which I spoke of just now, the emigrants at length would arrive at the edge of that elevated plateau, which constitutes Tartary proper. They would pass over the high region of Pamer, where are the sources of the Oxus, they would descend the terrace of the Bolor, and the steeps of Badakshan, and gradually reach a vast region, flat on the whole as the expanse they had left, but as strangely depressed below the level of the sea, as Tartary is lifted above it.[6] This is the country, forming the two basins of the Aral and the Caspian, which terminates the immense Asiatic plain, and may be vaguely designated by the name of Turkistan. Hitherto the necessity of their route would force them on, in one multitudinous emigration, but now they may diverge, and have diverged. If they were to cross the Jaxartes and the Oxus, and then to proceed southward, they would come to Khorasan, the ancient Bactriana, and so to Affghanistan and to Hindostan on the east, or to Persia on the west. But if, instead, they continued their westward course, then they would skirt the north coast of the Aral and the Caspian, cross the Volga, and there would have a second opportunity, if they chose to avail themselves of it, of descending southwards, by Georgia and Armenia, either to Syria or to Asia Minor. Refusing this diversion, and persevering onwards to the west, at length they would pass the Don, and descend upon Europe across the Ukraine, Bessarabia, and the Danube.

Such are the three routes,—across the Oxus, across the Caucasus, and across the Danube,—which the pastoral nations have variously pursued at various times, when their roving habits, their warlike propensities, and their discomforts at home, have combined to precipitate them on the industry, the civilization, and the luxury of the West and of the South. And at such times, as might be inferred from what has been already said, their invasions have been rather irruptions, inroads, or, what are called, raids, than a proper conquest and occupation of the countries which have been their victims. They would go forward, 200,000 of them at once, at the rate of 100 miles a day, swimming the rivers, galloping over the plains, intoxicated with the excitement of air and speed, as if it were a fox-chase, or full of pride and fury at the reverses which set them in motion; seeking indeed their fortunes, but seeking them on no plan; like a flight of locusts, or a swarm of angry wasps smoked out of their nest. They would seek for immediate gratification, and let the future take its course. They would be bloodthirsty and rapacious, and would inflict ruin and misery to any extent; and they would do tenfold more harm to the invaded, than benefit to themselves. They would be powerful to break down; helpless to build up. They would in a day undo the labour and skill, the prosperity of years; but they would not know how to construct a polity, how to conduct a government, how to organize a system of slavery, or to digest a code of laws. Rather they would despise the sciences of politics, law, and finance; and, if they honoured any profession or vocation, it would be such as bore immediately and personally on themselves. Thus we find them treating the priest and the physician with respect, when they found such among their captives; but they could not endure the presence of a lawyer. How could it be otherwise with those who may be called the outlaws of the human race? They did but justify the seeming paradox of the traveller's exclamation, who, when at length, after a dreary passage through the wilderness, he came in sight of a gibbet, returned thanks that he had now arrived at a civilized country. "The pastoral tribes," says the writer I have already quoted, "who were ignorant of the distinction of landed property, must have disregarded the use, as well as the abuse, of civil jurisprudence; and the skill of an eloquent lawyer would excite only their contempt or their abhorrence." And he refers to an outrage on the part of a barbarian of the North, who, not satisfied with cutting out a lawyer's tongue, sewed up his mouth, in order, as he said, that the viper might no longer hiss. The well-known story of the Czar Peter, himself a Tartar, is here in point. When told there were some thousands of lawyers at Westminster, he is said to have observed that there had been only two in his own dominions, and he had hung one of them.

5.

Now I have thrown the various inhabitants of the Asiatic plain together, under one description, not as if I overlooked, or undervalued, the distinction of races, but because I have no intention of committing myself to any statements on so intricate and interminable a subject as ethnology. In spite of the controversy about skulls, and skins, and languages, by means of which man is to be traced up to his primitive condition, I consider place and climate to be a sufficiently real aspect under which he may be regarded, and with this I shall content myself. I am speaking of the inhabitants of those extended plains, whether Scythians, Massagetæ, Sarmatians, Huns, Moguls, Tartars, Turks, or anything else; and whether or no any of them or all of them are identical with each other in their pedigree and antiquities. Position and climate create habits; and, since the country is called Tartary, I shall call them Tartar habits, and the populations which have inhabited it and exhibited them, Tartars, for convenience-sake, whatever be their family descent. From the circumstances of their situation, these populations have in all ages been shepherds, mounted on horseback, roaming through trackless spaces, easily incited to war, easily formed into masses, easily dissolved again into their component parts, suddenly sweeping across continents, suddenly descending on the south or west, suddenly extinguishing the civilization of ages, suddenly forming empires, suddenly vanishing, no one knows how, into their native north.

Such is the fearful provision for havoc and devastation, when the Divine Word goes forth for judgment upon the civilized world, which the North has ever had in store; and the regions on which it has principally expended its fury, are those, whose fatal beauty, or richness of soil, or perfection of cultivation, or exquisiteness of produce, or amenity of climate, makes them objects of desire to the barbarian. Such are China, Hindostan, Persia, Syria, and Anatolia or the Levant, in Asia; Greece, Italy, Sicily, and Spain, in Europe; and the northern coast of Africa.

These regions, on the contrary, have neither the inducement nor the means to retaliate upon their ferocious invaders. The relative position of the combatants must always be the same, while the combat lasts. The South has nothing to win, the North nothing to lose; the North nothing to offer, the South nothing to covet. Nor is this all: the North, as in an impregnable fortress, defies the attack of the South. Immense trackless solitudes; no cities, no tillage, no roads; deserts, forests, marshes; bleak table-lands, snowy mountains; unlocated, flitting, receding populations; no capitals, or marts, or strong places, or fruitful vales, to hold as hostages for submission; fearful winters and many months of them;—nature herself fights and conquers for the barbarian. What madness shall tempt the South to undergo extreme risks without the prospect or chance of a return? True it is, ambition, whose very life is a fever, has now and then ventured on the reckless expedition; but from the first page of history to the last, from Cyrus to Napoleon, what has the Northern war done for the greatest warriors but destroy the flower of their armies and the prestige of their name? Our maps,