For this purpose, it is probable the Sclavonian nations, with hordes of Mongolian Calmucks, and Tartars—the σιμοὶ, or flat-nosed nations of Herodotus—are gathering force and increasing in their vast plains and desolate forests. The scourge of Europe—once the scourge of Asia—is being prepared slowly but surely; and when civilization shall have taken a firm hold of America and the new continents gradually being built up in the Pacific, Europe, having fulfilled its part in the world’s history, will be swept away, and become a byword and a scorn among the nations—‘Ichabod’ will be written on its temples, and the bittern and the owl shall inhabit it; the wild beast of the desert shall lie there, and the dragons in its pleasant palaces.
The Finnish race presents a remarkable proof of the variation in physiognomy attendant on variation in mental capacity, occasioned by change of circumstances—as government, climate, and habits. The ancient Huns, the modern Hungarians, and the northern Finns and Lapps of the shores of the Bothnian Gulf and the White Sea, are all of the same race; and yet differ widely from each other in physiognomy and psychonomy.
“Few races exhibit greater or more remarkable differences in mental cultivation, and in the direction of their passions, according as they have been determined by the degeneration of servitude, warlike ferocity, or a continual striving for political freedom, than the Finns. In evidence of this we need only refer to the now peaceful Finns of the north, to the Huns, once celebrated for conquests that disturbed the then existing order of things, and lastly, to a great and noble people—the Magyars.”[[48]]
The differences between those races took place within the historic period, and afford a striking instance of the effect of external circumstances in modifying the mental and corporeal features.
The fierce and savage Huns, who overran a portion of the Roman Empire under Attila in the fifth century, differed wholly from the Finns now existing in Europe. So misshapen were their features, and so hideous their aspect, so savage and demoniacal their warfare, that the terrified Goths could not believe them to be born of woman, but asserted them to be the unnatural offspring of demons and witches in the fearful solitudes of the icy north. One of their distinctive features was a flat depressed nose, plainly indicating their low organization.
Although the Finns and Lapps retain the flat nose—never having emerged from barbarism—they are a mild, gentle, meek-spirited race, presenting few features which seem capable of amelioration.
The Hungarians, on the other hand—in whom, however, we must suspect a large infusion of Gothic blood—are a bold, independent, noble-minded, and highly intellectual people; characteristics which exhibit themselves in a noble Roman Nose, and a countenance bespeaking the independence of their minds.
We may next advert to the characteristic features of a few of the Asiatic nations.
Perhaps no nation displays a more universal dead level and general sameness of feature than the Snub-nosed Chinese. Notwithstanding the great varieties in climate and soil which prevail in that extensive Empire, and the correspondent variations which must be made in domestic habits and style of living, a remarkable identity of feature prevails among all classes of every province. The faces may be said to be all cast in the same mould; and one could wish that Nature, when she made the first cast, had—as she is reported to have done when she made a certain beautiful female, whose name we forget—broken the mould before she produced any more casts from it. Perhaps, however, we belie the good old dame in attributing the production of this, or any other equally ugly countenance, to her. It is rather the degraded form into which a despotism of unknown duration and unexampled soul-depressive powers has converted the original type.
A form of government more admirably arranged to keep the people in a state of childhood has never been modelled than that of China. The wisdom of its arrangements for securing the permanent despotism of the ruler is undeniably proved by its long and peaceable subsistence. To rebel in China is the heinous crime of filial disobedience: it is not, as in Europe, a political crime merely, it is also a moral crime of the same class as murder or theft. Unless we can imagine a nation by universal assent throwing off the bonds of morality, and living in confessedly gross crime, we can form no conception of the Chinese rebelling. It would present the unnatural and inconceivable state of a nation of parricides and disobedient children.