why these islanders should have fancied these concentric spheres or domes? Such a theory is not obvious to the savage mind, like the notion of a flat earth, with a firmament above. Is it, perhaps, an idea borrowed from some more civilised race, with whom the Polynesians have been in contact? The cosmogony of the ancient Hindu theologians has found its way into the Malay Islands, and thus the doctrine of the spheres of heaven may have reached the Polynesian branch of the Malay race. When we talk of being 'in the seventh heaven,' we are keeping up the remembrance of the old-world doctrine of concentric planetary spheres surrounding the earth-a doctrine which is the outcome of a comparatively advanced astronomy. It may be safely guessed that no South-Sea Islander ever had science enough to strike out such an idea; but whereas it has been known for thousands of years in Eastern Asia, it adds to the already strong evidence that we must look thither for the origin of the Polynesians, their language, and their civilisation. As a question of ethnology, it is hardly disputed that the connection of the Polynesian languages with the Malay dialects of Sumatra, Java, and the Malay Peninsula, proves that the Malays and Polynesians are in part at least of the same stock. It is true that a Tahitian or a New Zealander is not exactly like a Malay of Singapore, but they are not very different either in complexion, hair, or features; and allowing for the change of appearance and effect of intermarriage with the darker race of Melanesia, there is little to object to in the theory of a common Malay-Polynesian race, which separated long ago into its two great branches. Nor is it imprudent, when we find the SouthSea Islanders possessed of Asiatic ideas which seem beyond their own reach, to suppose these to have been carried across the canoe-frequented Pacific, perhaps a long while ago, perhaps quite lately. Care has to be taken, indeed, in such arguments. Mr. Gill, who believes that Polynesia was peopled from Asia, does not seem to strengthen his opinion by his reasoning on the fact that the Hervey Islanders divide the horizon into sixty-four points or wind-holes,' corresponding exactly with the card of our mariner's compass. As the magnetic compass was invented in China, Mr. Gill argues, may not the Polynesians have brought it with them, and though they dropped the needle in consequence of the scarcity of iron, have kept the points of the compass? It was unlucky that he did not notice the fact of the Chinese compass being divided not into thirty-two points but into twenty-four. It seems more likely that some English whaler may have occupied his leisure moments on Mangaia in teaching the natives to box the compass' after the manner of his country. 6 More More importance may be attached to the remarkable agreement in the legends of so many island groups as to whence their ancestors came. The first man, the Mangaians said, came from Avaiki, which means not only the Under-world but the West. We have seen that other forms of this word (of which the original form was probably Savaiki) are Savaii, Hawaiki, Hawaii. Two of these are well-known names of Pacific Islands, and they are so called because they are western islands. As moreover, in the Polynesian idiom, taken plainly from the sun's course, 'down' means 'west' and 'up means east,' any islander who wished to say that his ancestors came from Savaii would say that they came up' from Savaii. Entangled somehow in this confusion of terms lie the Polynesian myths of ancestors who came up from Avaiki. To their notions it was as reasonable that they should have come up out of Hades as that they should have come from the West. Our notions of the possibilities of nature are, however, different; and where there is alternative of meaning, we may reasonably choose for ourselves. Totally declining to believe that the first Mangaian came up out of the under-world, we may admit at least a possibility of real historical tradition in the idea that the voyages of the first migrating Polynesians started from the sunset-land of Asia, till, by gradual drifting, colonies of bold seamen had colonised island after island, at last reaching Easter Island, with nought but bare ocean between them and the American coast. ART. VIII.—1. The American Genealogist; being a Catalogue of Family Histories and Publications containing Genealogical Information issued in the United States. Arranged chronologically by William H. Whitmore. Third edition. Albany, 1875. 2. Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, with an Historical Essay. By Lorenzo Sabine. 2 vols. Boston, 1864. 3. The Old Streets of New York under the Dutch. A Paper read before the New York Historical Society by J. W. Gerard. New York, 1875. 4. Puritan Politics in England and New England. A Lecture delivered before the Lowell Institution by Edward E. Hale. Boston, 1869. 5. The Rise of the Republic of the United States. By Richard Frothingham. Boston, 1873. IT T is hardly egotistical, when the lapse of time and the mutations of men and things are considered, to refer to the article article on 'Works on England' in the fifteenth volume of this 'Review' (1816), where A Journal of Travels in England, Holland, and Scotland in the years 1805-6,' by Benjamin Silliman, an American gentleman who visited Europe with a commission to purchase philosophical and chemical apparatus and books for Yale College, in Connecticut, is analysed with much commendation. It is in these pages that occurs the oftencited passage, that, for Americans of education and reflection England is what Italy and Greece are to the classical scholarwhat Rome is to the Catholic-and Jerusalem to the Christian world; '-words, no doubt, of high pretension, but written by one the early dream of whose life was to become himself a pilgrim to the New World in search of a higher and freer social existence. How this poetic and philosophic venture, with which the names of Southey and Coleridge are associated, failed on the eve of its accomplishment is recorded-not, perhaps, with historical accuracy-in a stanza of 'Don Juan,' and the lapse of these young enthusiasts into a very different, and even contradictory, order of opinion is no new phenomenon in literary psychology. But the sentiment thus expressed sixty years ago, when the communications between the United States and Europe were comparatively rare and difficult-when on one side the complete surrender of a British squadron, and on the other the conflagration of the American Capitol were rankling in the minds of men when England, at what future historians may well regard as the apogee of her European greatness, was establishing what her statesmen believed to be the permanent pacification of the Continent, and which did last nearly fifteen years-is still well worth consideration, and we propose to examine its present reason and its applicability to current events. The American Government and people have this year invited the various nations of the world to a competitive festival of Industry and Art, organised with a magnificence and completeness unparalleled by any one of the great Exhibitions, of which our 'domes of glass' in Hyde Park, now commemorated by the Albert Monument, were the origin and material ensample. In all these enterprises the powers and possibilities of human skill have been abundantly illustrated, and the consequent development of Commerce largely advanced. But it is the avowed purpose of the United States to combine the demonstration of wealth and genius with historical interests and with a certain demand on the admiration and gratitude of mankind. The millions of delighted visitors will not only unite pleasure and instruction, but will assist in a centenary celebration of the foundation of of the American Republic; and of the foreign guests, the most numerous, and not the least honoured, will be the parent-people of the revolted Colony. Such is the irony of History! The very site of the Exhibition recalls the contradiction. It stands where the old Bingham mansion and pleasure-grounds overlooked the deep banks of the Schuylkill River; and the family of that name, no longer American, is mingled with the British peerage. To an American intent on the more modern history, the vicinage will recall the military vicissitudes that some hundred years ago threatened to nullify the freshly-issued Declaration of Independence the defeat of Washington on the Delaware, with his associates, Lord Stirling, Count Pulaski, and the young Lafayette-a strange combination of European names-followed by the apparently important, but in the end profitless, capture of Philadelphia itself; while the mind of the English visitor will revert to a former century, when, by an improbable concurrence of events, the son of a distinguished British admiral won, out of the very despotism that threatened the religious liberties of his own country, the means of establishing the freest and most continuously prosperous of American colonies.* Nor is the present aspect of the adjacent city less suggestive of mixed associations. Its decorous and handsome uniformity is the model of unostentatious wealth and of all such comfort as unimaginative and restrained desire may command; while the numberless small tenements will remind our countrymen of the persistent individuality of the English artisan, with the addition of white marble steps to his red-brick homestead, and Mr. * The following letter is, we believe, unpublished: 'To Major-General Lord Stirling. 'MY LORD,-The principal reason for halting the army here to-night is, that the enemy, from every information I have received this day, have not advanced towards Philadelphia. It follows, I think, evidently (especially if it be true that part of them are at Bonner's House, where we dined) that this army, and not the city, is their object; and of course that we should not be too far advanced towards them till our strength is collected. I have only to add, therefore, that my wish is that your Lordship would, if possible, have their present position watched, to see if any movement this way or towards Philadelphia takes place, that I may be early advised thereof; and that you will take every necessary precaution for the security of the whole troops in that quarter-Ireland's, Maxwell's, and Potter's. Should I advance with this army, and the enemy turn upon us and oblige us to retire, the consequences would be bad; to avoid which it is that I halt here this night. Count Pulaski goes to you with the Horse, and is instructed to send out parties for observation. 'I am, your Lordship's most obedient servant, Endorsed "From Gen. Washington, 'Sept. 24, 1777.") 'G. WASHINGTON. Child's Child's Daily Ledger' bringing him, every morning, the news of the world. Tis If, then, the ordinary English traveller in the United States is continually amazed and perplexed by the large similarities of principles and character and the comparatively small diversities of manners and institutions, feeling himself generally so much at home that even insignificant differences strike him the more as unexpected exceptions, it is probable that, in the presence of the many nationalities that this great celebration will bring together, he will find the sense of brotherhood with his hosts stronger than when they meet individually as man to man. He will hear the language which, in comparison with what would be the variety and confusion of expression, tone, and pronunciation in an assembly where the inhabitants of the English Counties, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, were brought together, may truly be called identical with his own; he will have about him an abundant literature, only too imitative of that with which he is familiar, and to a great extent dependent on the appreciation and approval of the English public for its success at home; and, whatever be his religious denomination, he will be seated the Sunday after his arrival in some commodious edifice, among men with whom he can exchange serious sympathies and discuss common opinions, with no sectarian detraction or possibility of social inferiority. But it is to the hospitality of the American people that the visitor will justly look for his main enjoyment, and how large that will be to all its guests they have already shown. Why the 'ancient enemy' may fairly expect to be received with special cordiality is a question we shall be glad to illustrate by some considerations of the more recent intellectual and moral influences that have been brought to bear on our cognate nature. Among the later literary developments of the Americans there is none more suggestive than the increased interest in genealogical researches. Of this the work we have placed at the head of this article is at once a proof and a result. It is a catalogue raisonné of six hundred and nine family-histories and genealogical writings published in the United States, chronologically arranged, and it is executed with much skill and an elaborate industry. The author is able to indicate only one such record written before the period of Independence-it is 'A Genealogy of the Family of Mr. Samuel Stebbings from the year 1707 to 1771,' printed at Hartford at the later date-a bibliomaniac curiosity, indeed, if still in existence-not seen by Mr. Whitmore, but referred to in an article by Mr. Daniel Stebbings in the fifth volume of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register.' There is only one other |