weeks, and the next day, George Gordon | in Oliver Twist, "I let myself go very reasent an exquisitely-written proposal of mar-sonable,-I was cheap, dirt cheap!" riage to Charlotte Easton, which lay in no I had written thus far, when George Gordanger of being taken to a wrong house. don called. George looked rather alarmed at this preface, as the firmest friend would find it very natural to do. He was refused, but Charlotte's aunt, with "George, my excellent friend," I said, whom he was a great favorite, privately ad-" I know your regard for me, it has been monished him to persevere, saying that tried and proved; will you give me another Charlotte had certainly felt a decided pre- demonstration of it?" dilection for Mr. Seyton, who had paid her marked attentions, and she was both mortified and wounded when he made choice of another lady, but that a little time and her own excellent sense would doubtless enable her to forget him, and she would then begin to value the good qualities and firm and consistent attachment of Mr. Gor-I don. George took the hint, was a frequent visitor at the house of Charlotte's aunt for three months, then renewed his offer, and was accepted. "I am sure, Seyton," he said, "I would do any thing to oblige you, but my account at my banker's is very small just at present." "I do not wish you to lend me money," returned, "the service I require at your hands is of a domestic nature." "Surely," he exclaimed, " you are not going to separate from your wife! I know these things are very common in the fashionable world, but indeed, Seyton, they will not do in middling life." 66 Again you are wrong, my friend," I said, "I have been writing a sketch of my life for the benefit and improvement of the rising generation; I wish to insert it in the Metropolitan, but it has awakened feelings the idea of again glancing on it; you know my adventures, you know my turn of expression, you know better than any one else the little peculiarities of my hand-writing, will you take it to the editor, and will you-will you, my dear friend, order the proofs to be sent to you for correction?" I have been married for a year, and have not the most remote intention of claiming the Dunmow flitch. The temper of Mrs. William Seyton is still less placid than that of Miss Euston; her jealousy is such that she cannot even bear me to look at the pretty faces in the Annuals, and she repays the anxiety of my mother and sister to pos-in my mind so painful, that I cannot bear sess her for a relative, by treating them with so much rudeness and hauteur, that it is painful to me to see them in my house, while I am subjected to the most rigid domestic cross-questioning and lecturing if I visit them in their own. It is true that my wife had, as was alleged, fifteen thousand pounds, but the solicitor employed by "my George started, put his hand for a mobrother the baronet" has so drawn up the ment before his eyes, then withdrew it, setlements, that should my wife die without | looked first at the cabalistic mysterious children, (and at her age it is likely enough characters of my blotted manuscript, and that "she may lead her graces to the grave, then on my rueful and imploring counteand leave the world no copy,") I am depriv-nance. ed of even a life-interest in her property, the whole of which goes to her brother and tone. his descendants, of whom there promises to I wrung his hand in silent gratitude, and be no lack, Lady Euston having just enliv-feel happy to close my melancholy tale with ened her domestic hearth by the introduc- so sublime an instance of the devotion of tion of magnificent twin boys. Thus, when true friendship. By the time these pages I am left a widower I shall be a pennyless meet the eye of the public, George Gordon one; the property of my wife being in the will have performed his promise! three per cents, only produces four hundred and fifty pounds a-year, of which she claims two hundred as pin-money, asserting that no lady can dress neatly upon a less sum; the one-horse chariot and French soubrette, which her brother the baronet declares to be absolutely necessary to the respectability of his sister, absorbs the remainder of the income she brings to me, and my friends all say of me, that, like Bumble the beadle "I will," he said, in a firm, distinct LADY ELIZABETH LEVESON GOWER.-A matriconcluded between the Marquess of Lorn and the monial engagement is confidently stated to be Lady Elizabeth Leveson Gower, eldest daughter of their Graces of Sutherland.-Court Journal. DISCOVERIES IN CENTRAL AMERICA. From the British and Foreign Review. builders) abroad upon the face of all the earth," was the time when the vast plains and forests of the Western world first The History of Ancient America, anterior received man as their inhabitant. A third to the time of Columbus, proving the party, still more absurd, have conceived identity of the Aborigines with the Tyr-(from a passage in Plato) that, in former ians and Israelites, and the Introduction of Christianity into the Western Hemisphere by the Apostle St. Thomas. By GEORGE JONES, M. R. S. I., F. S. V. Longman and Brown, London; Harper and Brothers, New York. 1843. IF all the embellishments the art of printing can bestow, with the addition of an elaborate title-page and a solemnly inflated style, could insure the success of a work and confer reputation on its author, Mr. George Jones would henceforth become the literary lion of the day, and his "History of Ancient America' would display its hot-pressed charms upon every library table. Unfortunately the merits of a book are not in precise proportion to its outward garniture; and though we doubt whether even the author would recognize the "child of his brain," were it unrolled from the gorgeous coverings in which it has been sedulously swathed, we own that we would rather have seen it in puris naturalibus. Few questions have given rise to more discussion or more ingenious theorizing than the original history of America. It is one of those moot points which have always been, and probably will ever continue to be, of an uncertainty only stimulating to the appetite of the speculative; while the inquirer, though he fail to solve them, may chance to alight upon detached and valuable portions of truth, as the hammer of the geologist may sometimes strike out a gem, though he lose the course of the stratum he is investigating. To determine this disputed paternity, many incredible and absurd hypotheses have been from time to time propounded. Some authors-Lord Kaimes among them-have not scrupled to report that the Mosaic account of the creation of our first parents was only intended to inform us of the origin of the inhabitants of the Eastern world, and that the American nations sprung from a different Adam and perhaps a less erring Eve! Others, with less imagination, or more piety, have contented themselves with hazarding the conjecture, that the destruction of the tower of Babel, when, according to holy writ, "the Lord scattered them (the times, an island of enormous dimensions, named Atlantis, stretched from the northwestern coast of Africa across the Atlantic Ocean, and that over this continental tract both man and beast migrated westwards. In one night, however, a mighty storm and wind overwhelmed this island, at a time when only a few animals had succeeded in making good their passage. These theories, and many others even more wild which might be collected from different writers, are not without their warning use; they give a humiliating proof of the puerilities into which even vigorous minds may be betrayed, when once they abandon inductive reasoning for the seducing fields of speculative fancy. Thus the early geologists conceived that the petrified shells and vessels found buried in the secondary strata were produced by what they called a "plastic force" in nature, and accounted for the vast beds of shells on the tops of the Alps by remembering the shellornamented bonnets of the pilgrims passing from Rome! To return however to our subject. The discoveries made by the Russians in the northern parts of the world, under the auspices of Peter the Great, confirmed the opinion of those who, not disposed to account by supernatural agency for what might be effected by natural causes, had early suggested the possibility of America having been peopled from the contiguous northern shores of Europe on the one side and Asia on the other. They insisted upon the similarity in features, manners, and mode of life of the denizens of these frigid zones; and, arguing upon the analogous migrations of the European and Asiatic nomads, they accounted for the existence of the Southern Americans by the continual pressure of a rapidly increasing population from the north. But even when the discoveries of Russia apparently corroborated this hypothesis, the tide of discussion was not checked, but merely diverted into fresh and numerous channels. Almost every nation of the Old World set up its claim in turn to the honor of having given birth to the new hemisphere; the Jews, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, the Greeks, Scythians, Chi nese, and many others, have all found zeal- | But we should give due weight to the reous advocates for their respective claims. mark of the author of the work before us Josephus Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit, who upon this point, viz., that this eminent hiswrote about the year 1560, is opposed to torian was not aware of the existence of the opinion, which he says was prevalent the stupendous remains of former magnifiin his time, that the Americans were of cence which it is the object of Mr. Jones Jewish origin. He treats this suggestion, to ascribe to their proper architects. On which he believes to have been founded on the whole, Robertson inclines to the opina passage of the book of Esdras, with ut-ion of Mr. Parsons before alluded to, and ter skepticism and even some degree of concludes that we must consider the northcontempt. He "cannot well see how that eastern nations of Asia to have been the Euphrates in Esdras should be a more convenient passage to go to the New World than the enchanted and fabulous Atlantike island of Plato." He confesses, however, that the coincidences in the customs of the two nations are curious, although in his opinion accidental. first inhabitants of America; and that, after having migrated across Behring's Straits, they spread themselves gradually over the whole hemisphere. This account tallies with the traditions the Mexicans have of their own origin, which relate that their ancestors journeyed from the north-west. This theory receives some additional confirmation from an account given by Peter Kalm, in his 'Travels into North America,' of pillars of stone, apparently of great antiquity, which had been found some hundred miles west of Montreal,-one of them covered with inscriptions, which some Jesuits who saw them affirmed were written in Tartarian characters. It appears moreover, from Marco Polo, that Kublai Khan, a Tartarian monarch, one of the successors of Ganghis Khan, after he had conquered the southern part of China, sent out a naval expedition for the purpose of subduing Japan, but that this armament was cast away and never more heard of; and it has been conjectured that some of these vessels may have found their way to the American Mr. Parsons, the author of the work entitled 'Remains of Japhet,' entertains no doubt that the earliest Americans were a colony from Tartary. In confirmation of this idea he observes, that the American nations had some acquaintance with the doctrine of the Trinity, for they worshipped their tutelary deity, the Sun, under the threefold appellation of the Father and Lord Sun,' the Son Sun,' and the Brother Sun;' and moreover they adored an idol called by the name of Tanga-Tanga, which signifies 'One in Three and Three in One.' This circumstance is considered by Mr. Parsons, who had observed a similar worship among the Lamas of Thibet and Tartary, as a strong presumption in favor of the original identity of the two nations; and from this and some other analo-shores. gies he concludes that both the Peruvians The Abbé Francesco Clavigero, a native and Mexicans are derived from the house of New Spain, and author of a 'History of of Togarmah, the son of Gomer, the son of Japhet, who, we are told, settled "eastward, in the northern quarter." Mexico' of considerable celebrity, is decidedly of opinion that his countrymen came from the northern parts of America, Dr. Robertson, whose graceful yet man- but evades the question of their original ly style stands out in strong and pleasing parentage. His description of their state relief to that of some authors upon this sub- at the time of their discovery is extremely ject, does not place much reliance upon the curious and entertaining, but appears too analogies which may be traced in the cus- much drawn from the notoriously exagge toms, either secular or religious, of any two rated and fanciful coloring of Boturini to be nations. He justly observes, that there is received as history without the most extreme nothing in these coincidences which may caution. He affirms that the Mexicans wornot be sufficiently explained by the similar- shipped a supreme deity called Teotl, which ity of their condition or situation; and that, bears some analogy to the Greek Osos, both to prove an identity of origin, it is requi- in sound and attributes. They had also site that some arbitrary institution, such as some notion of an evil spirit, whom they the keeping the seventh day holy, should called (for what reason we cannot conjecbe discovered in both. He also conceived ture) by a word which signified a rational that America was not peopled by any na- owl.' They also believed in the immortality tion of the Old World which had made any of the soul, and had descriptions of the considerable progress towards civilization. | creation, deluge, confusion of tongues and dispersion of the people, in the paintings which served them as national archives. Moreover, they had in their system of religion monasteries and different orders of monks.. To the list of distinguished writers who have embraced the opinion that America received at least the bulk of her inhabitants from eastern Asia, may be added the name of Mr. Pennant. The customs of scalping, torturing, and even eating their prisoners, of disguising themselves as wild beasts for the purpose of the chase, and of marching in file and not abreast, prevail, according to this author, as well among the American Indians as among the Scythians and inhabitants of Tartary, while in their physical formation the similarity is even more appa rent. Having thus, in some measure, recalled to our readers the opinions which have at various times prevailed respecting the parentage of the American aborigines, it is time to bestow our attention upon the work from which we have wandered. A great evil is conspicuous throughout the whole book, viz. the diffuse and digressive style in which it is composed; we are indeed prepared for this by the following announcement in the preface:-" Knowing from experience that works upon antiquities, described in language cold as the marbles they illustrate, are not of deep interest to the general reader, the author has therefore avoided the usual frigid style, and has consequently placed around them such fervent glowing words as their novel characters have authorized and demanded." Under shelter of this considerate care for the amusement of his readers, and disregarding the intrinsic interest of his subject, however dryly handled, our author has introduced intercalary disquisitions upon every branch of the fine arts; he has drawn long and hypothetical characters of celebrated persons, from Hiram king of Tyre, down, to his present majesty of Prussia; and, in fine, has contrived to put us in possession of his sentiments upon very many and very miscellaneous topics. Unhappily he has been but too successful in diffusing over the whole composition an inflated and frivolous tone, not only the worst which could be devised for a serious and important discussion, but which does not do justice to the information the author really possesses, and the ingenuity with which many of his propositions are maintained. An additional objection to this mode of composition is, that it has increased to the size of a royal octavo a book, the matter of which might fairly have been compressed within the dimensions of a duodecimo. There are three distinct assertions, the truth of which it is the author's aim to establish, though the first two are far less anxiously and laboriously investigated than the third. These are first, that the American nation are of two distinct races; secondly, that those to the north of Mexico are of Hebrew descent; and thirdly, that the Mexican and Southern aborigines were that remnant of the inhabitants of Tyre saved, after the destruction of their city, by Alexander the Great, and of whom Isaiah predicted that "these should be as the shaking of an olive-tree, as the gleaning grapes when the vintage is done." The first of these propositions, though perhaps (inasmuch as it influences the correctness of the second) the most important, is very cavalierly dealt with. Mr. Jones asserts that there are distinctive national differences in religion, politics, and customs, as well as in physical conformation, between the nations to the north and those to the south of Mexico: further, that the former are as remarkable for all the virtues which can adorn humanity, as the latter are for vices which would have disgraced the Romans under the corrupt sway of the later emperors. For these assertions no authority is adduced, though the author has apparently framed his peculiar creed alternately from Boturini and the calumniator of the Mexican race, M. de Pau. In opposition to these statements, we find in Humboldt that "the nations of America, except those which border on the Polar circle, form a single race, characterized by the formation of the skull, the color of the skin, the extreme thinness of the beard, and straight and glossy hair." We are told by the Chevalier Pinto, "that they are all of a copper color." From Don Antonio Ulloa we learn, "that the Indians who live as far as 40° and upwards north and south of the equator are not to be distinguished in color from those immediately beneath it, while the resemblance in their genius, character, and customs is no less striking." And lastly, Robertson bears his powerful and impartial testimony to the remarkable uniformity of all the American Indians both in appearance and character. We are far from asserting that Mr. Jones has no authority for what he has advanced; but he has not chosen to adduce any, and we must therefore be guided by those we possess. tic;" and again, that "being professedly an original work, the volume of the brain has been more largely extracted from than any other writer whose works are already before the public." We confess we see no pedantry in furnishing the student with the sources from which the conclusions he is pondering are drawn; neither do we think originality and imagination should, in an historical work, supersede accurate information and sobriety of detail. The second proposition, viz. that the nations to the north of Mexico are of Hebrew descent, is dependent in no slight degree upon the truth of the first; since even Mr. Jones does not contend that all America was peopled from the house of Jeroboam. In proof of his assertion he enumerates various analogies between the tribes of the north and the Hebrews; such as the seclusion of the mother after childbirth, the mar- The third division of the work is devoriage usually contracted between a widowed ted to the establishment of a theory, foundwife and her husband's brother, their pos- ed upon the ruined cities lately discovered sessing an ark, their selecting their medicine by Mr. Stephens, that the aborigines of men (i. e. priests or prophets) from among a portion of the tribe not warriers, their worship of one God, their traditional knowledge of the deluge, their various festivals, their belief in the immortality of the soul, and the practice of circumcision. Finally he proposes to the reader "this (as he believes) unanswerable question: if they are not of the lost tribes of Israel, who are they?" Mexican America (under which term Mr. Jones would include the southern continent) and the West Indian islands, were the ancient Tyrians of Phoenicia. Upon the conquest of Mexico by Cortez, in the year 1520, all vestiges of art and civilization were destroyed with fanatic zeal, as monuments of paganism and idolatry. Consequently no relics of former times, with the exception of some ruins at Copan, were Now many of these analogies can by no discovered till the year 1799, when a cirmeans be received as proving identity of cular piece of sculpture, having reference origin, but rather as curious and instructive to the astronomical calendar of the ancient points of similarity in the parallel yet inde- inhabitants, was exhumed. About the same pendent progress of national intellectual time Palenque was visited by Del Rio and developinent. How often does the same Du Paix. In the beginning of the nineidea strike two minds, connected by no kindred tie, except the sympathy of thought! How often have the same inventions been simultaneously made in different parts of the world! and why should not like political, or religious, or social institutions exist among nations totally unconnected, but arrived at a similar point in civilization? On the other hand, it seems admitted that Nestorianism, mingled with the dogmas of the Buddhists and the Shamans, spread through Manchou Tartary into the northeast of Asia; and therefore the supposition appears not improbable that their doctrines and rites may have been partially communicated to the northern parts of America, from which the Tultecs emigrated, and which must therefore be considered as the officina virorum of the New World. teenth century, Humboldt visited Mexico. Still later Waldeck was employed by the Spanish government to explore Yucatan. In 1836 Copan, nearly a hundred and fifty years after its first discovery, was visited by Galindo, and at length, in 1839-40, most of these cities, with several others, were thoroughly investigated and accurately delineated by Messrs. Stephens and Catherwood. It is on the ruins of Copan, Palenque, and Uxmal that the conclusions arrived at by Mr. Jones are founded, and to them he has consequently confined his remarks. He has taken as his text-book Mr. Stephens's narrative, with a running commentary of his own upon such points of inaccuracy as he has discovered in that work. We will give his own programme of his proceedings. But however this may be, we must again "First will be given a description of such enter our protest against the total omission parts of the great ruins as may be necessary of authorities for these alleged analogies. in the author's own words, with such commenReferring once more to the preface, we find taries as may be required by the narration: it to be the author's opinion, "that to give then will follow Mr. Stephens's reflections a list of works consulted " during fifteen upon all the ruins; his arguments will be met, his errors detected, his contradictions investigayears in America, and more immediately ted, and thereupon we shall endeavor (at least) for the last two years in England, while to completely refute his deductions and conwriting the Tyrian Era, would be pedan-clusions."—Page 56. |