VII.

In relation to the futile efforts of Spain in Mexico, the ethnologist Knox exclaims, "Neither climate, nor government, nor external influences ever alter race. They may and they do affect them, and in time destroy them, but they never give rise to a new race. In half a century the dreams of Humboldt, of Canning, of Guizot, and other profound statesmen, have come to a close, and Nature once more, as I long ago predicted, asserts her rights."

Naturalists, from Hippocrates to Buffon, have believed that climate, heat and cold, dryness and humidity, the qualities and abundance of nourishment, have power to modify men and animals, but "neither climate, nor government, nor external circumstances ever give rise to a new race." The generous qualities once gone, are departed forever, and their loss can rarely be retrieved. Where is the instance of a fallen man, class, or nation?

"The history of nations," writes the Registrar-General of England,--"the history of nations on the Mediterranean or the plains of the Euphrates and Tigris, the deltas of the Indies and Ganges, and the rivers of China, exhibits the great fact: the gradual descent of race from the highlands, their establishment on the coasts, in cities sustained and refreshed for a season by emigration from the interior--their degradation in successive generations under the influence of the unhealthy earth, and their final ruin, effacement, or subjugation by new races of conquerors. The causes that destroy individual men lay cities waste, which, in their nature, are immortal, and silently undermine eternal empires.

"A thousand years scarce serve to form a state; An hour may lay it in the dust: and when Can man its shattered splendors renovate, Recall its virtues back, and vanquish time and fate?"