body of nations who are distinct from the Indo-European family, by the term Allophylian races, which is of obvious meaning, and can admit of no mistake.

The Allophylian races are spread through all the remotest regions of the old continent, to the northward, eastward, and westward of the Iranian nations, whom they seem everywhere to have preceded, so that they appear, in comparison with the Indo-European colonies, in the light of aboriginal or native inhabitants, vanquished and often driven into remote and mountainous tracts, by more powerful invading tribes. The latter seem to have been everywhere superior to them in mental endowments. Some of the Indo-European nations, indeed, retained or acquired many characteristics of barbarism and ferocity, but with these they all joined undoubted marks of an early intellectual developement, particularly a higher culture of language, as an instrument of thought as well as of human intercourse. If we inquire as to the degree of social improvement which the Iranian nations had attained at the era of their dispersion from their primitive abode, or from the common centre of the whole stock, an investigation of their languages will be our principal guide; but in order that we might, in a satisfactory manner, avail ourselves of this resource, sufficient materials have not yet been collected and arranged. Some general remarks on the subject of this inquiry are all that I shall venture to offer, and these, indeed, I shall lay before my readers merely as conjectures and probable generalizations, rather than as inferences deduced from adequate research. If we compare the grammatical forms and vocabularies of the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Zend, German, Lithuanian, Slavic, and Celtic languages, we discover, besides analogies in the laws of construction or in the mechanism of speech, which is of all marks of affinity the most important, a palpable resemblance in many of those words which represent the ideas of a people in the most simple state of existence. Such are terms expressive of family relations, father, mother, brother, sister, daughter; names for the most striking objects of the material universe; terms distinguishing different parts of the body, as head, feet, eyes, ears; nouns of number up to five, ten, or

twenty; verbs descriptive of the most common sensations and bodily acts, such as eating, drinking, sleeping, seeing, hearing. As no nation was ever found destitute of similar expressions, or was likely to exchange its own supellex for corresponding words in foreign languages, the connexion between the IndoEuropean idioms must be regarded as truly primitive and original. It may be argued that the dialects which correspond in these parts of their vocabulary were originally one speech, the idiom of one people, and that the diversities which exist, belonging as they do to the less essential elements of language, are of later date, and had their origin at a time subsequent to the separation of the race into different tribes. We may carry somewhat further the assertion of affinity between, at least, some languages of the IndoEuropean family. Terms relating to pastoral habits and even to agriculture are common to most of these languages; this includes the names of domestic animals, especially such as constitute the herds and the companions of the pastoral class. But here the resemblance ends. It would appear that the common primitive ancestry of the Indo-European nations were unacquainted with the use of iron and other metals, since the terms by which these are denoted are different in different languages, and must have been acquired subsequently to the era of separation. Nothing, at least, can be more unlike than gold, Xpuoòc and aurum; than silver and argentum ; than oionpos and ferrum.* Names given to the implements of warfare likewise differ in the several vocabularies of these languages, a fact which Niebuhr has observed with respect to the Greek and Latin, but which with perfect truth may be stated more generally, and shown to extend to many of the

Some exceptions occur to this remark, and, perhaps, more instances of resemblance in the names of particular metals might be found on a careful investigation, since it is probable that one nation of the same race may often have made known the names as well as the uses of particular metals to others. Tin, in Greek Kaσoirɛpog, is in Sanskrit kastira; and Ritter has hence conjectured that tin was first brought to the Greeks from India. From this word may be derived the Arabic qasder, now used for pewter, a mixed metal imitating tin. Our English word, tin, and the German, zinn, may be from the Phænician tanak. Ayas in Sanskrit, brass, in Latin aes, affords another example of similar names given to the same metal in two of the principal Indo-European languages.

Iranian idioms.

If from these considerations we might be allowed to estimate the extent of the vocabulary belonging to the original stock of the Indo-European nations previously to their separation into different tribes, we should suppose them to have been nearly on a level in most respects with the great nomadic races, who have in later ages of the world issued from the central regions of Asia, and have invaded the countries inhabited by civilized nations. Perhaps, in general, their state of manners may have resembled the description given by Tacitus of the Germans. It is plain that the use of letters was entirely unknown to them, at least, to those tribes of the race who passed into Europe, and that it was introduced among them in long after ages, by the Phoenicians, who claim this most important invention. But though rude in respect to many of the arts of life, the Indo-European nations appear to have brought with them a much higher degree of mental culture than the Allophylian races possessed, before the Iranian tribes were spread among them. Even the most simple of them had national poetry, and a culture of language and thought altogether surprising, when compared with their external manners and condition, as far as they can be known or properly estimated. They had bards, or scalds, vates, doidol, who, under a divine impulse were supposed to celebrate the history of ancient times, and connect them with revelations of the future, and with a refined and metaphysical system of dogmas, of which it is difficult to imagine the original source. Among these, in the west as well as in the east, the metempsychosis held a conspicuous place, implying faith in an after-life of rewards and punishments, and a moral government of the world. With this was connected, among most, if not all, the Iranian nations, the notion that the material universe had undergone, and was destined to undergo, a repetition of catastrophies by fire and water, and to be renewed in fresh beauty, when a golden age was to commence, destined in its turn to inevitable corruption and decay. The emanation of all beings from the soul of the universe, and their refusion into it, a doctrine which appears to have formed an essential part of this system wherever it was preserved in a tolerably entire state, borders closely on a species of Pan

theism and of Fatalism, and is strongly contrasted with the theology of the Shemite nations, who only of all mankind appear in the early ages to have recognised the existence of an extra-mundane God, and a real maker or originator of the universe. The Iranian system, which was a religion of poetry and philosophy, and which everywhere produced an abundant growth of mythology, was still more strongly contrasted with the superstition of shamanism, connected with a belief in sorcery and spells, and the rude materialism which prevailed among all the Allophylian tribes. This last form of superstition, resembling in many particulars the fetissism of Africa, appears to have differed in different parts of Europe and Asia, among the rude aborigines of which it was once universally spread. It has given way, in most instances, to the influence of more systematic modes of belief, introduced by more polished nations; but Buddhism, which is a form of the IndoEuropean system, has not extinguished in China and Japan the original superstitions of Tao-sse and Sin-mu; nor did Islàm, though early adopted by the whole Turkish race, triumph over all the native superstitions of Siberia. Among all nations of Asia and Europe we discover an order of persons who were venerated as mediators between the invisible powers and their fellow mortals; but the priests, whether Druids, or Brahmans, or Magi of the cultivated nations, were revered as the depositories of ancient sacred lore, of primitive traditions, of the will of the gods expressed of old to the first men, and handed down, either orally in divine poems, or preserved in a sacred literature known only to the initiated: they were the constituted intercessors between weak mortals and the powers which govern the universe, and which they only knew how to approach by ordained rites. In most instances they were an hereditary caste, into which none were admissible who were aliens to the sacred race. Far different were the twice-born sages of the Hindoos, who sprang from the head of Brahma, to govern the multitude that issued from his legs and feet, from the sorcerers or shamans of the northern worshippers of fetisses, who by horrible distortions, cries, and yells, by cutting themselves with knives, by whirling and swooning, assumed the appearance

of something preternatural and portentous, and impressed the multitude with a notion that they were possessed by demons. Of this latter description were the wizards of the old Finnish races, whose successors, the sorcerers and witches of Lappland, sell wind to English mariners. Such were the angekoks of the Esquimaux, discovered by the missionaries to Greenland; and such are the shamans of all the eastern and northern countries of Asia, whither neither Buddhism nor Islàm have yet penetrated. By such traits as these, which display more fully and certainly than external manners and the modes of sustaining life the culture or rudeness of the mind, the barbaric tribes, dispersed over all the extreme parts of the ancient continent, are distinguished from the cultivated nations of Upper Asia, and from the European races allied to them in language and descent.

Paragraph 5.-Of the different Groupes of Nations comprehended among the Allophylian Races.

The ethnology of the Allophylian races is involved in greater obscurity than that of the tribes which belong to the Indo-European family. The sources of information respecting them are more scanty and difficult of access, and in many instances remain yet unexplored. We have, however, sufficient knowledge to convince us that many of these nations are referrible to particular stems, the branches of which are spread through remote regions. An attentive research has often discovered traces of connexion between tribes of people who must have been, from very ancient times, separated from each other by great distances of space; and these traces are sometimes so definite, as to leave no doubt that they owe their existence to affinity and sameness of origin. Such phenomena have been recognised among rude nations, scattered through immense spaces, in the north and east of Asia, and in tribes inhabiting the great central steppes to the southward of the Altaic chain. Few attempts have been made to elucidate, by an extensive comparison of languages, the relations of these dispersed races, though many persons have studied the history of particular groupes. Rudiger, Dobrow