414 Scientific Reviews. 



nian/ the Hunno- Finnish, the Finnish or Souomic, the Khasovas 

 or Samoiedes, the Mongolian, the Mandjour, the Turkish, the Cau- 

 casian, the Valaque, and the German race. Count Potocki, after 

 «ome preliminary remarks, refers these different races, and their 

 more complicate tribes, to Sclavonian origins, to Lithuanian or 

 Celto-Scythic, to Gelic or Valachian, to Sarmatic, to Tchoudic and 

 to Scythio-Skolatic origins. The people of the Caucasus he refers 

 to Iberian, Phrygian, and Armenian origins. M. Klaproth has 

 added a note on the identity of the Ossetes and the Alains, and an- 

 other on the Boukhars, whom Georgi and most writers place among 

 the Turks, but who, as Pallas remarked, belong really to the Persian 

 origin, and Klaproth points out the importance of this fact to the 

 the ethnographic system of the interior of Asia. 



From the history of this vast country, and from the results pre- 

 sented to us by its present condition, we may remark, that after an 

 age and a half of pretended civilization, Russia is even, in the pre- 

 sent day, almost entirely governed, commanded, and represented 

 by European courts and by strangers. Its language is despised by 

 the enlightened portion of its inhabitants, though it is rich and 

 flexible : its literature is little more than the echo of the literature 

 of its neighbours : its industry a bad assimilation of the manufac- 

 tural products of the continent and of Great Britain : and this is 

 the inevitable consequence of the attempt made by Peter and his 

 successors exclusively to favour strangers, even to the prejudice of 

 their own subjects. 



Ignorance is profound, and almost universal in Russia ; it is mask- 

 ed among the great by a few superficial facts, but is excessive among 

 the people. We find from Mr. Schnitzler's work, that Russia, 

 with a population of more than 54,000,000 of men, possesses only 

 seven universities, attended by about 3,000 pupils, 55 gymnasiums, 

 9 military schools, only 511 reading county schools, and some pa- 

 rish schools in the German provinces, and the colonies of the same 

 nation established on the banks of the Wolga. The government 

 of Tomsk, among others, had, in 1824, two schools frequented by 

 100 scholars out of 340,000 inhabitants ,* so that, in the whole of 

 Aussia, we cannot average more than one scholar out of 794 indi- 

 viduals, and a considerable portion of these belong to the Polish 

 university of Wilna. The printing establishments, not counting 

 those belonging to the different governments, are about 40 : there 

 are 32 libraries and 9 type-founders. 



Internal commerce is almost unkno^vn ; and there is perhaps only 

 one great road practicable in every season, that from St. Petersburgh 

 to Moscow. The Russian jurisprudence is a mass of incoherent 

 jargon, inapplicable to the present situation of the country : the ad- 

 ministration of justice is an object of commerce, which cannot asto- 

 nish us, when we know that an office of the importance of civil 

 magistrate, has not a revenue of more than L.15 a-year ; and this 

 is the common lot of almost all the public functionaries in Russia. 



