ALLEN. 137 
In the Adventures of Captain Bonneville, edited by 
Washington Irving, we read with regard to some of the 
Indians near the Rocky Mountains :—“ Simply to call these 
people religious would convey but a faint idea of the deep tone 
of piety and devotion which pervades the whole of their 
conduct. They are more like a nation of saints than a horde 
of savages.” 
Dr. Martius, the distinguished German ethnologist, gives 
it as his deliberate opinion, “that the nations of the New 
World are notin a state of primitive barbarism or living in 
the original simplicity of uncultured nature ; but that they are, 
on the contrary, the last remains of a people once high in the 
scale of civilisation and mental improvement, now almost worn 
out, and perishing, and sunk into the lowest stage of decline 
and barbarism.” Dr. Pritchard also says :— “ Attentive 
observers have been struck with manifestations of greater 
energy, mental and vigour, of more intense and deeper 
feelings, of a more reflective mind, of greater fortitude, and 
more consistent perseverance in enterprises and all pursuits, 
when they have compared the natives of the New World with 
the sensual, volatile, and almost animalised savages who are 
still to be found in some quarters of the Old Continent. They |, 
have been equally impressed by the sullen and unsocial 
character, by the proud, apathetic endurance, by the feeble 
influence of social affections, by the intensity of hatred and 
revenge, and the deep malice-concealing dissimulation so 
remarkable amid the dark solitude of the American 
forests.” 
Squier, in his Travels in Central America, vol. ii. p. 331, 
says:—‘‘ The state of separation,—disruption, as it is some- 
times called,—in which the American race was found, has been 
variously attributed to a radical physiological defect in its 
character, to extraordinary natural phenomena . . . . To me, 
however, this separation and subdivision of the aboriginal 
race, and the exclusion of its different families, in respect to 
each other, seem rather due to long periods of time, and long- 
continued migrations of single nations and tribes from one 
portion of the continent to the other.” 
Probably no country more distinctly bears in its history 
proofs of the facility with which a comparatively civilised 
country may become reduced to barbarism, in a short space of 
time, than Ireland. In the time of the Anglo-Saxons, it was 
known as the “ Isle of Saints,” the abode of learning and the 
arts, and the school of the youth of France and Britain; but, 
after the Danish and Norman invasions had passed over it, it 
became a mere battle-field of conflicting parties ; its churches 
VOL, XIX. lL 
