what they call good and bad, because it is not in man to dive into the motives of an action; were all motives known, there would be no difference of judgment about them. Reason about the matter as much as you please, there is the fact that we possess a faculty of judging good and evil; a law which we did not make, which we cannot alter, which, therefore, is not our creation, but should be our regulator. With this law, which says to the will "thou shalt," which fixes the obligation on us to follow its dictates, although it does not constrain :-with this law on the one hand, and our passions and appetites on the other, man is placed a free agent between two worlds, both attached to his nature, but not identical with himself, to choose. This is the very condition of virtue, and constitutes the sublime spectacle of a good man struggling to do his duty.

Schelling's philosophy appears to have produced a great sensation in Germany. The facility with which it seems to solve all the doubts and difficulties of metaphysics, the great relish it imparts to the investigation of nature, and, above all, the immense acquirements of its author, have made it the fashionable system of the day. But a nearer examination of its principles shows, how totally incapable it is to answer in particulars what it would appear to solve in generals. The reader cannot fail to have seen how inadequate it is to account for the existence of any thing individual. It often overpowers the imagination, but rarely instructs the understanding; and instead of throwing light on those convictions by which mankind have ever acted, and will ever act, it either obscures them, or denies their validity. The effect which it has had on the German language is not among the least remarkable of its phenomena. There is scarcely a book now published in which we do not find words which the severe simplicity of Lessing would have abhorred. In matters of science, half the new-published works are unintelligible, unless the reader has some notion of Schelling. Polarity, organisms, identity, infinite in finite, absolute, &c. are strewed thickly over every page. We will not say whether the boldness of the German theologians is to be traced to the influence of a philosophy which renders all systems of religion of little consequence, or nugatory; or whether both the philosophy and the religion are effects of other circumstances which have determined the age. But it is a fact, that religious licence is countenanced by the philosophical. Schelling, however, has met with an opponent in Jacobi, whose philosophy is daily acquiring ground in Germany, and daily inculcating the maxim, that the boasted absolute reason, which MUST solve every enigma contained in it, because it is the absolute reason, is, after all, but a poor faculty of a poor worm,

man. Jacobi has been called a dreamer, because he has shown that the foundations of reason itself are FIRST principles, which we implicitly believe, and for which there is no evidence from reasoning. These he has called feelings, and hence an outcry has been raised against him for making philosophic certainty rest ΘΗ a mere feeling. The ambiguity of the term may deserve censure, but whatever name we attach to our conviction of certain primary truths, it is a act that we do take these for granted, "certissima scientia, clamanti conscientia." And these facts should teach us the limitation of our faculties, and the existence of One, whose ways cannot be as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts.

ART. IV.-Atlas Ethnographique du Globe, ou Classification des Peuples Anciens et Moderns, d'après leurs Langues; précédé d'un Discours sur l utilité et l' importance de l' Etude des Langues, appliquée à plusieurs branches des connaissances humaines; d' un Aperçu sur les moyens graphiques employés par les différens peuples de la Terre; d'un Coup d' Eil sur "Histoire de la Langue Slave, et sur la Marche progressive de la Civilization et de la Litterature en Russie; avec environ sept-cens vocabulaires des principaux idiomes connus; et suivi du Tableau Physique, Moral, et Politique des cinq parties du Monde. Dédié à S. M. l' Empereur Alexandre, par Adrien Balbi, ancien Professeur de geographie, de physique, et de mathematiques, Membre correspondant de l' Athenée de Trevise, etc. One Volume in folio, containing forty-one tables. Introduction à l' Atlas, etc. Tome Premier. An octavo volume, pages 415. Paris. 1826.

THE term Ethnography, taken in a strict sense, can only be understood to mean the science which has for its object to classify different nations. But as one of the chief distinctions between these consists in their speaking different languages, a classification of the latter may be assumed to be a classification of the former. To the science which may be formed by comparing languages, the term linguistic has been applied by some German authors, which seems more applicable to it than the name selected by M. Balbi. It is not, however, generally adopted in France, and being otherwise objectionable, the author, looking at the classification of languages chiefly with a view to classify nations, has employed in preference the term Ethnography. The reader must look, therefore, at the Ethnographical Atlas we are about to make him acquainted with, as an atlas of all the na

tions and people of the earth, both of past and present time, as they are distinguished from each other, by speaking different languages. It is intended to throw light both on ancient and modern geography, to enable the curious inquirer to trace the migrations of different people; to clear op many of the doubts relative to the early history of man, and the successive developement of his intellectual faculties."

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This science is so very little cultivated in this country, that we believe not even the names applied to it on the continent are here known beyond the narrow circle of a few learned societies. We have been as assiduous as any other people in collecting facts, but we have neglected to reduce our knowledge to a scientific form, so as to be conveniently taught, easily remembered, and readily applied." The happy conjectures of Adam Smith, briefly illustrated by only a few examples drawn from the classical languages of Greece and Rome, and the brilliant, unexpected, and most important etymological discoveries of Horne Tooke, laid the foundations for a rational history of the progress of speech, and showed us the means of establishing the principles of general grammar. Mr. Harris and Lord Monboddo were both learned and diligent collectors. The spirited researches of Sir William Jones explained to all Europe how the connexion might be traced, if connexion existed, between the Sanscrit, the Persian, and the German languages,-between the superstitions of India and of ancient Europe, and between the mythology of the Hindoos and the Greeks, of the Egyptians and the Romans; and he brought to light many curious facts concerning the early history of our species. His successors in these pursuits, our Leydens, Crawfords, and Raffles's, with our Cookes, Clarkes, Parkes, Parrys, and Denhams, and numberless missionaries, travellers and voyagers, whom it is an honour, from their enterprising diligence in exploring all parts of the world, to call our countrymen, have collected abundant materials for illustrating the languages and migrations of the people of remote antiquity, and of tribes remote only as to space. But, in general, the collation of these materials, and the arrangement of them into a system have been accomplished by foreigners. Our classification of languages, even in the latest work we are acquainted with, the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, is a mere abridgenient, with some few alterations, of the system of Adelung and Vater. No nation has done so much, we believe, as the English, in collecting the raw materials of geography, but it is at this moment obliged to re-import them manufactured into a -system, by the diligence and talents of Malte Brun.

In the following passage from M. Balbi's book, the omission of the names of any of our countrymen arises, we are sure, from no national partiality :

"A fact which is little known, and which is, undoubtedly, a novelty in the history of princes, is, that the Empress Catherine II. of Russia, employed her leisure in comparing, not only all the languages spoken in her own vast empire, but also all the languages then known of the other parts of the globe. The Linguarum totius orbis Vocabularia Comparativa, published at Petersburgh, between 1786 and 1791, by Pallas and Jankiewitsch, was the result of the important researches made by these two gentlemen, and of those which that illustrious sovereign caused to be made both in her own dominions and abroad. But while the august Autocrat of Russia was employing herself in comparing languages, the learned Adelung, in Germany, and the indefatigable Hervas, in Italy, conceived, each ignorant of the other's intention, the gigantic and useful project of classifying all known languages by their mutual affinities, and of making known the principal features of their respective grammars. The learned and modest Spanish Jesuit published, in Italian, in the course of a few years (between 1784 and 1787,) his Catalogo delle Lingue, his Vocabolario Poliglotto, his Trattato delle Grammatiche, and his Aritmetica delle Nazioni conosciute, works which contain, notwithstanding many errors, arising partly from the period at which they were composed, and partly from want of accurate discrimination as to his materials, many valuable facts relative to the history and science of languages, and particularly in relation to those of the New World. Some years afterwards, (between 1806 and 1817,) at the beginning of the present century, the celebrated Adelung published, in German, the first volume of his Mithridates, a work which, after his death, was continued by the learned Vater. Though injured by many serious errors, and imperfect in many places,-defects that were inevitable from the state of ethnography when the Mithridates was published,-it is one of the most learned works of the age which witnessed its birth."-Preliminary Discourse, pp. 14, 15.

In this enumeration of the persons who have classified and arranged languages, we find no English names, and we are afraid that this circumstance must be taken as an additional proof of a national idiosyncrasy, that we have long been reproached with, and against which we ought to be on our guard. Our continental neighbours impute to us ignorance of logic, and neglect of systematic arrangement, in our scientific and philosophical writings. To have deserved such a reproach is singular enough in the countrymen of Bacon--the first among the moderns to classify all human knowledge, and of Locke, who laid the foundation for the rational logic even of our continental reprovers. Mr. Dugald Stewart, in the third volume of his Philosophy, attributes the slow progress of correct logic in this country to the prevalence of the sceptical theories successively propagated. This prevalence, however,

seems rather to afford evidence of the peculiarity, than to account for its existence. The want of logical acumen, both in the authors and in the public, allowed their fallacies to pass undetected.

M. Balbi, whose labours in collecting and arranging all our knowledge concerning languages into a scientific whole afford another proof of what we have just stated, is a native of Italy, and was formerly a professor of natural history, mathematics, and geography, in one of the Italian universities. He published, at Venice, in 1817, a Compendio di Geografia, with which he connected a table of the principal known languages of the globe, divided into five sections, corresponding to the five great divisions of the earth, now generally adopted. This work was favourably received, and a second edition soon called for. On revising it for re-publication, the author discovered that his table of languages was very imperfect, although at the time he had neither means nor leisure to improve it. This circumstance, however, attracted his attention more forcibly than before to a subject that had previously been a favourite study of his, and he set about forming a Polyglot Table of the Globe, to the composition of which he devoted several years. Unexpected circumstances having supplied him in the mean time, during a residence at Lisbon, with an opportunity of compiling a statistical work on Portugal, he suspended his ethnographical researches for two years; and in 1822 published, at Paris, an excellent statistical account of that kingdom, indeed the only good one with which we are acquainted, (Essai Statistique sur le Royaume de Portugal et d'Algarve, 2 vols. in 8vo.) By these works he has already been made favourably known to the scientific and literary world; and they contributed to procure him during his subsequent residence at Paris, great and valuable assistance in compiling the present publication.

The work consists of two parts, viz. The Ethnographical Atlas, in folio, and the Introduction, in 8vo, of which the first volume only has yet appeared. The second volume of the Introduction, containing a physical, moral, and political description of the globe, is not yet published, and therefore we can have nothing to say respecting it. From the description, however, of its contents, and the highly respectable names of those who have assisted in its compilation, we conjecture that it will be a useful compendium of geographical information. Persons who have seen it in manuscript describe it as condensing, in a comparatively small number of pages, the principal details of physical and political geography. Undoubtedly, this will be a valuable accompaniment to the Atlas, but we would venture to suggest to the author as a necessary accompaniment to it, and which would serve to com