divided into two separate and perfectly distinct histories: the first, an account of the Creation, and the general history of mankind till the dispersion: the Genesis properly so called, extending over a period of considerably more than two thousand years, and contained in the ten first chapters, and nine verses of the eleventh; while the remaining chapters, and indeed nearly the whole of the historical Books of the Old Testament, are exclusively devoted to the one selected race, that of Abraham and his descendants. Looking then to the first of these, and to its narrative in relation to the immediate descendants of Noah, the recognised protoplasts of the primary subdivisions of the human family, we perceive that certain very marked and permanent differences are assigned to each. Ham, the father of Canaan, by negation, is left without a blessing, while Canaan is marked as the progenitor of a race destined to degradation as the servant of servants. The blessing of Shem is peculiar, as if it were designed chiefly to refer to the one branch of his descendants, "to whom pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the Covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the service of God;" but to his various descendants a special rank is assigned in the world's future; special, predominant in relation to some branches of the human family; but yet inferior and of temporary duration when compared with the destinies of the Japhetic races, who, enlarging their bounds, and encroaching on the birth-right of the elder nations, are destined to "dwell in the tents of Shem," and Canaan shall serve them. Thus from the very first we perceive that one important subdivision of the human family is stamped, ab initio, with the marks of degradation; while another, the Semitic, though privileged to be the first partaker of the blessing, to be the originator of the world's civilization, and to furnish the chosen custodiers of its most valued inheritance, through the centuries which anticipated the fulness of time yet the nations of this stock are destined to displacement, for "Japhet shall be enlarged, and shall dwell in the tents of Shem." : Thus, also, from the very first we perceive the origination of a strongly marked, and clearly defined distinction between diverse branches of the human family; and this, coupled with the apportionment of the several regions of the earth to the distinct types of man, distinguished from each other not less clearly than are the varied fauna of these regions, seem to leave no room for doubt that the Genus Homo was as clearly sub-divided into diverse varieties, if not into distinct species, as any other of the great mammalian types of species ranged over the earth's surface according to a recognised law of geographical distribution. At the same time it is apparent that such assigned differences do not, thus far, affect the question of the unity of the race. To the claim of a common manhood for those strongly marked and greatly diversified sub-divisions of the human family, including its most immobile and degraded types, Shakespear has furnished no inapt reply: "Aye, in the catalogue ye go for men ; As hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, That writes them all alike: and so of men.' Looking then to the recorded descendants of the Noahic forefathers of the human family, we can, partially at least, trace their primitive subdivisions and occupation of the ancient earth. The sons of Japhet, the final inheritors of preeminence are first recorded as dividing among them "the isles of the Gentiles," a term which, looking to the geographical limits known to the ancient world, may be assumed, with little hesitation, as referring to the islands of the Eastern Mediteranean, and probably the Grecian Archipelago, with the adjacent coast lands of Asia Minor, and of Europe. There have been ingenious attempts made to assign to each of the Noahic generations their national descendants: the Cymri from Gomer, the Getæ from Magog, the Medes from Madai, the Ionian Greeks from Javan, &c.; but the majority of such results commend themselves to our acceptance at best as only clever guesses at truth. A considerable number of the names which occur in the Noahic genealogy undoubtedly remain very partially disguised by subsequent changes, as the appellations of historic or surviving races and kingdoms; of some of them, indeed, it appears from their dual or plural number, or their peculiar Hebrew termination, that they are used in the Mosaic record, not in reference to individuals, but to families or tribes, out of which nations sprung. Some of those have disappeared, or been transformed beyond the possibility of tracing the relations between their ancient and modern names; but of the most remarkable of the Hamitic descent we can be at no loss as to their geographical areas. The Canaanites occupied the important area of Syria and *Macbeth, Act III, Scene i. Palestine; and Nimrod, the son of Cush, moving to the eastward, settled his descendants on the banks of the Euphrates; so that of the distinctly recognisable generations of Ham, it is in Asia, and not in Africa, that we must look for them, for centuries after the dispersion of the human race. But the Semitic races were also to share the Eastern Continent before they enlarged their area, and asserted their right to the inheritance of the descendants of Ham. By Nimrod, the grandson of Ham, the settlements along the valley of the Euphrates were originated, "and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar," all sites of ancient cities which recent exploration and discovery seem to indicate as still traceable amid the graves of the East's mighty empires. But the eponymous of the rival kingdom on the banks of the Tigris was Asshur, the son of Shem, and in that region also it would appear that we must look for the locality of Elam, (Elymais), as well as others of the generations of the more favoured Shem; while nearly the whole habitable regions between their western borders and the Red Sea, appear to have been occupied from this very dawn of human history, by the numerous Semitic descendan's of Joktan, the protoplast of a branch of the human family to whose pedigree a special and curious attention is devoted in the Sacred Genealogies. By an expressive figure of speech Shem is spoken of as the father of all the children of Eber, of whom came Joktan and his sons, whose "dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar, a mount of the East," and of whom as surely descended Mohammed and the Semitic propogators of the monotheistic creed of the Koran; as came the Hebrews, according to Jewish belief, and through them, the great prophet of our faith, from Eber, the assumed eponymous of those whom we must look upon, on many accounts, as important above all other Semitic races. Deriving our authority still from the Sacred Records, we ascertain. as the result of the multiplication and dispersion of one minutely detailed generation of the sons of Ham, through Canaan, that for eight hundred years thereafter they increased and multiplied in the favoured lands watered by the Jordan, and stretching to the shores of the Levant; they founded mighty cities, accumulated great wealth, subdivided their goodly inheritance among distinct nations and kingdoms of a common descent; and upwards of eleven hundred years thereafter, when the intruded tribe of Dan raised up the promised judge of his people, the descendants of Ham still triumphed in the destined heritage of the seed of Eber. At length, however, the Semitic Hebrew accomplished his destiny. The promised land became his possession, and the remnant of the degraded Canaanite his bondservants. For another period of like duration, a period of more than eleven hundred years, the Semitic Israelites made the land their own. The triumphs of David, the glory and the wisdom of Solomon, and the vicissitudes of the divided nationalities of Judah and Israel, protracted until the accomplishment of the great destiny of the princes of Judah, constitute the epos of those who supplanted the settlers in the historic lands lying between the mountains of Syria and the sea, when first "the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, and set the bounds of the people." Then came another displacement. The Semitic Hebrews were driven forth from the land, and for eighteen hundred years, Roman and Saracen, Mongol Turk and Semitic Arab, have disputed the possession of the ancient heritage of the Canaanite. For very special and obvious reasons the isolation of the Hebrew race, and the purity of the stock, were most carefully guarded by the enactments of their great Law-giver, preparatory to their taking possession of the land of Canaan; yet the exclusive nationality, and the strictly defined purity of race admitted of exceptional deviations of a remarkable kind. While the Ammonite and the Moabite are cut off from all permissive alliance, and the offspring of an union between the Hebrew and these forbidden races is not to be naturalized even in the tenth generation, the Edomite, the descendant of Jacob's brother, and the Egyptian, are not to be abhorred; but the children that are begotten of them are to be admitted to the full privileges of the favoured seed of Jacob in the third generation. This exception in favour of the Egyptian is a remarkable one. The ostensible reason, viz., that the Israelites had been strangers in the land of Egypt, appears inadequate fully to account for it, when the nature of that sojourn, and the incidents of the Exodus are borne in mind, and would tempt us to look beyond it to the many traces of Semitic character which the language, arts, and civilization of Egypt disclose. Mizraim, the son of Ham, and the brother of Canaan, is indeed ordinarily regarded as the first inheritor of the Nile valley, and this on grounds fully as conclusive as those on which other apportionments of the post-diluvian earth are assigned; but along with the direct evidence of Scripture, we must also take the monumental records of Egypt, which shew that that land was speedily intruded on by very diverse races, and that by the time its civilization was sufficiently matured to chronicle by pictorial and ideographic writings the history of that cradle-land of the world's intellect, its occupants stood in a relation to each other precisely similar to that in which we find the Semitic and Hamitic populations of Palestine in the days of Joshua. The ethnological affinities of Egypt are certainly Asiatic rather than African, although she stands isolated, and in some important respects unique in relation alike to the ancient and the modern world. The ethnologist must be tempted to look for the congeners of the ancient Egyptian rather among the Semitic Asiaties, speaking and writing a language akin to her own, than among the Berber, Ethiopian, or Negro aborigines, of Africa. But around the shores of that expressively designated Mediterranean Sea how striking are the varied memorials of the world's past. A little area may be marked off on the map, environing its eastern shores, and constituting a mere spot on the surface of the globe, yet its history is the whole ancient history of civilization, and a record of its ethnological changes would constitute an epitome of the natural history of man. All the great empires of the old world clustered around that centre, and as Dr. Johnson remarked in one of his recorded conversations: "All our religion, almost all our law, almost all our arts, almost all that sets us above savages has come to us from the shores of the Mediterranean." There race has succeeded race; the sceptre has passed from nation to nation, through the historical representatives of all the great primary subdivisions of the human family, and "their decay has dried up realms to deserts." It is worthy of consideration, however, for its bearing on analagous modern questions, how far the political displacement of nations in that primeval historic area was accompanied by a corresponding ethnological displacement and extinction. It is in this respect that the sacred narrative, in its bearings on the primitive sub-divisions of the human family, and their appointed destinies, seems specially calculated to supply the initiatory steps in relation to some conclusions of general, if not universal application. However mysterious it be to read of the curse of Canaan on the very same page which records the blessing of Noah and his sons, and the first covenant of mercy to the human race, yet the record of both rest on the same indisputable authority. Still more, the curse was what may strictly be termed an ethnological one. Whether we regard it as a punitive visitation on Ham in one of the lines of generation of his descendants, or simply as a prophetic foretelling of the destiny of a branch of the human family, we see the Canaanite separated at the very first, from all the other generations of Noahic descent as a race doomed to degradation and slavery. Nevertheless, to all appearance, many generations passed away, in the abundant enjoyment, by the offspring of Canaan, of all the material blessings of the "green |