This disuniting power is very strongly marked among the tribes of Polynesia. "The Papuans, or Oriental negroes," says Dr. Leyden, seem to be all divided into very small states, or rather societies, very little connected with each other. Hence their language is broken into a multitude of dialects, which in process of time, by separation, accident, or oral corruption, have nearly lost all resemblance." "Languages in the savage state," says Mr. Crawfurd, "are great in number, in improved society few. The state of languages on the American continent affords a convincing illustration of this fact; and it is not less satisfactorily explained by that of the Indian islands. The negro races which inhabit the mountains of the Malaya peninsula, in the lowest and most abject state of social existence, though numerically few, are divided into a great many tribes, speaking as many different languages. Among the rude and scattered population of the island of Timer, it is believed that not less than forty languages are spoken. On Ende and Flores, we have also a multiplicity of languages, and among the cannibal population of Borneo, it is believed that many hundreds are spoken." The same fact has been observed among the Australian tribes, as is obvious from an inspection of the vocabularies published in King's Survey. If these causes act thus elsewhere, they must be still more powerful in America, where, as Humboldt has well observed, "the configuration of the soil, the strength of vegetation, the apprehensions of the mountaineers, under the tropics, of exposing themselves to the burning heat of the plains, are obstacles to communication, and contribute to the amazing variety of

American dialects. This variety, it is observed, is more restrained in the savannas and forests of the north, which are easily traversed by hunters, on the banks of great rivers, along the coasts of the ocean, and in every country, where the Incas had established their theocracy by force of arms."*

Lexical conformity, that is, agreement between words, does not exist; but an examination of the structure pervading all the American languages, has established beyond all doubt, that they all form one individual family, closely knitted together in all its parts by the most essential of ties, grammatical analogy. "This analogy," says Dr. Wiseman, "is not of a vague, indefinite kind, but complex in the extreme, and affecting the most necessary and elementary parts of grammar; for it consists chiefly in the peculiar methods of modifying conjugationally the meanings and relations of verbs by the insertion of syllables; and this form led the late W. von Humboldt to give the American languages a family name, as forming their conjugations by what he termed agglutination."

Nor is this analogy partial; it extends over both the great divisions of the New World, and gives a family

"The Basque tongue," says Dr. Wall, "affords a striking instance of the rapidity with which new dialects are produced, when the process is not checked either by some peculiarity of circumstance, or by the restrictions which alphabetic writing supplies." Of the multiplied dialects of this language, which are spoken within the narrow limits of the Pyrenean provinces, M. D'Abaddie gives the following description: "La langue Eskuarra compte six principaux dialect es, qui sont le haut-navarsais, le souletin, le bas-navarrais, le labourdin, le guipuzkoan, et le biskaien ou cantabre. Chacun de ces dialectes se subdivise lui-même, suivant le tribus, avec un incroyable variete d'inflexions et de desinences grammaticales."

air to languages spoken under the torrid and arctic zones by the wildest and more civilized tribes. "This wonderful uniformity," says Malte Brun, "in the peculiar manner of forming the conjugations of verbs from one extremity of America to the other, favours in a singular manner, the supposition of a primitive people, which formed the common stock of the American indigenous nations." The languages of the New World, therefore, when carefully examined, instead of proving diversity of origin, exhibit on the contrary divergence from a common centre of civilization.

There was, no doubt, a marked difference between the religious systems of the Mexicans and Peruvians : that of the former was gloomy, sanguinary, and based upon fear; that of the latter was cheerful, mild, and founded upon love. But this marked dissimilitude by no means proves that the two systems may not have been derived from the same root. There is just the same difference between the two great sects of India; the worshippers of Vishnu, the Preserver, and of Siva, the Destroyer. Both religions were elementary; that is, they were based on the worship of some object, power, or principle of nature; either physical objects, as the sun, the moon, the earth, etc., or abstractions, as the creating, preserving, and destroying; or, what seems to have been most usual, the object and the principle may have been combined, and the physical phenomena worshipped mainly, or only, as the expressions of a creating or destroying power. From this common starting point, it is very possible to derive the most opposite creeds, according to the prevalence of gratitude or fear in the minds of those by whom the

first elements are wrought into a system. And the system of sacrifice adopted by a nation will at once shew which principle has prevailed in the development of its religion, for sacrifices may be either offerings to testify love, or bribes to avert danger. Wherever there is an organized priesthood, and especially where there is a sacerdotal caste, we find the more gloomy creed and the cruel ritual prevalent; but where circumstances have weakened the sacerdotal power, a tendency to a more cheerful faith and milder observances becomes manifest. The religion of colonies generally exhibits this improvement on the creed and worship of the parent state. The Carthaginians brought the worship of Moloch with them from Palestine, but they never indulged in such sanguinary rites as were used by their ancestors in Canaan. It was among the Grecian colonies of Asia Minor, that the Hellenic religion assumed the poetic form in which it is presented to us by Homer, for in the dramatic poets, and particularly in Eschylus, we find traces of a darker creed, which favoured human sacrifices. In the countries adjacent to Hindustan, which indubitably derived their religion along with the first elements of civilization from India, it is not Brahminism which prevails, but Buddhism, a mixed political and philosophical reform of the ancient Hindú faith.

The difference between the religious systems of Mexico and Peru is not, in fact, greater than that between those of India and Ceylon, or Brahminism and Buddhism. It is a singular coincidence that the Peruvians had one Buddhistic notion prominent in their creed, the successive incarnations of Deity in the

persons of their rulers: there is a perfect similarity between the attributes of the Incas of Peru, and the Lamas of Tibet. It deserves to be added, that in the provinces where the empire of the Incas was not established, human sacrifices were as common as in Mexico.

When we compare two systems of religion, which were originally derived from the same elements, but which became wholly different in the course of their respective developments,-such for instance as the creeds of the Pelasgi and the Hellenes, of the Brahmins and the Buddhists, and most probably of the Mexicans and Peruvians, we shall find that the system which most closely assimilated the deities to human form was the most favourable to purity of morals and development of intellectual power. In Asia, where the human form was attributed to the gods, it was but a secondary affair; the indispensable means of presenting them to the senses, and nothing more. Hence the greater part of the Asiatic nations never hesitated to depart from the human form, or to disfigure it, in order to strengthen the symbolical representation. The Hindu makes no scruple of giving his gods twenty arms; the Phrygian Diana had as many breasts; the Egyptians gave their deities the heads of birds and beasts. All these disfigurations have a common origin; the human form was but a subordinate object, the chief aim was a more distinct designation of the symbol.

The Greeks gradually dismissed the symbolical representations, and adopted something more human in their stead. The Buddhists and Peruvians followed a similar course; for their incarnations were in principle