nations of America to build gigantic structures and to adorn them
with sculptures and paintings:213 the genius of art has never smiled
upon them. But, such being the indubitable facts of history, have
we therefore to consider Hungarians, Celts, Shemites and Scandinavians,
as lower races than the ante-Columbian Aztecs of Mexico, and
the Aymaras and Quiehoas of Peru ? Are we, because some nations
got peculiar endowments not shared by other races, to transfer these
facts into the moral, social, and political sphere ? Are the scientific
facts about the original “ unity” or “diversity” of human races, and
their equal or unequal mental and artistic endowments, to bear
upon their political, social, and legal treatment ? Are the Shemites
to be despised because they cannot understand epics and théogonies?
and the Celts oppressed because their imagination predominates
over their reasoning faculties? and the Hegroes enslaved because
they never arrive at orthography or grammatical correctness? "Will
the Hungarians, if they could be forced to forget their language and
to speak German; and the Poles, if they merge into the Russian
family, become more useful to mankind than in their own languages ?
Will they, by changing their idiom, change their national peculiarities?
Can they develope themselves under oppression and on a
foreign basis, better than in freedom and in their national individuality?
To all these questions there is but one reply: whatever be
their origin and endowments. They are all men; that is to say,
beings possessing reason and conscience, responsible for their actions
to their Creator, to mankind and to themselves, able to recognise
truth, and to discern between right and wrong, and therefore they
are equally entitled to “ life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”
w j g true is this remark, that Waloeck {Yucatan, p. 34) relates how the Meridafto, are
excellent mutators and clever workmen to this day; possessing, like their ancestors, an innate
power for sculpture and drawing. Again, in a more austral and less artistic part of America
the mulatto-breeds between Indians, negroes and Portuguese, have much talent for art
(DESUET, Voyage pittoresque au Brésil, III, p. 84). In spite even of Islamism, this perdurable
race-instinct breaks forth in Egypt among the Theban feltâhs ; whose Benvenuto
Cellinis, with the humblest instruments, manufacture “ modern antiques” with sufficient
skill to gratify that “ love for Egyptian art” professed by the most fastidious Anglo-Saxon
tourist. A n Cammôonee was, during my time at Thebes, the Skèykh of-native artists in
that line. My friend Mr. A. C. Harris, and myself, supplied him with all the small tools we
could spare (bits of tin and glass, broken penknives, nails, old toothbrushes, &c.), in hopes
through such means, under Providence, to flood the market with antiquarian curiosities
satisfactory to “ les badauds;” and thus obviate the necessity for their chipping the monuments.
(See my Appeal to the Antiquaries, London, Madden, 1841, pp. 139-45). G. R. (>.]
X .— HINDOO A N D C H I N E S E C I V I L I Z A T I O N S A N D A R T .
The peninsula of the Indus and Ganges is separated from the
mainland of Asia, by sand-deserts and ranges of inaccessible mountains.
The few long and narrow passes which lead through these
mountains, were rarely used as means of communication with the
West and Horth, for they are the home Qf warlike robber-tribes, accustomed
to levy black-mail on the surrounding populations. The
currents of the sea, and the directions of the winds, led the enterprise
of the Hindoos to the South-East, to the Malay peninsula and
its island-world. It was thither that India sent her culture and religion
: untouched by the lively development of the classical western
world, she remained unconnected with the current of our history.
Scarce and faint were the legends about that great country of the
East, which, in times of classical antiquity, reached the West by the
way of Persia and Arabia. The mythical tradition of the triumphs
of Bacchus, and Hercules, was all that reminded republican Greece
of the home of spices and gems. Guided by this tradition, Alexander
the Macedonian reached the frontiers of the fable-land; but
even his adventurous spirit had to give up progress into the interior.
The elephants, which he brought from the upper Penjaub, decided
the battles of his successors for more than half a century after his
death; down to the time when the last of them went up the Capito-
line hill, in the triumph of Curius Dentatus. This animal must have
lived full fifty years in Macedonian harness after the war with
Pyrrhus, being the last evidence of the unrivalled eastern conquests
of the great Macedonian. The Roman Legions were never able to
surmount the difficulties which barred access to I li ndostAn; and a
few merchants and ambassadors were the only western people, who,
during the times of classical antiquity, had seen the sacred rivers of
the peninsula.213 The development t>f society, religion, government,
and art, with the Hindoos, their institution of castes, their single and
efficient system of self-government, their elaborate code of law, their
epic and dramatic poetry, and their stupendous works of architecture
and sculpture, are, therefore, all of indigenous growth. They
are certainly not derived from, and 'many of them are probably
much anterior to, the Macedonian invasion ; which could not have
left any lasting trace; both from its short duration, and from the
218 One of these successful travellers, B a b d e s a n e s , gives us the first description of a
Hindoo rock-temple adorned-with the sculptures of an androgynous God. See Pobphteius
"pud S t o b j !itm, Eclog. Phys. i. p. 144.
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