost the yellow hair of their forefathers." In this respect both Gauls and Germans have changed their features; and it is only in Scandinavia that we can perceive the physical characters of the German race, such as they were seen and described by Tacitus. We have already mentioned the great variety of features exhibited by the Indo-European family, who have all sprung from a common stock, and must have migrated from the same regions.

If the features of nations are unquestionably subject to variation, so as to induce us to reject the hypothesis of distinct aboriginal stocks, it is also a remarkable circumstance, that those inoral and intellectual peculiarities which constitute what we call national character, are even more permanent than the external physiognomy of nations. In the American race, for example, extending through every degree of latitude, living under every variety of physical conditions, and presenting a great variety of complexion and stature, we find a remarkably uniform, but far from pleasing, moral character. In Canada, Mexico, and Brazil, we find the same malignant and revengeful temper, and the cold-blooded and hard-hearted cruelty; and this displayed equally by the savage Iroquois and the polished and semi-civilized natives of Mexico; so that one would

almost be tempted to trace their descent from the first homicide. In the numerous archipelagoes of the Pacific, we find also a uniform character of gay and thoughtless licentiousness, possessing none of the stern and inflexible character of the Carib or Algonquin of the American forests. It is, however, among the various races of Europe that we perceive this stability of national character. In this respect three great races of civilized nations present very remarkable distinctions.

The Chinese and allied nations display a national character which is strikingly contrasted with that' of the IndoEuropean race. "Prophets," says Mr. Newman, "never made their appearance in China: all its institutions proceed from men, and are calculated for temporal good. The Chinese were the utilitarians of the ancient world. It is not by flying from the world, and giving themselves to penance, like the Hindoos, that the Chinese obtain the favour of their gods, but by patient endurance in the midst of society, in obedience to the laws of their ancestors. What the Chinese cannot comprehend with their natural understanding exists not for them, and is an object of their derision." With such a people, poetry and imagination have no place; statistics, organisation, and practical principles, are what they alone care for. Such a people would canonize Adam Smith and Malthus, while Bentham would occupy the chief place in their pantheon. With this worldly-minded people, with whom prudence is the highest good, the Semitic or Aramaean family form a wonderful contrast. This race alone of all antiquity possessed true and worthy ideas respecting the divine nature and the moral relations of man, of guilt and punishment, which is so truly wonderful when we look upon the materialism of China, and the gigantic pantheism of the Hindoos. They alone of all the nations knew a personal deity distinct from his works-not merely the orderer and arranger of the material world, but the creator of its very elements. It is to this race that we must trace not merely our religion, but our civilization. The nearly allied Phoenicians carried Semitic civilization to the west, introduced alphabetic writing into Greece, and traded with

Cornwall and the Baltic, and imported the spices of India, long before the beginning even of Greek traditions. The Indo-European family exhibits decided intellectual tendencies, no less marked than the two families we have described. In all of them we find traces, more or less distinct, of a priestly caste, under the names of Brahmins, Magi, or Druids. None of the members of this family ever rose to the conception of a personal deity distinct from his creation. From India to Greece the basis of their doctrines was always some form of pantheism or emanation; and thus a physical religion, in which the laws and powers of nature were considered as portion of the divine nature, and personated in the endless forms of their mythology. How strong this tendency to nature-worship and pantheistic speculations is rooted in the Indo-European mind, is obvious from the uniformity of their mythology; or to him who has studied that uninterrupted succession of thought which pervades the Vedas and Hindoo philosophy, the poems of Hesiod, the early Greek philosophy, the latter doctrines of the Alexandrian school, and, in our own day, the writings of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.

In the subordinate divisions of this Indo-European race, we also perceive a national character still more permanent than national features. The Spaniard, for example, notwithstanding his country is broken into provinces, and has been oftener conquered than any other European kingdom, still retains his national character, if, unfortunately, he has lost much of his national spirit. The same spirit of enduring fortitude, of obstinate resistance, has been displayed at all periods of Spanish history, from the days of Hannibal to the siege of Zaragosa. The same inflated style and Castillian pride may be seen in Seneca and Lucian, as in their descendants of the present day. But the history of the Celts, as contrasted with that of the Teutonic race, affords, perhaps, the best illustration of the permanence of national character. The Gauls of Cæsar and Ammianus were the French of the present day. We have still the same lively fickleness, excitable temperament, the same taste for wild enterprise, without the practical wisdom

and steady industry of their northern neighbours. Their ready credulity

"Et tumidus Galla credulitate fruar ;"

and Silius Italicus has noticed their boastful character-Vanilo quum Celtæ genus. And Livy has said the same in language that we need not quote. The following graphic description, by Ammianus, which we quote from Dr. Pritchard's version, proves that the old legionary soldier had been long quartered in Celtic Gaul. The Gauls are almost all of tall stature, very fair, and red-haired, horrible from the fierceness of their eyes, fond of strife, and haughtily insolent. A whole band of strangers would not endure one of them, aided in his brawl by his powerful and blueeyed wife, especially when, with swollen neck and gnashing teeth, poising her huge white arms, she begins joining kicks to blows, to put forth her fists like stones from the twisted strings of a catapult. All ages are thought fit for war, and an old man is led forth to be armed with the same vigour of heart as a man in his prime, with limbs hardened by cold and continual labour, and a contempt for many even real dangers.

It is this unsteady and reckless courage, combined with a tendency to rally round some abstraction, whether a clan chief, the Grand Monarque, or the Republic, without ever fixing upon and following out some uniform system, which has decided the fate of the race, from the invasion of the Cimbri, to the occupation of Algiers. Long before the Christian era, the Celts had settled in the north of Italy, in Asia Minor, and in Bohemia. But the bravery which could gain a victory, was useless in the absence of practical wisdom, and of good social institutions. The system of reckless conquest ceased, and the Celts were soon pressed down by the Germans from beyond the Rhine. At the time of Cæsar, the Germans had gained a footing in Belgium, and the defeat of Ariovistus only drove back the stream which burst out four centuries later. In all Gallic history we find the same recklessness, and the same want of selfcontroul, and also want of respect for human rights and feelings. The social system in Celtic Gaul and Britain was inherently vicious, consisting of two

privileged orders of clan-chiefs and Druids, while the mass of the people was enslaved and degraded, plunged in licentiousness, with its frequent accompaniment, cruelty; and hence they were ever obliged to recede before the free and energetic race which descended upon them from the North. The dif ferent genius of the Celtic and Teutonic races is remarkably displayed in the history of conquest and colonisation. The early conquests of the Gauls in Italy, Germany, and Asia, have left no result, while the bold expeditions of the Northmen who, within the course of a century, founded the Russian empire, discovered America, and conquered Normandy, Naples, and England, have left behind them consequences which will influence the history of our species for ages to come. Perhaps the most striking example of the different tendencies of the two races is to be seen in the history of their North American colonies. Lower Canada and New England were occupied nearly in the same year. The French colony was fostered by a strong military establishment, and a vast expenditure from the mother country, while the New England colonists were neglected, and left to their own resources, or if the parent country interfered, it was only to teaze and vex the settlers. We can now see the result of a long experiment of two centuries: the Canadian nation, as it is called, scarcely exceeds half a million of individuals, while the six New England States contain a population four times greater, besides a nearly equal number of colonists, whom they have sent to found new states in the valley of the Ohio. This permanence of national character, of which we find such unquestionable evidence in history, pervades every national literature, constituting, so to speak, the individuality of a Shakspeare and Cervantes, of Voltaire and Goethe, is one of the facts which cannot be overlocked when speculating on historical questions, or laying the foundation of that yet unformed science which, by a convenient barbarism, has been called sociology. It is, we believe, Mr. Mill who has remarked that this energy of character, producing intense competition, constitutes a very characteristic difference between the English and continental merchant. The one concentrates his

efforts on his pursuit, while the other chooses to be contented with moderate gains, provided he can enjoy life as it passes, in the social amusements of the hour.

In tracing the progress of mankind, there is an inquiry which it is of importance to examine, as, when duly explained, it will tend to place a salutary limit to the excursions of speculation, on a topic where writers have too often considered themselves emancipated from the laws of logic. If man be a comparatively recent occupier of the earth, it is obvious that a great mass of speculation may be very summarily disposed of. In that case we need not waste time in tracing the metamorphosis of man through the inferior grades of the animal kingdom, nor will it be necesary to trace our origin back to the savage state, after the current and commonplace system expounded by Lucretius, and repeated by a thousand followers, who have often contrived to be dull, while the original, at all events, possesses the merit of poetic beauty. This subject has been only incidentally treated by Dr. Pritchard, and we must add, in a very unartistical manner, by Colonel Hamilton Smith. Perhaps the best view of the question, in as far as it regards geology, is to be seen in Mr. Lyell's work. It is rarely the fate of negative arguments to be conclusive, although in the present instance there is less ground for that complaint, than in almost any inquiry that could be mentioned. It may be stated, as a fact which few will call in question, that the oldest remains of human bones, or what is, in the present case, equivalent to them, stone-hatchets, arrow-heads, and such remains of human art, are only found in the most recent and superficial portions of the earth's crustas under peat, in rocky fissures, beds of rivers, &c.; but no one has ever found any trace of human existence in any, even of the newest tertiary strata. The fact thus stated admits of no doubt, and thus we have, at all events, a limit beyond which we need not go in seeking for evidence of the antiquity of our race. It is, at all events, obvious, that man is but a recent inhabitant of the earth, in respect to vast and scarcely imaginable periods which geology expands before us. The mere fact of this sudden and abrupt appearance of man, is incompatible

with the idea of his being merely a higher development of some inferior race, for, in that case, what has become of the intermediate forms which should indicate the transition?

There is another mode of investigating the subject, to which, however interesting and curious, we think undue importance has been attached, in as far as it has been supposed to have any bearing on the present question-we mean the occurrence of human bones associated with those of extinct races of animals. It has been assumed, for example, that if human bones were found mixed up with those of the mammoth, the mostodon, or the Irish elk, that not only was man, the contemporary of these ancient species, but further, that the antiquity of the human race must be thrown back to a much more remote period than is commonly supposed. As respects the matter of fact, various instances have been pointed out, in which the association of bones just mentioned has been supposed to have been detected. The question is still in a very unsatisfactory state, and in whatever way it may be settled, we cannot perceive that it can in any way modify our received opinions respecting the recent origin of man. It is to be remembered that the extinct elephants and mostodons were the companions of those animals which still live around us: their extinction, therefore, has been slow, and, so to speak, imperceptible. If such be the case, we have the dilemma of either assigning a high antiquity to man, or of referring the final disappearance of many animals to a comparatively recent time. In viewing the question in this manner, it appears by no means improbable that the Irish elk may have been hunted by the primeval Finnish and Celtic tribes, which made their way to our island. In the case of the extinct bird, the dodo, we have a species which lived down till the sixteenth century, and of the two gigantic oxen, the bison and the urus, which abounded in the forests of Germany in the time of Cæsar and Pliny, one has totally perished, and the other maintains a lingering existence, prolonged by the protection of the czar, and may become an extinct species tomorrow by a fit of imperial caprice. There is another series of facts, whose

bearing on this question are equally inconclusive. We find in many parts of the Mediterranean, and on the coast of Peru, and in Sweden, either human bones or remains of human art, imbedded under accumulations of gravel and sea-shells, and sometimes raised many feet above the sea level. But we know that in these countries the land is in a state of oscillation, between elevations, and depressions, and such accidents, as would imbed and preserve, human remains are very conceivable. The land, for example, on the west coast of Greenland, is gradually subsiding, and remains of buildings are found under the water; but such is no proof of antiquity, for we know that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Northmen built churches and founded monasteries in that dreary region.

In this inquiry, we think the moral evidence in perfect accordance with the negative records furnished by geology. The recent origin of civilisation, that is, the formation of civilised and progressive communities among mankind, is, of itself, an evidence of man's recent origin. If man can raise himself from the savage to the civilised state, without the aid of some external impulse, how is it that the Australians have not yet set about the attempt, and how long will it be ere they discuss the atomism of Epicurus, or Schelling's system of universal identity? Even when some progress has been made, and the first step taken, the history of the Chinese shows that, fatigued with the initial effort, they have taken a breathing time of thirty centuries; and the vast remains found in the valley of the Mississippi, prove that great communities may abandon the effort in despair, retrace their steps, and return to the hunting state. The truth is, that the savage state of mankind has been made the subject of discussion, by speculators and poets, forgetful that in this, as in every other investigation, we must study the phenomena before we attempt to classify; and generalise them. The savage state, as described in books, is as far from truth and actual nature, as the golden age of the poets is from representing any existing form of human society. The savage state, as it actually exists, or has existed, in Australia, or among

the wild tribes of North America, is neither the chaos of disorder some imagine, nor is it destitute of its laws and regulations, which, although unwritten, are better observed than the statutes of civilized kingdoms. In Tanner's narrative of his long captivity among the Indians, and in the admirable remarks of Captain Gray on the natives of Australia, we have true views of what savage life really is. So far from being an absolutely lawless state, it has its laws of property, of marriage, and of revenge, which is observed with a precision which may be called intuitive. Every tribe knows precisely the limits of its hunting-ground; no one dares to marry an individual belonging to the same name as himself; and if a murder is committed, those who are liable to suffer from retaliation, and those who are exempt from that peril, are accurately known. In fact, as Captain Gray justly observes, the savage is in reality subject to complete laws, which not only deprive him of all free agency of thought, but, at the same time, by allowing no scope whatever for the development of intellect, benevolence, or any other great moral qualification, necessarily bind him down in a hopeless state of barbarism, from which it is impossible for man to emerge, so long as he is enthralled by these customs; which, on the other hand, are so ingeniously devised, as to have a direct tendency to annihilate every effort that is made to overthrow them.

The existence, however, of great barbaric communities in America at the period of its discovery, is a proof that under peculiar circumstances savage man may be collected into great communities, and attain considerable progress. It would, in our opinion, be taking an extreme position to maintain, in the absence of all evidence, that the quasi-civilization of Mexico and Peru was the development of a germ which had been imported from some foreign source. Had the Mexicans been instructed by Asiatic teaching, assuredly the use of iron would have been introduced. Mr. Gallatin has, we think, rendered it highly probable that the Mexican civilization, and even its astronomy, are indigenous, for they bear internal evidence of having been constructed within the tro