The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 39, January, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 39, January, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
The pamphlet named at the head of this article, and which is but a
complement to the volume, is one of the numerous reconstructions and
rearrangements of European limits made in the quiet of the study. Were
it this alone, it would deserve but little attention. It is more. The
author bases his theories upon other than political reasons, having
labored hard to establish many debatable points of Ethnography in the
interesting notes appended to the work, and which form by far the most
remarkable part of it. So we have the question of Races discussed at
full length. There is certainly some philological legerdemain, as may be
seen from some of the convenient conclusions of the author concerning
the Celts and the Gauls. He is full of such paragraphs as this in his
argumentation:--
"It has seemed to us proved, that the names,
Volces, Volsks, Bolgs, Belgs, Belgians, Welsh,
Welchs, Waels, Wuelchs or Walchs, Walls,
Walloons, Valais, Valois, Vlaks, Wallachians,
Galatians, Galtachs, Galls, Gaels or Caels,
Gaelic, Galot, Gallegos, Gaul, and even Ola,
Olatz, and Vallus, were but one and the same
word under different forms."
The point to be established at all hazards is, that the French,
Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Belgians, and even the English and
Greeks, form but one great family, of one hundred and fifteen million
individuals,--the Gallo-Roman. This Neo-Latin world the author would
wish combined in one grand confederation, like the States of America.
Hence his use of the term _Panlatinism_, in opposition to the so much
debated one of _Panslavism_. The merit of the work under consideration
is, that, though decidedly French in all its views, it condenses in
a few paragraphs the present mooted question of race. The idea of
Panslavism, or the uniting of eighty millions of Sclavonians under one
banner, was, in its origin, republican and federal, whatever it may
have become since. Few words have acquired more diametrically opposite
meanings, according as they were uttered by radical or conservative.
Hence the confusion, hence the many strange phrases to be met with in
the periodical press. The author of the present work has sought to throw
some light on this important point. Leaving aside his prophetic fears of
future shocks with American or Asiatic powers as visionary, we can say
for the work that it presents in a clear light the question of races
as referring to European politics. The notes are good, and no research
seems to have been spared by the writer to establish the position he
maintains.
1. _Ancient Danish Ballads._ Translated from the Originals, by R.C.
ALEXANDER PRIOR, M.D. London: Williams & Norgate. Leipzig: R. Hartmann.
1860, 3 vols. pp. lx., 400, 468, 500.
2. _Edinburgh Papers._ By ROBERT CHAMBERS, F.R.S.E., etc., etc. _The
Romantic Scottish Ballads, their Epoch and Authorship._ W. & R.
Chambers: London and Edinburgh. 1859. pp. 40.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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