it is precisely the most difficult, whether as regards the element of unity or perfection, but with both together is, as an ethnic hypothesis, practically unworkable. He proceeds in error, for he considers that mankind began with civilization, and have degenerated into barbarism, in consequence of their separation from the parent stoek. While in strict correspondence with this, he regards the highly inflectional Indo-Germanic languages, more especially in their purer Sanscrit forms, as a remnant of the primitive tongue; while all philologists know that they are essentially conglomerate, and imply from their very structure the previous existence of monosyllabic and noninflectional languages. Just as all archæology takes us back to the stone period of primitive savagism as the original condition of untutored man, whose primal civilization in a paradisaical and golden age, is obviously one of those traditional myths that sooner or later must succumb before the stern teachings of demonstrable fact.

The foregoing, however, are perhaps not so much the speculations of Mr. Fergusson, as the accepted dogmata of the school in which he has learned his slender elements of ethnic lore. But it is quite otherwise with his nomenclature and arrangement of races; for here there is a specialty of misconception and misstatement, for which no recognized school of ethnologists can be held justly responsible. He arranges mankind into four divisions, thus ::

TURANIANS-SEMITES-CELTS-ARYANS,

embracing under the first, it might be supposed, all the non-Caucasian or imperfectly developed races; and under the three last all the varieties of the latter. But even this rude classification is beyond him, as his use of the word Turanian at once indicates. Admitting that as a generic term it includes the Tartars and Mongols proper, and so covers the Chinese, Tungouses, Magyars, Lapps, and Finns, he nevertheless proceeds to inform us, with all gravity, that the ancient Egyptians were the typical Turanians, who it seems, as Phoenicians, were also the builders of Solomon's Temple. Serious criticism is here obviously impossible, and we can only say that when a man of Mr. Fergusson's ability and general attainments, can venture to put such ideas into respectable print it certainly demonstrates that the Anthropological Society has not made its appearance before it was wanted.

Strange to say, Mr. Fergusson's fundamental misconception in connection with the Turanians is in relation to his own profession; for he regards them as the great master builders of the world. Now the pure or typical Turanian is a tented nomad, who at most heaps

a mound of earth upon the corpse of his departed chieftain; and, in strict accordance with this, his grander labours, even when settled in civilized and agricultural communities, are still earthworks, sometimes imposing for their extent, but never admirable for the taste or skill evinced in their erection. It is the Caucasian who is the builder, beginning with the cyclopean, advancing through the Egyptian, and ultimately attaining to the classical and gothic styles of true architecture. When the pure Mongol attempts a temple, it eventuates in a porcelain tower at Nankin, simply a series of tents in superposition. To speak of the Tamul architecture of Southern India as a veritable product of Turanian genius, is like citing the massive grandeur of the Rhameses, as a proof of the innate greatness of the negro. In neither case were the primitive peoples of Eastern Asia or Southern Africa masters of the situation; on the contrary, in both we may safely predicate the presence and predominance of Caucasian rulers as the producing cause of those monumental remains, which now characterise these distinctly marked areas of ancient civilization. The truth is the pure Mongol is never an artistic builder, except under Caucasian leadership, and we may add in obedience to Caucasian designs; and it need scarcely be added that the same remark applies with still greater force to the negro, whose palace is a cottage, and whose temple is a hut.

Mr. Fergusson is equally unfortunate in his remarks on the Semites, who it seems never erected a building worthy of the name; and yet their especial areas in Western Asia and Northern Africa are still among the most important monumental sites on the globe; while the Saracenic architecture of Spain is the admiration of the world. But when we remember that the author has spoken of the Egyptians and Phoenicians as Turanian peoples, it may be concluded that our difference of opinion with him on this subject is not as to facts but names. That the Semitic type has hitherto proved incapable of attaining to the highest form of æsthetic culture may be readily admitted, but it should be remembered that the Jews, who are obviously Mr. Fergusson's typical Semites, were never the artistic section of the race, being surpassed in this not only by the Egyptians and Assyrians, but also by their nearer congeners, the Syro-Phonicians and (Saracenic) Arabs. It is the last, who were probably the purest and highest form of the race, that is the most nearly free from Mongolic taint on the one hand, and from Negroid admixture on the other, whose lithe and elastic frames, elevated features, and finely arched crania proclaim them of the pure blood of the desert, who

have carried Semitic art to its highest refinement, and developed a style that may well be regarded as the Mohammedan rival to the Christian Gothic.

But we have thus been brought to a test of race which Mr. Fergusson, in accordance with his scholastic training in ethnology, seems to utterly ignore-we mean organic type. It is from his neglect or ignorance of this that he has been led into his contradictions and absurdities respecting the Turanians. Had he possessed the slightest idea of the radical distinction between the Brachycephalic Mongol and the Dolichocephalic Negro, he would never have spoken of an African race as Turanian. Nor with the most rudimentary knowledge of what this epithet really means would he have applied it to the finely developed, oval-faced, and nervous traders of Tyre and Sidon. Such errors as those we have alluded to, however fatal to his speculations as an ethnologist, might indeed well be pardoned in one whose refined taste and profound knowledge in connection with his own majestic act, should effectually plead his excuse for lapses in every other. But our duty as the representatives of a scientific anthropology, and our loyalty to the truth, alike demand an unflinching exposure of the fallacies and absurdities of that school of pseudo-ethnology, whose disciples, guided by a few philological analogies and other scholastic data, have ventured to speak of the migrations and displacement of races with a confidence that would be simply ridiculous, were it not also seriously obstructive to the progress of sound knowledge. Let us clearly understand that man must be studied not simply in language, but in structure; and that in proportion as we neglect organic type we are on the certain road

to error.

Mr. Fergusson is somewhat more at home with the Celts, perhaps because he knows them better; and had he spoken of them as he has done of the Turanians there would have been a much nearer approach to scientific truth than his work at present contains. To treat of the latter as especially susceptible of aesthetic culture is simply absurd; but in reference to the former the assertion is the embodiment of a great ethnic fact, of which history and archæology are alike demonstrative. If we enlarge the term, so as to make it embrace the classic nations of the south, as well as the Nervofibrous peoples of Western Europe, fine art may be said to constitute their especial appanage. The massive grandeur of the Egyptian style shows ideality laboriously and painfully struggling into manifestation, through the superincumbent pressure of a ponderous muscularity

of type, demanding a corresponding materiality of structure in its edifices. While in the architecture of India and the farther east, from the Buddist and Jaina times to the epoch of the Mohammedan invasion, we see in the complexity and elaborateness of the decoration that toylike tendency which has ever characterized the smallheaded and nervous children of the Indus and the Ganges. That highest form of beauty, which demands only simplicity and purity, and that grandest phase of sublimity which depends on form and proportion rather than mass, were never seen in perfection till the Parthenon was placed on the Acropolis, and Phidias adorned it with the masterpieces of his genius.

The author's estimate of the Aryans has obviously been written from the English standpoint. Indeed he had better at once have called them Anglo-Saxons, for this is decidedly what he means. The gigantic practicability of the English mind, with which the world has been so superabundantly blessed within the last few generations, seems to have quite overmastered him; and he accordingly dwells with needlessly exaggerated force on the inductive and utilitarian tendencies of the plain speaking and common sense Aryans, who, unfortunately for the architectural world, have a most decided predilection for congregationalism and plain churches. Alas! indeed for the fine arts, wherever these hard-working, shipbuilding, roadmaking Aryans obtain the predominance. Esthetic culture flies before them, while the viaduct supersedes the triumphal arch, and the whitewashed chapel takes the place of the gorgeous cathedral ! No wonder Mr. Fergusson has slender faith in the art of the future. What indeed can be expected of a people wholly given up to spinningjennies and power looms, and who prefer the profit derived from a red brick factory, with its smoking chimney, to all the unproductive glories of St. Peter's, and all the barren beauties of York Minster ! What indeed is to become of mankind after the extinction of those great master builders, the Turanians, a catastrophe which it seems is more nearly impending than some soft-hearted philanthropists are willing to suppose, it is impossible to conceive. Our only hope will then be in the Celts, who are themselves, poor fellows! everywhere subordinated to these dreadful Aryans, to whom all edification, save that of making a fortune, is utterly abhorrent.

To be serious. Mr. Fergusson has mistaken the tendencies of an age for the characteristics of a race, and so attributed to the latter what is due solely to the former. Whether the Aryans proper erected temples in India or not, it is quite certain that the "Sanscrit speak

ing" Greeks were the first artists in the world. And whether the English can or cannot erect tasteful and appropriate edifices now, it is demonstrable from existing remains, that they once enriched their country with abbeys and cathedrals, that are still the admiration of Christendom. Given a highly developed Caucasian race, richly endowed with creative power, susceptible to music, like the Germans, and capable of rising to the loftiest strains of dramatic and epic poetry like the English, and you have the elements out of which the purest and noblest art may at any time be evolved. But to nations as to individuals, there is a time for all things. We are the children of the inductive philosophy, and carried onward in the midway course of a materialistic and utilitarian era, we of necessity build steamships and construct railways; and as these are the best of their kind, so do they afford satisfactory evidence of a capacity, which wants but a higher and more spiritual inspiration to produce grander and more artistic results. When new temples are really wanted, that is when we have a living faith to put into them, Mr. Fergusson need not fear they will arise as by the wand of an enchanter, and cover the land with a grandeur and beauty of which no living artist has ever dreamed, and to which neither Grecian nor Gothic genius ever aspired.

Let us clearly understand this matter. Every style of architecture is but the manifestation of an idea; the temple is but the vesture of a faith. The stern power of the Osirian creed was befittingly reflected in the ponderous vastitude of Carnac. The grace and beauty of the Olympian deities, those glorious incarnations of all that is ideal and artistic in physical man and temporal life, found adequate expression in the harmonious proportions and faultless simplicity of a classic fane, that apt embodiment of finite thought and earthly aspiration; while the spiritual yearnings and heavenward tendencies of Christianity, with its overawing sense of the infinite and eternal, were befittingly mirrored in the dim vistas and far-stretching aisles, the lofty towers, and skyward pinnacles of a Gothic cathedral, that glorious symbol of the sublimity and severity, the grandeur and the gloom, of medieval faith. Now, it is precisely because we lack a great inspiration of this kind that we have no architecture. We live under the eclipse of faith. Protestantism pulls down what Catholicism is too weak to build up. It is not among iconoclasts that true edification should be expected to prevail. It is on the flood tide of a new, not the ebb tide of an old creed, that humanity is borne to those altitudes of thought, where new and untried forms of beauty are revealed, as in beatific vision, to its rapt seers. From Britain

VOL. I.-NO. II.