brought to bear on all these grave points the various speculations
involved in the distinction of races. He showed how race in perfection
is produced, up to a certain point, by admixture; how all mixed races
have been the most intelligent; how, in proportion as local circumstance
and religious faith permitted the early fusion of different tribes,
races improved and quickened into the refinements of civilization. He
tracked the progress and dispersion of the Hellenes from their mythical
cradle in Thessaly, and showed how those who settled near the sea-
shores, and were compelled into commerce and intercourse with strangers,
gave to Greece her marvellous accomplishments in arts and letters,--the
flowers of the ancient world. How others, like the Spartans; dwelling
evermore in a camp, on guard against their neighbors, and rigidly
preserving their Dorian purity of extraction, contributed neither
artists, nor poets, nor philosophers to the golden treasure-house of
mind. He took the old race of the Celts, Cimry, or Cimmerians. He
compared the Celt who, as in Wales, the Scotch Highlands, in Bretagne,
and in uncomprehended Ireland, retains his old characteristics and
purity of breed, with the Celt whose blood, mixed by a thousand
channels, dictates from Paris the manners and revolutions of the world.
He compared the Norman, in his ancient Scandinavian home, with that
wonder of intelligence and chivalry into which he grew, fused
imperceptibly with the Frank, the Goth, and the Anglo-Saxon. He
compared the Saxon, stationary in the land of Horsa, with the colonist
and civilizes of the globe as he becomes when he knows not through what
channels--French, Flemish, Danish, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish--he draws
his sanguine blood. And out from all these speculations, to which I do
such hurried and scanty justice, he drew the blessed truth, that carries
hope to the land of the Caffre, the but of the Bushman,--that there is
nothing in the flattened skull and the ebon aspect that rejects God's
law, improvement; that by the same principle which raises the dog, the