Chapter 14

THE HINDOO TRIMURTI.

But in the wide nostril of Brahma we also perceive the Cogitative form of Nose, so necessary to indicate the wisdom of Brahma, “the Creator:” who, though now he rests, having consigned the inferior office of Preservation to Vishnu, was the first emanation from the supreme Brahmè, and by whom and from whom all creation proceeded. With the exception of the head in this Trimurti, Brahma has no idolatrous representations, for it is said in the Vedas, “Of Him whose glory is so great, there is no image. He is the incomprehensible Being which illumines all, delights all, and whence all proceed.”

Sir William Jones mentions, in one of his discourses published in the Asiatic Researches, the existence of a small nation in India which appears distinct from theHindoo race. The people comprising it he describes as shrewd, clever tradesmen, enterprising merchants, acute money-lenders, and notorious in India for their aptitude for commerce. Their countenances, he adds, are what are called Jewish, and hence he concludes that they constitute a portion of Jews, who either at the dispersion of the Ten Tribes, or at some other very early period, settled in India. It is surprising that the acute President should have so hastily jumped to such a conclusion from the foregoing premises; for he adds a fact which seems most decidedly to negative it. This people, he tells us, have not the slightest trace of any Jewish traditions, belief, or customs among them. Now it is a familiar fact that the Jews, wherever dispersed, or however long separated from their brethren, have invariably retained a very large proportion of the inspired precepts revealed to regulate their religious, moral, and social conduct; and it must demand the most precise and indisputable evidence to justify the classing any people as Jews, who have lost all traces of the manners and customs of that singular nation.

For these reasons we do not hesitate to say that the two facts on which Sir W. Jones founded his hasty hypothesis, viz. the commercial character and the Jewish physiognomy of this Asiatic tribe, afford by their coincidence only a remarkable and curious confirmation of our Nasological theory, and as such, we here gladly insert it.

We have said that the Jewish Nose should more properly be called the Syrian Nose; but have reserved, until this place, some of the corroborative illustrations.

The Syrian Arabs, as descendants of Abraham, through the wild son of Hagar, inherit the physical, and many of the metaphysical, features of the Hebrew nation.

Destined, by the promise of God, to become a great nation, the Arabs founded one of the most extensive kingdoms of the earth, and for many centuries swayed an empire more extensive than that of Rome in her fullest prosperity. For twelve hundred years, a larger proportion of the inhabitants of the earth have devoutly obeyed the precepts of the Arabian prophet, than have knelt at the altar of any other individual creed; and, though Mahometanism is perhaps doomed to fall before Christianity, itcannot be regarded in any other light than as a minor dispensation, and an inferior blessing conferred by Providence on a very large proportion of His people.

Christians who yet recognize the finger of God in every sublunary affair, would shrink with horror if asked to recognize in Mahometanism a Providential dispensation; yet, whether we regard it as a religion which annihilated the grossest idolatries, abolished human sacrifices, exterminated the vilest obscenities, and substituted a nearly spiritual worship of One God, over the largest and fairest portion of the earth,—or as the religion of a nation, whose ancestor God blessed, and promised to “make a great nation,” and “to multiply exceedingly, that it should not be numbered for multitude;” and who, in token thereof, received the seal of circumcision—to this day retained, as among the Jews—it is difficult not to see in it the finger of God, or to deny that the pseudo-prophet of the sons of Ishmael was an unconscious instrument for good in His hands.

But this is a topic not needful for us here to enter fully upon. It is more to our purpose to remark upon the psychonomic features of the Arabs, while in the zenith of their promised glory as a nation;[51]when the Caliphs of the East ruled as Priest and Potentate over more than two-thirds of the known globe.

During this glorious period of their power, the Arab character shone out uncontrolled in its true features, and exhibited itself as it had never done before, nor since.

True to its parentage, but unshackled by the stringent laws and anti-social ceremonies of its more favoured brother, it rioted in all those tastes and pursuits which the latter delighted in, but was restrained from; and became celebrated for a splendour which was rivalled by that of Solomon alone, and a traffic which far outvied that of allcontemporaries or predecessors—except, perhaps, the cognate nation—the Phœnicians.

Rich in barbaric pearls and gold, and boasting all the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind, the court of the Caliphs verified the visions of the “Arabian Nights;” which, if true, were true here only. All the gauds and trinkets, the golden palaces, the jewelled walls, the glittering roofs, in which the other branch[52]of the Hebrew nation displayed their highest ideas of magnificence, shone resplendent in the halls of the Caliphs.

But as to the boasted literature of the Arabs, it resolves itself into an ardent pursuit of physical science—astronomy, chemistry, and the mechanical arts, for nearly all the more important of which we are indebted to the Arabs; not, however, as inventors, but as carriers, like the Phœnicians. In the higher departments of literature, the Arabs made no progress. Metaphysical disquisitions and intellectual pursuits were repugnant to their tastes, which rather delighted in the physics of Aristotle than the metaphysics of Plato.

Nor were they less true to their nasal development in their success and skill in commercial pursuits. The commerce of Arabia, for several centuries, encircled the whole known world. From the frigid shores of Scandinavia, from the torrid sands of Africa, from silken Cathay, from jewelled Ceylon, from vine-clad Europe, from spicy Araby, flowed the rich streams of produce. The amber of the north was exchanged for the gold of the south; the wines of Spain for the silks of China; the pearls of Ceylon for the slaves and gold-dust of Africa; and a commerce now excelled only by that of England, carried arts and literature from one end of the Old World to the other, and was mainly instrumental in raising the more highly-organized nations of Europe from barbarism to a physical and intellectual splendour hitherto unknown.

But from this glorious reality, the Arab has sunk into a wretched, irretrievable lethargy. Like the Jew, he has been weighed in the balance and found wanting; the cupof promise has been held to his lips, and he has refused, or polluted the blessed draught. They have been called, but would not come, they would have been gathered together as tender chickens under the wings of the hen, but they would not; and “behold, their house is left unto them desolate.”

Neither Arab nor Jew shall ever again revive, till they join with the whole earth in one universal cry, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!”

It has been said that Christian intolerance has driven the Jew into the mart, and sunk his soul in barter. But this is not true—Commerce and money-getting are the psychonomic features of both the Hebrew races. The Israelitish branch is vehemently charged with its usury and extortion, by all its prophets. The severe laws which Moses made against usury shew the character of the people for whom they were necessary; yet those laws were ineffectual to check this inherent vice. Ezekiel (ch. xxii. 12) exclaims, “Thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbours by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God;” so all the prophets.

The Arab and the Jew are both now equally sunk in the same degradation, (Heu! quantum mutati!) and both exhibit, through this degradation, their love of gold, though in a different manner. The Arab still haunting his native soil, from which legitimate commerce is almost excluded, betrays his ruling passion in extortion from travellers, in skilful chicanery in horse-dealing—the only commerce left to him—or in impudent incessant demands on strangers forbacsheesh.

All travellers agree, that when the Arab, degraded as he is, has an opportunity, there is no shrewder or more skilful bargain-maker, nor any one more competent to extract by ingenious chaffering, the full equivalent for his services. He has been designated by fleeced and angry travellers—little thinking how near the mark they were—the Jew of the desert. The modern Jew, driven from the land of his birth into a wider sphere, exercises his commercial propensities in similar pursuits, and under every clime; and amidst every race, out-manœuvres and surpasses his less shrewd antagonist.

Other Asiatic nations might seem to call for observation; but so little is known of their mental characteristics, that it would be improper to endeavour to substantiate our cause by them.

It is unnecessary to do more than remind the reader of the low development of the Negro mind and his miserable nasal conformation—they are worthy of each other. However humane may be the attempts to elevate the Negro, it can never be done till his Nose is more elongated; but as its present form has subsisted without alteration for three or four thousand years, there does not seem much hope of its being improved now. The Negro race, as old as the earliest Egyptian sculptures, has never risen to an equality with any of the other races; and, though we would not willingly condemn any nation to hopeless degradation, yet the history of the Pastwillreveal somewhat of the secrets of the Future, and he is a fool who cannot, and a coward who dare not, read them.

As among individuals, so among nations there are orders and degrees of mind, and it is only the blind who cannot see that the equality of the one is as wild a dream as the equality of the other.

No well-informed writer, however warm his sympathies towards the Negro race as his relation by the same “blood of which God made all the dwellers upon earth,” has anticipated a destiny for it equal to that of the Caucasian or elliptical-headed and aquiline-nosed races. Channing, the most enthusiastic friend of the blacks, in all the fervour of his ardent mind and vivid imagination, attributes to them a capacity only for the milder graces of Christianity, and accords to them a destiny precisely such as is indicated by their nasal formation when elevated and sanctified by religion. “I should expect,” he says, “from the African race, if civilized, less energy, less courage, less intellectual originality, than in ours; but more amiableness, tranquillity, gentleness, and content. They might not rise to an equality in outward condition, but would probably be a much happier race.” Essentially a feminine character is that which he assigns the negro; a character very loveable, notwithstanding the deformity of its facial indicator.

In the new Islands of the Pacific, we behold a constantsuccession of new worlds emerging from the deep by means of the same process which, in the pre-Adamite world, formed and elevated the islands and continents of the northern hemisphere. Minute polypi are secreting from the waters, and fixing on the summits of submarine volcanoes the solid and durable limestone which now forms their protection from the waves, and which will hereafter form the foundations on which accumulated detritus will heap up fertile soils and habitable lands.[53]Earthquakes are continually pushing up these horizontal surfaces, and breaking them up into mountains which, arresting the clouds in their progress, draw down into the valleys and plains the fertilizing rain. This smooths down the asperities of the earthquake-broken surface, and softens and harmonizes into that sweet variety which gives birth to

“The pleasure situate in hill and dale.”

To people these new lands, Nature has branched off from the old stock, new races of men of various degrees of physical development and mental endowments. While those nearest the old continent of Asia, and therefore nearest to the old blood, are of the lowest possible mental and physical organization, little elevated above the low-class animals—the kangaroo and the ornithorynchus[54]—of the Australian plains, those at a greater distance—the New Zealander and the Otaheitan—exhibit a development which may vie with that of the Caucasian nations: and which has proved its equality by not sinking before them,but maintaining against Saxon invaders equal rights and equal privileges.

We have a striking instance of this before us at the present time. The British Legislature having, in ignorance of the determined character and clever good sense of the New Zealanders, endeavoured to force upon them a Constitution which deprived them of legislative privileges equal with those of the colonists, and which gave to the latter the power of taxing the former without their consent, the natives have resisted the injustice so firmly, but hitherto peaceably, that the Governor, Sir George Grey, has been compelled to suspend this so-called Constitution, lest itshould foment a war of the most deadly character. It is worthy of observation that the injustice attempted to be done this shrewd and spirited people, is not one of an evident physical character, such as any savage can appreciate, but one of a purely theoretical and political nature, the importance of which is even yet hardly sufficiently understood and appreciated in any country besides England. Sir George Grey writes to the Home Government as follows:

“By the introduction of the proposed Constitution into the provinces of New Zealand, her Majesty’s Ministers would not confer, as it was intended, upon her subjects the blessings of self-government, but would be giving power to a small minority (the colonists). She would not be giving to her subjects the right to manage their affairs as they might think proper, but would be giving to a smallminority a power to raise taxes from the great majority(the aborigines). There was no reason to think that the majority of the aboriginal inhabitants would be satisfied with the rule of the minority; while there are many reasons for believing that they would resist to the uttermost. They were people ofstrong natural sense and ability, but by nature jealous and suspicious. Many of them were ownersof vessels, horses, and cattle, and had considerable sums of money at their disposal,and there was no people he was acquainted with less likely to sit down quietly under what they might regard as an injustice.”

“For these and other reasons, the Governor announced that he should not proclaim the constitution before receiving fresh instructions from the Colonial Office.

“The tone of the most trustworthy correspondence from New Zealand, proves that this exercise of independent authority on the part of Governor Grey has saved the colony from disastrous consequences. Ministers acknowledge his superior competency to judge in a matter of this kind, and a bill has accordingly been introduced into the House of Commons by Mr. Labouchere, ‘for suspending, during a limited time (viz., for five years), the operation of part of the Act for making further provision for the government of the New Zealand Islands.’”[55]

Thus has this noble people, with a strong natural sense and ability not hitherto supposed to belong innately to “savages,” opposed more successfully the first step in tyranny—the power of unrepresented taxation—than any other nation (except the Saxon), which has ever existed, civilized or uncivilized.

This has been done within twenty years after their actual beneficial contact with civilization; but it was more than six hundred years after the Norman conquest, before the Saxon roused himself to enforce the same right of self-taxation. There could be but one better evidence than this of the high-class mind of this people; and it has furnished this one better, and best, evidence—its speedy and conscientious reception of Christianity; for “in no country, similarly circumstanced, has the Gospel made such rapid progress, since the days of the Apostles.”[56]

While for several centuries missionaries of every denomination have laboured in Asia in vain, no sooner was Christianity efficiently made known to the New Zealanders, than, catching at once with a remarkable aptitude its leading characteristics, and appreciating immediately its beneficent doctrines, they accepted it; and now, togetherwith other Polynesian islands, New Zealand affords the proudest conquest and the richest harvest of the soldier of Christ.

Yet, apparently, for no nation could Christianity be less adapted, and no nation could be expected to afford less hope of speedy conversion. The pagan New Zealander was a fierce, blood-thirsty monster, spending his whole life, and finding all his pleasures, in the most savage warfare. Not content with slaying his enemies in combat, he sat down afterwards, with a joyous enthusiasm worthy of a fiend, to make a feast on their carcasses. Human sacrifices stained his altars, and hideously deformed images pourtrayed his debased notions of a God.

On the other hand, the peaceable and mild Hindoos, whose religion forbids bloody sacrifices of any kind, and enjoins the careful preservation of the spirit of life, even in the meanest forms; whose singular traditions of the incarnate Chreeshna seem to point distinctly to a Messiah, and whose remarkable Trimurti, “three in one, and one in three,” seems to open a way to the facile reception of the mysterious doctrine of a Trinity in Unity, have never, as a nation, a province, or even a small village, embraced Christianity.[57]China, which has its similar traditions, whose sages have taught that “The true Holy One is to be found in the West,” and that “Eternal reason (λόγος) produced One, One produced Two, Two produced Three, andThreeproduced all things,” and whose calm stoicism and severe morality are so accordant with the external symptoms of a Christian mind, has hardly furnished a single convert, and apparently feels no curiosity about the religion of the Fanqui (white devils).

If history is the past teaching lessons to the future, surely our Missionary Societies might take a lesson from these facts, and withdraw their exertions from so hopelessa field as Asia, and expend them on the hopeful soil of Polynesia. Surely if the great Apostle of the Gentiles, who was specially appointed to bring into the fold of Christ “all nations,” was forbidden to preach the Word to the effete nations of Asia, it is not given to his successors to contravene the inspired mandate.

Other injunctions of Scripture to the apostolic Church are rightly interpreted as applicable, and to be obeyed by the Church in all future ages; and it is a strange inconsistency, arising from a too warm and enthusiastic desire to promote the kingdom of Christ, fruitlessly to strive, in this instance, against the mandate of the Holy Spirit.

Thus much have we said, to contrast the New Zealand mind with the Hindoo and the Chinese, because the same contrast is manifest in their respective physiognomies.

NEW ZEALANDER.

Compare the bold energetic Roman Nose, the manly and commanding profile of the New Zealander, with the soft and rounded features of the Hindoo, and the flat monotonous surface of the Chinese visage. You perceive at a glance that the first is the face of a man of strong, straight-forward, common sense, and intense energy. He may not be an acute and subtle reasoner; but he catches at once the leading points of a subject, instantly decides, and instantly acts upon his decision.

While the two latter remain in imperturbable absorption, and while the subtle “Greek” would be thinking too precisely on the event,

“A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom,And ever three parts coward,”

“A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom,

And ever three parts coward,”

the “Roman” has been, and seen, and conquered. He is come back, at home, resting after his successful toil; while the “Snub” is thinking about getting out of bed, and the “Greek” is making up his mind whether it is “worth while” to go out.

Thus we have, from divers sources, brought together, briefly and succinctly, a few of the universal proofs which establish Nasology as a science. From individuals and from nations we have gathered the basis of our nasological laws; and we trust we have produced conviction in some minds that “the Nose is an index to Character;” if not, we shall not say to the reader, as phrenologists do to their incredulous auditors, that it arises from his defective organization, but rather attribute it to our own defective mode of argumentation; for we shall not willingly admit the erroneousness of a system which has been built up upon many years of personal observation both among the dead and among the living.

THE END.

1.It would be rather amusing, if it were not a melancholy sign of human perverseness, to sum up all the hypotheses which have been at their first promulgation pronounced impious and heretical. The denial of the approaching End of the World in any century after Christ; the Copernican System; Inoculation and Vaccination for the Small-pox; the change of the Style of the year; Pecuniary Usufruct; Geology; Phrenology; Railways; Aërostation; the Census; Mesmerism, &c. &c., would be included in the list of either existing or defunct heresies.

2. We shall endeavour to speak of Mind in popular phraseology, instead of in the obscure terms in which metaphysicians envelope their ignorance of mental phenomena.

3. See Combe’s Phrenology;passim.

4. See the woodcut (after a gem in the Florentine Museum) on the Title-page.

5. The Platonic theory that beauty of form generally indicates beauty of mind, is finely condensed by Spenser into a single line:“All that is good is beautiful and fair.”A HYMN OF HEAVENLY BEAUTY.And again“All that fair is, is by nature good;That is a sign to know the gentle blood.”—IBID.Wordsworth would also appear to be a Platonist:“For passions linked to forms so fairAnd stately, needs must have their shareOf noble sentiment.”—RUTH.

5. The Platonic theory that beauty of form generally indicates beauty of mind, is finely condensed by Spenser into a single line:

“All that is good is beautiful and fair.”A HYMN OF HEAVENLY BEAUTY.

“All that is good is beautiful and fair.”

A HYMN OF HEAVENLY BEAUTY.

And again

“All that fair is, is by nature good;That is a sign to know the gentle blood.”—IBID.

“All that fair is, is by nature good;

That is a sign to know the gentle blood.”—IBID.

Wordsworth would also appear to be a Platonist:

“For passions linked to forms so fairAnd stately, needs must have their shareOf noble sentiment.”—RUTH.

“For passions linked to forms so fair

And stately, needs must have their share

Of noble sentiment.”—RUTH.

6. A Nose should never be judged of in profile only; but should be examined also in front to see whether it partakes of Class III.

7. Thus Phrenologists rightly urge that negative qualities require no organ. Hate is only the absence of Benevolence; dislike to children, a defective Philoprogenitiveness.

8. Hooke’s Rom. Hist. b. vi, c. i.

9. We write thus reservedly, because there are some well-attested recent instances of cannibalism in Ireland. The following anecdote is likewise narrated by Leyden. “Reiterated complaints having been made to James I. of Scotland, of the cruelties of the Sheriff of Mearns, James exclaimed, ‘Sorra’ gin the Shirra’ were sodden, an’ supp’d in broo’.’ Thereupon four Lairds decoyed the Sheriff to the top of the hill of Garrock, and having prepared a fire and a boiling cauldron, they plunged the unlucky man into the latter. After he wassoddenfor a sufficient time, the savages fulfilled to the letter the King’s hasty exclamation bysupping the shirra’-broo!” If the subject were more agreeable to dwell upon, it would be easy to furnish many other well-attested instances of the slaking of hunger and the thirst of revenge by a repast of human flesh.

10. Pict. Hist. of England.

11. The indications of I being so decidedly opposed to those of V and VI it seems almost impossible for them to be associated.

12. The class placed first in these compounds is that which predominates.

13. Gibbon.

14. Roscoe’s Life of L. de’ Medici, chap. ix.

15. See Hone’s description of one performed in 1815 before several crowned heads of Europe for three successive days;Hone on the Mysteries. See alsoWilhelm Meister, vol. 1.

16. In Germany about 1750, and in England about 1550, the vernacular first began to supersede the Latin in philosophical and literary works.

17. Asser’s Life of Alfred.

18. Life of Raleigh, 6 Port. Gal. p. 10.

19. Colin Clout.

20. If Napoleon was an imitator of Alexander, it was only another point of identity between them; for Alexander was an imitator of Bacchus.

21. It is narrated of Napoleon that he was a practical Nasologist, and influenced in his choice of men by the size of their Noses. “Give me,” said he, “a man with a good allowance of Nose. Strange as it may appear, when I want any good headwork done, I choose a man—provided his education has been suitable—with a long Nose.”

22. D’Aubigné’s History of the Reformation, B. I.

23. The physiognomy of M. Ledru-Rollin, the Communist leader, is said, by an eye-witness, to be “without one redeeming quality—insolent, conceited, reckless, headstrong, cruel.”

24. We trust no one will misunderstand these observations, but give us credit for making them sincerely and with all reverence; firmly convinced as we are, that if the system is true, itmust, like all other sciences, furnish its quota of proofs of design in the universe.

25. The use of this word would often save the quibble, whether a system is entitled to be called a science, or only a theory or hypothesis. Thus both the advocates and the opponents of phrenology or geology might agree to call them noögenisms. For this reason we apply the word here to geology, which some persons assert to be more than a mere hypothesis, while others deny its claim to be called a science. At present we claim for Nasology no higher title than that of a mental deduction from facts or noögenism.

26.Longum, difficile est deponere amorem.

27. Nov. Org., Sec. VII.

28. How different is the language of the disciple from that of the master! Bacon himself says, “Read not to contradict nor to believe (i. e.for facts), but toweigh and consider.”

29. Explanations, 2nd Edit. p. 78.

30. Nov. Organ.

31. Ibid. Pt. 1, Sect. 7.

32. Historical and Critical Essays, vol. ii. The reader who wishes to form an estimate of the sordid views of the utilitarian school, had better peruse the whole of Macaulay’s Essay on Bacon.

33. Essays, vol. ii. p. 386–403.

34. Filum Labyrinthi.

35. New Atlantis.

36. Lucretius. Rerum Natura. Bacon would seem to have had this passage again in his mind, when he described Plato as “a man of a sublime genius,who took a view of everything as from a high rock.”—De Augmentis, sec. 5.

37. Essay on Truth.

38. Filum Labyrinthi, Part 1.

39. Earthly and heavenly are not here used in the New Testament sense, for sinful and holy, but in the Old Testament sense; earthly, for things pertaining to the body formed of the dust of the ground, and heavenly, for things pertaining to the mind, the breath of God.

40. Macaulay’s Essay on Bacon, vol. ii., p. 426.

41.i. e.Post Christum.

42. This head enables us to point out a characteristic difference between the convexity of the Jewish Nose and the Roman. The convexity of the former commences at the eyes, and if it afterwards aquilines, the Nose isIIVorIVIaccording as I. or IV. prevails. The convexity of the Roman Nose is confined to thecentreof the Nose, and occasions its aquilineness.

43. Ephes. v. 22–24.

44. “In 1846, which was a year of larger emigration than any that preceded, it amounted to 129,851. But in the year 1847, the emigration extended to no less than 258,270 persons, almost the whole of them being Irish emigrants to North America. It is scarcely necessary to observe, that history records no single transportation at all to compare with this. The migrations of classical antiquity were only the slow oozings of infant tribes from one thinly-peopled district into another rather less peopled, or rather more fertile. In actual figures, the irruptions from the north into southern Europe were never at one time more immense.“The Government only refrained from assisting this tremendous emigration at the urgent demand of the land-owners, because it was going on as fast as possible without its aid. Bad legislation had driven the Celt to the ocean, and Saxon ingenuity had furnished him a boat to cross it. Famine and pestilence were at his heels. It was unnecessary to do more. What drowning wretch will not catch at a straw? What patient idiot not fly from misery and death? Yet how monstrous to call such flight—‘thesauve qui peutof a panic-stricken army’ spontaneous!“It was theunavoidablemisfortune of this emigration to beentirely spontaneous. The cry was—‘Sauve qui peut!’ To send out more emigrants at the public expense, or to promise assistance to all who should emigrate, would only have been adding fuel to the fire, or like attempting to expedite the movement of a crowd locked in a narrow passage, by applying fresh numbers and pressure to its rear. A miserable necessity dictated that, as a general rule, emigration should be allowed to retain its spontaneous, unassisted character. * * * The fever,it is a painful satisfaction to reflect, raged with equal force in all the British vessels, whether well or ill-provisioned and appointed. Fearful, too, as the loss of life was, both at sea and on landing,it was not greater than was reasonably to be expectedfrom the mortality which prevailed, under circumstances rather less unfavourable for health, in the workhouses and other accumulations of Irish at home.”—Times, Jan. 1848.History, in its blackest pages, records nothing more horrible than the miseries of the passage; yet while we are maudlin over the horrors of the slave-trade, we “reflect, with a painful satisfaction, and reasonably expect” the more dreadful sufferings of our fellow-citizens. The slave-dealer—before the Abolition made it necessary to stow three cargoes in one ship—calculated to land at their destination four-fifths of his cargo; and it was thought sufficiently shocking that 1 in 5 died on the passage. But the mortality on board the Irish emigrant-ships was greater. Many vessels, from their rotten state, perished altogether, with from 200 to 300 passengers. This rarely happens with a slaver, as the vessels are necessarily of the very best construction. But, of those who escaped shipwreck, 1 in 3, and 1 in 4 died on the passage from fever, and one half the remainder suffered from disease. The “Laren” from Sligo sailed with 440 passengers—108 died and 150 were sick. The “Virginius” sailed with 496 passengers—158 died, 186 were sick, and the remainder landed feeble and tottering. It could hardly be otherwise, when vessels built to pack 200 emigrants sailed with twice that number; so that they are described to be worse than the blackhole of Calcutta. And this was the emigration which the British parliament—which laboured to put down the slave-trade—declared itself willing to encourage, had it been necessary, from any backwardness in the wretched Celts, to avail themselves of it, and which a British Minister coolly declared it would have been inhuman and unjust to interfere with.

“The Government only refrained from assisting this tremendous emigration at the urgent demand of the land-owners, because it was going on as fast as possible without its aid. Bad legislation had driven the Celt to the ocean, and Saxon ingenuity had furnished him a boat to cross it. Famine and pestilence were at his heels. It was unnecessary to do more. What drowning wretch will not catch at a straw? What patient idiot not fly from misery and death? Yet how monstrous to call such flight—‘thesauve qui peutof a panic-stricken army’ spontaneous!

“It was theunavoidablemisfortune of this emigration to beentirely spontaneous. The cry was—‘Sauve qui peut!’ To send out more emigrants at the public expense, or to promise assistance to all who should emigrate, would only have been adding fuel to the fire, or like attempting to expedite the movement of a crowd locked in a narrow passage, by applying fresh numbers and pressure to its rear. A miserable necessity dictated that, as a general rule, emigration should be allowed to retain its spontaneous, unassisted character. * * * The fever,it is a painful satisfaction to reflect, raged with equal force in all the British vessels, whether well or ill-provisioned and appointed. Fearful, too, as the loss of life was, both at sea and on landing,it was not greater than was reasonably to be expectedfrom the mortality which prevailed, under circumstances rather less unfavourable for health, in the workhouses and other accumulations of Irish at home.”—Times, Jan. 1848.

History, in its blackest pages, records nothing more horrible than the miseries of the passage; yet while we are maudlin over the horrors of the slave-trade, we “reflect, with a painful satisfaction, and reasonably expect” the more dreadful sufferings of our fellow-citizens. The slave-dealer—before the Abolition made it necessary to stow three cargoes in one ship—calculated to land at their destination four-fifths of his cargo; and it was thought sufficiently shocking that 1 in 5 died on the passage. But the mortality on board the Irish emigrant-ships was greater. Many vessels, from their rotten state, perished altogether, with from 200 to 300 passengers. This rarely happens with a slaver, as the vessels are necessarily of the very best construction. But, of those who escaped shipwreck, 1 in 3, and 1 in 4 died on the passage from fever, and one half the remainder suffered from disease. The “Laren” from Sligo sailed with 440 passengers—108 died and 150 were sick. The “Virginius” sailed with 496 passengers—158 died, 186 were sick, and the remainder landed feeble and tottering. It could hardly be otherwise, when vessels built to pack 200 emigrants sailed with twice that number; so that they are described to be worse than the blackhole of Calcutta. And this was the emigration which the British parliament—which laboured to put down the slave-trade—declared itself willing to encourage, had it been necessary, from any backwardness in the wretched Celts, to avail themselves of it, and which a British Minister coolly declared it would have been inhuman and unjust to interfere with.

45. “Territa quæsitis ostendit terga Britannis.”—Lucan.

46. Edinburgh Review, No. 178, p. 443, Oct. 1848.

47. Schnitzler’s ‘Russia under Alexander and Nicholas.’

48. Humboldt’s Cosmos, p. 411.

49. Acts, ch. xvi.

50. That is, westerly from the country last civilized or Christianized.

51. The repugnance of Christian commentators to allow any good in Mahometanism, has caused them to apply the promises of national glory made to Ishmael, to the petty chieftainship and desert supremacy of the Arab tribes during the centuries antecedent to Christ, though it is obvious that they were not then more powerful as “a nation” than they are now, and that to no period of their history but to that of the Saracenic Caliphates can the fulfilment be justly accorded.

52. The Hebrews consider themselves to be so named from Heber, an ancestor of Abraham (Gen. xi. 15). The descendants of Ishmael are therefore equally entitled to the name.

53. “The prodigious extent of the combined and unintermitting labours of these little world-architects must be witnessed in order to be adequately conceived or realized. They have built up 400 miles of barrier-reef on the shores of Caledonia; and on the north-east coast of Australia their labours extend for 1000 miles in length; averaging a quarter of a mile in breadth, and one hundred and fifty feet in depth. The geologist, in contemplating these stupendous operations, learns to appreciate the circumstances by which were deposited, in ancient times, those mountain-masses of limestone, for the most part coralline, which abound in many parts of our native island.”—Ansted’s Ancient World, p. 32.

54. Zoologists class the Marsupiala as the very lowest form of Mammalia, and but little removed above the cold-blooded Reptilia. They are a connecting link between those two great classes of Vertebrata. The Ornithorynchus is an animal of still lower organization. The whole fauna and flora of Australia indicate a newly-formed land, and are analogous to those of the Poilitic and New Red Sandstone ages of the Northern Hemisphere; which in like manner succeeded Coralline Limestones, and in which small islands began to be united into large islands and quasi-continents.

55. Leeds Mercury, Jan. 1848.

56. Church Missionary Report, 1848.

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