"Irland it mikla,” or “Hvitramannaland" | Mexico or of Peru and those of eastern of the early Icelandic chroniclers, was a Asia. The solution of the question is colony founded by Irish missionaries, ap that the Americans are neither Indians, parently near the mouth of the St. Law- Phoenicians, Chinese, nor Europeans; rence, long before even the Norseman they are Americans." "All these hypothknew anything of America. One cannot eses," M. de Rosny remarked again, “of but admire the learning, ingenuity, and Asiatic influences in America are very enthusiasm of M. Beauvois, but the ver- piquant: it is the proof which is always dict must be the Scotch one of "not wanting." What a pity a few men like proven," with a note that it was scarcely M. de Rosny and Dr. Dally were not apworth while calling together an interna- pointed beforehand to decide on what tional congress to listen to a paper of this papers were deserving of the serious atkind. tention of the congress! However, wisdom comes by experience. The fairly moderate paper on Fu-Sang, by M. Lucien Adam, might have been admitted, as might also that of M. Gravier on the Deighton Rock inscription, but we are sure that all the papers thus admitted could have been published in one-third of the space of these two volumes. This may be regarded as a type, and rather a favorable one, of a large number of the papers read at the Nancy congress, papers whose object was to show the intimate connection which in prehistoric times existed between the peoples of the Old World and those of the New. A paper by Prof. Paul Gaffarel of Dijon, for example, had for its object to show the great probability that the Phoenicians had found their way across the Atlantic to America, North and South, and that in various ways they left traces of their presence behind. This is a somewhat more sober paper than that of M. Beauvois, still the verdict must be essentially the same. M. Lévy-Bing brought much learning to bear on the Grave Creek inscription for the purpose of proving it to be Phoenician, with the usual unsatisfactory result, we are sure, on all unbiased listeners. Perhaps the most deliberate and cold-blooded attempt to prove an intimate connection between America and Old World civilization was made by Prof. Campbell, of the Theological College, Montreal, in his paper Of course the questions of Buddhists in America and of "Fu-Sang" got their share of attention, with the usual unsatis-"The Traditions of the Ancient Races of factory result. Fortunately there were some solid men at the congress who were able to perceive the utter futility of discussions of this kind. M. de Rosny, for example, had frequent occasion to recall the attention of the congress to its main purpose, and to remind the members that while we knew comparatively so little of the American aborigines and of their remains, it was a waste of time and energy to discuss the civilization of any other country. "Our duty," he said, "is to establish formally, against all the crotchets which have hitherto infested the domain of Americanism, a method. Every hypothesis which is not based on certain proofs is of no scientific value;" and Dr. Dally justly remarked that there is no special "Americanist method," but that there is a scientific method, whose rules are quite sufficient for this new department of science. "No documents," Dr. Dally continued, "are adduced in support of these connections between the Old and the New Worlds; we must, therefore, provisionally consider them as non-existent. All the alleged analogies are only vain appearances. The presumptions are, on the contrary, against the hypotheses of an analogy or a filiation between the religions of Peru and Mexico identified with those of the first monarch of universal history, |parisons: English each, he tells us, is the the Egyptian Menes, the Indian Menu, the same word as Hebrew isch. He gives Greek Minos, the Phrygian Manis, the pages of this sort of thing. It is easily Lydian Macon, the German Mannus, the done; any ignoramus with the dictionary Welsh Meney, the Chinese Ming-ti, and of a dozen different languages before him the Algonquin Manitou" and so on could do it. The "Tower of Babel" is through endless ingenuities. Is not this the abbé's starting-point in tracing the comparative philology playing at "high diversities of human speech. jinks"? and is it not one more striking proof that to trust to language alone in questions of ethnography is to trust to a chain of sand? While the Baron de Bretton's paper on the origins of the peoples of America contains some suggestions of value, it also, like the one just mentioned, is disfigured by many etymological fantasies. It is quite legitimate to try to show that America, may have been in part peopled from Europe, but to base such a theory on arguments like the following makes one almost despair of the progress of scientific method: "The first invaders from whom, according to the tradition of the Toltecs, that people were descended, were called Tans, Dans (Danes!). Their god, Teoti, strongly resembles linguistically the Greek theos, Latin deus," etc. The temples of this god were called tescabli, "a word which comes from Greek theos and Celtic ca-cas, house." A god, Votan, is probably Wodin, and Thara, Thor-as Asa-thor. Azlan, the supposed original home of the Aztecs, is, according to Baron de Bretton, evidently Scandinavian Asaland, country of the Ases, of the Asiatics, of the Aztecs themselves. What answer can be made to such etymological legerdemain ? The Abbé Petitot has been for many years a zealous missionary in the Athabasca-Mackenzie region of North America, and has made some valuable contributions to a knowledge of the geography of that region; not content with this, however, he is eager through the medium of language to prove the unity of origin of the human race. He argues that because certain North American Indian words have a more or less distant resemblance to Chinese, Malay, Tamul, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Japanese, German, English, etc., therefore all these are descended from one common stock. We shall give only one specimen of the abbé's easy-going com It seems to us a pity that the reputation of an international congress that might do much good should be endangered by puerilities such as those we have referred to. We hope that in this their first meeting the froth has come to the surface, and that in future meetings means will be taken to prevent middle-age word-puzzles being foisted on the congress. The two volumes, however, contain some papers of real value; these we have space only to name. Prof. Luciano Cordeiro's (of Coimbra) paper on the part taken by the Portuguese in the discovery of America is of considerable interest, and shows great research. A paper by M. Paul Broca on two series of crania from ancient Indian sepulchres in the neighborhood of Bogota is a model of careful observation and reasoning. M. J. Ballet, of Guadaloupe, has a long memoir on the Caribs, full of information. A paper by M. Julien Vinson on the Basque language and the American languages is able and scholarly and cautious. He shows that in structure and grammar they have many points of resemblance, but that on this ground there is no reason whatever for concluding that they or their speakers have a common origin. Other papers of value are Dr. Cornilliac's on the anthropology of the Antilles, Mr. Francis A. Allen's on the origin of the primitive civilization of the New World, an elaborate paper, the result of great research, and M. Oscar Cometrant's paper on music in America before the discovery of Columbus. On the whole, we cannot think that these two volumes show that this International Congress of Americanists has done much in furtherance of the object for which it met, and we shall look with interest for the results of the second congress, which will meet at Luxembourg in September, 1877. Fifth Series, No. 1687.-October 14, 1876. From Beginning, CONTENTS. Down where the dusty roads divide, The children group in happy bands, Of rimless hats are hung by day. Of merry urchins at their play, The intermission glides away. FRANKLIN W. FISH. GOING SOFTLY. SHE makes no moan above her faded flowers, She will not vainly strive against her lot, Patient she wears away the slow, sad hours, As if the ray they had were quite forgot; While stronger fingers snatch away the sword, And lighter footsteps pass her on the ways, Yielding submissive to the stern award That said, she must go softly all her days. She knows the pulse is beating quickly yet, She knows the dream is sweet and subtle still, That struggling from the cloud of past regret, Ready for conflict live Hope, Joy, and Will; So soon, so soon to veil the eager eyes, To dull the throbbing ear to blame or praise, So soon to crush rewakening sympathies, And teach them she goes softly all her days. She will not speak or move beneath the doom, She knows she had her day, and flung her cast, The loser scarce the laurel may assume, Nor evening think the noonday glow can last. Only, oh youth and love, as in your pride, Of joyous triumph your gay notes you raise, Throw one kind glance and word where, at your side, She creeps, who must go softly all her days. All The Year Round. From The British Quarterly Review. THE ILLYRIAN EMPERORS AND THEIR LAND. except a few doubtful and scattered settle ments on the opposite coast, the most distant sphere of Greek colonization in those THE Eastern shores of the Hadriatic seas, as it was the latest chosen of all the have in all ages borne the character of a spheres of genuine Greek settlement, as border-land. And it is from their character distinguished from Macedonian conquest. as a border-land that they draw a great part It was through these lands, through wars of their charm, alike for him who studies and negotiations with their rulers, that their past and present history and for Rome won her first footing on the eastern him who looks on their hills and islands coast of the Hadriatic, and thereby found with his own eyes. And they have been her first opportunity and excuse for meda border-land in two senses. They form dling in the affairs of Greece. The land the march of the two great geographical, through which the Roman had thus made political, and religious divisions of Europe. his highway into the eastern lands became, The two great peninsulas which the Ha- in the days when his empire split asunder, driatic Gulf parts asunder have a march- a border-land, a disputed possession, of the land which does not exactly coincide with Eastern and the Western Empire, of the their primary physical boundary. The Eastern and the Western Church. In days north-eastern part of the eastern peninsula, when Greek and Roman had so strangely that which is sometimes called the Byzan- become names of the same meaning, the tine peninsula, is closely connected, even cities of the Dalmatian coast clave as long physically, with the Italian peninsula which as they could to their allegiance to the lies on the western side of the gulf. The Greek-speaking prince whose empire still mountains which part off Istria and Dal-bore the Roman name. In after times matia from the vast mainland to the east they became part of the dominion of that of them are a continuation of the range of mighty commonwealth which, itself as it mountains which parts off Italy from the were a portion of the east anchored off vast mainland to the north of her. It is the shores of the west, bore rule alike on indeed true in one sense that the heights the mainland of Italy and among the which part off all the three great penin- islands and peninsulas of Greeee. sulas of southern Europe are parts of own day it forms part of the dominions of one range stretching from the Pyrenees to a potentate who still clings, however vainly, Haimos. But Dalmatia is bound to Italy to the titles, traditions, and ensigns of the by a closer tie than this, and Istria is elder Rome, but whose geographical posibound to her by a tie closer still. Istria tion calls him before all princes to be the lies east of the Hadriatic; yet, on any arbiter, the conqueror, or the deliverer of theory of natural boundaries, Istria is the lands which still look with fear or with manifestly Italian. In the case of Dal- hope to the younger Rome. Dalmatia in matia the connection is not so close and all her stages, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, unbroken; yet the narrow, the constantly Venetian, Austrian, has steadily kept up narrowing, strip of land between the moun- her character of a border-land between tains and the sea, though geographically eastern and western Europe. And if we part of the eastern peninsula, has not a take into our account the great struggle little the air of a thread, a finger, a branch, of the early days of our own century, the cast forth from the western peninsula. short incorporation of Dalmatia by France, Dalmatia is thus physically a march-land; the still shorter occupation of some of her and its physical position has ever made it islands and cities by England-in days the march-land of languages, empires, and when England did not despise Montenereligions. It lies on the border of those grin, and even Russian help-the long two great divisions of Europe which we destiny of this coast as a debatable ground may severally speak of as the Greek and between the two great divisions of Europe the Latin worlds. The Dalmatian archi- is carried on in yet minuter detail. pelago, a secondary Ægæan with its islands and peninsulas, formed, unless we In our The Dalmatian coast has thus always kept its character as a march-land between |