took the old race of the Celts, Cimry, or Cimmerians. He compared the Celt who, as in Wales, the Scotch Highlands, in Bretagne, and in uncomprehended Ireland, retains his old characteristics and purity of breed, with the Celt whose blood, mixed by a thousand channels, dictates from Paris the manners and revolutions of the world. He compared the Norman in his ancient Scandinavian home, with that wonder of intelligence and chivalry which he became, fused imperceptibly with the Frank, the Goth, and the Anglo-Saxon. He compared the Saxon, stationary in the land of Horsa, with the colonist and civiliser of the globe, as he becomes, when he knows not through what channels--French, Flemish, Danish, Welch, Scotch, and Irish--he draws his sanguine blood. And out from all these speculations, to which I do such hurried and scanty justice, he drew the blessed truth, that carries hope to the land of the Caffre, the hut of the Bushman--that there is nothing in the flattened skull and the ebon aspect that rejects God's law, improvement; that by the same principle which raises the dog, the lowest of the animals in its savage state, to the highest after man,--viz. admixture of race--you can elevate into nations of majesty and power the outcasts of humanity, now your compassion or your scorn. But when my father got into the marrow of his theme--when, quitting these preliminary discussions, he fell pounce amongst the would-be wisdom of the wise; when he dealt with civilisation itself, its schools, and porticos, and academies; when he bared the absurdities couched beneath the colleges of the Egyptians, and the Symposia of the Greeks;--when he showed that, even in their own favourite pursuit of metaphysics, the Greeks were children; and in their own more practical region of politics, the Romans were visionaries and bunglers;--when, following the stream of error through the middle ages, he quoted the puerilities of Agrippa, the crudities of Cardan; and passed, with his calm smile, into the _salons_ of the chattering wits of Paris in the eighteenth century, oh, then his irony was that of Lucian, sweetened by the gentle spirit of Erasmus. For not even here was my father's satire of the cheerless and Mephistophelian school. From this record of error he drew forth the grand eras of truth. He showed how earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors. He proved how, in vast cycles, age after age, the human mind marches on--like the ocean, receding here, but there advancing. How from the speculations of the Greek sprang all true philosophy; how from the institutions of the Roman rose all durable systems of government; how from the robust follies of the North came the glory of chivalry, and the modern delicacies of honour, and the sweet harmonising influences of woman. He tracked the ancestry of our Sidneys and Bayards from the Hengists, Genserics, and Attilas. Full of all curious and quaint anecdote--of original