were in common use,—­as is proved by representations of them found in Egyptian tombs,—­although they were afterwards superseded by galleys propelled by oars alone.  The reason assigned by Mr. Wilson for this change makes a valuable addition to the stores of Biblical commentary.  “The Greeks,” he says, “appear to have been selected from their imitative powers, to perpetuate such of the arts and civilization of the elder world, as were to be preserved from that decree of extermination, pronounced by the Almighty against its nations. Commerce had been the chief cause of the total demoralization of antiquity, and of this, they were permitted to preserve only a boat navigation.”  Coeval with the decline of commerce and the extermination of sailing ships was the cessation of this Phoenician emigration to America.  The colonists, having no longer any communication with the mother country, soon dwindled away and perished, in accordance with a well-known law of Nature.  “Extinction is the doom of every immigrant population in an uncongenial climate (habitat) when migration ceases to keep up and renew the original stock.”  The same fate is impending over us.  “In our own country various causes have been assigned for the recognized delicacy, which is steadily advancing in what may be called the pure American.  The growing smallness of the hands and feet, the shortening of the jawbones, the diminution in the number of the teeth and their rapid decay, are matters of daily comment.”  In like manner, the Caucasian race is melting away in the colonies of Great Britain, in South Africa, Australia, and the West Indies.  “In these uniform consequences the most obtuse cannot fail to recognise the operation of a universal law, whose primary effects are to diminish migration, and whose ultimate results are the extinction of the exotic population.”  We suppose none of our readers are obtuse enough not to be aware of the gradual shortening of their jawbones, a phenomenon especially noticeable in members of Congress and popular lecturers.  As for the diminution in the number of our teeth, and their rapid decay, we need, alas! no Wilson to remind us of these melancholy facts.

What we may call the physical evidence in favor of the Aztec civilization having been thus disposed of by Mr. Wilson, we come now to his treatment of the written and traditional testimony, the accounts that have been handed down to us of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and of the condition of the country at the time when that conquest was made.  Mr. Wilson opens his “Chapter Preliminary” with the statement, that, “in this work, the standard Spanish authorities have been followed as long as they followed the truth.”  This declaration excited, we confess, painful misgivings in our mind; for, if Mr. Wilson was already in possession of the truth, independently of historical research,—­whether by communications from the spirits of the Conquistadores, or by any other of the easy and popular methods of