dinary man, in calling Colombian the species with which he put Europeans on terms of communication. We might have been able to give a softer termination for such a name; but we wished to avoid the confusion which might probably result from it, as a rising republic, calling itself Colombia, has paid to one of the greatest, and most wonderful geniuses, the tribute of gratitude, denied to him by his ungrateful country.

The Colombic species, probably rising from the roots of the Aleghany and Apalachian mountains, peopled towards the north, the vast basin of the river St. Lawrence, as far as, or farther, than the forty-fifth degree of north latitude. Passing from the Floridas, and from isle to isle, in the south, they occupied the eastern borders of the regions of Mexico, the Antilles, and what is called Terra Firma, with the Guianas, from the territory of Cumana, even under the line, always on a parallel with the coasts from which they were driven from day to day by Europeans. The Canadians, numerous small tribes who have been gradually exterminated by the admirable social state of North America, the natives of Jucatan and Honduras, the Caribbeans, and the Galibis, belong to this species.

To know whence and when these people could have penetrated into the countries in which Europeans have found them, has been much discussed-even those who wished to acknowledge them as the children of Adam, have had a considerable share in exterminating them. We can only compare the barbarity with which the Europeans, for a period of three hundred years, have treated these pretended brothers, with the cruelty with which, to replace their race, drowned in their own blood, they have transported to a land widowed of its Aborigines, unhappy negroes from theirs. From such horrors right-feeling hearts revolt, and when the naturalist acknowledges in what physical respects man and monkies are akin, should not the philosopher in his turn, endeavour to find out by what characteristics drawn from morality, Europeans-exterminating Europeans are in so many points of view like wolves, hyænas, and tigers?

The Columbic species, which we must seek in the mixture of whites and blacks of all species, which is sprung up in the New World since its discovery, is preserved almost untouched in their solitudes, where it endeavours to shelter itself from our violence, and even, it is said, on some points of the windward islands. What we have heard from a multitude of travellers, who formerly visited either Carolina or the centre of the United States, or all the islands which form a long chain from the Floridas to Trinidad, or in fact, the space comprehended between the Orinoco and the river Amazon, is absolutely adapted, in every respect, to the men who there inhabited a sinuous line of nearly twelve hundred leagues, from north to south, the breadth of which, however, except towards the northern lakes, seldom exceeded from one to two hundred leagues. These men are

of a bilious and phlegmatic disposition, tall, well made, active, and stronger than those who are commonly called savages. Their extremities are not so slender as the people of Australia. The conformation of the head is tolerably proportionate, from which circumstance, their figure appears of an agreeable oval cast. Their forehead, however, is singularly flat, which has led old authors to believe, and modern ones from force of habit to repeat it, that this people deformed, during infancy, that particular part, by the application of small flat boards, tightly fastened together. The nose is long, prominent, and aquiline, and if it is found flattened to the face," says Father Dutertre," it is because that also has been compressed from infancy." The mouth is moderately wide, with the teeth vertical, and lips like those of Europeans. The eye is large and of a brown colour; the hair black, platted, thick, hard, shining, of middling length, and though falling upon the shoulders does not form into curls. It is said that their hair never turns white or grey. The men are almost without any beard, and carefully pluck out the hairs, which grow upon several parts of the body, and which other species of men have in abundance. When they are heated and perspiring, it is pretended they emit a smell like that which is peculiar to the canine genus. The colour of their skin is reddish, or rather of a molten copper colour. Among the females, who are condemned to the most painful labours-who are, in fact, reduced to the condition of domesticated beasts-the breast, though rather low, is well shaped, so long as it has never given suck. Nubility developes itself at an early age among them, whether it be, that the women belong to Septentrional tribes, or whether they belong to those which are situated near the equator. Instances of great longevity in this particular species have been cited.

It was principally the Canadians and Caribbeans, who, during the last century, furnished philosophers with a pretext for those declamations, in which the superiority of the savage, over man living in polished society, was so pompously established. We must not credit a word of what has been asserted in these fine productions, about the wisdom and the solemn treaties, which they were supposed to conclude between them, pipe in mouth, in exchanging the calumet of peace: we must not believe what was then said of such barbarians, naturally wanderers, hunters, brutal, idle, quarrelsome, anthropophagi, devouring not only the enemies whom they had vanquished in war, but even their own parents, and rejecting with horror (occasioned, perhaps, from the recollection of the injuries which it has done them) the means of civilization, wherever it has been attempted. Intemperate, thirsting after strong liquors, for which they are obliged to pay us, they do not even possess the industry necessary for composing them for their own sakes, while they live without religion, despising that of Europe, and imagining its mysteries absurd. The Colombians, however, believed in the existence of good and bad spirits, without

the sort of sorcerers who so frequently, by means of jugglery, tyrannize over savage tribes, seeking, in the elements of their gross superstitions, for that authority which is always the first established among men, and often extends its ramifications so far, that it is beyond the reach of philosophy to eradicate them.

The courage of the species which now occupies our attention, has been reported in high language, because prisoners of war, whom they devour, sing death-songs whilst their enemies are roasting them alive, and even under the bite of their lacerating tooth. If this be true, which may be doubted, it denotes a brutal insensibility of the physical powers, and not heroism. The Caribbeans and Canadians, we are assured, have great affection for their children; but panthers are equally attached to their offspring, as well as the most considerable part of men of the species of Japhet. In other respects, they go naked, having a small covering, made of vegetable stuff, or animal skin, fastened round the loins. In those parts, where the winter season is most severe, they scarcely think of providing themselves a defence against its inclemencies, by covering their bodies with the spoils of wild beasts, of which they destroy a great number. They prefer giving up these skins to European merchants for brandy, and run the risk of perishing with cold, in preference to going clothed. It is not among them we must expect to find those brilliant head-dresses, those tunics and mantles, adorned with feathers, with which painters, in their unfaithful portraits, are in the habit of muffling up the American Indians. Exotic Neptunians only, from the borders of the South Sea, make use of such ornaments, and in Peru, as well as in Mexico. The Colombians know no other means of embellishing their persons, than by daubing themselves with Rocou, which renders them more red than they are by nature. Bows and arrows are their means of attack and defence. Divided into hordes, conducted by a chief, and regulated by simple customs, they have no established extent of domination. Agriculture is not only foreign, but hateful to them. Without mind, without energy, they have been everywhere deceived and dispossessed without difficulty. By the end of the present century, it is probable they will exist only in the records of history-that they will have disappeared from their natal soil, as the Guanches of the Canaries, and as the wolves in England.

It is pretended, that among the Caribbeans, the language of the females differs altogether from that of the males. It would be important to prove this fact.

We must remark, that there exist in northern America, among the tribes of the Colombian species, other tribes which belong to very different species, such as the Hyperborean, and perhaps even the Scythian: these do nothing but wander about from place to place, and are regarded as Autochthonians. There are also tribes of Celtic origin, who, it is stated, speak the idiom of that language

with as much purity as it is spoken in Wales. It is probably by means of these foreigners, that the custom of interring the illustrious dead with their arms, and singing songs of grief, was introduced among the Colombians.

But though we agree with M. Bory, in considering all these species, as he designates them, to have originated from one primitive stock, yet the great variations remarkable among them, according to their degree of cultivation, may indicate that their chief characteristics originated in accidental circumstances, affecting their moral relations, as well as their physical constitution. The New Zealanders, for example, are savages, and chiefly black; the New Hollanders, half civilized, and chiefly tawny; the Friendly Islanders are more advanced, and not quite so dark; several are lighter than olive colour, and hundreds of European faces are found among them. The people of Otaheite and the Society Isles are the most civilized and the most beautiful; the higher order among them have a light complexion, and hair flowing in ringlets; the lower orders, less cultivated, are less pleasing. "The same superiority," says Captain King," which is observable in the Erees (nobles) throughout the other islands, is found also here (Owyhee). Those whom we saw were, without exception, perfectly well formed; whereas, the lower sort, besides their general inferiority, are subject to all the variety of make and figure that is seen in the populace of other countries."

Similar authorities might be multiplied to infinity; but we cannot at present spare room to go into the extensive field which is here open to us, and must leave the discussion to some future opportunity. We have selected a few of the points which appeared to us to possess the most interest, and we must refer those who are pleased with the subject, to the original work of M. Bory, which, from the specimens we have here given, will be seen to be ingenious, original, and eloquent, but, at the same time, extremely fanciful, and replete with theory, where we ought only to find well ascertained facts.

ART. III.-Flowers of Fancy; exhibited in a Collection of Similes, taken from various Authors, and Alphabetically arranged. By Henry Schultes. London: Longman. 1829.

The

We have long wished for a good opportunity of expressing our vexation at the grievous waste of time, paper and ink, which we have observed in the portion of our cotemporary literature, professedly devoted to the illustration of our elder poets. revivers of English taste, in this direction, were too near the close of the last century, and too limited in the number of their votaries, to exert due influence on the publishers of the ably prefaced body of English poetry, from Cowley to Gray, which was given to the

world under the auspices of Dr. Johnson. We will not repeat, for the ten thousandth time, the complaint about his political or personal antipathies, and his consequent resolute blindness to the poetical merits of those who were so unfortunate as to excite either; and we will spontaneously acquit him of any enormous culpability in the omission of our earliest heroes of song. He was too far advanced in years, when the task of criticising the English poets was assigned to him, to begin with relish the study of Chaucer and his successors, down to the time of James the First. Neither did the facilities then exist for the successful cultivation of those authors, which have since been created by the labours of many meritorious students. Still less were the mass of the reading world, at that time, aware of the riches of their first bards. There was no disposition in the mass of the people to patronise, or even to attend to any re-publications of poems which had become obscure from the obsoleteness of their diction, and which they were led by the prevailing spirit of criticism, to eschew as barbarous. The efforts of Dr. Percy, the two Wartons, Tyrrwhit, &c., were, however, not ultimately unavailing; they did make a deep, if not an immediate impression. Before the commencement of the nineteenth century, the effects of their exertions were evident, not only in England but in Germany. A man could profess his admiration of Chaucer and Spencer, without fear of incurring the imputations of pedantry and bad taste; he might lament the decline of real poetry in the previous age, and escape the suspicion of being a mere temporis laudator acti. This was not the only result of the glorious revolution created by the relics of ancient English poetry. Burger and Schiller had the merit of discerning the beauties of our ballads, and by their own subsequent efforts in the same line of composition, the one has obtained all the reputation (neither insignificant nor transient) that he possesses; and the other has increased the amount even of that fame and popularity which belong to him, as the finest tragic writer of his age and country. The number of English publications relating to our poetical antiquities, since the year 1765, when Dr. Percy published the Reliques, we think nearly quintuple the whole number during the previous hundred years. In Germany, also, the history is parallel; their early poetical legends have attracted and rewarded the industrious and patriotic enthusiasm of a multitude of learned and highly gifted critics, who have spread, in the most popular forms, the results of their researches, and they have reaped an ample harvest in the visible improvement of their countrymen, in respect to taste, and of their principal poets and romancers, in the judicious choice of the subjects of their imaginative productions. To return to England, in the year 1798, a new collection, though a limited one, was made of the British poets, and Dr. Robert Anderson was selected as the Editor; his love of the early writers operating upon the practical wisdom of his employers, (who were