manners of his subjects, accustomed, like himself, to blood and rapine, might excuse in their eyes such partial acts of tyranny as would excite the horror of a civilised people, but the power of a despot has never been acknowledged in the deserts of Scythia. The immediate jurisdiction of the khan is confined within the limits of his own tribe, and the exercise of his royal prerogative has been moderated by the ancient institution of a national council. The Coroultai,1 or Diet, of the Tartars was regularly held in the spring and autumn in the midst of a plain, where the princes of the reigning family and the mursas of the respective tribes may conveniently assemble on horseback with their martial and numerous trains, and the ambitious monarch who reviewed the strength, must consult the inclination, of an armed people. The rudiments of a feudal government may be discovered in the constitution of the Scythian or Tartar nations, but the perpetual conflict of those hostile nations has sometimes terminated in the establishment of a powerful and despotic empire. The victor, enriched by the tribute and fortified by the arms of dependent kings, has spread his conquests over Europe or Asia; the successful shepherds of the North have submitted to the confinement of arts, of laws, and of cities; and the introduction of luxury, after destroying the freedom of the people, has undermined the foundations of the throne.15 a 14 See the Diets of the ancient Huns (De Guignes, tom. ii. p. 26), and a curious description of those of Zingis (Vie de Gengiscan, 1. i. c. 6, 1. iv. c. 11). Such assemblies are frequently mentioned in the Persian history of Timur, though they served only to countenance the resolutions of their master. 15 Montesquieu labours to explain a difference, which has not existed, between the liberty of the Arabs and the perpetual slavery of the Tartars (Esprit des Loix, 1. xvii. c. 5, 1. xviii. c. 19, &c.). Since the time of Gibbon our knowledge of the languages of the nomadic tribes of Asia has been enlarged, and we are now enabled to classify these nations with greater accuracy than was possible at an earlier period. As we shall have frequent occasion to speak of them in subsequent notes, it is necessary to enter somewhat in detail into this subject. The nomadic tribes of Asia inhabit the vast area reaching from the Uralian mountains to the sea of China and Japan, and from the northern limits of Persia and India to the frozen ocean of Siberia, though a portion of the latter country is also occupied by other races. These various tribes were originally one race, as is proved by an examination of their languages, though, like the members of the Indo-European race, they are now divided into different families, speaking languages mutually unintelligible, but bearing a strong resemblance to one another in their physical and moral characters and habits of life. They are now divided into four branches, called respectively the Mongolian, Tungusian, Turkish, and Ugrian. I. THE MONGOLIAN RACE.-The Mongolians are the least numerous of the four, and were confined to a comparatively small territory till the time of their national hero Zingis Khan, when they first occur in history. Even in his armies and those of his successors, most of the soldiers were Turks, while the captains were Mongolians (see c. lxiv.). With the exception of a few scattered hords, the Mongolians are still confined to the country northward of the great wall of China and westward of the Mandshú country. II. THE TUNGUSIAN RACE extends on the east from the Yenesei to the sea of of Scythia, The memory of past events cannot long be preserved in the frequent and remote emigrations of illiterate barbarians. Situation The modern Tartars are ignorant of the conquests of their and extent ancestors; 16 and our knowledge of the history of the or Tartary. Scythians is derived from their intercourse with the learned and civilised nations of the South-the Greeks, the Persians, and the Chinese. The Greeks, who navigated the Euxine, and planted their colonies along the sea-coast, made the gradual and imperfect discovery of Scythia, from the Danube and the confines of Thrace, as far as the frozen Mæotis, the seat of eternal winter, and Mount Caucasus, 16 Abulghazi Khan, in the two first parts of his Genealogical History, relates the miserable fables and traditions of the Uzbek Tartars concerning the times which preceded the reign of Zingis. Okhotsk, and on the north from the coast of the Icy Sea, between the Yenesei and the Lena, to the Yellow Sea on the southeast. Among the numerous tribes of the Tungusian race, some of which are very barbarous, the only one which has exercised an influence upon the history of the world is that of the Mandshús, the present rulers of China. III. THE TURKISH RACE, the most widely extended of the four, and one of the most considerable of the families of the world, occupies as a continuous population the vast extent of country from the neighbourhood of the lake Baikal, 110° E. long., to the eastern boundaries of the Greek and Slavonic countries of Europe. One isolated tribe-the Yakuts -dwell in the remote east, upon the river Lena and the coasts of the Icy Sea. The chief divisions of the Turks are:1. The Ouigours, on the west of the Mongol frontier, the most anciently civilised tribe of the Turkish race. 2. Turks of the Sandy Desert, conterminous with Mongolia and Tibet. 3. Turks of Khoten, Kashgar, and Yarkend, conterminous with Tibet. 4. The Kirghis, in Independent Tartary. 5. The Uzbeks, the Turks of Bokhara. 6. The Turkomans, inhabiting the Persian frontier of Independent Tartary from Balk to the Caspian. 7. The Osmanli, or Ottoman Turks, the Turks of the Turkish empire. 8. The Nogays, dwelling north of the Caucasus, between the lower Don and the lower Volga. 9. The Turks of the Russian Empire. 10. The isolated Yakuts of the Lena, already mentioned. IV. THE UGRIAN RACE, also called the FINNISH or TSCHUDISH.-This people left the great eastern plateau of Asia, and settled in the north-west of Asia and the north of Europe, at a period long antece dent to all historical documents. They extend as a continuous population from the Yenesei on the east to Norway on the west. The eastern branches of this race are the Voguls and the Ostiaks, between the Ural mountains and the Yenesei, inhabiting the country formerly called Ugrien, Jugrien, or Jugoria; the most important of the western branches are the Finns and Lappes. The Magyars of Hungary are also members of the Ugrian race. This people, in the ninth century of the Christian era, descended from the southern part of the Uralian mountains, and settled on the plains of the lower Danube. They called themselves Magyars, but the Russians gave them the name of Ugri, as originating from Ugria, and this name has been corrupted into Ungri and Hungarians. The Magyars are the only people of the Ugrian race who have exercised any influence upon the history of the world. Upon the ethnology and languages of the above-mentioned races the following are the most important works since the time of Gibbon:- Klaproth, Tableaux Historiques de l'Asie, Paris, 1826, 4to.; Rémusat, Recherches sur les Langues Tartares, Paris, 1820, and several essays by the same writer in his Mélanges Asiatiques, Paris, 1825-26, 2 vols. 8vo., and Nouveaux Mélanges Asiatiques, 1829, 2 vols. 8vo.; D'Ohsson, Histoire des Mongoles, La Haye et Amsterdam, 1834, 4 vols.; Schott, Versuch über die Tatarischen Sprachen; F. H. Müller, Der Ugrische Volkstamm, Berlin, 1837-39, 2 vols. 8vo.; Neumann, Die Völker des südlichen Russlands, Leipzig, 1847; Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, vols. iii. and iv.; Latham, The Natural History of the Varieties of Man.-S. which, in the language of poetry, was described as the utmost boundary of the earth. They celebrated, with simple credulity, the virtues of the pastoral life: they entertained a more rational apprehension of the strength and numbers of the warlike barbarians, 18 who contemptuously baffled the immense armament of Darius, the son of Hystaspes. The Persian monarchs had extended their western conquests to the banks of the Danube and the limits of European Scythia. The eastern provinces of their empire were exposed to the Scythians of Asia, the wild inhabitants of the plains beyond the Oxus and the Jaxartes, two mighty rivers, which direct their course towards the Caspian Sea. The long and memorable quarrel of Iran and Touran is still the theme of history or romance: the famous, perhaps the fabulous, valour of the Persian heroes, Rustan and Asfendiar, was signalised, in the defence of their country, against the Afrasiabs of the North; and the invincible spirit of the same barbarians resisted, on the same ground, the victorious arms of Cyrus and Alexander. In the eyes of the Greeks and Persians, the real geography of Scythia was bounded, on the east, by the mountains of Imaus or Caf; and their distant prospect of the extreme and inaccessible parts of Asia was clouded by ignorance, or perplexed by fiction. But those inaccessible regions are the ancient residence of a powerful and civilised nation,22 which ascends, by a probable tradition, 17 In the thirteenth book of the Iliad, Jupiter turns away his eyes from the bloody fields of Troy to the plains of Thrace and Scythia. He would not, by changing the prospect, behold a more peaceful or innocent scene. 18 Thucydides, 1. ii. c. 97. 19 See the fourth book of Herodotus. When Darius advanced into the Moldavian desert, between the Danube and the Dniester, the king of the Scythians sent him a mouse, a frog, a bird, and five arrows; a tremendous allegory! 20 These wars and heroes may be found under their respective titles, in the Bibliothèque Orientale of D'Herbelot. They have been celebrated in an epic poem of sixty thousand rhymed couplets, by Ferdusi, the Homer of Persia. See the history of Nadir Shah, p. 145, 165. The public must lament that Mr. Jones has suspended the pursuit of Oriental learning.b 21 The Caspian sea, with its rivers and adjacent tribes, are laboriously illustrated in the Examen Critique des Historiens d'Alexandre, which compares the true geography and the errors produced by the vanity or ignorance of the Greeks. 22 The original seat of the nation appears to have been in the north-west of China, Ferdusi is yet imperfectly known to European readers. An abstract of the whole poem has been published by Goerres in German, under the title "das Heldenbuch des Iran." In English, an abstract with poetical translations, by Mr. Atkinson, has appeared, under the auspices of the Oriental Fund. But to translate a poot a man must be a poet. The best account of the poem is in an article by Von Hammer in the Vienna Jahrbücher, 1820; or perhaps in a masterly article in Cochrane's Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 1, 1835. A splendid and critical edition of the whole work has been published by a very learned English Orientalist, Captain Macan, at the expense of the king of Oude. As to the number of 60,000 couplets, Captain Macan (Preface, page 39) states that he never saw a MS. containing more than 56,685, including doubtful and spurious passages and episodes.-M. b The later studies of Sir W. Jones were more in unison with the wishes of the public, thus expressed by Gibbon.-M. above forty centuries; 23 and which is able to verify a series of near two thousand years by the perpetual testimony of accurate and contemporary historians.24 The annals of China23 illustrate the state in the provinces of Chensi and Chansi. Under the two first dynasties the principal town was still a moveable camp; the villages were thinly scattered; more land was employed in pasture than in tillage; the exercise of hunting was ordained to clear the country from wild beasts; Petcheli (where Pekin stands) was a desert; and the southern provinces were peopled with Indian savages. The dynasty of the Hun (before Christ 206) gave the empire its actual form and extent. 23 The æra of the Chinese monarchy has been variously fixed from 2952 to 2132 years before Christ; and the year 2637 has been chosen for the lawful epoch by the authority of the present emperor. The difference arises from the uncertain duration of the two first dynasties; and the vacant space that lies beyond them, as far as the real, or fabulous, times of Fohi or Hoangti. Sematsien dates his authentic chronology from the year 841; the thirty-six eclipses of Confucius (thirty-one of which have been verified) were observed between the years 722 and 480 before Christ. The historical period of China does not ascend above the Greek Olympiads." 24 After several ages of anarchy and despotism, the dynasty of the Han (before Christ 206) was the æra of the revival of learning. The fragments of ancient literature were restored; the characters were improved and fixed; and the future preservation of books was secured by the useful inventions of ink, paper, and the art of printing. Ninety-seven years before Christ, Sematsien published the first history of China. His labours were illustrated and continued by a series of one hundred and eighty historians. The substance of their works is still extant; and the most considerable of them are now deposited in the king of France's library. 25 China has been illustrated by the labours of the French; of the missionaries at Pekin, and Messrs. Fréret and De Guignes at Paris. The substance of the three preceding notes is extracted from the Chou-king, with the preface and notes of M. de The ablest Chinese scholars in Europe, Klaproth, Rémusat, and Neumann, accept without scruple the statements of the Chinese authors respecting the antiquity of their monarchy. Rémusat says that the history of China goes back with certainty to the twenty-second century before our era, and that traditions, entitled to credit, allow us to date its commencement four centuries earlier, in the year 2637 B.C., in the 61st year of the reign of Hoang-ti. (Rémusat, Nouveaux Mélanges Asiatiques, vol. i. p. 65.) But notwithstanding the authority of these scholars, the laws of historical criticism compel us to reject the ancient date which they assign to the Chinese monarchy, and even the much later date which Gibbon gives as the commencement of the historical period of China. The earliest extant history of China is by Ssema-Thsian (called by Gibbon Sematsien in note 24), who was born in B.C. 145, and published his work about the commencement of the first century before our era. We learn from him that the ancient chronicles had been destroyed in B.C. 213; and it appears that he was obliged to have recourse chiefly to tradition for the period preceding the Han dynasty. (Rémusat, ut supra, vol. ii. p. 132.) A history handed down by tradition for 2000 years cannot be accepted as VOL. III. a real narrative of facts; and even if SsemaThsian recovered most of the ancient annals, we know nothing of their value, whether they were written by contemporaries of the events which they record, or whether, like the Greek genealogies of the heroic ages, they were the inventions of a later period. At all events we cannot with certainty place the commencement of the historical period of China earlier than B.C. 206, the beginning of the Han dynasty. Even if the thirty-six eclipses which are said to have been observed between 722 and 480 B.C. have been really verified, it would only prove that some kind of records had been preserved before the Han dynasty; but even these astronomical calculations have been called in question by competent judges. Moreover many of the details of early Chinese history rest upon the authority of Ma-touan-lin, who in the thirteenth century of our era compiled an encyclopædia of history, antiquities, and literature. His work is considered as one of great authority by Chinese scholars, but cannot be of any value as an independent testimony respecting the early period. (Rémusat, ut supra, vol. ii, p. 166.) There are some good remarks upon the value of early Chinese history in Latham's Natural History of the Varieties of Man, p. 56, seq.-S. X and revolutions of the pastoral tribes, which may still be distinguished by the vague ameliation of Sevtiians or Tartars-the vassals, the enemies, and sometimes the conquerors of a great empire, whose Dalry has uniforms opposed the blind and impetuous valour of the hs of the Nari. From the mouth of the Danube to the sea of Japan, the whale longitude of Scythia is about one hundred and Tex deres, which in that paralel, are equal to more than five thousand mães. The latitude of these extensive deserts cannot be s easy ie si accurately measured; but, from the fortieth degree, which touches the wall of China, we may securely advance above a thousand mães to the northward, t our progress is stopped by the excessive caid of Siberia In that dreary climate, instead of the anmazed picture of a Tartar camp, the smoke which issues from the earth, or rather from the snow, betrays the subterraneous dwellings of the Tongouses and the Samojedes: the want of horses and oxen is imperfectly suppled by the use of reindeer and of large dogs; and the conquerors of the earth insensibly degenerate into a race of deformed and diminutive savages, who tremble at the sound of arms.26 The Haas, who under the reign of Valens threatened the empire Guignes, Pars:" The Tomo Kiev-K- translated by the P. de Mailla, under the name of Esa Generale de la Chine, tom i p. 1-c.; the Mémoires sur la CL, Pes 17% ÁL, KOL. 3. p. 1-2k kom i p. 5-364; the Histoire des Huns, 2m 1 1 2012, 2 v. p-31 sad the Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscrip42 km xv. p. 495-504, tom. xviii. p. 178-295, tom. xxxvi. * See the Histoire Generale des Voyages, tom. xviii.; and the Genealogical History, vai à a 120-066. There has been much controversy among modern scholars respecting the race to which the Huns belangel. The three principal theories are: 1. That they were Momodis, which is maintained by Niebuhr, 2. That they were Corinus, which is the opinion of Humboldt and of the chief writers on the subject. 3. That they were Irts, which is maintained by Zeuss Prichard, and Latham. The last of these theories appears to the Editor to be the most probable. 1. The only argument in favour of the Mongolian origin of the Huns is derived from the description of their physical appearance, which is supposed to correspond only to the true Mongols of Mongolia. But this is a mistake; for many of the Turkish tribes of Asia, such as the Uzbeks, have the real Mongol physiognomy; and it is more natural to look for the original type of their physical conformation in the nomadic tribes of the race than in the Osmanli Turks of Europe, who have intermarried with other races, and whose habits and manner of life are widely different from those of their ancestors. Moreover the true Mongols first appear in history in the time of Zingis Khan, as has been remarked in a previous note; they are never mentioned by the Byzantine historians, whereas the name of the Turks frequently occurs; and it is exceedingly improbable that a conquering race like the Huns should have remained quiet for so many centuries. 2. The argument in favour of the Ugrian origin of the Huns rests chiefly upon the supposition that the name of Hungary is derived from that of the Huns; and as it is an undoubted fact that the Magyars of Hungary are Ugrians, the Huns must have belonged to the same race. But instead of deriving the term Hungary from the Huns, it is more natural to connect it with that of Ugri or Ungri, the name of the race who peopled it in historical times. 3. The direct evidence in favour of the Turkish origin of the Huns is scanty; but still there is evidence, which is not the case with the Mongolian and Ugrian hypotheses. The Byzantine writers use the |