haps curious interest in this connection, that we have found the average stature of ninety Americans, who have been distinguished in literature or in public life, to be 5 feet 10 inches.

M. Topinard has given ample space to the description of physical and physiological characters; and the complex results that he has presented are classed and tabulated with the skill that distinguishes the scientific work of the French. But we shall hardly expect to get at the vital principles of anthropologic science by means of rule and compass. No method is more alluring, in physiologic studies, than this of accurate measurement and description; none seems to promise more definite results, and yet none oftener disappoints the promise. For it is, after all, the life, and not the stature, or the weight, or the facial angles, that has a final meaning for the student; it is rather the questions of the origin of the races of man, their essential distinctions, their ethnic, linguistic, historical characters, and how "the natural divisions of the human group" were produced, that finally concern the anthropologist. And M. Topinard, while making no claim as a discoverer in these matters, has served a most excellent purpose in putting before us the best results of research from Lamarck to Haeckel; and also in reminding us that to the former discoverer belongs the first and chief honor of the theory of development. A German scientist, Oscar Schmidt, tells us the same thing in words which we will quote in preference to M. Topinard's, as being free from any suspicion of national prejudice in favor of a compatriot. Schmidt says: "Lamarck first formulated the doctrine of descent. In 1804 he actually propounded all the propositions which Darwin has constructed afresh and more. completely." When Lamarck said, in his "Philosophie Zoologique (1809), "A species varies infinitely, and, considered as regards time, does not exist;" and, again, "La fonction fait l'organe," he spoke the words which were to unlock for our century the greater part of what it knows of life in its development and its transformations. And because he spoke them too early for their right understanding by his time because, indeed, the chief glory of proving their truth has fallen to a later discoverer, scarcely less great than he-Charles Darwin-it is well that we should not forget in what mind that prolific seed thought of our time germinated; and how, like the sower's seed in the parable, it fell on stony ground.

We need hardly say that M. Topinard adopts the theories of Lamarck and of Darwin as regards the origin of the race and of species. The translator, Dr. Bartley, has, however, told us, in a

prefatory note, that as for himself, on the contrary, he retains, as a pupil of the illustrious Prichard, "an entire belief in the authenticity of the Mosaic records, which no sophistry on the part of the advocates of polygenism has been able to shake." We cannot be too thankful for this warning voice, made so clearly audible by the translator at the dangerous gate which he throws open. But those who enter will find interesting ground within, and intelligent guidance. It only remains to say that Dr. Bartley's translation, though quite devoid of charm in style, is made in the main with faithfulness; and the only sign of indolence about it is, that he has failed to reduce the metrical measurements of the original to English feet and inches.

8.-Goethe's Poems. Translated in the Original Metres by PAUL DYRSEN. New York: F. W. Christern. 1878. 12mo, pp. xx. -378.

Of the twoscore volumes which make up, in the edition of 1840, the tale of Goethe's works, Mr. Dyrsen has translated, in the book that lies before us, the whole of the first, except a few pages, of the "Prophecies of Bakis," and also the "Rhymed Sayings" from the third volume. He has thus given us more of Goethe than what was given us, a few years ago, by the translators with whom he must stand comparison-Messrs. Aytoun and Martin, whose well-known versions included, as their chief contents, the "Poems in Antique Form," the "Ballads and Legends," and the "Songs and Lyrics.” Mr. Dyrsen translates, besides these, the remarkable "Roman Elegies" and the "Venetian Epigrams," besides a number of pieces that the earlier translators passed over; and he has attempted, and with fair success, what they thought hopeless, the "absolute prosodical reproduction" of the originals. The "Roman Elegies," they said in their preface, "the translators do not believe can be rendered, by any amount of labor and skill, into corresponding English measures with any assurance of success." But Mr. Dyrsen has handled them, if unequally (which it would take more space than is at our command to show), yet fluently and musically sometimes, as witness these lines:

"Then of a sudden she drew a Roman five; and before it,
Quickly, a vertical dash; then, being sure I had seen

All I should, ran line into circle destroying the letters:

But an indelible four burned and illumined my eye."-(p. 243.)

On the other hand, he offers us too many hexameters, like the first of the following:

"In the autumnal chill the fire starts up on the hearth and

Crackles, illumines, and shoots up from the copse and the sticks."

But the translation in the main keeps closely to the original in sense as well as in form; it is more literal, if less graceful, than Messrs. Aytoun and Martin's; and it is much more daring in faithfulness to situations and to phrases where the earlier translators were timid; as, notably, in passages of "The Bride of Corinth."

Mr. Dyrsen's brief preliminary essay on the translating of Goethe is interesting, but we turn, after all, to the actual performance, of which a few lines more will fairly show the spirit as contrasted with that of the rival translations, and help us to compare the accuracy of the two. Goethe addresses the Alps at Uri in a passage commencing:

"War doch gestern dein Haupt noch so braun, wie die Locke der Lieben,
Deren holdes Gebild still aus der Ferne mir winkt!"

Mr. Dyrsen renders this as follows:

"Yesterday your summit appeared deep-brown: and my distant
Darling I thought I beheld, looking at me from afar :
Prematurely I see your brown locks changed into white locks,
Changed in a day by the night's snow and tempestuous storm."

Mr. Aytoun translates the same passage thus:

"Yesterday thy head was brown, as are the flowing locks of love;
In the bright blue sky I watched thee, towering giant-like above;
Now thy summit, bright and hoary, glitters all with silver snow,

Which the stormy night hath shaken from its robes upon thy brow."

Mr. Dyrsen's translation, as will be seen, has vigor and a fresh feeling about it; and though it is unequal, and has sadly prosaic spots in it, is done in a faithful and intelligent spirit, and is a real contribution to our knowledge of Goethe.

9.-Ethnographie von Ungern. Von PAUL HUNFALDY. Mit Zustimmung des Verfassers ins Deutsche übertragen von Prof. J. H. Schwicker. Buda-Pesth. 1877. 8vo, pp. xvi.-446.

HUNGARY, with its present population of Magyars, Szeklers, Slovaks, Ruthens, Croats, Serbs, Wallachs, Germans, Armenians, Jews, etc., and the ancient and mediaval dwellers on its soil-Agathyrsians, Dacians, Pannonians, Goths, Huns, Avars, Bulgarians, Cumans, and other tribes-presents one of the most checkered fields of inquiry to the ethnographer. Hunfaldy's work embraces the whole ground, entering into the critical examination of every part

of the vast subject which has as yet received no definitive solution. Ethnic affinities, migrations, violent dispossessions, and gradual linguistic developments, are subjected by him to a keen scrutiny, which, while amply drawing from the sources of Germanic, Slavic, and other research, bows before no authority, however strongly supported by age or fame. In his own sphere, the Finno-Ugric division of ethnography and philology, which embraces the Magyar or Hungarian branch, he is himself one of the foremost authorities, and his conclusions concerning the origins of his nation, the Hungarian, may almost be considered as definitive as far as they go; while his opinions as to the ethnic relations of Huns, Khazars, Cumans, and Wallachs, or the earliest abodes of the Slavs, whenever original, will be found worth weighing against those of other writers of renown. The plan of the work is historical, the successive occupants of the land being treated of in almost regular order. The times preceding the conquest by the Hungarians (about 890) are divided into the following periods: the prehistoric, the Roman (in Pannonia and Dacia, or Southwestern Hungary and Transylvania, with adjoining parts), the Germano-Hunnish (Goths, Attila's realm, etc.), the Avar (Bayar's realm, Slavs, Bulgarians), and the Franco-German (Charlemagne and his German successors, Svatopluk). To the Magyars and their kindred most of the space is naturally devoted, but special attention is also given to the origin of the Wallachs, or Roumans. The conclusions of the author are mainly supported by philological evidences. Prof. Schwicker's translation from the Magyar is very carefully executed, and in insertions embodies also some independent research.

The Magyars, according to our author, originally formed a portion of the Finno-Ugrians before their separation. After the separation of the Finns and Ugrians-at an unknown time-they belonged to the latter division of people. The Ugrians formed a less compact aggregate of tribes than the Finns; the Magyars remained in the neighborhood chiefly of the Voguls, Ostiaks, and other tribes dwelling east of the Volga, on both sides of the Ural Mountains. The genetic periods of the Magyars were thus the Finno-Ugrian and the Ugrian proper. In them the individuality both of the nation and the language was formed and established. Hunting and fishing were in those times the occupations of the people; many Hungarian terms referring to those occupations are Finno-Ugric. Agriculture was not practised; words referring to cattle are not to be found in the common stock. The Magyars occupied a southern portion of

the vast Ugrian territory (Ugra or Yoria), probably near the lower banks of the Irtish, in the present Russian government of Tobolsk, Here, on their southern confines, they came in contact with Turkic tribes, including, perhaps, the Khazars, and from them adopted the names of such animals as the lion (Hung., oroszlán; Osmanli Turk., arslan), camel (Hung., teve; Turk., deve), and badger (Hung., borz; Turk., bortch); and a large number of words designating domestic products and animals, such as wheat (Hung., buza; Turk., bogdai), pea (Hung., borsó; Turk., burtchag), apple (alma in both languages), barley (árpa in both languages), ox (Hung., ökör ; Turk., öküz), calf (Hung., borju, Turk., buzagu), and ram (Hung., kos; Turk., kotch)—all of which goes to prove that the Magyars received the knowledge of southern products and of agriculture from their Turkic neighbors. From their abodes near the Irtish they migrated westward, traversing the Ural Mountains, and occupying a land designated Lebedia (perhaps corresponding to the government of Viatka). A subsequent abode of the Magyars is known as AtelKuzu, which may have been between the Upper Volga and the Upper Dnieper. From there they moved southward toward the northern shores of the Black Sea and the rivers Pruth and Seneth, where they dwelled before crossing the Carpathians and entering the present "land of the Magyars." The Szeklers, occupying its southeastern mountain-borders, our author regards as perfectly identical in race with the Magyars, and their derivation from the Huns as the invention of a chronicler.