and the United States in respect to climate, soil and rivers; it has remained severed by its geographical position from many of those disturbances which have influenced and afflicted other Asiatic nations,-circumstances which close observers have pointed out, as prominent causes of the superiority of Chinese civilisation over that of all the rest of Asia, Persia not excepted (6). Yet if we compare that most eastern Asiatic nation with the western European race, in intellectual and political civilisation, it will not be difficult to form a just decision.

This Western race, which is distinguished by an onward movement from the times of its first dawn of civilisation, is at present in one of those periods which are peculiarly stirring, similar, perhaps, in its character of universal and thrilling activity to that of the Reformation, preceded as it was by the exciting period of maritime discoveries. We are, indeed, ever apt to consider objects near us of peculiar magnitude; but the calmest mind, the most comprehensive intellect familiar with all the most active periods of history, will probably not deny, that our period is a peculiarly active one, and one of those epochs in which man seems to employ all his energy in realizing some important idea. A time when in the East the Turkish empire is busily engaged in severing itself from Asiatic civilisation and joining European; and in the West a railroad is building to effect that for which Columbus sought so long and ardently in vain, and when the two poles of this conductor from the East to the West, from the Atlantic into the Pacific, will be brought in contact with other hemispheres by the busy steamboat, braving wind and current,—such a period seems not to be a common one.

Future ages, perhaps, will look upon our period as a preeminently political one; as that period in which governments from cabinet governments became national and popular governments, superseding the period of court politics, in which, as an eminent continental writer expressed it, "The court law came to be made the common law" (7); as the period in which broad ideas of substantial civil liberty were more clearly defined and more widely secured for a large number of nations; in which the primary relation of the citizen to the state became a distinct subject of intense political action; as the age of constitutions. If so, it behoves every one to perform conscientiously his task in this animated time. But whether it be so or not, certain it is, that many entirely new agents of human society have come into play and act with an intensity, which give a far greater importance to every thing connected with politics, for weal, if we do our duty, for woe, if we neglect it, than at any previous period, except that of antiquity.

(1) Buddhaism (or Boodhism), Bramaism, the doctrines of Confucius, the religion of the Dalai Lama, and that of Zoroaster, together with the three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Mohametanism, are all of Asiatic origin.

(2) Among others of the various modern works which show the Sanscrit to be the great fountain from which an immense number of languages, if not all others, have directly or indirectly flowed, see Francis Bopp, Comparative Grammar of Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Ancient Sclavonic, Gothic and German, Berlin, 3d Div. 1837, (in German.); T. C. Prichard, Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations proved by a Comparison of their Dialects with the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Teutonic Languages, London, 1831. Also, Etymological Enquiries in the Province of the Indo-Germanic Languages, with particular Reference to the Mutation of Sound in the Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian and

Gothic (in Germ.) by F. A. Pott, Professor in the University at Halle, Lemgo 1836.

(3) Some readers may not be willing to allow the justice of my remark if applied to Gothic architecture and that of Egypt, the whole civilisation of which forms a connecting link between Asia and Europe, and may undoubtedly be included, in several points of view, in Asiatic civilisation. The many and magnificent recent works on Egypt have revealed to us among other treasures, a grand, thoughtful and beautiful architecture. Which of the two might be considered as bearing witness to a more developed state of the art, as closely connected with the inner man, is not to be decided in this place. In favor of whichever side the decision would be, it does not change our position. It is perhaps one of the most striking proofs of the refined intellect of the Greeks, and one closely connected with their national being, that they were the first who elevated themselves so high, as to separate the ideas of perfection and purity of taste from those of mighty masses. A single column of Grecian taste is still a whole, a separate work of art in itself, independent and relying on its own harmony and correctness. As to Chinese art, striking and not without taste in many instances, it nevertheless appears to me, if I may express it thus, as refined and tasteful childishness. Every thing which excites the admiration of the child-contrast, (in form and color, and conception,) peculiarity (and monstrosity) and gaudiness-seems to form the foundation of Chinese art and taste. How totally different is the spiritualized art of the Greeks, which delights the more, the more refined the mind is, and is the chaster and the nobler, the more purely it follows out its own principles. The American reader has a peculiarly convenient opportunity of judging of Chinese art, offered in the Chinese museum at Philadelphia, collected and now arranged and exhibited by Nathaniel Dunn, Esq. with equal munificence, perseverance, judgment and taste. the most complete collection of what may be copied or carried away of a people, that I am acquainted with, and far the most complete Chinese collection in existence.

(4) The former, among other works, in his Historical Researches into the Politics, Intercourse and Trade of the Principal Nations of Antiquity, transl. Oxford, 1833, 3 vols.; the latter in the Introduction to his Sketch of Pol. History of Greece, trans. Oxf. 1834.

(5) The paramount importance of the institution of monogamy, and its infinite superiority over polygamy and polyandry as well as community of wives, with reference to its forming the transition from individual to public law, (as the institution itself is half of a moral, half of a jural character,) has induced me not to enter upon it any farther in this place, and to leave a discussion proportionate to the vast influence which monogamy has had on Western civilisation, especially upon jural civilisation, to some other occasion.

(6) The following is an interesting extract from the work of Mr. Davis on China, already quoted. In the introduction, pp. 7 and 8, he says:

"The early advancement of China, in the general history of the globe, may likewise be accounted for, in some measure, by natural and physical causes, and by the position of the whole of that vast country (with a very trivial exception) within the temperate zone. On this point the author will repeat some observations which he long since made in another place: that an attentive survey of the tropical regions of the earth, where food is produced in the greatest abundance, will seem to justify the conclusion, that extreme fertility, or power of production, has been rather unfavorable to the progress of the human race; or, at least, that the industry and advancement of nations has appeared in some measure to depend on a certain proportion between their necessities and their natural resources. Man is by nature an indolent animal, and without the stimulant of necessity will, in the first instance, get on as well as he can with the provision that nature has made for him. In the warm and fertile regions of the tropics, or rather of the equinoctial, where lodging and clothing, the two necessary things after food, are rendered almost superfluous by the climate, and where food itself is produced with very little exertion, we find how small a progress has in most instances been made; while, on the other hand, the whole of Europe, and by far the greater part of China, are situated beyond the northern tropic. If again, we go farther north, to those arctic regions where man exists in a very miserable state, we shall find that there he has no materials to work upon. Nature is such a niggard in the returns which she

"See the Observations of Humboldt on the use of the banana in New Spain." Every one who has been in the West Indies can testify to the justness of these remarks.

makes to labor, that industry is discouraged and frozen, as it were, in the outset. In other words, the proportion is destroyed; the equinoctial regions are too spontaneously genial and fertile; the arctic too unfriendly barren; and on this account it would seem that industry, wealth and civilisation have been principally confined to the temperate zone, where there is at once necessity to excite labor, and production to recompense it! There are, no doubt, other important circumstances, besides geographical situation, which influence the advancement of nations; but this at least is too considerable an ingredient to be left out of the calculation."

It will be recollected that, on various occasions in the first part of this work, much importance has been attributed to two principles of man's social development, namely, that every thing which characterizes man as such, must first be developed, except his physical nature, and that the first starting point of every thing indispensably necessary to man's social development has been indissolubly connected by the Creator, with the material world. We observed it with regard to the family and other necessary institutions. In the present case the principle is manifest. Man ought to labor, yet would he have labored from the beginning? The most genial regions are the earliest in the advance of civilisation, especially Hindostan. Its luxuriance encouraged the first starting; but the luxuriance is too abundant; man relaxed under it; only the first effort was excited; energy showed itself farther north, in Egypt, Greece, Rome. At later periods man found assistance in a thousand discoveries, and enabled himself to carry civilisation through a long winter, both in a physical and mental point of view. Civilisation extended farther and farther north, and a country like Canada, which would never have induced man to start in the path of industry, may still become a flourishing one. The general remarks of Mr. Davis are undoubtedly true. If the negroes of Hayti could not contrive to live by paying a trifling attention to a few banana trees, they would not have allowed all the sugar fields to go to ruin. Hence likewise the evil consequences which the introduction of the potato into some countries has produced, although its good effects, upon the whole, in warding off famine, formerly so frequent, will be denied by no one. But it is certainly true that the potato has frequently operated in the northern regions as the ba