"How are ye, Bub? I like that blanket, I do." In spite of this noble stranger's goodwill and prowess, we still found Fort Sumter a knotty question. In a country which for eighty years has not seen a shot fired in earnest, it is not wonderful that a good deal of ignorance should exist concerning military matters, and that second-class plans should be hatched for taking a first-class fortification. While I was in Charleston, the most popular proposition was to bombard continuously for two whole days and nights, thereby demoralizing the garrison by depriving it of sleep and causing it to surrender at the first attempt to escalade. Another plan, not in general favor, was to smoke Anderson out by means of a raft covered with burning mixtures of a chemical and bad-smelling nature. Still another, with perhaps yet fewer adherents, was to advance on all sides in such a vast number of row-boats that the fort could not sink them all, whereupon the survivors should land on the wharf and proceed to take such further measures as might be deemed expedient. The volunteers from the country always arrived full of faith and defiance. "We want to get a squint at that Fort Sumter," they would say to their city friends. "We are going to take it. If we don't plant the palmetto on it, it's because there's no such tree as the palmetto." Down the harbor they would go in the ferryboats to Morris or Sullivan's Island. The spy-glass would be brought out, and one after another would peer through it at the object of their enmity. Some could not sight it at all, confounded the instrument, and fell back on their natural vision. Others, more lucky, or better versed in telescopic observations, got a view of the fortress, and perhaps burst out swearing at the evident massiveness of the walls and the size of the columbiads. "Good Lord, what a gun!" exclaimed "D'ye see that gun? one man. an almighty thing! I'll be ever put my head in front of it!" What if I The difficulties of assault were admitted to be very great, considering the bad footing, the height of the ramparts, and the abundant store of muskets and grenades in the garrison. As to breaches, nobody seemed to know whether they could be made or not. The besieging batteries were neither heavy nor near, nor could they be advanced as is usual in regular sieges, nor had they any advantage over the defence except in the number of gunners, while in regard to position and calibre they were inferior. To knock down a wall nearly forty feet high and fourteen feet thick at a distance of more than half a mile seemed a tough undertaking, even when unresisted. It was discovered also that the side of the fortification towards Fort Johnstone, its only weak point, had been strengthened so as to make it bomb-proof by means of interior masonry constructed from the stones of the landing-place. Then nobody wanted to knock Fort Sumter down, inasmuch as that involved either the labor of building it up again, or the necessity of going without it as a harbor-defence. Finally, suppose it should be attacked and not taken? Really, we unlearned people in the art of war were vastly puzzled as we thought this whole matter over, and we sometimes doubted whether our superiors were not almost equally bothered with ourselves. This fighting was a sober, sad subject; and yet at times it took a turn toward the ludicrous. A gentleman told me that he was present when the steamer Marion was seized with the intention of using her in pursuing the Star of the West. A vehement dispute arose as to the fitness of the vessel for military service. "Fill her with men, and put two or three eighteen-pounders in her," said the advocates of the measure. "Where will you put your eighteenpounders ?" demanded the opposition. "On the promenade-deck, to be sure." "Yes, and the moment you fire one, 'll see you it go through the bottom of the ship, and then you'll have to go after it." During the two days previous to my second and successful attempt to quit Charleston, the city was in full expectation that the fort would shortly be attacked. News had arrived that Federal troops were on their way with reinforcements. An armed steamer had been seen off the harbor, both by night and day, making signals to Anderson. The Governor went down to Sullivan's Island to inspect the troops and Fort Moultrie. The volunteers, aided by negroes and even negro women, worked all night on the batteries. Notwithstanding we were close upon race-week, when the city is usually crowded, the streets had a deserted air, and nearly every acquaintance I met told me he had been down to the islands to see the preparations. Yet the whole excitement, like others which had preceded, ended even short of smoke. News came that reinforcements had not been sent to Anderson; and the destruction of that most inconvenient person was once more postponed. People fell back on the old hope that the Government would be brought to listen to reason, that it would give up to South Carolina what it could not keep from her with justice, that it would grant, in short, the incontrovertible right of peaceable secession. For, in the midst of all these labors and terrors, this expense and annoyance, no one talked of returning into the Union, and all agreed in deprecating compromise. Once more, this time in the James Adger, I set sail from Charleston. The boat lost one tide, and consequently one day, because at the last moment the captain found himself obliged to take out a South Carolina clearance. As I passed down the harbor, I counted fourteen square-rigged vessels at the wharves, and one lying at anchor, while three others had just passed the bar, outward-bound, and two were approaching from the open sea. Deterred from the Ship Channel by the sunken schooners, and from Maffitt's Channel by the fate of the Columbia, we tried the Middle Channel, and glided over the bar without accident. REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES. 1. Descriptive Ethnology. By R. G. LATHAM. 2 vols. London. 1859. 2. Anthropologie der Naturvölker. Von Dr. T. WAIZ. 2 Bänder. Leipzig. 1860. SOME writers have the remarkable faculty of making the subject which they may happen to treat forever more distasteful and wearisome to their readers. Whether the cause be in the style, or the point of view, or the method of treatment, or in all together, they seem able to force the student away in disgust from the whole field on which they labor, with vows never again to cross it. Such an author, it seems to us, is preeminently R. G. Latham, in his treatment of Ethnology. Happy the man who has any such philosophic interest in Human Races, that he can ever care to hear again of the subject, after perusing Mr. Latham's various volumes on "Descriptive Ethnolo gy." We wonder that the whole English reading public has not consigned the science to the shelf of Encyclopædias of Useful Knowledge, or of Year-Books of Fact, or any other equally philosophic and connected works, after the treatment which this modern master of Ethnology has given to the subject. The reader wades slowly through his books, and leaves them with a feeling of intense disgust. Such a vast gathering of facts merely to produce this melancholy confusion of details! You feel that his eminence in the science must be from the circumstance that no one else is dull enough and patient enough to gather such a museum of facts in regard to human beings. The mind is utterly confused as to divisions of human races, and is ready to conclude that there must be almost as many varieties of man as there are tribes or dialects, and that Ethnology has not yet reached the position of a science. The reader must pardon the bitterness of our feelings; but we are just smarting from a prolonged perusal of all Mr. Latham's works, especially the two volumes whose title is given above; and that we may have sympathy, if only in a faint degree, from our friends, we quote a few passages, taken at random, though we cannot possibly thus convey an adequate concep tion of the infinite dulness of the work. The following is his elegant introduction: Such disconnected masses of facts are heaped together in these works, such incredible dulness is shown in presenting them, such careful avoidance of any generalization or of any interesting particular, such a bald and conceited style, and such a cockneyish and self-opinionated view of human history, as our soul wearies even to think of. Mr. Latham disdains any link of philosophy, or any classification, among his "ten thousand facts," as being a fault of the "German School" (whatever that may be) of Ethnology. It seems to him soundly"British" to disbelieve all the best conclusions of modern scholarship, and to urge his own fanciful or shallow theories. He treats all human superstitions and mythologies as if he were standing in the Strand and judging them by the ideas of modern London. His is a Cockney's view of antiquity. He cannot imagine that The following is his analysis of the beaua barbarous and infant people, groping in tiful Finnish Kalevala: "I follow the Horatian rule, and plunge, at once, in medias res. I am on the Indus, but not on the Indian portion of it. I am on the Himalayas, but not on their southern side. I am on the northwestern ranges, with Tartary on the north, Bokhara on the west, and Hindostan on the south. I am in a neighborhood where three great religions meet: Mahometanism, Buddhism, Brahminism. I must begin somewhere; and here is my beginning.”— Vol. i. p. 1. "Wainamoinen is much of a smith, and more of a harper. Illmarinen is most of a smith. Lemminkainen is much of a harper, and little of a smith. The hand of the daughter of the mistress of Pohjola is what, each and all, the three sons of Kalevala strive to win,- a hand which the mother of the owner will give to any one who can make for her and for Pohjola Sampo. Wainamoinen will not; but he knows of one who will,- Illmarinen. Ilmarinen makes it, and gains the mother's consent thereby. But the daughter requires another service. He must hunt down the elk of Tunela. We now see the way in which the actions of the heroes are, at one and the same time, separate and connected. Wainamoinen tries; Ilmarinen tries (and eventually wins); Lemminkainen tries. There are alternations of friendship and enmity. Sampo is made and presented. It is then wanted back again. "Give us,' says Wainamoinen, if not the whole, half.' 'Sampo,' says Louki, the mistress of Pohjola, 'cannot be divided.' "Then let us steal it,' says one of the three. 'Agreed,' say the other two. "So the rape of Sampo takes place. It is taken from Pohjola, whilst the owners are sung to sleep by the harp of Lemminkainen; sung to sleep, but not for so long a time as to allow the robbers to escape. They are sailing Kalevalaward, when Louki comes after them on the wings of the wind, and raises a storm. Sampo is broken, and thrown into the sea. Bad days now come. There is no sun, no moon. Illmarinen makes them of silver and gold. He had previously made his second wife (for he lost his first) out of the game metals. However, Sampo is washed up, and made whole. Good days come. The sun and moon shine as before, and the sons of Kalevala possess Sampo." - Vol. i., pp. 433, 434. This, again, is Mr. Latham's profound and interesting view of Buddhism : — "Buddhism is one thing. Practices out of which Buddhism may be developed are another. It has been already suggested that the ideas conveyed by the terms Sramana and Gymnosophista are just as Brahminic as Buddhist, and, vice versâ, just as Buddhist as Brahminic. "The earliest dates of specific Buddhism are of the same age as the earliest dates of specific Brahminism. "Clemens of Alexandria mentions Buddhist pyramids, the Buddhist habit of depositing certain bones in them, the Buddhist practice of foretelling events, the Buddhist practice of continence, the Buddhist Semnai or holy virgins. This, however, may be but so much asceticism. He mentions this and more. He supplies the name Bouta; Bouta being honored as a god. "From Cyril of Jerusalem we learn that Samnaism was, more or less, Manichæan,Manichæanism being, more or less, Samanist. Terebinthus, the preceptor of Manes, took the name Baudas. In Epiphanius, Terebinthus is the pupil of Scythianus. "Suidas makes Terebinthus a pupil of Baudda, who pretended to be the son of a virgin. And here we may stop to remark, that the Mongol Tshingiz-Khan is said to be virginborn; that, word for word, Scythianus is Sak; that Sakya Muni (compare it with Manes) is a name of Buddha. "Be this as it may, there was, before A. D. 300, "1. Action and reaction between Buddhism and Christianity. "2. Buddhist buildings. "3. The same cultus in both Bactria and India. "Whether this constitute Buddhism is another question." — Vol. ii. p. 317. And more of an equally attractive and comprehensible character. We assure the reader that these extracts are but feeble exponents of the peculiar power of Mr. Latham's works, — a power of unmitigated dulness. What his views are on the great questions of the science -the origin of races, the migrations, the crossings of varieties, and the like-no mortal can remember, who has penetrated the labyrinth of his researches. An author of a very different kind is Professor Waiz, whose work on Anthropology has just reached this country: a writer as philosophic as Mr. Latham is disconnected; as pleasing and natural in style as the other is affected; as simply open to the true and good in all customs or superstitions of barbarous peoples as the Englishman is contemptuous of everything not modern and European. Waiz seems to us the most careful and truly scientif ic author in the field of Ethnology whom we have had since Prichard, and with the wider scope which belongs to the intellectual German. The bane of this science, as every one knows, has been its theorizing, and its want of careful inductive reasoning from facts. The classifications in it have been endless, varying almost with the fancies of each new student; while every prominent follower of it has had some pet hypothesis, to which he desired to suit his facts. Whether the a priori theory were of modern miraculous origin or of gradual development, of unity or of diversity of parentage, of permanent and absolute divisions of races or of a community of blood, it has equally forced the author to twist his facts. Perhaps the basest of all uses to which theory has been put in this science was in a well-known American work, where facts and fancies in Ethnology were industriously woven together to form another withe about the limbs of the wretched African slave. Waiz has reasoned slowly and carefully from facts, considering in his view all pos sible hypotheses, even, for instance, the development-theory of Darwin, — and has formed his own conclusion on scientific data, or has wisely avowed that no conclusion is possible. The classification to which he is forced is that which all profound investigators are approaching, that of language interpreted by history. He is compelled to believe that no physiological evidences of race can be considered as at all equal to the evidences from language. At the same time, he is ready to admit that even this classifi cation is imperfect, as from the nature of the case it must be; for the source of the confusion lies in the very unity of mankind. He rejects in toto Professor Agassiz's "realm-theory," as inconsistent with facts. The hybrid-question, as put by Messrs. Gliddon and Nott, meets with a searching and careful investigation, with the conclusion that nothing in facts yet ascertained proves any want of vitality or power of propagation in mulattoes or in crosses of any human races. The unity of origin and the vast antiquity of mankind are the two important conclusions drawn. His second volume is entirely devoted to the negro races, and is the most valua ble treatise yet written on that topic. The whole work is mainly directed towards Naturvölker, or "Peoples in a State of Nature," and therefore cannot be recommended for translation, as a general textbook on the science of Ethnology, - a book which is now exceedingly needed in all our higher schools and colleges; but as a general treatise, with many new and important facts, scientifically treated, it can be most highly commended to the general scholar. Il Politecnico. Repertorio Mensile di Studj applicati alla Prosperità e Coltura Sociale. Milano, 1860. New York: Charles B. Norton, Agent for Libraries, 596, Broadway. AMONG the best first-fruits of Italian liberty are the free publication and circulation of books; and it is a striking indication of the new order of things in Lombardy, that the publishers at Milan of the monthly journal, "Il Politecnico," should at once have established an American agency in New York, and that in successive numbers of their periodical during the present year they should have furnished lists of some of the principal American publications which they are prepared to obtain for Italian readers. It will be a fortunate circumstance for the people of both countries, should a ready means be established for the interchange of their contemporaneous works in literature and science. The "Politecnico" is not altogether a new journal. Seven volumes of it had been published, and had acquired for it a high reputation and a considerable circulation, when political events put a stop to its issue. The Austrian system of government after 1849 repressed all free expres sion of thought in Lombardy; and no encouragement was afforded for the publication of any work not under the control of the administration. With the beginning of the present year the "Politecnico" was reëstablished, mainly through the influ ence and under the direction of Dr. Carlo Cattaneo, who had been the chief promoter of the preceding original series. The numbers of the new series give evidence of talent and independence in its conductors and contributors, and contain articles of intrinsic value, beside that which they possess as indications of the present intellectual condition and tendencies of Italy. The journal is wholly devoted to serious studies, its object being the culti vation of the moral and physical sciences with the arts depending on them, and their practical application to promote the national prosperity. That it will carry out |