alike;-short, middle-sized, and tall; white, brown, tawny, red, olive, copper-colored, swarthy, and black;-features, very coarse, or very fine-hair, brown, fair, red, and black, long, curled, frizzled, or woolly; we find innumerable combinations of these different shapes and colors, according to the different degrees of latitude, temperature, or civilization. How many races shall we count? The number five has been taken; but fifty might be taken for the same reason. Among the blacks, there are coarse and delicate features; strong and slender forms; deep black, and innumerable varieties of lighter shades, until they become swarthy; from flat noses and thick lips to high noses and thin lips; from short frizzled wool to long straight hair. Among the nations, who are called fair or white, there are so many shapes and shades, that no two men could be expected to agree in fixing where the white ends, and where the tawny, the red, the brown, or the olive begins." The thick-skinned Esquimaux Indians, far-famed for filthy habits and smoking huts, "are of a yellowish gray color. Their blood is dark, dense, warm, and oily; their hands and feet are as clammy as bacon; and the effluvia from their bodies is extremely offensive." The Mogul Tartars are another example of the disgusting effects of barbarian habits. While the "Moguls, who invaded India, and settled in Hindostan, have acquired the darker complexion, the figure and features, of the people they supplanted;" and the Portuguese colony, settled at Mitomba, have become perfect negroes; the Falatahs, or Foulahs, who have sojourned with their flocks for successive generations, among the gross features and thick skins of the naked aborigines of Guinea, by their mode of life, and peculiar neatness of dress, and cleanliness of person, have preserved their general elegance of form and the delicacy of their features. Owing to these circumstances, the hair of the Foulahs is fine, and the skin thin; consequently their color is only of a brown, or tawny, caste. America, although it stretches from the extreme North beyond the fiftieth degree South of the Equator, cannot strictly be said to possess any torrid region. "The immense extent of ocean by which its shores are bounded, its lofty mountains, running continuously from one extremity of the continent to the other, with their tops covered with perpetual snow,"

and its dense forests, "cool the scorching breezes of the torrid zone, and convert it into a temperate clime." Of the inhabitants of its frozen region, mention has been already made. All the other parts of this vast continent, have a moderate temperature, compared with that of Guinea; consequently the curly hair and black skin of the negro, are not to be expected among the aboriginal Americans. We find, however, different shades of complexion according to the actual variations of heat. "The Araucans of Chili," says Molina, "are white and red, with blue eyes, fair hair, and regular features, like Europeans in the middle of the northern temperate zone." "In Europe, the complexion grows darker as the climate becomes warmer. The complexion of the French is darker than that of the Germans, while the nations of the South of Germany and France are darker than those of the North." In Asia, the same change is observable; the people of the temperate clime of Asia Minor having a fair complexion, while the inhabitants of the South of Persia are remarkably sallow, and those of Hindostan, nearly black. "The Jews, though scattered over the face of the earth, have, in general, remained a distinct and separate race; yet they are found fair in Britain, brown in Spain and Portugal, copper-colored in Arabia and Egypt, and almost wholly black at Cochin," on the Malabar coast of Hindostan. It should be further remarked, that the Jews, by the force of climate alone, approximate in features, as well as complexion, to the original inhabitants of the several countries in which they reside. As the surface of the ocean, and of other large bodies of water, can never freeze, until the whole mass of water becomes intensely cold, and as the perpetual agitation of the waves in summer mixes the cold waters of the deep with the heated surface, the wind passing over it acquires a moderate temperature. On this account, small islands and countries abounding with seas and lakes, are noted for the mildness of their climate. Hence, the superior fairness of the complexion of the Greeks to that of other nations in the same latitude. Abyssinia, both on account of its elevated position and the abundance of water, though in the same latitude with the burning region of Guinea, enjoys a milder climate, and its inhabitants are lighter colored by several shades. The southern extremity of Hindostan, also, being fanned by the

breezes of the ocean, both from the East and West, is cooler by far than countries of the same latitude, in the central and western parts of Africa and in New Holland. Indeed the color of the New Hollanders is scarcely distinguishable from that of the blacks of Africa. The vast extent and compact form of this region, its excessive drouth, and the savage manners of its inhabitants, sufficiently account for the blackness of their complexion. Wherever a colony of people have settled among others of a very different complexion, although they have been a great length of time in acquiring the characteristic appearance of the natives, yet, in all cases, where the native customs have been adopted, the features and complexion have gradually assimilated themselves till no trace of distinction remained. "The descendants of French and English families, who have lived twoor three generations in the West Indies, are tending fast towards the complexion of the original inhabitants; indeed the finest skin, by a few months residence in the West Indies, and frequent exposure to the sun and wind, becomes almost brown." It is on all hands admitted that the people of these United States, "descended, as they are, from many different European nations, have acquired a uniform cast of features," the complexion being considerably darker, and the form more slender, than of the original colonists. "The

African, with a flat nose, thick lips, arched shins, and large hips, in a few generations after he is removed to a better climate, and has been accustomed to sit, and dress, and feed, like civilized people, is greatly improved in form." It is even maintained by Dr. Smith, of New Jersey, that the negroes in this country, not amalgamated with the whites, are gradually losing the curled hair and black complexion of their African progenitors. The fact that a colony of gipsies, who settled in one of our southwestern states a number of years since, have so completely lost their distinctive traits, as to be entirely similar to the other inhabitants, the analogy of the vegetable world, and the well-attested change of the color of every kind of animals into white in the polar regions, render it highly probable that his statement is correct. We have, indeed, testimony as full and positive on this point as need be desired. We learn from Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, that the Egyptians in their day were woolly headed and black, and were sup

posed to be a colony from Ethiopia. Historians, writing some hundred years after, have described them as somewhat less black than formerly. At the present day, the Copts, who are accounted the descendants of the ancient Egyptians, are a brown race. It seems certain, therefore, especially since the discovery of statues of the negro caste in Egypt, and the investigations of Professor Blumenbach, who has found Egyptian mummies to possess the features characteristic of the negro,-that, in the process of time, the descendants of negroes have acquired the very same complexion, which the descendants of Europeans have acquired by residing for successive generations in the same climate.

Seeing that it is sometimes alleged, in disproof of the oneness of the human family, that some of its tribes have scarce a perceptible advance of the brutes in intellect, I subjoin a little touching the evidence on which that allegation is based. Spanish travelers of high repute, describing the Indians of this country, say that "stupidity, gluttony, cowardice, and effeminacy, characterize them. Abstraction, or a chain of reasoning, is far beyond their power. Even the negroes from all the different provinces of Africa, learn more readily, and comprehend subjects above the capacity of the Americans." Cicero pronounced the savage Britons blockheads, fit only for slavery. The Greeks called all men barbarians but themselves. Only sixty years since, English officers, who had served in America, said in parliament concerning our grandfathers, "the Americans are, by nature, cowards, and so effeminate, that they are disabled from going through the service of a campaign. Five regiments will drive them from one end of the continent to the other." What are the Greeks now but savages? What are the descendants of the old Romans, compared with those of the despised Britons, but slaves? The poor Indian, traduced below the brutes, has not only shown all the virtues of the ancient Spartans,-he has also put the defamers of his intellect to eternal silence. The Chaldeans, the black Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Saracens, have each in turn held the supremacy in the literary world; each in turn has sunk into listlessness and ignorance. The Chinese and Hindoos, for many hundred years, have been wasting away their stock of knowledge. Paganism and tyranny

combined, have never failed to cover a land with darkness that may be felt. Liberty alone has given a momentary light. Liberty and Christianity will render all men of every shape and every shade intelligent, reasoning, and holy. In view of the evidence presented, can any one doubt that custom and climate fully account for the diversities of the human form? Shall the baseless and disproved theories of the infidel always hold professed Christians in covered, but real and practical, skepticism? Shall "the mother of harlots" and "the father of lies" persuade us that God and mammon, uniting their interests, require the enslavement of pagans, to fit them for Heaven; and when we have debased them that they are merely noble, but soulless, brutes? The withering dogma, that no man can gain without another's loss, begins at last to be found a pestilential lie. Soon may equal and exact justice be mutually rendered by all men of every state and nation; then shall liberty, wealth, and happiness bless the world. M.

See Williamson on Climate, Edinburgh Encyclopedia, Lander's Travels, Good's Book of Nature, Sumner's Botany, Robertson's America, Marshall's Washington, &c.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF AMERICAN COMMERCE.

THE Constitution of the United States makes it the duty of Congress "to regu late," if need be, "commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states." Hence it seems to us, that if under the name of "commerce," either external or internal, there should spring up any nefarious system of outrage upon mankindany atrocious violation of the laws of nature, it would be the duty of Congress utterly to weed it out, and leave nothing but commerce properly so called. In our cities a power to regulate the streets, gives the proper officers authority to remove nuisances, and even to shut up a street which it would be dangerous to pass through. There is abundant evidence to us that the American inter-state slave trade is an intolerable evil, and consequently we think that Congress, in regulating commerce ought to regulate it out of existence. A highly valued correspond