the same sheet the architect has drawn the elevation both of the principal and of the garden front.

Joseph, the grandson of Dr. Priestley, now living at Northumberland, says in a letter to his sister, Mrs. Parkes, "The house in which Dr. Priestley lived and died at Northumberland is still in a remarkable state of preservation, and must have been very carefully built of the best materials. It is the most comfortable house in the place, and is visited by a number of strangers, who come to see it as the former residence of Dr. Priestley."

When Miss Harriet Martineau went to the United States, "the first point fixed in her intentions was the retreat of Priestley." She fulfilled this design, and her chapter on his character, suggested by her visit to his last settlement and his grave, is among the most beautiful, eloquent and instructive passages in her works.*

PHYSICAL PECULIARITIES OF THE ANCIENT HEBREWS.

SIR,

THE Jewish people are objects of much curiosity to ethnological inquirers, as well as to divines. To both they offer numerous problems for investigation. Their undoubted antiquity, their very considerable separation from all other people, their dispersion amongst all nations, and the peculiar rites they everywhere carry with them, invest this race with singular interest. The Jews have perhaps stood first in determining the scientific problem, which has had so much prominence given to it of late years by the writings of Blumenbach, Lawrence, Pritchard and others, viz., the assumed variations of race from secondary influences, such as climate, mode of life, &c. In the discussions relating to this hypothesis, very discrepant assertions have been made respecting them. And now, when the hypothesis itself is in a large measure relinquished by ethnologists, the physical characters of this people are not less matters of laudable research. With regard to their moral characteristics, it seems to be generally admitted that these are quite special; having small resemblance to those of the European races, and evincing imperfect or rare evidences of the intellectual power these latter so preeminently display. In other words, that the Jews are intellectually and morally distinct from other people, and much inferior

to some.

In describing the typical physical peculiarities of the Jews, as seen in this country and in Europe generally, ethnologists are much agreed. They attribute to them black hair, dark eyes of an almond shape, a peculiar arched nose, full lips and generally heavy features, a somewhat receding forehead, and pallid complexion, with an expression of mildness combined with cunning. And such, no doubt, are usually seen among the chosen people who reside in England. But are we justified in regarding these lineaments as essential to the Jewish race? Such has been assumed, perhaps too hastily. Dr. Pritchard asserted, we believe with somewhat too great facility, that "among the Jews of northern Europe the Xanthous variety becomes general." Colonel Hamilton Smith, in his very fanciful manner, tells us, that "all the tribes descended from Abraham and Lot were of high-land descent, clearly in part of a fair rufous stem, grey-eyed and auburn hair. Evidence of this fact is repeatedly named in history and in tradition;" and adduces the women in particular in Morocco "to this day generally grey-eyed." In a neighbouring country, Algiers, we have a clear description of the Jews which agrees but little with the Colonel's assertion. "Sous le ciel d'Afrique, de même qu'en Europe, les Juifs ont leur type Nat. Hist. of Human Species, p. 391.

spécial: nez aquilin, barbe noire, œil magnifique quoique toujours faux, teint blanc et lisse. Il est facile de les reconnaître à cet air de fourberie et d'humilité, à cette inclinaison du corps pendré en avant, à ces traits sévères, et a ces demi-cercles qui encadrent leurs noires prunelles et qui sont un des signes particuliers de leur race.

The most distinct and the best account of a very diverse type of the Jewish race is by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, in the abridged edition of his work on the Egyptians.† He says, "Here I may mention a remarkable circumstance, that the Jews of the East to this day often have red hair and blue eyes, with a nose of delicate form and nearly straight, and are quite unlike their brethren of Europe; and the children in modern Jerusalem have the pink and white complexions of Europeans. The oriental Jews are at the same time unlike the other Syrians in features; and it is the Syrians who have the large nose which strikes us as a peculiarity of the western Israelites. This prominent feature was always a characteristic of the Syrians, but not of the ancient nor of the modern Jews of Judea: the Saviour's head, though not really a portrait, is evidently a traditional representation of the Jewish face which is still traceable at Jerusalem. No real portrait of him was ever handed down; and Eusebius of Cæsarea pronounced the impossibility of obtaining one for the sister of Constantine; but the character of the Jewish face would necessarily be known in those early days (in the fourth century), when the first representations of him were attempted; and we should be surprised to find any artist abandon the style of features thus agreed upon for ages, and represent the Saviour with those of our western Jews. Yet this would be perfectly correct if the Jews of his day had those features; and such would have been, in that case, his traditional portrait."-This I have quoted as a sufficient introduction to the object I have in view. To go into the various ethnological questions connected with this peculiar race, many of them of a controverted character, is no part of this object.

Seeing the grounds on which are based such remarkably different views of the physical characters of the Jews, assuming that the distinctive characteristics of diverse races are uniform, an important question arises, viz., what light can be thrown upon the original constitution of the Israelitish family by the consultation of their sacred books and the ancient commentaries upon these books? This question can only be satisfactorily solved by those who have an acquaintance with the Hebrew language and literature. After having in vain sought information on it from Jewish sources, I beg permission to bring it under the notice of

Algérie historique, pittoresque et monumentale. Par M. Berbrugger. 1843. Des races Algériennes.

↑ Vol. II. p. 197, &c.

your learned correspondents, in the hope that I may be able to interest them sufficiently in this curious inquiry to induce them to trace out and enumerate the different passages which bear on the physical peculiarities of the ancient Hebrews, and thus to afford the scientific world the benefit of their critical knowledge. If I am successful in eliciting the information the Hebrew scholar is able to impart, I am persuaded, whether it prove adequate to determine the physical characters of the ancient Israelites or not, that it will be of considerable value. More than this I trust it is not necessary to say to induce the contribution I am desirous to see. I hope that you will not regard an inquiry of this kind to be unsuited to your pages, and that you will open them to those correspondents who may please to contribute towards its solution.

Finally, I may observe, that the question has indeed a bearing upon biblical science in one way, if not in others. A confirmation of the history of the ancient Hebrews, as given in their sacred books, has been sought in the pictorial representations of the Egyptian tombs. In the celebrated scene of the Brickmakers in the Theban Sepulchre, so finely represented in Rosellini's M. C. Tav. xlix., and described Tom. II. p. 254, the figures considered to be those of Israelites are distinguished by their colour, physiognomy and beards, from the Egyptian taskmaster seated hard by and armed with his stick; i. e. they may be Israelites, if the notions commonly entertained of these features in the Hebrew race be true-not without.

Shelton, Dec. 10, 1860.

J. BARNARD DAVIS.

NATURE AND GOD.

SIR,

In the National Review for October, p. 508, occurs this passage: "While on this Secondary field His mind and ours are thus contrasted, they meet in resemblance again upon the Primary; for the evolutions of deductive Reason there is but one track possible to all intelligences; no merum arbitrium can interchange the false and true, or make more than one Geometry, one scheme of pure Physics for all worlds: and the Omnipotent Architect Himself, in realizing the Kosmical conception, in shaping the orbits out of immensity and determining seasons out of eternity, could but follow the laws of curvature, measure and proportion. And so, in the region of the demonstrative sciences, to us the highest that mere intellect attains, where most we feel our thought triumphant and seem to look down on dominated nature,—there is His Mind the least unconditioned, and there alone comes into experience of necessity."

In venturing to make a comment upon the doctrine (may I without sore offence say dogma?) contained in what I have quoted, I feel, more deeply than my words can express, affectionate and unqualified respect

towards the writer of the article in which those sentences occur. But just in proportion to my respect is my regret that one so able and noble should commit what seems to me so grievous an error of exposition.

That purest of works on pure Physics, Newton's Principia, amongst other characteristics of its excellence, stands not least approved by its very title. The great "little child picking up pebbles on the sea-shore," as he laid down his geometrics and evolved his trigonometric marvels, doubtless thought these, his "mathematics," to be but the exponents of Physical Power or Powers, as the same may be said to appear to man's present comprehension of mind. He surely did not (how could he, so able yet so humble?) mean that his theory of the universe, or that any purely terrestrial mathematics, must needs be the one and only geometry of GOD! We cultured mortals of earth are, alas! too apt to deem that which is the best that comes to our bidding to be best in the behests of God. Even in the demonstrative sciences, we should not forget, the most determinate and decisive of demonstrations can be but so far determinate and decisive as man's terrestrial penetrations reach. The whole hermeneutics of Heaven, whether upon physical, metaphysical or hyperphysical subjects and objects, cannot be within the compass of earthborn men, even though nine hundred-and-ninety-nine-fold Newtons each. Great God's heaven and little man's heaven must ever be very different facts, physically, theologically, morally. Most reverently towards the Omnipotent Architect Himself, and with all due deference to the singularly gifted reviewer, I would heartily subscribe to the sentence, that "no merum arbitrium can interchange the false and true;" while I as heedfully demur to the consecutive assertion, that God's arbitrium cannot "make more than one Geometry, one scheme of pure Physics for all worlds." I am one of those, perhaps rash and rude, thinkers whom neither Geometry nor Physics, nor Theology nor Metaphysics, have been able to dispossess of the conviction that God ever, of His own supreme will and mere motion, constituted and continues the principia (call them Laws or what you may) of measurement, movement, development, accomplishment, &c. Nor can I, without degrading my conception of my God very sadly indeed, so think of Him as to say that He could but follow the laws of curvature, measure and proportion." Admitting, what will obviously be urged, that this allegation does not necessarily imply priority of existence, and that the Laws in question may be co-eternal with Himself, still I dare freely protest against the opinion that any "Laws" extraneous to Himself (and who says God has "curvature, measure and proportion"?) can possibly place Him under the necessity of being, in any sort or sense, otherwise than "unconditioned." Else, how is He GoD, the God ever supreme?

Let me now revert to what appears to me a gratuitous assumption, very alien in spirit from the laws of "the demonstrative sciences." I ask, with utterly unfeigned submission to a person so deservedly commanding respect as the reviewer, how does he, or how do we, know that ours (of the planet Earth) is the only Geometry, the only scheme of pure Physics that is true? Even as it regards us free denizens of earth, let me humbly hint that at best ours is but an approximation towards the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Vast as are the views of Newton, and valuable as are his and other volumes on such topics, wisdom enhances our welcome to such boons when we