880 the Assyrians swept over the various Semite lands. Loud were the
laments of the Hebrews; terrible the tales of cruelty; deep the scorn
with which the Babylonians submitted to the rude conquerors. We approach
here a clearer historic period; we can trace with plainness the
devastating track of war;[5] we can read the boastful triumph of the
Assyrian chiefs, can watch them step by step as they adopt the culture
and the vices of their new subjects, growing ever more graceful and more
enfeebled, until they too are overthrown by a new and hardier race, the
Persians, an Aryan folk.

[Footnote 5: See _Rise and Fall of Assyria_, page 105.]

Before turning to this last and most prominent family of humankind, let
us look for a moment at the other, darker races, seen vaguely as they
come in contact with the whites. The negroes, set sharply by themselves
in Africa, never seem to have created any progressive civilization of
their own, never seem to have advanced further than we find the wild
tribes in the interior of the country to-day. But the yellow or Turanian
races, the Chinese and Japanese, the Turks and the Tartars, did not
linger so helplessly behind. The Chinese, at least, established a social
world of their own, widely different from that of the whites, in some
respects perhaps superior to it. But the fatal weakness of the yellow
civilization was that it was not ennobling like the Egyptian, not
scientific like the Babylonian, not adventurous and progressive as we
shall find the Aryan.

This, of course, is speaking in general terms. Something somewhat
ennobling there may be in the contemplations of Confucius;[6] but no man
can favorably compare the Chinese character to-day with the European,
whether we regard either intensity of feeling, or variety, range,