the eastern origin of the Celtic nations.* It is through Oriental Asia, therefore, that the Celtic and American monuments are affiliated. It is not surprising that those streams of population, which flowed from the same primitive fountain should present many traits of similitude. Though these two races appear to be dissimilar physically, their common Oriental origin may serve to explain such analogies as have been traced between their arts and customs.

Accord

Madagascar. A race physically approximated to the type of the Red race, has been observed in this island. ingly, we find a great correspondence in their customs and institutions with those of the Polynesians and Americans. This people are divided into tribes; they trace their genealogies through the female line; they revere the dead; like many of the American nations, they scrape the flesh from the bones of the corpse; with the deceased are buried his weapons, and his wealth; and over the ancient graves tumuli were erected, some of which present the form of graduated or terraced pyramids. They manufacture cloths like those of the Polynesian islanders, and they formerly fortified their towns by surrounding them with immense embankments and ditches, excavated from the

* Higgins' Celtic Druids. Pritchard's Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations. O'Brien Fosbrooke. Davies' Celtic Researches. Davies, on the authority of the following passage from an ancient song in the Welsh Archæology, conjectures that knotted cords were anciently used: "It is time to go to the banquet with the artists employed about their mystery, with a hundred knots, after the manner of our countrymen." The Druids believed in the transmigration of souls, and were skilled in the practice of magic.

*

earth with incredible labor. And in fine, they attribute diseases to the agency of evil spirits, and have a particular class, who practise the arts of medical magic and divination, exactly similar to the American sorcerers or conjurors. According to Mr. Ellis, the language of these tribes belongs to the Polynesian class, and they are supposed to be the descendants of Javanese colonists.

Etruria. Italy, it is well known, was occupied in distant ages by enlightened nations, who have been distinguished by the learned under various names, as the Pelasgians, Oenotrians, Etruscans, Ausonians, and Oscans. From their traditions and monuments, the Oscans and Etruscans, or rather the Etrurians, appear to be assimilated to the cultivated races of America. Every thing relative to these people, however, is enveloped in mysterious darkness. Even the Etruscan language which was once understood by the Romans, is now entirely lost. Like the Mexican, it appears to have been harsh, and consonants were its predominant sounds. Antiquarians have traced some analogies to the Mexican language, and the words deciphered in a Perugian inscription in Tuscany, Spancxl, Eplt, and Thunchultl, certainly bear some resemblance to the Mexican. The divination, the rituals, and the sacred ceremonies of the Romans, which were mostly of Etrurian origin, indi

* Hist. Madagascar, by Rev. W. Ellis, vol. i. pp. 73, 88, 110, 127; vol. ii. pp. 164, 221, 55, etc.

In the appendix to this work the following passage occurs: "Hence it may not be extravagant to express an opinion that the great Polynesian language has extended its powerful influence even into the two remote continents of Africa on the west, and South America on the east." Vol. i. p. 493.

cate that worship of nature and of the elements, which was the first and purest form of Sabaism. On the day of the third and great festival of the Mexican god Tlaloc, the god of water, which was held in the month of May, the temple was strewed with rushes brought from the lake Citlaltepec. After performing other sacrifices, the priests, followed by the people in procession, proceeded to a certain part of the lake where in former times there was a whirlpool, and plunged two children of different sex into the water, together with the hearts of the other human victims who had been sacrificed. In Italy, on the Ides of May, the Vestal Virgins took thirty images of men made of rushes, and accompanied by a sacred procession, threw the mock sacrifices into the Tiber, from the Sublician bridge, in the place of an equal number of human beings formerly devoted to the same rites. In Mexico the termination of a cycle was attended with the extinguishment of the old fires which were kept in the Teocalli, and the kindling of the new with joyous ceremonies. The Etruscans also celebrated their secular periods by festivals, and at Rome, on the first of March in each year, a new fire was lighted in the temple of Vesta.

The Romans derived their most ancient calendar from the Etrurians. The year of Romulus consisted of three hundred and four days, subdivided into ten months, and weeks of eight days. This, like the Aztec ritual calendar, is manifestly arbitrary and derived from no astronomical period. The Aztec ritual month, it has already been observed, represented the light and dark halves of the moon, and the same division into half lunations is perceived in the Roman Ides. Both of these curious systems of chronology, bore a relation to a certain great secular period which they measured, and which was formed

from an accurate idea of the true duration of the solar

year.

The Etrurians had a great cycle of one hundred and ten years, during which two intercalations were made in the fifty-sixth, and one hundred and tenth years, whereby the religious year of three hundred and four days, and its eight day divisions, corresponded with the true time and the course of the sun. The close of the great Mexican cycle of one hundred and four years was the time also when the ritual year of two hundred and sixty days accorded with the solar year. The peculiar construction of these calendars is to be elucidated only by reference to the religious institutions of Italy and Mexico. They had probably been adopted at an early age, as the only practicable means of celebrating the rites of religion upon certain stated days. In all important public ceremonies, in all festivals, in the fulfilment of vows and the performance of sacrifices, "where even an involuntary transgression threatens to draw down vengeance" from heaven, this invariable and unerring system became highly valuable as a sacred calendar, whilst at the same time some degree of real order was preserved by making it correspond at the end of a particular number of years with the course of the sun. * The Mexicans appear to have calculated the length of the year at three hundred and sixty-five days, five hours and fifty minutes, and the Etrurians at three hundred and sixty-five days, five hours and forty minutes, a degree of accuracy which excites our astonishment; and like other ancient people, they both believed that at the end of certain astronomical cycles, periodical changes in na

* Was not the same object attained by the great Sothiac Period in Egypt?

ture would occur, and these were watched with great anxiety and fear.

In Italy and America, human sacrifices were customary at the graves of chiefs and other illustrious individuals, but in Italy they were eventually superseded by gladiatorial exhibitions. Reference has been made to the gladiatorial contests which were usual in Mexico upon certain religious festivals; on the other hand, the Etrurians introduced gladiatorial games into Italy, and their use and prevalence at Rome may be traced to this source.

The massive style of architecture, and some of the peculiar features which characterize the arts of the Etrurians, are supposed to have been borrowed from the first and conquered inhabitants of the country; and the same remark is applicable to many of the Etrurian institutions. For the origin of all such traits of resemblance as may appear, we are to go back to the earliest ages of Italian history. The most ancient style of architecture in Italy belongs to that, which, from its colossal character, the use of prodigious masses of stone, and from tradition, is called the work of the giants or the Cyclops. In America, and particularly in Peru, the great size of the stones, the appearance of polygonal walls, and of the Cyclopean arch, indicate a similar method of construction. Pliny, on the authority of Varro, has transmitted to us a description of the mausoleum of Porsenna, above which was raised a series of pyramids, which indicate analogies to the structures of Egypt and Mexico. The custom of burning the dead; of depositing articles used by the deceased in his lifetime, in the sepulchres; the practice of divination; the conical caps worn by the Roman Flamens, from which he took his name, and which were