gone to the dogs, all but in name; and many kingdoms had taken its place. Poland and Sweden had been ephemerally great, and Russia had come into existence and power now in the very cradle of all the Aryan races. The New World had been discovered, the road to India round the Cape of Good Hope had been turned to account; the insular world of the Indian and Pacific Oceans had been explored.

In time, while Russia and England grew, India, Persia, and Turkey have declined. Russia had advanced to the south, threatening India by way of Transoxiana, Persia by way of the Caspian and Georgia, Turkey both in Europe and in Asia Minor. England, meanwhile, has advanced into Bactria; and thus Aryan confronts Aryan on the old battlefields of the Pelasgian Alexander of Macedon; the prize, now, as then, is the Empire of Western Asia.

The Semitic, Asiatic Aryan, and Turanian races are for the moment in decadence. China and Japan appear to be on the move. Europe is groaning under its own stifling panoply, and offers a spectacle, the result of which time alone can show :-a grand, but also a saddening spectacle, when considered as the result of nearly two thousand years of civilization and of peace-preaching, but ever aggressive Christianity.

The foregoing sketch has offered many an example of the rising again of a race to the re-possession of widely-extended empire. Is it, then, wise to assert, as is now so often done, that an effete people cannot be resuscitated? A defunct kingdom may, perhaps, never rise again; but a race, until extinct, has always within it a potentiality of seizing power

anew.

We cannot help calling special attention to the divergence that exists between the origin of the Aryan races as here suggested and that adopted by Sanskrit and Zend scholars from the supposed indications of ancient hymns. However interesting, from their great antiquity, those hymns cannot be allowed to possess an authority greater than that of the Mosaic record. These all give the result of legendary lore, incorrectly conceived at first, incorrectly handed down, and incorrectly recorded; besides being also, perhaps, incorrectly understood. There is no such error in the indications of geology, though these too may for a time be misinterpreted, and may frequently be modified by more recent discoveries. The theories hitherto put forward appear to me to contain impossibilities, which I have essayed to explain away to my own satisfaction. The result I offer to the consideration of such as, like myself, have felt doubt.

The scholars in question have selected the plateau of Pamir as the cradle of the Aryan, or of the human race. Pamir is a plateau at an elevation of 16,000 feet above the sea, necessarily covered with snow and ice during the greater part of the year. How could such a country be the cradle of any race? It is about 150 miles square, and is far removed from any place where, in modern geological times, a sea has been. The nearest is the great Chinese desert. Did Noah or Manu come from China or Turania across that sea to Pamir? We will not ask how the distribution of the races took place thence. It would be hopeless. But, with regard to the Aryans of Europe, we venture to press upon the

serious consideration of all inquirers the following facts.

Pamir lies in latitude about 36° to 38° N. In that latitude the phenomenon of the zodiacal light is a conspicuous object in the eastern sky before daydawn, and in the western sky after nightfall, for a considerable period before and after the two equinoxes, in the morning in the autumn, and in the evening at the spring season. Shepherds, travellers, guards, and armies, must see and notice the glaring effulgence. Had the Aryans of Europe come from Pamir, they would have carried with them in all their wanderings a knowledge of that phenomenon, provided they did not wander into high latitudes, where it is, if at all, but dimly and rarely visible.

Now the Aryans of Europe, even after Alexander's conquests and Ptolemy's residence in Egypt, remained in entire ignorance of the existence of the zodiacal light, until it was observed by an Englishman in London, in its springtide evening phase, about the year 1640. In 1680 it was first named the Zodiacal light by Cassini at Paris; both which places are far to the north of Pamir. The simple. conclusion we draw from these premisses is that the ancestors of the Aryans of Europe were never at or near Pamir, but came from a land far to the north; where that phenomenon is not visible. Their ignorance of it is hence naturally accounted for, and thus we leave the question.

LONDON, March, 1880.

J. W. REDHOUSE.

EARLY ITALIAN DRAMATIC LITERATURE.

BY R. DAVEY, ESQ.

(Read March 26th, 1879.)

WHEN upon the downfall of the Roman Empire, the barbarians invaded Italy, they destroyed nearly every vestige of the fine arts, and none suffered more than the drama, which had so eminently flourished under the ancients. In consequence, for several centuries, if we except the reign of the enlightened Theodoric, we find in Italian history, scarcely any mention of the occurrence of theatrical or spectacular representations. In one shape or other, however, plays, enacted either by human beings, or puppets, Marionetti, were still common, but they were of so degraded a character that the Church discountenanced them.

As early as the fifth century, Cyrus, bishop of Genoa, threatened all who attended theatres with excommunication, and St. Isidore, in his homilies, entreats all good Christians to shun playhouses" as places of abomination, where Venus presides over corruption and Mercury teaches iniquity." Three centuries later, Athon II, bishop of Vercelli, issued a pastoral against the theatres, and, to judge from the description he gives of the performances, he was justified in condemning them. The plays alluded to by these worthies, as also by St. Thomas of Aquinas,

are generally believed by learned Italians to have been of the basest specimens of pagan histrionic art, which, notwithstanding the progress of Christianity, still survived among the "plebeians." The determined attitude of the Popes and of the clergy in discountenancing them, however, at last succeeded, and they were finally replaced by the miracle plays and sacred dramas which soon became general throughout Europe. Among the most popular writers of this latter class of composition was Rosweida, called "the Nun of Gandersheim," whose works were written in Latin and performed at a very early epoch all over Italy. Six of these are mentioned by Fabricius in his "Bibliotheca Latina," and are " The Conversion of St. Paul;" "The Passion of St. Irene;" "Climachus;" "Abraham;" "Mary Magdalen ;" and "Faith, Hope and Charity." There is a controversy, at present, concerning the genuineness of the works of this Roswitha or Rosweida, of Gandersheim. While the mysteries were delighting especially the pious on Sunday and holiday afternoons, another class of Italian plays, of a profane nature, were attracting large audiences, notwithstanding the censures of the clergy. Albertino Mussato assures us that the most renowned deeds of history were dramatized in the "vulgar tongue" at a very early age, and he himself wrote in Italian, in imitation of Seneca's style, a tragedy on the life and adventures of Ezzelino. These plays, however, the accurate Gingueny says, were for the most part improvised by the actors, or at any rate, so lightly considered for their literary merits, as not to be preserved in any of the National Libraries. I imagine they are