The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Volume 04 — John Shaqi
The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Volume 04Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Volume 04
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
English fiction -- 19th century; Families -- Fiction
sprang, by their side, the Saturn of the Phoenicians, the mystic Budh of
India, the elementary deities of the Pelasgian, the Naith and Serapis of
Egypt, the Ormuzd of Persia, the Bel of Babylon, the winged genii of the
graceful Etruria. How nature and life shaped the religion; how the
religion shaped the manners; how, and by what influences, some tribes
were formed for progress; how others were destined to remain stationary,
or be swallowed up in war and slavery by their brethren,--was told with
a precision clear and strong as the voice of Fate. Not only an
antiquarian and philologist, but an anatomist and philosopher, my father
brought to bear on all these grave points the various speculations
involved in the distinction of races. He showed how race in perfection
is produced, up to a certain point, by admixture; how all mixed races
have been the most intelligent; how, in proportion as local circumstance
and religious faith permitted the early fusion of different tribes,
races improved and quickened into the refinements of civilization. He
tracked the progress and dispersion of the Hellenes from their mythical
cradle in Thessaly, and showed how those who settled near the sea-
shores, and were compelled into commerce and intercourse with strangers,
gave to Greece her marvellous accomplishments in arts and letters,--the
flowers of the ancient world. How others, like the Spartans; dwelling
evermore in a camp, on guard against their neighbors, and rigidly
preserving their Dorian purity of extraction, contributed neither
artists, nor poets, nor philosophers to the golden treasure-house of
mind. He 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 into which he grew, 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 civilizes of the globe as he becomes when he knows not through what
channels--French, Flemish, Danish, Welsh, 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 but 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
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