maritime and commercial people, and, with their colony established in Carthage, in the north of Africa, exerted a powerful influence in promoting the civilization of the ancient world. The Semites early peopled the Arabian peninsula, and established a state in Ethiopia, as some believe, before Egypt had attained its full development. The Ethiopians established a flourishing commerce on the Red Sea, with the eastern coasts of Africa, and with India, and contributed greatly to the resources of ancient Egypt.
They have always been a religious race, and gave the three great religions, Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity, to the world, as well as some of the most debasing superstitions and forms of idolatry ever known. The larger part of the popu . lation of Asia is still Turanian, and the Semites now occupy about the same area as in prehistoric times; but the Hamites have been overpowered and have lost their clearly distinctive character as a family, unless represented by the negro tribes.
7. 'The third great family, the Aryan, called also the Japhetic, from Japhet, one of the sons of Noah, and from the regions they peopled and made illustrious by their genius and activity, the Indo-European, was the last to leave the birthplace of mankind. The other races were incapable of carrying the fortunes of humanity beyond a certain point, of themselves alone, as the history of Turanian China, Hamitic Egypt and the Semitic Mohammedans and Jews clearly proves. The history of the Aryans shows them to possess inexhaustible mental power and physical stamina, with a vigorous ambition, always dissatisfied with the present, and constantly seeking something better in the future and the distant, that have produced the happiest effect on the destinies of the
8. It would seem that while the Turanians, Hamites, and Semites were taking the lead of the world and building up the empires of prehistoric times, whose mighty ruins have been the wonder of later ages, the Aryans were all united in following peaceful pursuits, which the common features of their
languages indicate were chiefly the care of flocks and herds. They were much farther removed from barbarism than
of the other races when they began their wanderings. Warlike, agricultural and nautical terms, and the names of wild animals are not often found in the common vocabulary; while family relations, domestic animals and their uses, the heavenly bodies in connection with worship and the priestly relation of the father of the family, and terms indicating a considerable cultivation of sensibility and thoughtfulness, imply a purer social and religious condition, and more elevated mental traits, than in the primitive forefathers of the other families. Their language was highly picturesque, and its peculiar terms for natural phenomena are believed by some to have originated the mythological histories of the ancient Greeks and Romans and Teutonic nations. The ancient language used epithets and names, so glowing with personality, that the imaginative descendants of the primitive stock, when their early history was forgotten, believed theiu to contain an account of the origin of things, and the early deeds of gods and heroes; and the genius of the poets clothed the supposed marvels in the immortal dress of fiction which we find in Homer and Hesiod, in Virgil, the Indian Vedas, and the Sagas and Scalds of northern Europe. This, at least, is the conclusion reached by some of the most eminent scholars and philologists, whose study of the formation and growth of languages has thrown so much light on the ante-historical periods. These myths, the germs of which were embodied in their language, embellished by the supposed inspired genius of the poets, formed the literature and theology of the early historic nations, and were received as undisputed truth.
9. The first migration of the Aryan family appears to have occurred through the passes of the Caucasus, northwest to the northern part of Asia Minor and Southern Europe. The Turanian nations, or “barbarians," were everywhere found in advance of them, in a very degraded condition, and the native spirit and ambition of the Aryan people rendered them
the uniform conquerors. Afterward, another migration southward peopled India, and, in the earliest historic times, the part of the family still remaining in the ancient home of the race established the brilliant empire of the Medes and Persians, who extended their sway over all the central and western parts of Asia, broke down the ancient monarchy of Egypt, and, in the height of their power and glory, swept like a tempest into Europe with the purpose of subjugating a few self-governing tribes of their own race dwelling on the shores and among the mountains of the small peninsula of Greece. The failure of the mighty empire in this effort, through the indomitable resolution of a handful of hardy republicans, forms one of the most glorious pages of history. It was a grand era in the development of civilization, and Grecian culture became the inheritance of the world.
THE DIRECTION OF PRE-HISTORIC GROWTH.
1. The three classes of indications on which we rely for a knowledge of the advance of mankind previous to the period when authentic history comes to our aid the researches of geologists among the accidental traces of man's early activities, the ruins of ancient cities, and the study of the growth of language - unite in testifying to an extremely rude, feeble and childish condition of the earliest representatives of the race, and to a progressive improvement in knowledge and capacity, precisely like what occurs in the case of every individual of our kind. A fourth more general observation also confirms this view. This is the obscurity that covers the early ages. Aside from the Bible narrative, a cloud rests on the early history of every people. A long period passes before they begin to reflect, to look around and back toward their origin, and still another of groping thought and study before they are led to record their reflections and experiences. The necessi. ties and habit of social intercourse give rise to language and
gradually mature it; a long period would necessarily pass before the natural aversion to other than desultory labor, the increase of population and the habit of obedience to an authority requiring continued painful toil, would render the massive monuments of some of the earlier peoples possible, and before their attempts at architecture could mature and originate the elaborate ruins which time has not been able to destroy during so many centuries.
2. One of the most striking traits of pre-historic times is the simplicity and awkwardness that characterize childhood. The Chinese language has been remarked upon as showing the extremely infantile cast of mind among the people who formed and retained it to our times. Each word is a sentence, standing by itself originally; the tone and gesture give it much of its signification. It would seem as if its authors had never grown
to the idea of an elaborated sentence. There is an average of eight words, spelled and pronounced exactly alike, for every sound used. There are, it is said, 212 characters pronounced che; 138 pronounced foo; and 1165 which all read e, and each letter is a word, a phrase and a sentence, and may be an adjective, a noun, or a verb, or all three together. The difficulty of expressing shades of meaning, or all that may
be in the thought, where so much must be acquired before expression is possible, has kept the Chinese mind, in many respects, in a state of childhood, though they have preserved a stability of character and institutions nowhere else observed. The primitive mind and habits are maintained as if crystalized. The principle of decay, so universal elsewhere, would seem, by some singular process, banished from a vast nation, as it is in the human body in Egyptian mummies. The same feature is observable in a smaller degree among the Hindoos, and seems to have characterized the ancient Egyptians.
3. Such a habit of fixity among the early races, whose position secured them from disturbance by the more restless tribes, was favorable to the construction of the stupendous monuments which have been the wonder of after
those races have been remarkably exclusive. It was not until nearly four hundred years after the era of authentic history that Egypt was freely open to all the Greeks. These observations apply only to those portions of the human family which were stranded in some quiet nook outside of the current of movement that carried along the most of mankind. Change of place, intercourse, conflict and conquest were the chief early educators. The isolated nations, after exhausting the power of their first impulses, ceased to improve. Their minds, institutions and habits stiffened and petrified. Nor did the families that wandered far from the general centre of movement usually acquire any high degree of development. They were characterized by unsettled habits, not favorable to highly organized institutions.
4. It was around, and westward of, the common centre of the race that a course of steady improvement went on. Here the laws of inheritance and suggestion, the stimulus of constant friction, and the infusion of newer and more enterprising blood worked the freest and developed the elements of a true civilization the soonest. If the legendary history of Greece is not to be trusted in its details, it at least establishes the certainty of active movement and incessant conflict out of which was, at length, evolved a noble, if incomplete, civilization. The Greeks were near enough to the scene of stirring action in Western Asia to be benefited by its influence without having their institutions frequently disturbed and broken up before they had reached any degree of maturity, as was the case with the Assyrians, Persians and Phenicians. They reaped the fruit, without sharing the disasters, of the great surgings back and forward which we find to have been the condition of the Asiatic peoples at the time reliable history begins to observe them. It appears to have been the same in that region (Western Asia) as far back as monument, legend, or science can trace. The fruit of this shock of races and mental activity matured on the spot the greatest and best religious systems the world has ever known, the three greatest