named in Genesis, to refer the Teutonic race, so strongly marked, and so eventful in its history; but Tubal is without a following, and may probably have been the great patriarch of the German name. That all these tribes came round the Euxine is probable, both from the direction of their later movements, and from the circumstances of the settlement of Tiras, on both sides the Bosphorus, and so on to the Adriatic and Northern Italy. The Javanic race is identified with the history of the ancient world, and their settlements, whether as Greeks proper, or Pelasgians in Asia Minor Greece and Southern Italy, have been already discussed.

The Iberians are the most mysterious people, widely spread on continent and islands over the south-west of Europe, not without some civilization, but pushed from Sicily by the Greeks; subjugated in their islands by Carthage; and, ultimately everywhere both absorbed and assimilated by Rome, they have no history but in the successes and crimes of others.

The

It is not a little curious and encouraging to our own theory, that the actual names by which Russian and Tartar are to this day known in Asia, are given in Genesis. Mesech and Magog, that we may not inaptly paraphrase as Muscovite and Mogul, mark two distinct races, though alike comprehended under the sway of the Russian sceptre. Sclavonians are Europeans of some antiquity, though with features and complexion that suggest a more recent settlement than their western neighbours. The Magogians on the other hand are so organically distinguished from the Japhetic race, and resemble so closely the Semitic and Monosyllabic natives of Eastern Asia, that were not Scripture distinct on the fact of Magog being the son of Japhet, one would be inclined to assign them the Semitic origin of the Chinese. But here again physiological considerations may assist us. Northern Asia, comprehending under the same physical features a great part of Russia in Europe, though in the same latitude as the most favoured European states, has a very different climate, and very different geographical conditions. Vast plains, often of great elevation, having only two seasons, a snowy winter and a parching summer; may, from the continued severity of these alternatives, and the mysterious influence of the habits they engender, produce in the lapse of ages the peculiar development of complexion, eye, and feature that mark the Mogul nomades of the steppe, as well as their Chinese neighbours.

This illfavoured and ill-fated race seem the parent stock of·

ORIGIN OF SERFDOM.

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the Laplanders of Europe, and the Esquimaux of America; unless similar circumstances have effected analogous results in degrading the normal type of Teutons and Indians. This is not likely, at least in the former case. The Swedes and Norwegians live close to the Lapps, and under nearly the same physical conditions, and are as tall and handsome as any members of the Teutonic race. So we must suppose some of the stunted and sallow wanderers of the steppes to have penetrated or been forced by the prowess of others, into the vicinity of the Arctic circle. One peculiar institution of this region of the globe, which is destined to have its effect on the history of the human race, we take to have had its origin in the reaction from the nomade state. Serfdom, as it has ever existed in the Russian empire, bearing no mark of early conquest, where lords and serfs are of the same race language and till the last century and a half, of the same manners, must have originated in the rude effort of government or proprietors to fix a population to industrial pursuits, where indefinite migration was both the instinct of the race, and favoured by the nature of the country. It is needless to remark what a magazine of power this institution proves to the Czar, in the inexhaustible raw material of armies and the popularity of enfranchisement.

The ethnology of China is a problem worthy a discussion of its own. Whether we consider the inhabitants a people of remote Tartar origin, civilized by force of the advantageous circumstances of their settlement; or, as we are more inclined to suppose them a Semitic people assimilated to the Magogian type by climatic influence; the question is involved in great difficulty. Nor should we altogether repel the Oriental tradition, as old at least as the Hegira, that represents the Chinese as the post-diluvian progeny of Noah; and therefore not descended from either of the three other patriarchs of the human race.

We are not phrenologists enough to draw the inferences from the capacity of skulls of different races and ages that Dr. Latham does. And indeed the effects of a high state of civilization in the development of individual character have been much overrated, at least as regards the mass of the community. The statesman or philosoper may indeed receive a great enhancement of mind, both in amount and activity, from the advantages of his position; while the division of labour, always keeping pace with an advancing civilization, will tend to dwarf and confine the capacities of the great majority.

The great American difficulty naturally suggested by our

approach to the north-eastern angle of Asia must be reserved for some future occasion. Nor are we aware that either our author or any recent writer has thrown any new light upon the subject. The origin, and still more the variety of alphabetic writing, is too curious and important a subject to be treated at the close of an article. It is a subject surrounded with difficulty. For supposing the alphabet a revelation to man, the diversity of phonetic symbols would imply a miraculous confusion of alphabets also, that seems an unwarranted and needless assumption. The diversity and copiousness of oriental alphabets, even where the spoken tongues have no great difference, precludes the otherwise natural supposition of nation having imitated from nation so useful an invention or revelation. Unless indeed priestcraft or some other motive induced an arbitrary variation, with a view to secrecy or national distinction.

But in concluding our notice of his really interesting and valuable works, we would caution Dr. Latham against laying himself open to the inference, that might not unwarrantably be drawn from such remarks as those he has indulged in, relative to the maturity of the races and consequent adaptation of polygamy for certain regions. Now this postponement of a moral law to the physical appetite is nothing more than materialism in practice; and the more inexcusable, as the moral law enjoined in Eden, and sanctioned rather than restored by our Lord was universal in its application, whereas the physical fact is exceptional. Like every other sort of moral discipline, the constancy to a faded partner does not seem to be for the present joyous but grievous, yet eventually works out high moral and mental results. Indeed the polygamy of the East has no more real cause in the physical circumstance adduced in its behalf, than the ante-nuptial license of the West, too much tolerated by the public opinion of Christian nations, is justified by the imprudence of early marriage. Both are difficulties, but only difficulties incidental to our probationary state, and intended to exercise the character in self-denial and self-control. It would be a curious inquiry which entailed the largest amount of suffering, the retaining an old wife, or deferring a young one; but we are inclined to think the advantage would not be with the earlier monogamist.

The form of compromise between western prudence and eastern sensuality, that prevailed among the Jews at the close of the Mosaic dispensation, as was perhaps natural in a transition age and country, was the facility of divorce. This

practice censured by Malachi, and particularly reprobated by our Lord, appears from Josephus to have existed to a remarkable extent in Judea. Herod the Tetrarch had been married to ten wives, most of them living at the same time. This practice, though a sort of homage to the primeval law, was more cruel to women than the regular polygamy of earlier times, as it abandoned them to vice or misery; and was more injurious in practice, being within the reach of all, and not necessarily confined to the great and wealthy. It is not a little remarkable, that amidst the deep depravity of the classical nations the ideal of monogamy was rarely if ever infringed. As it is impossible to ascribe this restraint to either moral principle or a respect for the weaker sex, it seems to have arisen from the republican, or rather citizen ideas of those countries, that it was not right to encroach or monopolise at the expense of other citizens, nor to contract marriage at all but with a citizen. Like every other bad habit that perpetuates itself by indulgence, the polygamy of the east and the divorces of the west continued till a voice more than man's denounced at least the latter practice, and, by inference, the other also. And the change, which man would never have effected for himself, that followed this injunction, resulted in the altered relation of the sexes, the domestic happiness of Christian families, and the vast increase of population in Christian countries.

ART. II.-Life of William Etty, R.A. By ALEXANDER GILCHRIST, of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law. 2 Vols. London. 1855.

IT is remarkable that among the many memoirs which have swelled the book-lists of late years, so few have at all fulfilled the true functions of a biography. We have in them, for the most part, narratives of facts, anecdotes, and events, interspersed with letters and diaries, all merely tending to place the subject of the memoirs before us in his relations to other men. This record may be useful in a partial degree, but it is not all that we expect in the history of a man's life. We do not care so much about knowing how event succeeded event-how fame gradually spread abroad: mere dry facts never yet did good to any living soul, nor will they ever do so. It is of very minor importance for us to know that such and such was the exact date of a birth,

or a tour, or a death it is in most cases very unessential that we should be informed about the exact place of a man's habitation, or the precise mode of spending his time. Biography, such as this, which has only to do with the exoteric life seems to treat men as mere animated corpses, who passed their days on earth in certain capacities, and after gaining more or less distinction then sank again into dust. And besides, mere narratives of events are entirely without effect on our own lives: no fact of our own lives can or will be changed by the bare record of other facts, for it probably never happens that two men are placed in precisely the same situations, under precisely the same conditions. Hence we shall seldom find that men derive from the perusal of a biography anything more than a set of notions about events and the actors in them: their thoughts are not purified, nor their impulses guided, nor their passions curbed.

We long for something more-we look for something higher we want a history of the life-the inner spiritual being, which contains within itself the springs of action, which especially makes the man. It is with the history of a human soul alone that we all have sympathy, from the least of us to the greatest: no two outer lives may be coincident, but the phases of the inner life are almost independent of outward conditions, and are similar in different men under the most different circumstances. The spiritual life is the same although the temples in which it dwells are various : its moods, its aspirations, its passions are common to all whose inward light is not changed to darkness. We want to learn, then, from a biography how the subject of our thoughts grappled with temptations-how he bowed his head in trial-how he steered his soul in prosperity. We want to hear his aspirations after holiness, to imitate his searchings for truth, to emulate his soarings into Nature's mysteries; to know, in short, how he conquered the world, and how he conquered himself. And then, too, we want to know his failures, to learn how he was vanquished in the conflict within, or in the struggle without: how he buoyed his head above the waves of the tempest; how he sank, and how he rose again. We want to see how he allowed outward circumstances to affect his spiritual life; how he braved the world's scorn, and defied, with solemn earnestness, its contempt; how he succumbed to passion, and how at last he rid himself from its tyranny. It is only when such lessons as these are learned from the story of a life that we shall rise from its perusal holier, and wiser, and better men.