138 
CIRCASSIANS. 
harmony. In short, it was wild and savage ; — a sort of oral, as 
the kind of dance is an ocular, testimony, of the antiquity of 
any particular people in the country where we find such traces 
of the earliest states of social man. The like strains, though 
often uttered by very differently constructed instruments, with a 
similar style of dance, are yet common in the Russian peasant, 
and with the Cossack; and are also to be found in Africa, and 
amongst the Indian nations of Asia; likewise in America, both 
north and south, wherever the aboriginal people have been 
suffered to exist. Hence any great and polished nation, has as 
little to be ashamed of, in the remains of these proofs of the 
former infancy of its state; as any personage, of modern times, 
would think he had for blushing, when showing a long pedigree, 
to find the names of a Caractacus, or Arminius, or any other 
illustrious barbarian, in the line of his ancestry. 
The Circassians, six in number, whom I mentioned as being 
present at this festivity, had been in the suite of His Excellency 
General Yarmolloff, during his late embassy to Persia. One of 
them was a prince, a man of eminent merit, and consequent 
weight amongst his people : and, if we may judge of the personal 
advantages, in point of figure and noble mien, of his compatriots 
at home, by those of his own person, and of his five companions, 
the hardier sex in Circassia are no way inferior in beauty to the 
long celebrated charms of their fair countrywomen. These men 
were tall, robust, and finely proportioned; of bright complexions, 
with dark eyes and hair, wearing their beards short, with an 
expression of frank good-humour all over their countenances; 
which makes them appear a very different race, indeed, from 
what is marked in the fierce physiognomies of their neighbours 
the ferocious Tchitchinzees and Ossitinians; and even as distinct 
