animals fit for the purpose, domesticated animals; no single one of which attributes has yet been discovered among beasts. Rudolph Wagner rightly says, that it is illogical to count man in the animal world; for we thus forsake the principle lying at the foundation of all classification of natural objects, which are arranged according to purely immaterial respects, into organic and inorganic, and the first of these again into plants and animals. Holding fast this principle in Natural History, we shall appoint man his place, not according to his mere physical similarities to single animals, but according to the great element and fundamental condition of his life-his spiritual nature. He forms, consequently, a separate division of the first rank in the animated world.

Let us now pass to the proper subject of our essay. There exist among men certain hereditary differences, by which they may be separated into a number of main groups, and these again into smaller divisions. The first are called human races, or stocks; the latter, popular or national stocks; and the subdivisions of these last, national branches. In this way mankind would be constituted of several leading classes, composed, like the great divisions of the animal world, of species and sub-species. But such a systematic classification is impossible, at least for the present; and that for two reasons. In the first place, the affinities of most nations are by no means as yet scientifically investigated; and, secondly, there are transitions in humanity, which make a definite limitation of human and popular races impossible, though, for the sake of system, they have sometimes been disregarded. We will offer a few instances of these transitions, intentionally selected from a race most strikingly marked out from the rest. The Caffres of South Africa have some of the prominent marks of the negro race, such as woolly hair and thick lips; but their foreheads are higher, and their colour passes into a brown. The Hottentots are of a still lighter complexion; their features approach those of the Chinese and other Mongolian people; and their hair, though woolly, like that of the negro, is not so soft, and, instead of uniformly covering the head, grows in separate tufts. The Mandingoes of Senegambia have the colour and hair of the negro, but surpass him in beauty of form and features, and are noted for an intellectual activity, an inquisitiveness, a vigour and industry, that incline one to think them allied to the civilized whites, rather than to the usually gross and sensual negro stocks. Finally, the Fulahs in Senegambia, who also possess a higher degree of intellect, vivacity, and self-respect than is customary with negro tribes, have not a proper black colour, are but partially woolly-haired, and, in structure of body and features, are distinct from the negroes. Yet

neither in Africa nor elsewhere is there a people to which we could suppose them related.

After what has been said, it will occasion no surprise to our readers to be told that there is great diversity of views among the learned concerning the relationships of nations. It will also be easy to see that, for a long time to come, an accurate adjustment, and a consequent rational classification of the kindred nations, must remain impossible. Meantime, the science of Ethnology has been approximating to this result more certainly and rapidly in our days than ever before, aided, on the one hand, by the extensive and careful observations of travellers, for the last forty years, upon the differences among nations, and, on the other, by the advancing study of languages. In the first of these departments, the English, French, and Germans, but especially the English, deserve the greatest praise, as, on the other hand, philology is the pride of the German learned world.

What science has been able to do toward a classification of mankind, so far as it will serve our purpose, shall be given in the following survey.

BLUMENBACH, the first who attempted a really scientific arrangement, looked merely to physical distinctions. He divided mankind into five races: the Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, Malay, and American. Speaking generally, these five races may be said to answer to the five great divisions of the earth, although some of them extend into several of these divisions. Since this classification is frequently mentioned, a more particular account of the individual races becomes requisite.

Under the Caucasian race Blumenbach brought all the Europeans, except the so-called Finnish nations, of which the Magyars and Laplanders are best known, and all the North Africans, as well as the inhabitants of the south-western part of Asia, bounded on the east by the river Obi, the Caspian Sea, and the mouths of the Ganges. The characteristics of this race are, a colour more or less white, red cheeks, and a form of skull and features that makes them the fairest portion of mankind. He gave this race the name of Caucasian, because the Georgians, who belong to it, and pass for the handsomest of all people, dwell at the southern base of the Caucasus, and because he believed the home of the first men to be in that region. The last notion is, however, erroneous; for history does not know a single example of a people of early antiquity, originally native in or about the Caucasus, that has emigrated from there; nor do any national myths indicate anything of the sort. But if, like the old Greeks, we extend the application of the word Caucasus to a mount

ain range on the north-western boundary of India, the designation Caucasian becomes less unfitting, because we thus indicate the tendency of the Indians, the outmost eastern people of this stock, toward Europe, the dwelling-place of its western members, and because the region lying between the two ranges may have been its original seat. The Mongolian race comprises the remaining, or Eastern Asiatics. excepting the Malays, on the peninsula of Malacca, the Finns of Europe, and the Esquimaux of North America. The members of this race have generally a yellowish complexion, straight black hair, flat faces, with cheek-bones projecting laterally, and contracted eye-lids. Its name is taken from one of the nations belonging to it.

The Ethiopian or Negro race includes all the Africans, except those of North Africa. The name Ethiopian was given by the Greeks to the dark-coloured people living in the southernmost parts of the then known world. The usual characters are a dark complexion, curly hair, projecting jaws, thick lips, and flat noses.

The American race comprehends all the Aborigines of America. save the Esquimaux. We understand by the Aborigines of a land those who, so far as history can testify, have always lived in it. The men of this race, also called Indians, have mostly a dull, rusty copper colour, and broad, but not flat faces, marked with prominent features.

The Malay race includes the inhabitants of the Peninsula of Malacca, of the Sunda Isles, of the Moluccas, of the Philippine and Marianne Islands, as well as the New-Hollanders, and the natives of all the islands which with New-Holland form the fifth grand division of the globe. Most of the members of this race speak the Malay, or a cognate language, and hence its name. The physical characteristics are, a brown colour, thick black hair, a broad nose, and large mouth.

Blumenbach held that none of these five races was clearly separated from the rest; but that, by single intermediate stocks, they gradually passed into each other. He maintained that the Caucasian was the main race, which had degenerated on one side into the Mongolian, and on the other into the Ethiopian; and that the American and Malay were the connecting links-the first between the Caucasians and the Mongolians, the latter between the Caucasians and the Negroes.

CUVIER made a new classification, which is generally preferred to that of the German professor, and is more frequently quoted. Cuvier arranged mankind in three races, not recognizing as distinct races the last two of the five just mentioned, which Blumenbach treated as only intermediate members. Cuvier made two important

advances in Ethnology. He divided each race into a number of popular stocks, composed of the nations most closely allied to each other; and, secondly, he founded his division not merely on physical distinctions, but had regard to the intellectual and moral character of people, as displayed in their history, and to the affinities and variations of their languages. His three human races are the Caucasian, or White; the Mongolian, or Yellow; and the Ethiopian, or Negro. The subdivisions of each of the above races we will not here introduce, because they have since been more accurately defined.

Cuvier's Caucasian race, whose original locality he also erroneously considered to be the Caucasus, comprehends the nations of Europe and North Africa, as well as those of Western and Southwestern Asia; that is, besides the Europeans, the Berbers, Moors, Egyptians, Abyssinians, and the other tribes of North Africa; the Arabians, Jews, Phenicians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Georgians, and other dwellers about the Caucasus; the Turkish tribes, the Armenians, Parthians, and Persians. A sufficiently accurate boundary of this race in Asia is described by the river Irtisch, in Siberia, and a line drawn from the Caspian Sea, along the river Oxus to the Himalaya range, and on to the Bay of Bengal. The leading characteristics of this race are the oval form of the face-the hair and complexion are not uniform-and the fact that to it belong those civilized nations who, in all periods of history, have exerted the greatest influence in the world by their extensive dominion.

The Mongolian race includes the Japanese and all the Asiatics living between the eastern boundary of the Caucasians and the ocean, with the exception of the Malays. They are marked by yellow skins, prominent cheek bones, flat faces, small oblique eyes, straight black hair, and a thin beard, and by this peculiarity, that the culture which the most civilized of the Mongolian nations, as the Chinese, have attained to, is not progressive. They are, with slight exceptions, followers of the religion of Buddah or of Fo.

The Ethiopian race occupies the countries of Central and Southern Africa. Its main characters are the black skin, woolly hair, compressed skull, flat nose, projecting jaw bones, thick lips, and the unusually low degree of mental culture.

Cuvier thought that all people not mentioned under one of these three races, either from our want of historical accounts, or from our imperfect knowledge of their physical nature and their languages, could neither be counted as belonging to one of these, nor as forming a race of themselves. The American nations had no physical peculiarities sufficiently definite and universal to mark them as a distinct race; in the blackness of their hair, and in their thinness or want of

beard, they resembled the Mongolian; but the European form of the nose and the large eye brought them nearer to the Caucasian type. Nor in their language was any certain affinity with other stocks discernible. So in regard to the Esquimaux, Lappes, and Samoiedes, of the Arctic countries, Cuvier could not decide whether they belonged to the Caucasian or Mongolian race. It is the same with the Malays and the inhabitants of the fifth division of the globe, of whom Cuvier thinks that the Negritos or Papuas, in New-Guinea, NewBritain, and other islands, and the kindred New-Hollanders, approach nearly to the Negroes, while the rest seem to bear a similarity to each of the other two races.

The following are the most important of the other classifications:

The French naturalist, LACEPEDE, made five human races, differing somewhat from those of Blumenbach and Cuvier, and somewhat differently entitled: The Caucasian, or, as he also termed it, the Arabo-European, answering to Cuvier's of the same name; the Hyperborean, originating from a mingling of the Caucasians and Mongolians, and including the Arctic nations of the earth; namely, the Esquimaux of America, and the Ostiaks, the Samoiedes, and the Lappes; the Mongolian, to which, besides the stocks of Cuvier, he adds all the Malays and all the inhabitants of Oceanica; the Ethiopian and the American. The last two correspond to the races of the same name in Blumenbach's arrangement.

BORY ST. VINCENT, another learned Frenchman, divided men into fifteen classes: the Japetic nations, so named from Japetos, the mythic ancestor of the Greeks, one of the most important people of that group, embracing all the Caucasians of Cuvier, except the two next following: the Hindoos of East India; the Arabians, with those nearest allied to them, as the Jews; the Scythians, who form a part of Cuvier's Mongolians; the Chinese; the Hyperboreans; the Neptunians, or Malays; the Australians, New-Hollanders; the Melanians, Negritos; the Columbians, Indians of North America; the Americans, comprising the remaining American tribes, except the Patagonians; the Ethiopians; the Kafirs, and the Hottentots. It still remains to present the classification of the Englishman, PRICHARD, who has lately treated the subject with extreme particularity, and whose great work, the Natural History of Man, has been translated into German.* This learned investigator, fully believing

* The "Researches into the Physical History of Mankind," the great work of Prichard, is doubtless here intended. For a very interesting and valuable article on Ethnology, based on Prichard's writings, see No. 178 of the Edinburgh Review. -Trans.