market, the best race is always fixed to take place at the best hour. The Two Thousand is not run at dusk, after eleven plating races; and the Four-mile race at Beaufort House might take precedence of such exhibitions as hammer-throwing and pole jumping. We must also observe that the colours of the competitors, as printed on the card, were carefully and persistently contradicted by the colours worn by the competitors when they appeared on the course. We shall not review the results of the day's proceedings seriatim, because many of our remarks on Friday's sports will apply to those of Monday. Mr Ridley of Eton, who will be an athletic treasure to whichever University may hereafter secure him, won the Hundred yards and the Quarter-mile races. He is not only possess ed of great speed, but he runs with great gameness and unflinching perseverance. The Seven-mile walking race occupied 58 min. 18 sec. Mr. Chambers, who won this contest last year, did not appear in good condition, but he struggled well, and only lost by a few inches. We do not profess to be judges of what is fair walking and what is not; it seemed to us that both Mr. Chambers and the gentleman who, according to the card, was qualified for taking part in this meeting by having resided at Liverpool, are very fair runners, and singularly sound in wind and in limb. Mr. Frere had no difficulty in winning the Half-mile race for Oxford, and Mr. Long was again unfortunate enough in the One mile to be beaten just by a few inches. His steadiness and gameness in running are unquestioned; with just a little more speed at the finish be would often be, as he deserves to be, a winner. In the Four-mile race Mr. Kennedy showed his real power. No one had the least chance with him, and he was as fresh at the end as when he started. In these degenerate days, a man who can run four miles at a good pace, and finish as if he were ready to begin his task anew, is worth remembering. to be excluded, and the character of these contests would be irretrievably degraded. The meetings of the Amateur Athletic Club should be open to gentlemen solely. Professionals can, of course, be excluded easily. It is not so easy to find out and reject the claims of those who are neither professionals nor gentlemen. JAPANESE ODES TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH. By F. V. Dickins, M. B. (Smith, Elder, and Co.) - This is a curiosity of literature, and is quite as worthy of a place on a drawing-room table as a Japanese tray or workdo not exceed six lines and many of them, box. All the odes are short most of them though popular among the natives, are to us absolutely pointless. No doubt the Japanese would say the same of Dr. Watts or Mr. Tupper, if they were rendered into that ancient dialect from which these have been translated. In one place, too, we stumbled on a graceful turn which is beyond either of those poets: "And still my love for thee as yet I have forgotten to forget. But without Mr. Dickins's valuable notes and elucidations the collection would have been a mere toy, and a quaint toy rather than one of intrinsic beauty. - Spectator. Critical, on Early Poems of Alfred and C. TENNYSONIA. Notes, Bibliographical and Tennyson. In Memoriam. Various Readings, with parallel passages in Shakespeare's Sonnets, &c. (London: Basil Montagu Pickering.) It is a pity that the anonymous author of this little study of the various forms and changes through which the poems of Tennyson have passed did not, if he could have gained permission at least, so far enlarge his plan as to print completely the now greatly altered poems of the earliest editions and volumes side by side with the latest forms which these poems have taken, and to give us in full the younger We have one remark to make in conclu- poems which the maturer taste of the poet has now suppressed. As the book stauds, the sion. At present the success of the Ama- complete lists of old editions and the occasional teur Athletic Club meetings depends al- citations of a few lines since altered in a poem most entirely on University men. But in here and there, will be of use chiefly to those time competitors will be attracted from all who have all the old editions in their possesparts of the country. It is to be hoped sion, that is, perhaps, to two or three of Mr. that a rigorous scrutiny will be made into little book is curious and welcome to the stuTennyson's thousands of readers. Still this the qualifications of all strangers who as-dent of Mr Tennyson. It has been prepared pire to take part in these meetings. The with sedulous accuracy, and all its facts, may mere fact of a man's belonging to an athlet- be depended on. It contains a complete list of ic club or a gymnasium in some large town the portraits (photographs and engravings) of is quite insufficient. The door would be Mr. Tennyson, which will be useful to many opened to hundreds of persons who ought readers. — Spectator. No. 1200. Fourth Series, No. 61. 1 June, 1867. CONTENTS. PAGE SHORT ARTICLES: The American Colony in Palestine, 580. Death of Prof. John H. Alexan- der, 563. Antiphonal Chanting, 607. Bamboo for Paper, 607. Anecdote of David Hume, FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the Living Age will be punctually forwarded a commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. From the San Francisco Bulletin. AN ARCTIC VISION. WHERE the short-legged Esquimaux Know you not what fate awaits you, On the spot where Eugene Sue Leaning on his icy hammer True the Springs are rather late Rocks, too; mebbee quartz; let's see"Twould be strange if there should beSeems I've heerd such stories told : Eh!-why, bless us - yes, it's gold!" From the Edinburgh Review. 1. Historical and Statistical Information respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. Collected and prepared under the direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, by HENRY ROWE SCHOOLCRAFT (COLCRAFT). Illustrated by S. EASTMAN, Capt. U. S. Navy. 6 vols. 4to. Philadelphia 1851-1860. 2. Antiquities of the State of New York: with a Supplement on the Antiquities of the West (reprinted from the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge). By EPHRAIM GEORGE SQUIER. 8vo. Buffalo THE northern continent of America affords, though it might seem otherwise, an extensive field for archæological research and an excellent test of the true value of the theories which have been propounded as to the origin of civilization and of art in the eastern hemisphere. Historically as well as geographically, the area is almost unbounded, and has been occupied, in all probability, from the remotest antiquity, by different nations, if not by different races of mankind, in various stages of social, political, and intellectual development. The ancient remains, many of which are in a singularly perfect condition, considering the lapse of so many centuries, are calculated to impress the most stolid beholder with admiration and awe. Unlike the relics of antiquity in the Old World, they have suffered less from the vandalism of man than from the ravages of time. The advancing immigrant and the retreating Indian each in his turn have contributed to their preservation; the one from economical, the other from superstitious motives. Their number is so vast, their distribution so unequal, and their character so diverse as to render any attempt at a classification - in this place at least - a profitless task. From Gautemala to Upper Canada, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, the surface is strewn with stupendous ruins of pyramidal temples and tumuli, entrenched camps and fortifications, walled towns and villages, amphitheatres and pictorial grottos, embankments and bridges, towers and obelisks, wells and aqueducts, high roads and causeways, gardens and artificial meadows; the greater part of which were designed, constructed, and maintained by numerous, intelligent, and skilful races of men who have long since disappeared from the several scenes of their labour, bequeathing to posterity no written, nor even a solitary traditional memorial of themselves or of their ancestors. Some portion of their history, nevertheless, may be dimly discerned by the light of analogy. But before speculating on their probable origin, or determining to what particular branch of the human family they belonged, or from whom they derived elementary instruction in the arts and conveniences of life, let us take a glance at their country, as it presented itself to the astonished gaze of the Spaniards at the commencement of the sixteenth century. In that age, the continent of North America, so far as relates to its territorial divisions, its political circumstances, and the dispersion of its multitudinous families, differed less than might be supposed from its present condition. Then, as now, fixed communities and nomadic tribes divided the soil between them. In their respective modes of existence, the best of the inhabitants exhibited but an imperfect civilization, and the worst of them but a qualified barbarism; the first were emerging from, and the second were sinking into, a state of social decrepitude and moral ruin. Nor is this the only instance of the verification in the New World of the maxim in the Old, that history reproduces itself. As in the nineteenth so in the sixteenth century, one great national confederation eclipsed all the surrounding principalities or kingdoms. The ancient Mexican League, including the several sovereignties of Anahuac, Tezcuco, and Tlacopan, occupied that pre-eminent position, and exercised that paramount influence, north of the Tropic of Cancer, which has since become the indisputable inheritance of the United States. Less intelligent and humane than the Acolhuans and Nahuatlacas, the founders respectively of Tezcuco and Tlacopan, but more warlike and ambitious than either, the Aztecas of Mexico assumed the lead in all military and aggressive enterprises, and were gradually extending their dominion, which already reached from the 14th to the searcely inferior terraced buildings, with pillared façades fantastically carved, which were exclusively set apart for the Mexican priesthood; and gigantic lithic monuments bearing the mystical emblems of Sabean, Phallic, and Ophite worship, met the gaze of the Spanish soldier whithersoever he turned himself. 21st degree of north latitude, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, when they were startled by the sudden apparition of the Spaniards. The story of their tragical conquest, as has been remarked, reads more like a fiction of romance than a chapter in the annals of mankind. But with that story, excepting so far as concerns the progress which the unfortunate Aztecas had But architecture was not the only art made in civilization and the arts, we have practised by the ancient Mexican. He was little to do in this place. Their conquer-equally skilled in metallurgy. Gold, silver, ors in penetrating Central America, and copper, lead, and tin were the five metals reaching the elevated regions of Anahuac, that his country produced, or that were were not less astonished by the multitude known to him; and in manipulating these of stately and populous cities than by the he was confessedly not inferior to the exwealth and magnificence of the tropical pertest craftsman in Europe. His tools for landscape. Both were a surprise and sur- hewing the toughest timber, as well as for passingly beautiful to the hardy invaders. dressing the hardest rock, were made of When I beheld the delicious scenery copper alloyed with a small proportion of around me,' exclaims that honest old sol- tin. He found in that composite metal an dier, Bernal Diaz, 'I thought we had been efficient substitute for iron and steel. His transported by magic to the terrestrial par- sculptured images, cut out of solid blocks of adise. Some of our men, who had vis- basalt, are marvellous specimens of manual ited both Rome and Constantinople, de- skill. Swords, knives, and other impleclared that they had not seen anything ments, requiring the keenest edge, were comparable in those cities for convenient made of obsidian, a most difficult and inand regular distribution, or for numbers of tractable material of volcanic origin, which people. Works of public utility, some he split into the desired form with amazing built of brick and some of stone, were visi- dexterity. Long after the subjugation of ble in every direction, many of which in his country by the Spaniards, he set little magnitude as well as in grandeur rivalled store by that metal the possession of which the most celebrated structures of antiquity so many of our modern archeologists perin the Old World. The terraced-pyramid sist in making the sole criterion of a civilof Cholula, in the sacred province of Pue- ised condition. His skill and industry as a bla, which was crowned with an elaborately mechanic may be judged from a remarkable decorated teocalli, or house of God,' and passage in Mr. Tylor's' Anahuac': — which was built, it has been supposed, upon the model of the Temple of Belus, described by Herodotus, covered an area double that of the largest of the Egyptian pyramids; but its altitude was greatly disproportioned to the vast extent of its base, being no more than 177 feet, or a third only of that of Cheops. The interior walls of the teo calli were adorned with curiously wrought plates of silver and gold, profusely studded with gems. A much greater expenditure of wealth and ingenuity was bestowed upon the shrine of the tutelary god, whose statue, larger than life, was graved in the most durable stone, and painted in the most gorgeous colours. There was not a city or populous village within the confines of the Anahuacan territory, or in the provinces to the south of it, which could not boast of a temple more or less conspicuous for its magnitude and sumptuous embellishments. In fact, storied palaces of princes and nobles, each elevated on a series of artificial platforms, with magnificent flights of steps reaching to the summit; long ranges of 'In the ploughed fields, in the neighbourhood [of Tezcuco], we made (says that gentleman) repeated trials whether it was possible to stand still in any spot where there was no relic of Old Mexico within our reach; but this we could not do. Everywhere the ground was full found arrows and clay figures that were good of unglazed pottery and obsidian, and we even enough for a museum." (P. 147.) The Aztecas were likewise indefatigable tillers of the ground; and the East - and through the East the whole world — is indebted to them for the successful cultivation of the maize and cotton plants. Their famous floating parterres, on the great lake of Tezcuco, bore witness to their singular taste and ingenuity as floriculturists and gardeners. Like the Egyptians, they had contrived a pictorial method of recording events, and so of perpetuating amongst themselves, if not for the advantage of alien posterities, the chief particulars of their his tory. It cannot be said with certainty, but the fact is far from improbable, that they |