in symmetry, the black colour, woolly hair, long receding forehead, and prominent jaws. It includes, in general, the tribes of Central and Southern Africa. They bear every mark of a race greatly modified by the influence of climate, and degraded by the oppressions of the more civilized races from time immemorial. In their turn they have had an influence on these powerful neighbours, and thus a decided Nigritian element has been traced in ancient Egypt. The affinities of their dialects form too large and difficult a question to be discussed here. 3. The Turanian † (called by earlier writers the Mongolian) is the race most closely connected with the Caucasian in ancient history. Its extreme physical type is strongly marked by flat broad features, a low forehead, and generally a small stature; but its higher forms approach more nearly to the Caucasian. It is found spread over the vast tracts of Central and Eastern Asia, as well as the great northern plain which slopes down to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, not only in Asia and Europe, but also in America. It includes the ancient Huns and Scythians, the Mongolian, Calmuck, or Tatar tribes, the Samoyedes of Siberia, the Ugrians, Fins, and Laps of Europe, and the Esquimaux of America. Besides these peoples, who, shut in between mountains, steppes, and an Arctic sea, lead the life of nomad herdsmen and hunters, other branches of the same race, placed under more favourable conditions on the vast fertile plains and extensive sea-board of China and Farther India, reached a much more advanced stage of civilization. The languages of these tribes are considered as forming the third great family, the Turanian, which comprises all the languages spoken in Asia or Europe, not included under the Aryan and Semitic families, with the exception of Chinese and its cognate dialects.‡ These last are assigned to a still earlier stage, the first in the formation of language, in which roots form independent words, and grammatical inflections are unknown. The Turanian dialects belong to that second stage, in which, two roots being joined together to form words, one of them loses its independence and becomes subsidiary to the other. This first step towards the use of merely grammatical inflexions, such as are seen in the Aryan and Semitic families, has been well described by the name "agglutination," or * In the extreme south, the Caffres are evidently a Caucasian race, who have overpowered the Nigritian tribes. The name is derived from the great table land of Turan in Central Asia, which is divided from that of Iran by the Hindoo Koosh and its western extension. Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language, p. 275. gluing together. This term signifies that form or stage of language, in which the additions that make declensions and conjugations are tacked on to the words they modify, so as to be still separable, instead of being incorporated with them as inflections. We happen to have an English example of agglutination in the comparatively modern barbarism, "John his book." This structure characterizes an early stage in the development of language; a stage through which each family of languages has passed, but which has become stereotyped among the races now called Turanian. It is thus that, as in the physical world, where processes have been arrested at a certain stage, as if to preserve them for our study, so the progress of civilization has halted among nations the less favoured in the means of progress; and in them we may see former conditions of races now far more advanced. Thus the Turanian is distinctively the class of languages spoken by the nomad tribes of Asia and Northern Europe, as distinguished from the more settled Aryan and Semitic populations. But we must be very careful to infer no more than the premisses will warrant. We must not, for example, conclude from the early prevalence of Turanian forms of speech a state of civilization exactly parallel to that of the existing Turanian races. Especially is this caution needed when we find the traces of a Turanian population in those parts of Western Asia-Chaldæa for example-which were the earliest seats of civilization. short, this Turanian occupation seems to mark a period when the great demarcations between languages and races were not yet established. Whether the Turanian race was nearer to the Hamitic or to the Semitic family, is one of the most difficult problems of Ethnology. The most probable opinion seems to be that the Turanian was the stage of speech which the different races carried with them when they first left their primeval seats; that it was developed by the race of Ham, who, as the earliest cultivators of science and art, would be the first to require new forms of language, into the stage seen in the Hamitic dialects of Africa and Southern Asia; and that these were again modified, by contact with Semitic races, into the forms of speech called Semitic. The Aryan languages seem to have passed out of the Turanian stage by a still more direct process. In Professor Max Müller gives a genealogical table of the Turanian languages, too detailed to be transferred to our pages. He divides the Turanian family into two great classes, the Northern and the Southern. The Northern, which is sometimes called the UralAltaic or Ugro-Tataric, is divided into five sections, the Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Finnic, and Samoyedic. The Southern, which occupies the south of Asia, is divided into four sections: the Tamulic, or languages of the Dekhan; the Bhotiya, or dialects of Tibet and the Bhotan; the Taic, or dialects of Siam; and the Malaïc, or Malay and Polynesian dialects. 4. From this classification it would follow-at least so far as race may be inferred from language-that the fourth variety of mankind, usually called the Malay, or Polynesian, was a branch of the Turanian, which passed over from the two great Indian peninsulas. Its other name, Australasian, may be taken not only in a local, but also in an etymological sense, denoting the origin of the race from Southern Asia. In confirmation of this view, we know that the primitive Hamite race extended as far as India, where it was overpowered by the irruption of the Aryans; and the pressure of nation upon nation, which always results from such movements, would naturally find an outlet by the Malay peninsula and the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, whence the race might spread, by means of their light canoes, over the calm waters of the Pacific. Moreover, the physical characters of the Malay race are very similar to those of the Hamite populations of Southern Asia, as they are seen on the monuments of Chaldæa, and described by Herodotus under the name of the "Asiatic Ethiopians." They have the complexion of various shades of darkness,-black hair, generally straight, but inclining in some tribes to the crisp curl which distinguished the Cushites of Africa,-with regular features, resembling the Caucasian type. There is, on the other hand, a striking contrast between the energy and invention of the Hamite race in Asia and the sensual life of the Polynesian savages, in which indolence and cruelty are strangely mingled. Their soft liquid dialects, scarcely possessing the more vigorous elements of speech, afford no bad type of their prevailing character, as a race which has degenerated, from causes not far to seek. Shut out from the great movements of their fellow men, in beautiful islands, where a tropical climate and spontaneous vegetation leave no care for food and clothing, they show what man becomes when really placed in the "Islands of the Blessed." But one type is not sufficient to describe the Malay tribes. They vary from the highest standard of the manly savage in New Zealand to the lowest degradation in Australia, Papua, and elsewhere; and in most of the islands the distinction between the chieftains and the common people is as marked as that imagined by Homer between the "Jove-born kings" and the vulgar herd. These cir CONCLUDING REMARKS. 57 cumstances seem to point to a mixed descent, partly from the Caucasian, and partly from the Negro race. 5. The American race is a name given in common to the warlike hunting tribes who peopled the forests and prairies of North America, the more civilized people who founded cities and kingdoms in the Centre, and the savages of the South; though the unity of all these requires further proof. The chief existing type is to be seen in the so-called Indians of North America. Their main distinction is a copper-coloured complexion, with thin lank hair. Their physical perfection, noble carriage, and manly courage, point to a Caucasian origin, while in language and manners they have many points of resemblance to the Turanians; so that a mixture of these two races appears to supply the most probable account of their origin. The ancient Greeks held that the first inhabitants of every land were sprung from the soil; and the nobles of Athens wore golden grasshoppers in token that they boasted to be Autochthons. The Latin races expressed the same belief by the word Aborigines, which modern usage has adopted. But it is scarcely necessary to say, that by an aboriginal people we now mean simply the earliest known inhabitants of their country. In concluding this chapter, we must emphatically repeat, that the enquiry of which it treats is as yet only in its infancy; but we seem at length to have reached a stage in which the intrinsic difficulties of the subject need no longer be enhanced by a wilful conflict between science and authority. In what remains to be done, no caution perhaps is more necessary than to bear in mind that the diffusion of our race cannot be accounted for by any single movement from its common centre. We must take into account, not only the successive impulses which have followed one another at long intervals, but the flux and reflux of the great tides of population. Every such wave has left behind it traces as marked as those of the waters which have covered the lands during the great geological periods. But their traces are the nations, languages, monuments, and customs of living men, whose vital action has worked changes much more difficult to classify than the strata of dead matter. All that has been done, however, has tended to confirm that great primeval document, "The Book of the Generations of the Sons of Noah." CHAPTER V. EARLY HISTORY OF THE HEBREW RACE-FROM THE CALL OF ABRAHAM TO THE EXODUS, B.C. 1921-1491. "Thus will this latter, as the former world, From all the rest, of whom to be invoked A nation from one faithful man to spring."-MILTON. THE HEBREWS NOT THE MOST ANCIENT NATION-REASON FOR THEIR PRECEDENCE-THE LINE OF SHEM TO ABRAHAM-UR OF THE CHALDEES, ITS PROBABLE SITE-CALL OF ABRAM AND MIGRATION OF TERAH'S FAMILY FIRST SETTLEMENT AT CHARRAN — ABRAM'S JOURNEY INTO CANAAN TO THE VALLEY OF SHECHEM-REMOVAL TO EGYPT AND RETURN TO BETHEL-SEPARATION FROM LOT THE CITIES OF THE PLAINEXPEDITION OF CHEDORLAOMER-THE TRIBES OF THE CANAANITES-ABRAM AT HEBRON-HIS SUBSEQUENT HISTORY-BIRTH AND MARRIAGE OF ISAAC-DEATH OF SARAH BIRTH OF ESAU AND JACOB DESTRUCTION OF SODOM AND GOMORRHA ORIGIN OF THE NATIONS OF MOAB AND AMMON, THE ISHMAELITE AND KETURAÏTE ARABS-LIFE OF ISAAC-ESAU AND JACOB-THE EDOMITES-JACOB IN PADAN-ARAMHIS RETURN TO CANAAN-AFFAIRS AT SHECHEM-JOURNEY TO THE SOUTH-REMOVAL INTO EGYPT-THE CAPTIVITY-CLOSE OF THE PATRIARCHAL AGE-THE EXODUS-AN EPOCH IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY. OUT of all the nations that sprang from the three sons of Noah, the sacred history, which is still our only positive authority, begins with the story of the Hebrew race. Not that this was the first of the nations in chronological order. It did not even become a nation till four hundred and thirty years after the call of Abraham; and his history furnishes abundant proofs that great cities had already been built, and mighty kingdoms established. The very name of his native place, Ur of the Chaldees, attests that it belonged to the dominions of the great Cushite empire which has already been mentioned in the Book of Genesis, and with which Abraham comes into conflict at a later period. Damascus is already an important city; and, as Abraham journeys to the south, he finds Egypt at a high pitch of wealth and power, to say nothing of the nations of the Canaanites and Philistines. The precedence given to Abraham's call has that moral significance, which forms the true life of history. It is the next event after the confusion of the Babel builders, in which the direct action of God's providence is seen, and the first step in that course of |