The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-04-25
"HARPER,S.o "

"HARPER'S."
Hd1pers Magazine for May presents the
following table of contents: -"Our Barbarian
Brethren" Benson j. Lossing, with twenty
four illustrations. ga Song" Mary N. Pres
colt. albert Durer," A. II. Guernsey, with
five illustrations. 'The Spots in the Sum-"
Jacob Abbott, with fourteen illustrations.
SIN a Country Store" Joseph o. Goodwin,
with nine illustrations. Frederick the
Great" VI. Diplomatic Intrigues and Mill
tary, with four illustrations. Handsome
John Gatsimer," Alice Cary. ''The Church
of Jerusalem" Eugene Lawrence. ga House
to Let, Annie Thomas. Industrial Schools
for Women" Elizabeth r. Peabody ga
Breach of Promise, Mary N. Prescott. "Cuba
and the Ostend Manifesto" Don Piatt. ga
Word for Grandfathers," Rev. Samuel Os-
good, D. D. ''Fais ton Faict, Mrs. Mary e.
Parkman. "Only Womans HAIR" Justin
Mccarthy. Secular and Sectarian Schools"
Lyman Abbott. 'Old English Lawyers"
William A. Seaver. Editors Easy Chair.
Editors Literary Record" editors Scien-
tific Record" Editors Historical Record"
Editors Drawer"
We make this quotation from Mr. Lossings
article on 'Our Barbarian Brethren:"-
Whence came the inhabitants of the darker
regions of the North, now the domain of our
republic, is an open question. 1t has never
been answered by satisfying fact, and pro-
badly never will be. Nearly all Investigators
have travelled from the same starting point.
Assuming the unity of the human race to be
fact, according to popular biblical interpre-
tation, and considering the garden of delight
Of in, Hol Vrit fha old bop
of the whole human family, students, revers-
ing the better order of logic, have been busy
with guesses and in hunt for plausible hy-
potheses for more than three centuries. And
often fanciful and foolish have been these
hypothesis Rejecting as hetsrodox the idea
of Lord Kames and others, that the old
Americans may have been an indigenous race
of men, and regarding the most beautiful
creature of earth, who first breathed in Eden,
as the n.other of us all-Barbarian and Civil
lized Man-scholars have earnestly sought for
condolences of language, traditions, customs,
and crania. for proof that the first dull-red
! people of this continent were tawny immi-
grants from Asia. They have cited some
mystic poetry of the half fabulous bards, or
the dark, oracular sayings of the priests and
seers and philosophers of ancient days, to
show that our continent was undoubtedly
known to early navigators of the Mediterra-
ranean Sea, and was naturally peopled by
them or their countrymen. They have cited,
in proof, passages from Hesiod and Homer.
They have have pointed to the narratives
of Hanno, the Carthaginian explorer of
the seas. They have argued nervously
from dialogues of Theopompus, and SEN
tences from the stories of Diodorus Siculus,
Plato and Aristotle. They have strained
common-sen to its utmost tension in the
arrangement of fancied evidences that the
aborigines of America were descendants of
| the Phanicians, or of the Chinese or Japa-
nese family of Mongolians, or the Egyptians
or the Hindoos; and writer's like Grotius,
Thorowgood, Adair Boudinot, and others,
have argued, without showing q single pre-
mise of solid fact, that the fathers of our bar
harlan brethren were the men of the 'lost
tribes of Israel" who ''took counsel to go
forth into a further country, where never
mankind dwelt." Cation Mather-sturdy Par
son Mather-who believed in witches,
and seemed to have an intimate ac-
quaintance with Lucifer, guessed as
forcibly, saying, " And though we
know not when or how the Indians first
became inhabitants of this mighty continent,
yet we may guess that probably the Devil
whom he called the sold usurping landlord
of America decoying these miserable sal
wages hither, in hopes that the Gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ would never come here to
destroy or disturb his absolute empire over
them" Might not mere theorists find O good
example in Mather, who, when satisfied that
the delusion of witchcraft had made fool of
him, declared that the subject was "too dark
and deep for ordinary comprehension, " and
referred its decision to the Day of Judg'
mentY
Mather's idea that the red race is morally
devilish, and not fairly human, except IN
shape, seems to have been prevailing one
with the civilized man, especially of the type
of the belligerent settler, and the selfish
trader, contractor, and other promoters OF
frontier wars, ever since his first contact witt
that race lie accepts the theory as the
most agreeable and profitable solution of the
question of the origin of our barbarian breth
, rem for it gives license to the free action Of
: the mailed hand, whose warrant for its vic
{ lence and wrong is the doctrine of the op
| pressor in every form, that Might makes
Right 1t gives countenance to the opinion
| of an eminent British author-an OPT
nion that seems TO be largely preva
4 lent in the pulpit, in legislative halls
8 and around the chairs of state, in ou
( country-that they are ''animals of an infe
= rior order, incapable of acquiring religious
4 knowledge, or being trained to the functionI
5 of civil life" 1t justiies the assertion tina