all the external appearance of barbarism and rudeness;-a proposition which must sound oddly to those who consider improvement only to consist in the accommodations of elegance and luxury. They do not build cities, but live in scattered villages in cottages which are of rude architecture. "Such (says the writer of the article Araucania, in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia) is a short account of the manners and "customs of an indigenous tribe of South America, distinguish"ed from every other barbarous people, by the wisdom of their political institutions, the sublimity of their religious faith, the "honesty of their commercial transactions, and the unchange"able love of liberty which fires their breasts. While the other "native tribes of America have been compelled to crouch be"neath the Spanish sceptre, the Araucanians have, for more "than three hundred years, opposed the most formidable re"sistance to these unprincipled robbers, and continue to "maintain their national independence, which is so dear to "their hearts." Perhaps the most valuable specimen, therefore, which the Blonde has brought us, is the skull of an Araucanian warrior, found in a place where that people had fought, and where the bones had remained unburied. It is a head of Caucasian type of great animal power, especially inordinate warlike tendencies, with excellent moral sentiments and good intellectual organs. 11. Love of Approbation, very large. 12. Cautiousness, large. 13. Benevolence, rather large. 14. Veneration, rather large. 15. Hope, rather full. 16. Ideality, rather large. 17. Conscientiousness, rather large. 19. Lower Individuality, large. 22. Weight, full, 23. Colouring, rather full. 25. Order, rather full. 29. Language, rather full. 33. Imitation, full. The seventh and last specimen presented by Mr Malden is that of a Chilian, taken from the burial-place of the native hospital at Valparaiso. With some inferiority in size, it bears a close resemblance in all parts to that of the Araucanian warrior, except in Combativeness and Destructiveness, in which it falls greatly short of it. There is not about this head, more than the other, the slightest appearance of compression; and, as in the Araucanian, there is a very just balance of animal, moral, and intellectual development, of which our readers shall judge. 22. Weight, full, 23. Colouring, full. 24. Locality, full. 25. Order, full. 29. Language, moderate. 33. Imitation, rather large. Similarity of cerebral development will afford an interesting and novel element, in addition to the usual indicia from which national descent is conjectured. This, in the Araucanians, is much more like that of the Sandwich islanders than that of any other race in or around the Pacific Ocean. We trust yet to see a considerable number of Araucanian skulls, and to compare them with a great variety of the South American races; and we should be glad that some competent investigator would observe minutely all the points of resemblance, not forgetting language, between the Araucanians and Sandwich islanders.* The Phrenological Society certainly have not received, since its foundation, a more interesting donation, and ought to avail themselves of every opportunity of a similar kind to increase their store. The Phrenologists, although not the first that have made collections of national skulls, are certainly the first who have done so to a rational end. Professor Blumenbach is not a Phrenologist, yet he has made a large collection; and others, having caught the fancy from him, are very busy collecting national skulls, which are even finding their way into university museums as curiosities. These we look upon as so many valuable inheritances to Phrenology, after those who have blindly and absurdly stored them up as lumber, have left them to phrenological successors, as a miser leaves his wealth, without ever having either properly appreciated or enjoyed it. In Araucania, rivers are often named by a repetition of the syllables of the word, as in Callacalla and Biobio. It is singular that the name of the king of the Sandwich Islands who died in London was Riorio. ARTICLE X. AN ESSAY on some SUBJECTS connected with TASTE. 8vo, Oliphant, Waugh, and Innes, Edinburgh; and Longman and Co. London, 1817.—And ILLUSTRATIONS of PHRENOLOGY, with Engravings. Constable and Co. Edinburgh; and Hurst, Robinson, and Co. London, 8vo, 1820. By SIR GEORGE STEWART MACKENZIE, Bart. F.R.S., P.PH. CL. R.S.E., F.SS.A. THE time is at hand when priority in avowed conversion to Phrenology will bear value. In 1816, when Dr Spurzheim was little esteemed in Edinburgh, the author of the two works before us manfully declared himself a pupil of the new philosophy. By having devoted his previous life to science, he was called by the suffrage of philosophers to preside in their associations, and was entitled to that great privilege of learned bigotry which authorises men of established reputation to reject without examination all doctrines that are new, and to contemn all teachers who are unendowed; yet he set himself to investigate with patience and candour the pretensions of Phrenology; and when its evidence satisfied and its system delighted him, he fearlessly declared, that he owed to its founders the first philosophy of mind and man that had satisfied his understanding. Sir George Mackenzie, we believe, was the first man of science in Britain who avowed himself a Phrenologist. Nor was his long an inactive profession; for in 1817 he published his Treatise on Taste, in which, by the application of phrenological principles, he levelled the graceful but unsubstantial fabric which, as a theory of Taste, had for years reigned in this country; and, at the same time, gave the first shock it received from the same quarter to the popular system of metaphysics upon which that theory is built. To none would it be so manifest as to the author, that in doing so, he was writing in advance of the period, if not of the age. He read his lucubrations to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was, we doubt not, held and reputed absurd, if not insane, for his pains. If unappreciated within the walls of the Royal Society, his new views were not treated with greater justice beyond them. This hallucination about craniology was held sufficient to condemn the book without any farther investigation; and nevertheless, in our humble judgment, when we compare it with all other essays on the subject of taste, it is incomparably the soundest in philosophy and most irresistible in argument that has appeared. There prevails a feeling among the students of metaphysics, and it is a well-founded feeling, that all that has been written on the "Sublime and Beautiful" is, somehow or other, unsatisfactory; that the reasonings of Burke, of Alison, and of Jeffrey leave the subject pretty much where they take it up. To the phrenological investigation, first of the meaning of these mysterious words,words which have been written into mystery; and then of the causes of the emotions for which they stand, the essay before us is almost exclusively confined. In his introduction, the author shows that metaphysics have fallen into bad odour in the present age, because they have hitherto been prosecuted on false principles, and are as useless as they are baseless. The metaphysicians of the old school impute the disregard of their theories to the superficial levity of the age; we, on the contrary, think it a decided proof of the advance of the age in sound thinking and good sense. It is a grand mistake to conclude, from the fate of such speculations, that a well-founded analysis of human nature can have no attractions. We should reason a priori, that its attraction would, on all capable minds, be irresistible; and indeed we have proof of this before our eyes in the zeal which Phrenology excites, and which the old philosophers can only impute to a prevailing mania. To the error of concluding, that the perception and consciousness of all other men is the same as our own, the author traces the many and irreconcilable theories of Taste which |