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out, as they still are in Africa, and were believed able to torment the living by torturing a presentment in wax or clay, so long as something belonging to the victim -a nail, a hair, or a rag of clothing-could be incorporated into the image, into which needles were stuck, or which was roasted slowly by the fire. Such beliefs, known from an early time in Asia, survived in Europe to a very late period, and still survive in the East. It is most instructive to find among all such early tribes that death was never regarded as the natural end of life as the withering of the flower or decay of the tree-but as a direct murderous interference on the part of malignant power with the immortal life on earth which man believed himself capable of enjoying. Old age and grey hair, sickness and sorrow, were not the natural lot but the misfortunes of man, due to the opposing influence of demons.

The result of the incantations on the demons was remarkable. The inscribed pillar confronted them at the house door, and they had to lie in wait outside; but the spells of the priests diverted their rage against one another, and they are represented ramping up and tearing one another, fleeing away struggling," as one charm preserved in cuneiform tells us. Rude as such conceptions may appear, they still formed an important part of popular religion in Europe late even in the middle ages.

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The earliest temples of the Altaic tribes, like those of our own Druids, were open-air circles of stones, with a central standingstone supposed to be haunted by the deity. Over it libations of oil, of water, of wine, of koumiss, of blood, were poured; before it, or on it, flowers, fruits, berries,

and other such gifts were placed. Within the circle a man might leave unharmed his most valuable property under the protection of the god. Near it the dolmen, or stone table, formed an altar, on which human or animal victims were offered. The magic circle, the cup hollow with its surrounding rings, used by all Asiatics alike, were connected with rites of purification by sprinklings of dew, of water, or of milk. On the dolmen-stones the sick were laid, as they still are on inscribed talisman - stones in Syria; and through the dolmens they crawled or were dragged, in hope of speedy

cure.

One of the most curious of Asiatic superstitions that of the Dead's Door-was connected with this rite of "passing through." In Persia, in China, and not less in medieval Europe, it was thought of evil omen that the dead should pass out through the same door as the living. A hole was broken in the wall, through which the corpse was taken out; or even at a later time a special door-high up from the ground-was made for the same purpose. It is believed that the western superstition as to "closing the door" on a corpse has the same derivation, and the Dead's Doors may still be seen in Northern Italy.

From the religion of these ancient tribes we may perhaps gather most light as to their civilisation; but some of their social customs are equally curious and instructive, especially that of the couvade, as it is called in France -the custom of putting the father of a new-born child into bed, carefully tending him and feeding him on special diet for some time, until the baby begins to grow strong. This extraordinary, and to our ideas unnatural custom, is com

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mon to various Altaic peoples. In France among the Basques, in Spain among Iberians, in Corsica, in Asia Minor, in Borneo, in Siberia, in Greenland, in Africa, America, and in the Indian Archipelago alike, this custom exists, or has existed. Marco Polo mentions it in China; Apollonius Rhodius in Pontus. Perhaps it may be due to a belief in some mysterious sympathy between the father and the child, the health of the infant being supposed to depend on that of its sire. The mother appears to receive little attention from the Turanian peoples among whom this strange custom prevails.

The laws of the Altaic tribes in Chaldea are only known to us by a few Akkadian fragments. Their punishments, including drowning and mutilation, walling up alive, and tearing off the nails, show us how savage they were, even in days when they could write and trade, and had some knowledge of art. They had slaves also who were recognised as having some human rights, for a master was bound to maintain his slave if he had injured him by violence. The position of women was more independent and important than we might have thought likely; but the jealous seclusion of the sex practised by Semitic peoples seems always to have been unknown to Altaic races.

The practice of divining was an important branch of priestly knowledge: divining by gems, by arrows, by sticks thrown into the air, by the flight of birds, by the bones of cocks slain as sacrifices (as is still the case in Burmah)-in short, every sort of consecrated gambling and choice of action by "tossing up." No general would have expected success if he led out his army against the advice of the wizard. Long lists of rules were

VOL. CXLII.-NO. DCCCLXI.

drawn up, including such an omen as a dog straying into the temple, and some of these lists have come down to us in cuneiform to the present day. Herodotus tells us how the Scythians divined by twigs, and Buddhist or Nestorian priests alike continue the practice to the present day.

The language and the writing of the Altaic peoples were, like themselves, extremely primitive. Picture-writing-like that of bushmen, or of the cavemen in Europe -had passed into a further hieroglyphic stage, in which pronouns and other parts of speech were represented by emblems, and in which the plural was shown, as in Egypt, by the simple device of a series of strokes after the noun. Language, in like manner, had developed from mere monosyllabic sounds to the agglutinative stage -still traceable even in Englishwhere other syllables are added to show the relations of the various root - sounds to each other; but even to our own times the Altaic peoples have not advanced any further. Their languages have not become inflexional like those of Aryan or Semitic peoples, and they have never invented, consequently, an alphabet to supersede their clumsy hieroglyphics or syllabaries, which, with time, have only grown clumsier and more complicated. A Chinese at twenty-one has not attained that mastery over his language which an Aryan child may attain at the age of five.

The arts were represented among the Altaic tribes of Western Asia not only by writing and sculpture, but very early by metallurgical discoveries. Not less than 3000 years B.C. the Akkadians had not only learned to smelt iron, to extract copper, lead, and tin from the ore, to use gold and silver and alloys like electrum in barter, but

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they even knew how to make bronze and brass. They wrought beautiful vases, bowls, and basreliefs in repoussée work in all metals; they plated their chariots with silver; they made statues with heads of gold; they carved wood and alabaster, and engraved on their signets groups represent ing the gods, or commemorating the myths already noticed. Many precious stones-the ruby, diamond, turquoise, and others—were known to them by distinct names; and their temples were rich with crusted metal, like the houses of kings which Homer describes.

Such then was the civilisation of the Turanian tribes of Western Asia before the family of Abraham crossed the Euphrates, and entered a land fully peopled with their tribes, whose names-Hittites, Amalekites, Philistines, and the rest are preserved for us in the Bible. Such were the Canaanites whom Joshua drove out before him. Such were the Hittite princes whose daughters Rameses and Solomon alike married, and whose trade with Egypt is not only mentioned in the Bible, but is also known almost as early as the time of Moses to have been regulated by a treaty written on a silver tablet, the account of which is still preserved in a famous papyrus.

But it came to pass, in process of time, that the prosperity of this great race declined. The Babylonians drove them from Chaldea, or lorded it over their surviving members. The Assyrians defeated them at Carchemish and in Syria. The Hebrews almost extirpated them in Palestine. The Romans conquered them in Italy, the Gauls in France. The civilisation which they founded was adopted by Babylonians and Greeks and Latins, and by many later races, and their

very existence was forgotten, and their language unknown to have been ever spoken beyond the regions of Central and Eastern Asia.

But they left behind them written records to prove their descent, their race, their wealth and power, their beliefs and hopes and fears. The present century has seen the recovery of these records, cut in basalt, stamped in clay, carved on stone, engraved on silver; and at last, after thirty centuries, their history begins to be written. In Syria, in Chaldea, in Italy, nay, even in Egypt, the same discovery has been made, and the oldest civilised race claims credit for its own works.

It has taken many years for this result to be attained, and the full understanding is yet incomplete.

In 1812, the great traveller Burckhardt found at Hamath the first of these hieroglyphic texts, hewn in basalt. Then, for nearly three-quarters of a century, nothing more was done. When, however, explorers again lit on Burckhardt's text, and on four others at Hamath, they were at first said to be fanciful ornamental designs; but when this failed to explain them away, a learned man set to work, and studied them for some time upside-down. Then another learned man translated them, and discovered that one (this is a fact) referred to giving permission to see a bull-fight gratis. This was not approved by the rest of the learned, partly because no one ever heard of bull-fights in the East (though the Assyrians had something of the sort), partly because they doubted apparently if admission gratis to a bull-fight was probable. Thus the question went to sleep again, and the learned society most interested turned its attention to printing a paper, in

which a Hebrew scholar raised the question whether a pigeon could ever have flown with one wing. It seems that the Rabbis understood the words, "O that I could fly away and be at rest!" to mean fly with one wing and rest with the other. The author called his paper "Ancient Observation on the Flight of Birds," and sent it to Mr Huxley, whose reply was unfavourable; also to the Vienna Balloon Society, who were less unfavourable (perhaps because balloons fly without any wings). The Vienna Balloon Society said the paper was very interesting.

Meanwhile the Hittite inscriptions remained unread, or at least only read to the satisfaction of each one who proposed a new system. At length, in two different directions, comparisons with known emblems-from Cyprus and from Babylon were proposed; but, alas! each author was mutually convinced that the other was wrong. It was a case of two sides to the shield; and the fact that the rude clay - sketches derived from the old basalt emblems were very different from the scrawls on limestone, which had the same original forms, was not at first evident. George Smith, who had discovered, at Carchemish, many of these valuable texts, and François Lenormant, who had begun to study the question in earnest, both died too soon. Professor Sayce is the only student of first-class acquirements who has since made much of the matter.

Substantial agreement is, however, at last being slowly attained

on important points. The fact that the hieroglyphics are to be read as syllables, not as an alphabet, that they are of Hittite origin, that the Hittites were an Altaic people, and even that the language is akin to the Akkadian, is beginning to be established. It is established, also, that the names of the gods occur on these hieroglyphic texts, and that some, if not all as yet known, are magical or religious incantations. To discover the meaning of such inscriptions, when the language and the actual meaning of each symbol are alike unknown, by aid of nothing more than a short bilingual of six words, is evidently a task of no little difficulty. But it is not impossible; and if followed on scientific principles, with patience and a mind open to the objections of others, it must in the end yield, as other problems have yielded, to the labour of the student. The Etruscan remains, not less than those of the Akkadians, will serve to throw new light on the subject; and the recent discovery of a common origin for the hieroglyphics of Egypt and of Babylonia shows us that Egyptian also will serve to assist in the interpretation of the Hittite script. The doubtful results of cuneiform research will be controlled by comparisons with many living languages; and so, after centuries of growth, centuries of civilisation, centuries of decay, and long periods of neglect, the old Tatar race of Asia and of Southern Europe begins once more to take its place in the history of the world.

A SKETCH FROM ILFRACOMBE.

GERAINT, "a tributary prince of Devon," ruled a wonderfully picturesque country. And it must have been a very paradise for the venturesome knight - errant who made blows his business, and sought recreation in the chase. The red-deer which still run wild in Exmoor swarmed then in the wilderness of woods and sloughs; while beneath the Earl's Doorm or "the Sparrowhawks" in their "bandit-holds," the combes and the sea - caves offered almost inaccessible retreats to meaner malefactors, who were quite as lawless and scarcely less troublesome. If If Geraint, as the Laureate tells us, succeeded in establishing order, it was much to the credit of his chivalrous energy; for many a century afterwards, when myth and fable were only perpetuated in local tradition, these wild districts had an exceptionally evil reputation in our criminal records. Mr Blackmore has written actual chronicles in his strangely fascinating romances; and his pictures of the sensational state of society in the past may be trusted to their most minute details. When even the fierce debatable land lying between Carlisle Castle and Hermitage had been brought into something like tolerable order; when Somersetshire and Devon had their regular forces of train-bands; and just before the Lord Chief - Justice of England held the Bloody Circuit of the West, in all the pomp and circumstance of orderly law-administration, the Doones had their robber-den on the borders of the two counties. The traces of the Doone settlement are still to be seen on the green banks sloping down to the stream of the Badge

worthy Glen. It was comparatively nothing that a Tom Faggus should take tolls upon the roads; for at that time the heaths and commons surrounding the metropolis were more unsafe than the tracks on the skirts of Exmoor. But it seems strange that a mere score or so of stalwart ruffians should have laid half-a-dozen of parishes under regular contribution, when those parishes were populated by the men of Somerset and Devon, who have always prided themselves on sturdy manhood. Still more striking, perhaps, was the existence of the colony of naked savages that flourished under the pastoral charge of the redoubtable Parson Chowne, years after Rodney, who gave his Christian name to one of the heroes of the 'Maid of Sker,' had won his victory off Cape St Vincent.

The explanation of historical phenomena which seem at first sight to be romantic extravagances, is to be found on a visit to the north of Devon. It is a district which, as it long kept the law at arm's-length, is likely for many a year to come to bid defiance to the enterprise of railway promoters. No doubt our engineers are not to be baffled, in the days when they are driving their tunnels through the Alps. But it is one thing to spend millions in surmounting physical obstacles on great rival lines of lucrative international traffic, and another to offer reasonable security for returns on the thousands expended in opening up thinly peopled wastes. The coast from the point of Hurtland northward and eastward, along the southern shores of the British Channel, is a succession

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