386 



GENIUS. 



/.MI, was taken by storm, in 1213, and plundered. 

 The conflagration lasted a month. The murder of 

 the ambassadors, whom Gengis-Khan had sent to the 

 king of Kharisin, occasioned the invasion of Turke- 

 stan, in 1218, with an iirmy of 700,000 men. The 

 first conflict was terrible, but undecisive. The sons 

 of Gengis-Khan showed themselves worthy of their 

 father. The Klmrismans lost 160,000 men. 



In 1219, the Mongols pushed their conquests still 

 further. The two great cities of Bochara and Sa- 

 marcand made the greatest resistance. They were 

 stormed, plundered, burnt, and more than 200,000 

 men destroyed with them. We must here lament 

 the destruction of the valuable libraries of Bochara 

 a city famous through all Asia for its institutions 

 of learning. Seven years in succession was the 

 conqueror busy in the work of destruction, pillage, 

 and subjugation, and extended his dominions to the 

 banks of the Dnieper, where also the grand duke of 

 Kiew and the duke of Tchernikoft" were taken pri- 

 soners. He had at one time thought of putting to 

 death all the natives of China, turning the cultivated 

 fields into pastures, and making it the residence of a 

 few men, who were no longer able to do military 

 service. But one of his counsellors, Tletchusay, 

 strongly opposed the measure. The conqueror now 

 resolved to return to his capital, Kara-Korom. Here 

 his family came as far as the banks of the river Tula, 

 to meet him, and received him with the liveliest joy. 

 He showed, on this occasion, that he was not desti- 

 tute of feeling. Of his numerous grand-children, he 

 caused two to be educated according to a system of 

 his own. In 1225, though more than sixty years old, 

 he marched in person, at the head of his whole army, 

 against the king of Tangut, who had given shelter 

 to two of his enemies, and had refused to give them 

 up. The Mongols marched through the desert of 

 Cobi, in winter, into the heart of the enemy's coun- 

 try, where they were met by an army of 500,000 

 men. A great battle was fought on a plain of ice 

 formed by the frozen Karamoran, in which the king 

 of Tangut was totally defeated, with the loss of 

 300,000 men. The victor remained some time in 

 his newly subdued provinces, from which he also 

 sent two of his sons to complete the conquest of 

 Northern China. Meantime the siege of the capital 

 of Tangut, Nankin, was zealously prosecuted. The 

 city at length yielded, and, like the others, was 

 given up to fire and sword. But the foundation of a 

 Mongol monarchy in China was reserved for his 

 grandson. 



On this expedition, Gengis-Khan felt his death 

 approaching. He summoned his children together, 

 enjoined union upon them, and gave them the wisest 

 advice for the government of the extensive states 

 which he left them, and which stretched 1200 leagues 

 in length. He died, surrounded by his friends, in 

 the bosom of victory, August 24, 1227, in the sixty- 

 sixth year of his age, and the fifty-second of his reign. 

 The ambition of this conqueror cost the human race 

 from five to six millions of persons, of every age and 

 sex. Besides this, he destroyed a vast number of 

 monuments of art, and valuable manuscripts, which 

 were deposited in the cities of Balk, Bochara, Samar- 

 cand, Pekin, and other places. He was interred, 

 with great pomp, at Tangut, not far from the place 

 where he died, under a tree remarkable for the enor- 

 mous size of its branches. He had himself chosen 

 this spot for his burial place. Before he died, he 

 divided his territories among the four princes whom 

 he liad by the first of his four legitimate wives. A 

 great part of the empire of Gengis-Khan, however, 

 came into the hands of Kublai, who is considered as 

 the founder of the Mongol dynasty in China. 



GENIUS. The Genii of the Romans were the 



same as the demons of the Greeks. According to 

 the belief of the Romans (says Wieland), which was 

 common to almost all nations, every person had his 

 own Genius ; i. e., a spiritual being, which introdu- 

 ced him into life, accompanied him during the course 

 of it, and again conducted him out of the world at 

 the close of his career. The Genii of women were 

 called Junonea. Male servants swore by the 

 Genius of their master, female ones by the Juno of 

 their mistress, and the whole Roman empire by the 

 Genius of Augustus, and of his successors. As the 

 religion of the Greeks and Romans in general was 

 connected with no distinct and settled system, but 

 their whole creed was indefinite, wavering, and arbi- 

 trary, so there was nothing determined on this sub- 

 ject ; and every one, according to his pleasure, be- 

 lieved either in two Genii, a white and good one, to 

 whom he was indebted for the favourable events ot 

 his life, and a black and evil one, to whom he 

 ascribed all his misfortunes ; or in but one, who, as 

 Horace (Epistles, ii, 2,) says, was black and white 

 at the same time, and, according to the behaviour of 

 a man, his friend or enemy. From this opinion ori- 

 ginated the expressions " to have an incensed 

 Genius," "to reconcile his Genius," "to treat his 

 Genius well," &c. The stronger, more powerful, 

 prudent, watchful, in short, the more perfect a Genius 

 was, and the greater the friendship which he enter- 

 tained for the person under his protection and in- 

 fluence, the happier was the condition of that man, 

 and the greater were his advantages over others. 

 Thus, for instance, an Egyptian conjuror put Antony 

 on his guard against his colleague and brother-in- 

 law, Octavianus. " Thy Genius," said he, " stands 

 in fear of his. Though great by nature, and cour- 

 ageous, yet, as often as he approaches the Genius of 

 that young man, he shrinks, and becomes small and 

 cowardly.'' The belief of the ancients in Genii (for 

 not only every man, but every being in nature, had 

 a Genius) was, no doubt, a consequence of their idea 

 of a divine spirit pervading the whole physical world. 

 Whatever gave a thing duration, internal motion, 

 growth, life, sensibility, and soul, was, according to 

 their opinion, a part of that common and universal 

 spirit of nature; therefore Horace calls the Genius 

 the god of human nature. He is not the man him- 

 self, but he is what renders every one an individual 

 man. His individuality depends on the life of this 

 man ; and, as soon as the latter dies, the Genius is 

 lost again in the universal ocean of spirit, from 

 which, at the birth of that man, he emanated, in 

 order to give to that portion of matter, of which the 

 man was to consist, an individual fonn, and to ani- 

 mate this new form. Horace, therefore, calls him 

 mortalem in unumquodque caput. As the Greeks 

 were accustomed to clothe all invisible things, and 

 all abstract ideas, in beautiful human forms, the 

 Genius of human nature also received a particular 

 image. He was represented as a boy, or rather 

 of an age between boyhood and youth, slightly 

 dressed, in a garment spangled with stars, and wear- 

 ing a wreath of flowers, or a branch of maple, or 

 naked, and with wings, like the Genius in the villa 

 Borghese, of whose beauty Winckelmann speaks with 

 so much enthusiasm. 



The Jinns of the East, commonly translated Genii, 

 seem to be the lineal descendants of the Devalahs 

 and Rakshasas of the Hindoo mythology. They 

 were never worshipped by the Arabs, nor considered 

 as any thing more than the agents of the Deity. 

 Since the establishment of Mahommedanism, indeed, 

 they have been described as invisible spirits ; and 

 their feats and deformities, which figure in romance, 

 are as little believed by the Asiatics as the tales of 

 Arthur's round table are by ourselves. They are 



