Thus high uplifted o'er the watery waste,

The sisters trembling, shook in terror wild;
Betwixt them he, their sole support and stay,
Guided them both on that aërial way.

"Now close behind them suddenly they hear

Fierce Rumo's accents, vengeance menacing,
Behold him burst from out a thicket near,

And see him on the bridge impetuous spring.
The gentle sisters shriek, o'erwhelmed with fear;
His cheek and eye of wrath such terrors fling;
Blinded with rage, he hurries on to dart
His eager weapon to Ulrico's heart."

Lida shields her lover, receiving in her bosom the descending blow, and

“Th' assailant on his murderous aim intent,

Thrown blindly forward, feels his footing fail,
And fain, with swaying arms alternate lent

To either side, would balance him: the rail
He grasps at, misses, falls: that shock hath bent
The beam; it leaves him: nothing now avail
The fragile bars: hurled, shrieking, to the wave,
That wood-work, following, floats upon his grave."

With this catastrophe we should have thought the poem might have properly closed; but Grossi has added a whole canto, in which Lida gets home and goes to bed; finds her mother insane at the loss of her children; and sees her recover her senses on the restoration of the two survivors. Yet just when every body, surgeon and reader included, imagines her wound in a fair way of healing, the poor girl dies, a minute or two after being married to Ulrico.

It strikes us as somewhat remarkable, that two out of these three new and popular poems should terminate with a deathbed marriage; and we feel half tempted to consider the circumstance as indicative of a return to a depth and solemnity of feeling such as has not, for some centuries past, been indigenous in the Italian soil and spirit.

Here we take a temporary leave, looking forward with hope to more finished productions from Carcano and Montanari: to the genius of Grossi we decidedly think the prose historic novel far better suited than either poetic tales, or fragments of epics.

The works we have just noticed do not possess all the merit we could desire, but they are at least interesting, and even important, as showing that the most recent literary taste of western Europe has also extended to Italy.

ART. III.-La Science Politique fondée sur la Science de l'Homme, ou Etude des Races humaines sous le Rapport_philosophique, historique, et sociale. Par V. Courtet, de L'Isle. Paris: Bertrand. 1838. 8vo.

THERE is in vogue amongst our continental neighbours a Philosophy which, let it take what shape it will, is perpetually tending towards materialism: a philosophy that, in its self-sufficiency, continually flatters itself by seeking its defence in the ancient philosophy of the Greeks and Romans; overlooking the characteristic fact, that whilst this latter was constantly grasping after truth, itself is as constantly running after error, and embracing, with an exulting satisfaction, every opinion that may reduce the intellect given us by our Creator to a level with the animals that grovel in the dust. We scarcely know from what causes such a theory has obtained disciples, unless it be more or less attributable to a condition of society bordering fast on the dissolution of social sentiments, or the bigotry of mental blindness, rejecting all evidence but that of the touch.

To this system of philosophy unquestionably belongs the essay of M. Courtet, which has just reached our hands. When he talks of laying the foundations of political science in the science of man, we must not understand by this latter the science impressed by the immortal y σEAUTY. M. Courtet wishes to make politics what he terms une science positive, by throwing overboard the study of man's high intellectual faculties, and basing it upon his physical constitution as an animal; that is to say, he would have us consider the essence, or being, implied by the term MAN, to be in the body and not in the mind. He attempts to do away with the illusion which, it seems, has so long been suffered to mislead our theories of government, viz. the consideration of man as a "moral being" only; and accordingly divides his book into two parts, in the first of which he developes his notions of Man as simply an animal; and in the second he applies these notions to the science of politics.

Linnæus, says our author, when he placed man in his system of nature at the head of the animal kingdom, opened a new road to science. Buffon followed in the same train, and called the attention of his disciples to the singular and beautiful regularity with which the chain of animated nature extended, from its lofty climax, man, down to the lowest point of its gradation. But Linnæus and Buffon, with their followers, according to M. Courtet, although they made this grand step towards the true, fell into the important error of considering man, physically, as a class, in

stead of one species of a class. Others, too, of later years, have led the way to the grand discovery set forth, it seems, in the present work, viz. that as in every class of animals there is a regular series of species, so in this highest class of man there is such a series also; every species of which is distinctly separated from the other, and has been ab origine, by the strongest and most indelible characteristics. Having thus extirpated "un préjugé trop profondément enraciné," namely, the notion that man is one class, M. Courtet sets down certain axioms, as he calls them, on which his political doctrines are to be grounded, and which are-1, a general deep-rooted gradation in animal beings and in the human race; 2, a plurality of original types amongst mankind; 3, the perpetuity of these types, entirely independent of the influence of climate.

Before we go farther into M. Courtet's system, we will consider briefly the arguments by which he supports these axioms (!) and we trust that we shall, without much difficulty, be enabled to show their utter fallaciousness.

In the first place, our author attempts to demonstrate a logical necessity for the truth of his axioms, by a train of reasoning that would do honour to an "opponent" in any one of our university schools. Buffon, says he, places man at the head of the animal race: Buffon remarks the astonishing regularity of the chain, descending "by steps almost insensible, from the most perfect of creatures to the most shapeless mass.' Now, in order that there may be such a regularity of descent, "there must necessarily be in the composition of the human race original differences of organization, at least as distinct as those which separate the different species of animals :" *-Ergo, there are such differences; &c. An admirable argument this, and equally remote from the common places of logic and fact. We must, nevertheless, consider poor Buffon as extremely ill used in this process of reasoning, since there is much more fathered upon him than he would willingly have acknowledged. When Linnæus and

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"Il résulte de cette opinion que l'homme, tout en se distinguant d'une manière sensible des genres inférieurs d'animaux, se lie néanmoins à ces genres par une facile transition, comme ceux-ci, également distincts les uns des autres, se lient évidemment entre eux. Il n'y a identité nulle part, mais l'analogie est partout. Entre l'homme et les autres êtres organisés, il n'y a point similitude, il y a gradation. Mais pour qu'il y ait gradation, pour que l'on puisse descendre par des degrés presque insensibles de la créature la plus parfaite à la matière la plus informe, de l'animal le mieux organisé au minéral le plus brut,' il faut nécessairement qu'il y ait dans le sein du genre humain (qui se trouve ainsi rattaché à tous les autres genres) des différences originelles d'organisation, pour le moins aussi tranchées que celles qui séparent les diverses espèces d'animaux: car, si l'on comparait l'Européen à l'oran-outang, il serait absurde de dire que l'on passe de l'un à l'autre par une transition légèrement marquée."-—p. 6.

Buffon placed man, as an animal, at the head of their system, the former at least knew well that it was taking him in only one of his attributes; and also, what M. Courtet seems to have left out of the consideration, that he possessed another attribute, marking the widest possible separation betwixt himself and the next species in descent in fact, that it would have been as absurd to say there was an "insensible step" between man and the highest species of brutes, as it would have been both absurd and impious to say there was but an insensible step between God and man. The error is notorious; and with a known cause of such infinite difference, we have no ground whatever for assuming the logical necessity of a nearer and more regular approach.

The system of M. Courtet is thus reduced to rest entirely upon facts, and not upon theoretic reasoning, in which the foregoing example proves that he is not over strong. To us there appears no conceivable reason for imagining that the different species of mankind must follow the same system as the inferior animals, or that any "original law of creation," as M. Courtet terms it, can be applicable here; unless, as he seems to suppose, and as some of the older philosophers in a barbarous age literally believed, men were produced like cabbages.

M. Courtet next proceeds to show that there are marked differences in the physical organization of different races of Man, which must have co-existed with his origin, and which prove such a graduated chain in that class as he had already assumed to exist. He specifies various physical characteristics which distinguish, for instance, the negro from the European: and, trifling as these appear and really are in comparison with the differences between other classes of animals, he asserts them to be such as render it impossible that the two races could ever have sprung from the same stock. He then enumerates the various species of mankind which some naturalists have interposed between the European and the negro, and finally arrives at the conclusion that all these varieties have been, from the first existence of man, as radically distinct as a tiger and a cat.

The strongest distinguishing characteristics of the different races of mankind are seated in the head and face. Here it cannot be denied that the negro, with his low narrow forehead, his scull elongated backwards, his thick lips, &c., differs widely from the European; that the European differs from the Asiatic, and that the Jew differs from others:- we admit the truth of many similar statements in the book before us. But are not these exactly what we ought to expect? and does there not exist as remarkable a distinction between two individuals of the same race and nation, in proportion to circumstances, as between the general charac

teristics of any two races, even the European and the negro? Let those who would have an answer to this question visit the cabinet of a phrenologist.

If it be demanded, what is the reason of this diversity of formation in the heads of different individuals, we have little hesitation in assigning it principally to education; taking this, however, in its widest and philosophical sense, as combining accident and cultivation: and we base this opinion even upon the observation that among nations where a higher degree and greater diversities of education prevail, the diversity of heads is much greater than among a nation of savages. The simple circumstance that the grand distinguishing characteristics of races are situated in that part to which we involuntarily turn for character and intelligence, might lead at once to this mode of solving the question; for who does not form a judgment of strangers on a first glance at their faces ?

Beauty, according to our author, is itself a distinctive characteristic of the different species of the class MAN. Beginning with the lowest grade, we see extreme ugliness in the Hottentot, and find a constant and regular increase of beauty through all the ascending scale till we reach its highest degree in the European. We are strongly tempted to question this argument altogether, and see no ground for concluding the organization of the head to be connected with the features of the face. With regard to beauty, M. Courtet overlooks the disparity often occurring in the different sexes of the same race; the Greeks, for instance; and for the Irish, compare the men of Munster and Connaught with their brethren. Is the native of Bengal, the Nair, the American Indian, the Persian, or the Circassian, superior in intellect, as unquestionably in beauty, to the ancient Roman* and the modern Chinese?-and what, in a few centuries, has so changed the Tatars of Rubruquis and other old travellers? But may we not pursue even M. Courtet's scale of beauty within the bounds of Europe-nay, in our own island—in the same manner? and is not the actuating cause the same? Why, for instance, do we find in England the greatest degree of beauty as well as intelligence, if we seek it as the characteristic of a class, amongst the highest grade, the nobility? Doubtless because we there find the most universally careful education. Who that is accustomed to observe attentively the features of any particular class of society in England, will not recognize, to a certain degree, a distinctive character between that class and another, and thus afford one solution of the question as to the difference of feature in different

VOL. XXI. NO. XLI.

See Cicero.

E