ture of the Chinese with that of the Hindoo, fashioned almost like a European, even to his complexion. He will study the boundless religious system of the Brahmins, and oppose it to the bald belief of the original Chinese, which can hardly be named religion. He will remark the rigorous division of the Hindoos into castes, sects, and denominations, for which the inhabitants of the central kingdom have even no expression. He will compare the dry prosaic spirit of the Chinese with the high poetic souls of the dwellers on the Ganges and the Dsumnah. He will hear the rich and blooming Sanscrit, and contrast it with the unharmonious speech of the Chinese. He will mark, finally, the literature of the latter, full of matters of fact and things worth knowing, as contrasted with the limitless philosophic-ascetic writing of the Indians, who have made even the highest poetry wearisome by perpetual length.'
History of the Eastern Nations till their Incorporation in
the Persian Empire. Leaving India—that great fragment of the original
Caucasian civilization—and proceeding westward, we find two large
masses of the human species filling in the earliest times the countries lying
between the Indus and the Mediterranean—namely, an Indo-Persian mass
filling the whole tract of country between the Indus and the Tigris; and
a Semitic-Aramaic mass filling the greater part of lesser Asia and the
whole peninsula of Arabia, and extending itself into the parts of Africa
adjoining the Red Sea. That in the most remote ages these lands were
the theatres of a civilized activity is certain, although no records have been
transmitted from them to us, except a few fragments relative to the Semitic
nations. The general facts, however, with regard to these ante-historic
times, seem to be: 1st, That the former of the two masses mentioned—namely,
the population between the Indus and the Caspian—was essentially
a prolongation of the great Indian nucleus, possessing a culture
similar to the Indian in its main aspects, although varied, as was inevitable,
by the operation of those physical causes which distinguish the climate of
Persia and Cabool from that of Hindoostan; 2d, That the Semitic or Aramaic
mass divided itself at a very early period into a number of separate
peoples or nations, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Ph[oe]nicians, the
Jews, the Arabians, etc., and that each of these acquired a separate development,
and worked out for itself a separate career; 3d, That upwards of
a thousand years before Christ the spirit of conquest appeared among the
Semitic nations, dashing them violently against each other; and that at
length one Semitic fragment—that is, the Assyrians—attained the supremacy
over the rest, and founded a great dominion, called the Assyrian
empire, which stretched from Egypt to the borders of India (B. C. 800);
and 4th, That the pressure of this Semitic power against the Indo-Persic
mass was followed by a reäction—one great section of the Indo-Persians
rising into strength, supplanting the Assyrian empire, and founding one of
their own, called the Persian empire (B. C. 536), which was destined in
its turn to be supplanted by the confederacy of Grecian states in B. C. 326.
Beginning with Egypt, let us trace separately the career of each of the Eastern nations till that point of time at which we find them all embodied in the great Persian empire:—
The Egyptians. Egypt, whose position on the map of Africa is well
