The Vestiges of Creation has been translated into German by Charles Vogt, a savan who in late years has become noted as a radical politician. The translation is highly praised. Published at Brunswick.
The translation of Hegel's Aesthetik into French is now nearly completed at Paris, the fourth volume, which is devoted to the consideration of music and poetry, having just been published. One volume more will complete the work. The translator is M. Charles Bénard.
The Human Race and its Origin.—Under the title of Histoire Générale des Races Humaines, M. Eusebe-François de Salles has just published at Paris an elaborate work on Ethnography, for which he had prepared himself by long and careful personal observation of most of the races on the globe, his travels having extended into nearly all climes and regions. He takes the ground of the descent of the entire human family from a single pair, created adult and perfect in mind and body, not by any simple evolution of nature, but by a direct act of the Divine Being. The paradise or home of this pair he places to the north of India and the east of Persia. All the varieties of men now existing he attributes to the influence of climate and circumstances. "The first light of history," he says, "shows us the human family in possession of a language, and of a certain degree of science, the inheritance of the past. Its aptitudes, its passions, and outward circumstances, may increase this inheritance, keep it the same, or diminish it. In peoples enervated by luxury and by doubt, in tribes softened by too favorable a climate, or separated too long from the stronger and better educated masses,—in a family or a couple exiled by a catastrophe, a shipwreck,—we are to seek the origin of the decline into the various degrees of corruption, barbarism, the savage state, and brutality. Imagine a boat from the coast of America, or from the South Sea Islands, cast by a tempest on some unknown shore or some desert island. A few young persons, a few children, alone escape from the shipwreck, knowing imperfectly the language, the arts, and the family traditions of their parents. Such is the origin of the unfortunates sometimes met with, who are ignorant even of the use of fire." Against the spontaneous generation of the human race in several localities he argues at length as an utter absurdity, the point of his argument being, that isolated couples so produced would be unable to resist the inhospitality of nature without miraculous aid, and one miracle, he contends, is more admissable than ten or a dozen. But the chief grounds upon which he labors to establish his doctrine are the similitude of the most ancient traditions among all branches of the human species, the affiliation and analogy of languages, and the identity of organization and equality of aptitudes. He finds similar traditions among the Hebrews, the Chaldeans, the Phœnicians, the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Chinese, the Thibetans, the Scythians, and the Americans. In the theogonies and cosmogonies of the Aztecs of America, he says that the traditions of ancient Asia are plainly to be found, while some vague traces of these primitive narratives are to be found even among the savages of Oceanica, and the most barbarous and miserable negroes of western Africa. To the negroes he devotes perhaps the most careful and learned portion of the work. Starting from the discovery of M. Flaurens as to the pigmentum or coloring matter of the skin, he contends with great force that nothing but the gradual influence of climate, giving a greater and greater intensity to the action of this coloring matter, which exists in every race and every individual, has caused the essential difference between whites and blacks. For, he argues, there is no other difference between them than that of color, all the other features, such as the prominent mouth, the woolly hair, the facial angle, being in no wise exclusively peculiar to the Africans. And so, after having gone over the entire race in detail, proving the identity of organization in every division, M. de Salles concludes that the primitive complexion was olive, somewhat like the color of unburnt coffee, and the original men had red hair. On the affiliation of languages he reasons at great length, with a striking affluence of curious and learned detail. Languages, he remarks, become more and more complicated and perfect as we ascend toward their origin. Next he considers the modifications by which the present races of men have departed from the first family, and in so doing he takes up every people that has ever been known. America, he thinks, was first settled by Mongol emigration, with religious traditions, between the eighteenth and the fifteenth century before our era: then, six or eight hundred years later, there was a second emigration of Hindoo races, with traditions of architecture. With the Bible and the facts of geology as his starting point, he demonstrates the falsity of the Egyptian, Hindoo, Chinese, and Mexican chronologies. The six days of creation he takes as so many great epochs; the deluge he places at five thousand years before Christ.
In our account of this book we have not strictly followed the order of the author. Thus he makes the direct miraculous creation of man the concluding topic of his book, and treats it not without a certain poetic elevation as comports with such an event. We have aimed only to give the outlines of his doctrine, and for the rest recommend those of our readers who are interested in such studies to procure and read the work.
Joachim Lelewel (a name honored by all lovers of liberty,) has just published at Breslau a work on the geography of the middle ages, which is worthy of the warmest admiration. It consists of an atlas of fifty plates, engraved by the hand of the venerable author, containing one hundred and forty-five figures and maps, from eighty-eight different Arabic and Latin geographers of different epochs, with eleven explicative or comparative maps and two geographical essays. The whole work exhibits the most thorough acquaintance and conscientious use of the labors of previous explorers in the same direction. The cost of importing a copy into this country would be about eight dollars.
More new German Novels.—The Siege of Rheinfels, by Gustave von See, is a historical romance, founded on an episode from the wars of Louis XIV., against the German empire. While the Palatinate and the left bank of the Rhine were ravaged by the French armies, the fortress of Rheinfels held out obstinately against a siege which was prosecuted with fury by a much superior force. Amid the scenes of this siege, passes the love-story that forms the kernel of the novel, which is written with originality and talent. The historical part is equally attractive and vraisemblant. A collection of romances under the title of Germania, has appeared at Bremen. It is intended to serve as the beginning of an annual publication. The first number contains seven tales, some of them by well known romance writers. The first is Eine Leidenschaft (A Passion), by Louise von G., and is highly praised by the most reliable critics; it abounds in arch and graceful humor. Spiller von Hauenschildt is the least successful of the contributors in respect to the artistic treatment of his subject. His novel is socialistic. Adolph Hahr and Alfred Meissner are also among the contributors. On the whole the book is a good one.
Leopold