puerile, verbal resemblances, analogies of customs stated upon the credit of such writers as Sir John Mandeville, Marco Polo, and other oracles of little higher authority, and which, even if uncontrovertible, would leave Mr. Ranking just at the same distance from his ultimate point as when he

set out.

Although we might content ourselves with this summary sentence upon the work, without the fear of its being impugned by any indifferent person who should examine it, we shall, nevertheless, give the reader a little insight into Mr. Ranking's method of induction, and into the nature of the proofs upon which he relies to convince the world that the Mongols, a race unacquainted with nautical science, could and did convey an army and elephants from the shores of China or Japan, 7,000 or 8,000 miles across a trackless ocean, to an unknown country, of which their own records, as far as they have been examined, make no mention whatsoever.

He begins by saying that, "in the Introduction to the Researches on the Wars and Sports of the Mongols and Romans, the writer hinted at having met with some indications of a connexion between Asia and America, long before the discovery of the New World by Columbus. From that time he has kept this object in view; and such has been the success of his further inquiries, that he now ventures confidently to affirm, that Peru, Mexico, and other countries in America, were conquered by the Mongols, accompanied with elephants, in the thirteenth century;" and elsewhere, he says, that "there is strong reason to conclude that the progress of the Mongols in America reached Rhode Island."

His process of proof is as follows. He shows from Du Halde, Marco Polo, &c., that the Tartars, after their conquest of China, invaded Japan, in which operation they suffered many reverses, in short, were miserably defeated. "From the confusion in the histories of China," he assumes it to be probable, that "the number of the invading troops was very considerably above a hundred thousand;" and then he says, we shall see, from the construction of the ships (Chinese junks!), how possible it is that a great number of them might reach the shores of America."

This happy conclusion from "the confusion in the Chinese histories," and the great likelihood that many thousand Mongols could be wafted safely over the Pacific in Chinese junks, from "the construction" of those vessels, constitute positively the whole of the evidence that a wild American tradition, recorded by Garcilasso de la Vega, without date, commemorates the safe arrival of the Mongols on the coast of Peru!

As Mr. Ranking has drawn so important a conclusion from the exceeding commodiousness of Chinese junks, as transports for the conveyance of troops and elephants some thousand miles, we may just mention to him that, in the evidence lately taken before the Parliamentary Committee, we find Mr. Marjoribanks stating that these vessels are cumbrous, insecure, and unseaworthy; that Mr. Davidson declared that property is so unsafe in them, that, even with an European master on board, he would not risk his goods in one, and that, out of every five junks which sail from China to a distant port, one is lost; and lastly, that Mr. Crawfurd, albeit a warm

friend to junks, confesses that they are clumsy and awkward in the extreme; that their crews are entirely unacquainted with navigation, and that they manage to complete their short voyages "only at the height of the monsoon, when a fair and steady seven or eight-knot breeze carries them directly from port to port." We cannot suppose that the junks were more safe and commodious in the thirteenth than in the nineteenth century.

The counterpart of his proof is the tradition to which we have alluded, and which is thus reported by Garcilasso de la Vega.

I shall relate what Pedro de Cieza de Leon told me that he had heard in the province where the giants arrived. They affirm, said he, in all Peru, that cer tain giants came ashore on this coast, at the Cape, now called Cape St. Helens, which is near the town of Puerto Viejo. Those who have preserved this tradition from father to son, say that these giants came by sea, in a kind of rush boats, made like large barks; that they were so enormously tall, that from the knee downward they were as high as common men; that they had long hair, which hung loose upon their shoulders; that their eyes were as large as plates, and that other parts of their bodies were big in proportion; that they had no beard; that some went naked, others were covered with the skins of wild beasts, and that they had no women with them. After having landed at the Cape, they established themselves at a spot pointed out to them by the inhabitants, and dug very deep wells through the rock, and which to this day supply excellent water. These giants lived by rapine, and desolated the whole country. They say, that they were such gluttons, that one would eat as much meat as fifty of the native inhabitants, and that for part of their nourishment, they caught a quantity of fish with nets. They massacred the men of the neighbouring parts without mercy, and killed the women by their brutal violations. The wretched Indians often tried to devise some means to rid themselves of these troublesome visitors, but they never had either sufficient force or courage to attack them. Secure from apprehension, these new monsters thus tyrannized for a long while, committing the most infamous enor mities. Divine justice sent fire from heaven with a great noise, and an angel armed with a flaming sword, by whom they were destroyed at one blow. To serye as an eternal monument of the vengeance of God, their bones and skulls were not consumed by the fire, but are found at the very place, of an enormous size. I have heard Spaniards say, that they have seen bits of their teeth, by which they judged that a tooth weighed more than half a pound. As for the rest, it is not known from what place they came, nor by what route they arrived.

If there was any thing in this absurd story which could by possibility apply to the arrival of a large body of Mongols with elephants (to which no allusion is here made), it might be worth while to consider what degree of credit was due to "the Inca," as he is called, whose authority Dr. Robertson repudiates upon very sufficient grounds. But if the story, reduced to the standard of credibility, were accepted as true, it is almost an insult to the understanding to call this a proof of the fact sought to be established; yet it is the only direct one offered! The rest of Mr. Ranking's evidence is derived from extracts from De la Vega's History of the Incas, from whence he garbles a few forced and pretended analogies between the terms, customs, &c. of the Mexicans and Peruvians, and those Asiat.Jour. N.S.VOL.6. No.22.

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of the Tartars, wheresoever they can be found, for Mr. Ranking does not confine himself to Mongolia, or to the ancient seats of the Mongol, Manchoo, or Tartar tribes, but takes the entire range of Asia,-China, Japan, Hindostan, Siam, Pegu, Tibet, Assam, and even Siberia! His authorities, moreover, are almost always the least satisfactory he could adduce, and most of them are such as an oriental antiquary would never dream of consulting, and which, of course, lead him sometimes into the most ridiculous mistakes. Mr. Ranking tells us that he has resided upwards of twenty years in Hindostan and Russia: yet he evinces not the slightest knowledge of oriental languages or oriental history, properly so called, which is an indispensable qualification for the task he has undertaken.

As we have pronounced some of Mr. Ranking's proofs frivolous and puerile, we shall specify an example of each, and then dismiss a book, which, we must say, it was a lamentable waste of time to compose, and will teach a reader nothing but error.

Manco Capac, the first Inca of Peru, Mr. Ranking boldly identifies with a Mongol prince of the house of Genghiz Khan; upon no other ground, however, than similarity of name! Manco (or, as he chooses to write it, Mango, though he admits the Peruvians had not the letter g in their tongue), he says, is a word which has no meaning in the language of Peru. The rest we will give in Mr. Ranking's ipsissimis verbis, as a beautiful specimen of his mode of induction :

Mango is a Mongol name. Mango was grandson of Genghis Khan, and brother of Kublai; and his name is thus spelt by Du Halde, vol. ii. p, 251; by Maundevile, p. 275. Mango was grand khan till 1257, when he was killed at the siege of Ho-cheu in China (Sir W. Jones, vol. i. p. 101. Marco Polo, note 381. De la Croix, p. 399), and was succeeded by his brother Kublai. He conquered and ravaged Thibet (M. Polo, p. 412; and Purchas, vol. iii. pp. 49, 78). His name is spelt Mangu by Polo, p. 172. Mangou by De la Croix. Marco Polo, p. 200, writes Mongu. These are the Mongol modes of spelling. The Chinese pronounce the g hard; for Bengal, they write Pen-ko-la. (Modern Univ. Hist., vol. ii. p. 387). The Peruvians have not the letter g in their tongue (Vega, vol. ii. p. 164). These are sufficient reasons for Vega and others writing Manco. The Japanese annals relate, that "the Tartar general Mooko appeared on the coast of Japan, with 4,000 ships and 240,000 men.” (Kæmpfer, p. 187.) We find the name spelt Mongko in a note in Du Halde, ii. 251. The grand khan Kublai had twenty-five sons by his concubine, all of whom were placed in the rank of nobles, and were continually employed in the military profession. (Polo, p. 286.) Thus it appears highly probable that the first Inca of Peru was a son of the Emperor Kublai.† Marco Polo, p. 281, describes Kublai " of the middle stature, his limbs well-formed, and his whole figure of a just proportion. His complexion is fair, and occasionally suffused with red, like the bright tint of the rose, which adds much grace to his counnance; his eyes are black and handsome; his nose well shaped and prominent." The reader is referred to the portrait of Mango Capac,‡ in this volume, that he We should rather have supposed them to be the French and Italian modes of spelling.

↑ Elsewhere he says: "the opinion of the writer is, that Mango Capac, the first Inca of Peru, was a son of the Grand Khan Kublai, and that Montezuma's ancestor was a Mongol grandee from Tangut, very possibly Assam."

Trumpery portraits of all the Incas, from Mango Capac to Atahualpa, are inserted in Mr. Ranking's book, and he deduces a serious argument from their head-dress!

may compare it with this description of Kublai! There is certainly nothing in it to weaken the conjecture that the Inca was a son of Kublai; and Mango was the name of Kublai's brother.

All this we call trifling and frivolous, and stronger examples might be cited. Of the puerilities, we subjoin the following instance among many. The reader will remember that Garcilasso de la Vega, in his account of the arrival of the giants, stated that they came in "rush boats." Mr. Ranking, finding that, translated into French, "rush boats" would be bateaux de jonc, is struck with the similarity of the word jonc to junk, and says "the reader is referred to the description of Chinese and Japanese vessels in Ch. I., and he will then not fail to remark what an important word junk is in the mass of proofs of the identity of the Mongols and the Incas!" It is vain to attempt to give a syllogistic form to this argument, a parallel to which must be sought in the nursery or in Bedlam. We may just remark that our author, being desirous of ascertaining the meaning of the word junk, refers to Todd's Johnson's English Dictionary, where, he says, it is defined, "probably an Indian word, applied to large and small ships!" A dictionary of the Chinese tongue would have been a better authority, and there Mr. Ranking would have learned that the term junk is an European corruption of chuen.

It is always with sincere regret and reluctance that we pronounce a condemnatory sentence upon the labours of any writer; but until the office of a critic really merges in that of an author's herald or encomiast,-a revolution which certain pseudo critics seem impatient to bring about, we shall esteem it to be our duty to the public, although it be as little pleasing to ourselves as to the objects of our censure, when a work is forced upon our notice, which, like the one before us, is utterly useless, if not worse than useless, honestly to say so.

EXPORT OF COTTON YARN.

THE policy of encouraging the exportation of cotton yarn, which is the state of nearly one-fourth of our boasted amount of cotton manufactures shipped by the free-traders to India, may be doubtful after the following statement recently made in a petition to the House of Commons by the operative cotton weavers of Whittle-le-woods, and its vicinity, in the county of Lancaster, which sets forth that they are in a lamentable state of poverty and distress, working from fourteen to sixteen hours a day for 8d. or 10d., and “in thousands of instances, a man with his wife and four to six children are compelled to subsist upon that small pittance." The causes of these distresses they allege to be the necessity of our manufactures being on a level (as regards wages) with foreign manufacturers; and the export of cotton yarn. The state of the weavers (they say) was comfortable, previous to 1803, "when a part of the raw material (the cotton yarns), about 5,000,000 lbs. per annum, on which the petitioners were employed, being exported to the continent, gave the first shock to their wages; and in proportion as these 5,000,000 lbs. have increased to upwards of 60,000,000 lbs., so have the wages of the petitioners been reduced, until they are not only brought down to famine prices, but at certain periods of the year thousands can get no work at all." They ask a protecting duty on the exportation of cotton yarn.

THE ORIENTALISMS OF THE GREEK WRITERS.

No. III. THE DRAMATIC POETS

GREEK poetry underwent a change, both in its spirit and expression, during the long period which elapsed between the production of the Homeric epos and the day when Eschylus arose, the morning star of the Lyric drama, in the dark and cloudy atmosphere of Grecian literature. It would not be uninteresting to trace the various and gradual modifications of thought and manners, which the intercourse with Persia more especially might be supposed to have introduced. Eschylus was a warrior and a poet, and his association with the habits of that most splendid and luxuriant of the oriental nations may be traced in the occasional glimpses, which his writings afford, of imagery at once wild and magnificent, impressing the mind with a kind of religious awe by reason of their very dimness and uncertainty. It may be remarked of the Eastern poets generally, that their images are rarely, if ever, founded upon analogy; and the same thing may be said with equal truth of the poetry of Eschylus. We may explain what is meant by our application of analogy to a figurative mode of speech very briefly. We are indebted to Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, for the first mention of it. Every metaphor or simile, then, properly founded upon analogy, ought to be equally true and just in the converse; thus, youth has been called the Spring of life. Now let us alter the words, and say, the Spring is the youth of the year, and the appropriateness of the expression is preserved. We shall discover more traces of this analogy in the remains of Sophocles and Euripides, than in the sublime fragments of the author of the Agamemnon. The intimate relation, which subsisted between the cities of Greece and the colonies of Asia Minor, cannot be denied to have influenced considerably both the mental feelings and the moral polity of the whole of Greece. The organization of an Athenian family cannot well be more distinctly described than by a picture of an Asiatic household of the present day, which may be considered synonimous to it in the greater number of its customs. The silence, the seclusion, the unremitted restraint, and the voluptuous indolence, which characterize the existence of an Asiatic woman in the nineteenth century, are not less truly illustrative of the habits of a Grecian lady in the bold and stirring times of Eschylus, or the more polished age of Sophocles and his successors. Let us go back to Homer for a moment.

"I am persuaded," observes the learned author of the Origin of the Laws (Goguet), "that we ought to refer to the manners of the inhabitants of Asia Minor all the descriptions which the poet makes of the dresses and the toilettes of the goddesses. He would probably paint on these occasions what the women of his country practised, and I think that Homer was born and passed his life in Asia Minor." Allusion was made in our second paper to the epithet rosy-fingered, as applied to the morning. In the following very exquisite description of the toilet of Juno, when about to issue forth with the girdle of Venus, in the hope of regaining the alienated affections