merely human guides. The exceptions to this remarkas, for example, his occasional sanction of the glories of war, and his advocacy of the forms of government and of church establishments unfriendly, as we think, to man's highest interests are few. In the main, he writes on all topics from the Christian point of view; he disregards the false glare of a worldly splendor, and commends only that honor which cometh from above. If we sometimes disagree with him as to institutions and means for doing good, in his ends we heartily concur. It is good to follow him, because of his conscious integrity and his fearless pursuit of the right. In his earlier years he encountered much obloquy; he drew on himself the abuses of many critics, and the disrespect of the public, by the peculiar character of his poetry. The world were not pleased that he took his themes from so humble objects, and manifested a sympathy with what they despised. But he heeded not their taunts; he felt himself to be right, and he clung steadily to the high path he had entered. Mark at this day the issue! A new age has come forward; the children have adopted his cause, and even the fathers, in many an instance, have at last sent in their adhesion to him. The poor and unfortunate have found friends all around them, and their old champion at length wins the poet's coronal. Freedom is the watchword of this age, and he who was among the foremost for the slave now finds troops of companions. They whose strains lauded the rich and the titled and the mighty alone are passing into a rapid oblivion; while he who set virtue above gold, and truth and love higher than thrones and dominations, lived to see his star in the ascendant. And so it must be in all coming time. The poet who records the facts of our common life, who is true to nature and to man, cannot fail of ultimate success, nor yet of a final and general recognition. Truth and imagination are not, as was once thought, enemies; they are friends and allies. We are not to look on the poet as an idle dreamer, and pity his illusions; if gifted for his vocation, he is a seer of the truth. He penetrates into our inner being and sees us as we are, sees us as the mere reasoner cannot. We may not, therefore, distrust the oracles of imagination, though they come not from ascending 1850.] His Moral Elevation. 109 into heaven or descending into the deep. If they utter the heart of our every-day experience, they are the oracles of God. Honor to that illustrious spirit who has forged such bright links between wisdom and truth and poetry, and blended the highest inspirations with the sober walks of this our mortal life! Honor to the Christian poet, who has broken down the partition-wall between imagination and religion! Not in vain has he lived, who, dwelling apart from life's turmoil and conflicts, ministered an high-priest at the altar of that religion which accepts the sense of beauty as a gift of God, as in its true offices an all-sanctifying messenger to our race. We need, especially in this age of utilities and in this work-day world,-we need an eye to perceive the eternal "affinity between religion and poetry; between religion, making up the deficiencies of reason by faith, and poetry, passionate for the instruction of reason; between religion, whose element is infini tude and whose ultimate trust is the supreme of things, and poetry, ethereal and transcendent." Honor, then, to the Christian poet! Thanks to him who has written out for us our truest thought, our holiest feeling! The man who leaves on record an immortal verse, to be a breakwater against the flesh and the world, to be a quickener to our faith and devotion, to lift us above the beaten round of this dusty world, to hold before us the true light where phantoms so often lure us astray, is among our noblest benefactors. To an elevated genius, when conjoined with a corresponding virtue, we owe unspeakable obligations. To him who in holy strains soothes our sorrows, and nerves us with a patient resignation to the will of the Highest, to him who inspires us to a steadfast virtue, as by sacred numbers he draws aside, even though but for a moment, the thick veil which hangs between us and the spirit-land, — we owe a debt we cannot easily discharge, a debt we cannot perhaps comprehend, until, like him, we have passed within that veil. It has been our purpose in this article simply to record our sense of the moral elevation of Wordsworth. We have not ventured on an analysis of his poetry in its literary aspects. Time will hang round his portrait everfresh chaplets of honor and beauty; we have but laid on VOL. XLIX. 4TH. S. VOL. XIV. NO. I. 10 It his tomb an early offering of Christian affection. gives us great pleasure to learn that we shall soon receive, through his nephew and literary executor, the Rev. Henry Wordsworth, the entire poem of which fragments are given us in his works under the name of "The Recluse." We anticipate a rich treat of autobiography in this work. A. B. M. ART. VIII.—THE DIVERSITY OF ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN RACES. We have a right to consider the questions growing out of men's physical relations as merely scientific questions, and to investigate them without reference to either politics or religion. There are two distinct questions involved in the subject which we have under discussion, the Unity of Mankind, and the Diversity of Origin of the Human Races. These are two distinct questions, having almost no connection with each other, but they are constantly confounded as if they were but one. We recognize the fact of the Unity of Mankind. It excites a feeling that raises men to the most elevated sense of their connection with each other. It is but the reflection of that Divine nature which pervades their whole being. It is because men feel thus related to each other, that they acknowledge those obligations of kindness and moral responsibility which rest upon them in their mutual relations. And it is because they have this innate feeling, that they are capable of joining in regular societies with all their social and domestic affinities. This feeling unites men from the most diversified regions. Do we cease to recognize this unity of mankind because we are not of the same family? - because we originate in various countries, and are born in America, England, Germany, France, Switzerland? Where the relationship of blood has ceased, do we cease to acknowledge that general bond which unites all men of every nation? By no means. This is a bond which every man feels more and more the farther he advances in 1850.] Unity of Mankind. 111 his intellectual and moral culture, and which in this development is continually placed upon higher and higher ground, so much so, that the physical relation arising from a common descent is finally entirely lost sight of in the consciousness of the higher moral obligations. It is this consciousness which constitutes the true unity of mankind. But we know so little respecting the origin of that first human pair to which the white race is distinctly referred, that, even if it were possible to show that all men originated from that one pair, the naturalist would still be required to exert himself to throw more light upon the process by which they were created, in the same manner as geologists have done respecting the formations and changes in the physical condition of our globe. We know so little respecting the first appearance of organized beings in general, that, even if there were no questions with regard to the origin of men, we might still inquire into the method of the origin of that first human pair, who have been considered as the acknowledged source whence all mankind have sprung, though it may be that they were not the only source. Such an investigation into the ways of nature, into the ways of the Creator, and into the circumstances under which organized beings were created, is a question wholly disconnected with religion, belonging entirely to the department of natural history. But, at the same time, we deny that, in the view which we take of these questions, there is any thing contradicting the records in Genesis. Whatever is said there can be best explained by referring it to the historical races.* We have no statements relating to the origin of the inhabitants now found in those parts of the world which were unknown to the ancients. Do we find in any part of the Scriptures any reference to the inhabitants of the arctic zone, of Japan, of China, of New Holland, or of America? Now, as philosophers, * In speaking of the historical and the non-historical races, we do not mean to say that the nations of the white race only have historical records, and that these records alone are highly valuable, for we know that the history of the Chinese extends far back, and how full their records are. We only intend, in making this distinction, to refer to the history in Genesis, in which the branches of the white race only are alluded to, and nowhere the colored races as such. we ask, Whence did these nations come? And if we should find as an answer, that they were not related to Adam and Eve, and that they have an independent origin, and if this should be substantiated by physical evidence, would there be any thing to conflict with the statements in Genesis? We have no narrative of the manner in which these parts of the world were peopled. We say, therefore, that, as far as the investigation will cover that ground, it has nothing to do with Genesis. We meet all objections at once, we dare to look them in the face; for there is no impropriety in considering all the possible meanings of the Scriptures, and nobody can object to such a course except those whose religion consists in a blind adoration of their own construction of the Bible. It has been charged upon the views here advanced, that they tend to the support of slavery, as if the question in its most extensive bearing did not involve the origin of the Chinese, of the Malays, and of the Indians, as well as that of the negro race. If the question of slavery had ever been connected with the colored races of Asia and America, we would acknowledge that these views have some bearing upon that subject. But is it really so? Is that a fair objection to a philosophical investigation? Here we have to do only with the question of the origin of men; let the politicians, let those who feel themselves called upon to regulate human society, see what they can do with the results. It is for us to examine into the characters of different races, to ascertain their physical peculiarities, their natural developments. And we do nothing more than has already been attempted long ago, when authors have designed to characterize nations. Because the French differ in many respects from the English, the Greeks, the Italians, etc., and because we see in these nations different turns of mind, does it follow that the particular degree of civilization attained by one is also the best that others could enjoy, and the best that could be introduced into their social condition? We disclaim, however, all connection with any question involving political matters. It is simply with reference to the possibility of appreciating the differences existing between different men, and of eventually determin |