The last accession which the population of Europe received was accomplished by an irruption similar to that of the Huns, but on a grander scale. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the Osmanli Turks swept across the Hellespont and Bosphorus, and in 1453 established their empire in Europe by the capture of Byzantium. In proportion to its numbers, no race ever gave such a shock to the Western world as this; and, by its very antagonism, it helped to quicken into life the population and kingdoms of central and eastern Europe. It is semi-Caucasian by extraction, but, coming from the northern side of the Caucasus, and pretty far to the east, the original features of the race had a strong dash of the Tartar in them. The portrait of Mahomed II., the conqueror of Byzantium, may be taken as a fair sample of the primitive Turkish type,—indeed a more than average specimen, for among all nations the nobles and princes, as a class, are ever found to possess the most perfect forms and features. The Turkish tribes who still follow their ancient nomadic life, and wander in the cold and dry deserts of Turkistan, still exhibit the Tartar physiognomy—even the Nogays of the Crimea, and some of the roving tribes of Asia Minor, present much of this character. The European Turks, and the upper classes of the race generally, exhibit a greatly superior style of countenance, in consequence of the elevating influences of civilisation, and of their harems having been replenished for four centuries by fair ones from Georgia and Circassia,—a region which, as Chardin long ago remarked, “is assuredly the one where nature produces the most beautiful persons, and a people brave and valiant, as well as lively, galant, and loving.” There is hardly a man of quality in Turkey who is not born of a Georgian or Circassian mother,—counting downwards from the Sultan, who is generally Georgian or Circassian by the female side. As this crossing of the two races has been carried on for several centuries, the modern Ottomans in Europe are in truth a new nation—and, on the whole, a very handsome one. The general proportion of the face is symmetrical, and the facial angle nearly vertical,—the features thus approaching to the Circassian mould; while the head is remarkable for its excellent globular form, with the forehead broad and the glabella prominent.
The natural destiny of the Turks in Europe, like that of ruling castes everywhere when holding in subjection a population greatly more numerous than themselves, is either to gradually relax their sway and share the government with the subject races, as the Normans in England did,—or, if obstinately maintaining their class-despotism, to be violently deposed from the supremacy. The increasing development of the Greek and other sections of the population of European Turkey has of late years made one or other of these alternatives imminent; but the extensive reforms and liberalisation of the government simultaneously undertaken by the Ottoman rulers, and the remarkable abeyance in which they have begun to place the distinctive tenets of the Mahommedan faith, promised, if unthwarted by foreign influences, to keep the various races in amity, and admit Christians to offices in the state. The history of the last fifteen years has shown this system of governmental relaxation growing gradually stronger—so that Lord Palmerston was justified in saying that no country in the world could show so many reforms accomplished in so short a time as Turkey. And after the recent exploits of the Ottomans in defeating simultaneously the attacks of Russia and of the Greek and Montenegrin insurgents, and the Turkish predilections even of those provinces which were entered by the Christian forces of the Czar, it cannot be doubted that the Turkish rule was on the whole giving satisfaction, and that, if unaided by foreign Powers, no insurrection against the supremacy of the bold-hearted Osmanlis had the slightest chance of success. It was this state of matters which alarmed the ambitious Czar into his present aggression; for he felt that now or never was the time to interfere, if he did not wish to see a Turko-Greek state establish itself in such strength as to bid defiance to his power. We may add, that, whatever be the issue of the present contest, it must tend to a further and higher development of the Turkish character. The contagion of Western ideas, disseminated in the most imposing of ways by the presence of the armies of England and France, cannot fail to impress itself on the slumbrous but awakening Ottomans, and not only expand their stereotyped civilisation into a wider and freer form, but possibly to strike also from their religion the more faulty and obstructive of its tenets.
Such are the elements of the present population of Europe,—a population which, in its western and southern portions, no longer presents distinct masses of diverse tribes, and whose various sections every century is drawing into closer contact. The progress of commerce and civilisation produces not only an interchange of products of various climes, and of ideas between the various races of mankind, but also a commingling of blood; and as the most nobly developed races are always the great wanderers and conquerors, it will be seen that the progress of the world ever tends to improve the types of mankind by infusing the blood of the superior races into the veins of the inferior. The settlements of the Normans are an instance of this. And a still more remarkable, though exceptional, exemplification of the same thing may at present be witnessed in America—where the Negroes, transported from their native clime, have already become a mixed race, owing to the relation in which all female slaves stand to their masters, and the consequent frequent crossing of the European blood with the blood of Africa. In point of fact, there are slaves to be found in the Southern States, who, like “George” in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, are as Caucasian in their features and intellect as their masters,—a circumstance fraught with considerable danger to the White caste in these States, because producing the extremest irritation in these nearly full-blood “white slaves,” and at the same time providing able and fiery leaders for the oppressed Negro race in the event of an insurrection and servile war.
But the great variety of countenance and temperament in Western and Southern Europe is not due merely to actual crossings of the commingling races. Civilisation itself is the parent of variety. The progress of humanity produces physical effects upon the race, which may be classed under two heads, one of these being a general physical improvement, and the other increasing variety. Take an undeveloped race like the Tartars or Negroes, and you will find the aspect and mental character of the nation nearly homogeneous,—the differences existing amongst its individual members being comparatively trivial. Pass to the Slavonians, and you will perceive this uniformity lessened; and when you reach the nations of Western Europe, you will find the transition accomplished, and homogeneity exchanged for variety. The explanation of this is obvious. Just as all plants of the same species, when in embryo, are nearly alike, undeveloped races of mankind present but few signs of spiritual life; and therefore their individual members greatly resemble one another,—because the fewer the characteristics, the less room is there for variety, and the more radical and therefore more universal must be the characteristics themselves. Pebbles, as they lie rough upon the sea-shore, may present a great uniformity of appearance; but take and polish them, and a hundred diversities of colour and marking forthwith show themselves;—even so does civilisation and growth develop the rich varieties of human nature. As these mental varieties spring up within, they ever seek to develop themselves by corresponding varieties in the outer life,—placing men now in riches, now in poverty, now under the sway of the intellect, now of the passions, now of good principles, now of bad, and moreover leading to an infinite diversity of external occupation. The joint influence of the feelings within, and of the corresponding circumstances without, in course of time comes to affect the physical frame, often in a very marked manner; and, indeed, it is well known that even so subtle a thing as the predominant thoughts and sentiments of an individual are almost always reflected in the aspect of his countenance. Nations, when in a primitive uncultured state, differ as widely from those at the apex of civilisation, as the monotonous countenance and one-phased mind of a peasant contrasts with the rich variety of expression in the face of genius, whose nature is quickly responsive to every influence, though often steadied into a masculine calm. Let any one inspect the various classes of our metropolitan population, and he will perceive an amount of physical, mental, and occupational variety such as he will meet with nowhere else in the world—presenting countenances deformed now by this form of brutal passion, now by that, ranging upwards to the noblest types of the human face, the joint product of easy circumstances and high mental and spiritual culture. It is all the result of civilisation, which ever tends to break up the uniformity of a population, and allows of its members rising to the highest heights or sinking to the lowest depths,—thus breaking the primitive monotony of life into its manifold prismatic hues.
Not the least remarkable of the physical changes thus produced by civilisation, is the diversity of complexion which it gradually affects. It appears certain, for example, that the races who peopled the northern and western parts of Europe, subsequent to the dark-skinned Iberians, were all of the fair or xanthous style of complexion; but this is by no means the case with the great mass of people who are supposed to have descended from them. “It seems unquestionable,” says Prichard, “that the complexion prevalent through the British Isles has greatly varied from that of all [?] the original tribes who are known to have jointly constituted the population. We have seen that the ancient Celtic tribes were a xanthous race; such, likewise, were the Saxons, Danes, and Normans; the Caledonians also, and the Gael, were fair and yellow-haired. Not so the mixed descendants of all these blue-eyed tribes. The Britons had already deviated from the colour of the Celts in the time of Strabo, who declares that the Britons are taller than the Gauls, and less yellow-haired, and more infirm and relaxed in their bodies.” The Germans have also varied in their complexion. The ancient Germans are said to have had universally yellow or red hair and blue eyes,—in short, a strongly marked xanthous constitution. This, says Niebuhr, “has now, in most parts of Germany, become uncommon. I can assert, from my own observation, that the Germans are now, in many parts of their country, far from a light-haired race. I have seen a considerable number of persons assembled in a large room at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, and observed that, except one or two Englishmen, there was not an individual among them who had not dark hair. The Chevalier Bunsen has assured me that he has often looked in vain for the auburn or golden locks and the light cerulean eyes of the old Germans, and never verified the picture given by the ancients of his countrymen till he visited Scandinavia,—there he found himself surrounded by the Germans of Tacitus.” In the towns of Germany, especially, the people are far from being a red-haired, or even a xanthous race; and, from the fact that this change has been developed chiefly in towns, we may infer that it depends in part on habits, and the way of living, and on food. Towns are much warmer and drier than the country; but even the open country is much warmer and drier than the forests and morasses with which Germany was formerly covered. The climate of Germany has, in fact, changed since the country was cleared of its vast forests; and we must attribute the altered physical character of the Germans to the altered condition under which the present inhabitants live.
It was the conquests of Rome that first scattered the seeds of civilisation in Western Europe. There it has grown up into a stately and nearly perfect fabric on the shores of the Atlantic, gradually losing its perfection as it proceeds eastwards, until it reaches the semi-barbarism of Russia, and the still deeper barbarism of Upper Asia. Our limits hardly allow of our inquiring what influence this civilisation is calculated to exert in future upon the ethnological condition of the Continent, although it is a question of great importance, as foreshadowing the chief changes which may be expected to result from the state of chronic strife upon which Europe has now entered. We can only remark that the grand action of progress and civilisation is to develop the mind, and so convert the units of society from a mass of automatons into thinking and self-directing agents,—conscious of, and able to attain, alike their own rights and those of their nation. Hence follows the growth of liberty within; and, without, the gradual establishment of union between scattered sections of the same race. Supposing, then, that the progress of civilisation in Europe be unobstructed, we may calculate that wherever we now see internal despotism, there will be liberty,—wherever we see foreign domination, there will be national freedom,—and that, after a little more training in the stern school of suffering, the Continental nations, grown wiser, will make an end of the present arbitrary and unnatural territorial system of Europe, and arrange themselves in the more natural, grander, and permanent communities of race.
It was doubtless a perception of this truth that caused the French Emperor recently to declare that “the age of conquests is past.” We regret to think, however, that the statement is somewhat premature,—for Europe is still far from that happy climax of civilisation which in the preceding sentences we have indicated. Moreover, there are two very opposite periods in the life of nations when the race-principle reigns supreme, their first and their last;—just as, in the case of individuals, men often adopt in old age, from the dictates of experience, principles which in youth they had acted upon from instinct. Now, Europe at this day presents both of these phases of national life existing simultaneously, at its eastern and western extremities; and it seems probable that the development of the race-principle in its early form among the Slavonians, will take precedence of its development in maturity among the civilised races of the Continent. There is every indication that the Panslavism of Russia will precede the coalescing of the Teutonic tribes into a united Germany—or of the Romano-Gallic races of France, Spain, and Italy, into that trinity of confederate states which Lamartine so stoutly predicts. Nay, may not this Panslavism of Russia, by a short-lived political domination, be destined to prove the very means of exciting the ethnological affinities of the rest of Europe, and of thereby raising up an insuperable barrier to its own progress, as well as involuntarily launching the other nations on their true line of progress?
The fag-end of an article is little suitable for the discussion of such really momentous topics, and we especially regret that we cannot proceed to consider the effects which the progress of civilisation is likely to exert upon Russia itself. Any one, however, who is disposed to supply for himself the deductions from the above principles, will feel that his labour in so doing is not without its recompense, by establishing the consolatory truth that, so far as human eye can discern, “a good time coming” is yet in store for Europe,—though, alas, what turmoil must there be between this and then!
THE GANGETIC PROVINCES OF BRITISH INDIA.[[35]]
Disguise it as we may, conquest to the conquered must ever be a bitter draught.