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manuscripts as Caraibs, Carios, or Carious. There were many tribes of this race both in Paraguay and in Brazil, and the independent Guaranis have still their national tribe names of Caayguas or Cayuas, Carimas, Tarumas, and Guayaquiles in Paraguay. The independent Bugres of Brazil, and the Parecis and Guatos of Mato Grosso, are also said to be of the Guaranian race, the most numerous of all the various races of the South American continent. The Guarani-a dialect of the Tupi, or lingoa geral-was spoken over all Brazil, and even on the Amazons. De Humboldt traced it in olden time to the Orenooko. D'Orbigny has traced the Caribs of the Caribbean Islands to the same source. The Chiriguanos of the Bolivian Andes are historically known to be Guaranians; the Guarayos (guara, tribe, and yu, yellow) of the Bolivian forests; and the Sirionos of Moxos are also all "Guaranians," or riors," according to the generally accepted etymology of the word.

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The few remaining independent Guaranis live in the impenetrable forests in the north-east of Paraguay. They are generally designated as Montesses, or woodmen, but they have also especial names of tribes. They come out of their forests sometimes to barter with the Paraguayans, but rarely. It is impossible to ascertain what are their numbers. The two explorers most familiar with Paraguay, Azara and Reugger, have not attempted even to estimate it, and M. Demersay has wisely followed their example of discretion. Besides the independent Guaranians, there exist other races of Indians remarkable for their noble stature and proportions, more particularly the Payaguas on the Rio Paraguay, the longtime dreaded enemies of the Spaniards. M. Demersay agrees with D'Orbigny in classifying this fine race of men as Pampean, or of the plains. They are maiuly remarkable for their height, which exceeds that of almost any other nation on the face of the earth, even that of the Patagonians. The mean height of the men is in French measure 1 mètre 78 centimètres 1 millimètre, whereas the average height of recruits in France is, as a matter of comparison, 1 mètre 682 millimètres. Even the mean of the women of the Pampas is 1 mètre 58 centimètres, almost equal to the average French soldiery. The Payaguas, who live chiefly in canoes, have the muscles of the arms and chest largely developed, but they are never fat. Their colour is olive-brown, without the yellowish Mongolian hue of the Guaranis. Their fine heads are covered with abundant long curly hair.

It is to be remarked that many of these tribes of independent Indians are gradually parting with their more savage habits, as more especially the practice of wearing the barbote, a piece of wood or tembeta of gum, inserted in a hole in the lower lip. Such practices are now scarcely to be met with, except among the Botocondos of Brazil and the Lenguas of the Grand-Chaco. It is now little more than three centuries ago (June 9, 1536) that the Pope Paul III. promulgated, at the solicitation of the Jesuit missionaries, a bull of great celebrity, determining that the aborigines were not of the race of uran-utans or gorilli, but really human beings. It is lucky that the pope of that day was so far enlightened, for if not, instead of discussing in the present day whether the Paraguayans are descendants on the maternal side of Mongols or Polynesians, we should be still inquiring whether or not they are the haughty and exclusive offspring of satyrs of the woods.

LORD MACAULAY AS A TRANSLATOR.

To give the poetry of one nation to the literature of another by means of a metrical version is, at best, but a futile attempt at producing an impression which it is impossible to convey. In every language poetry depends as much upon "words that burn" as upon thoughts that breathe." We would not be too fanciful in our illustrations, but the process of translation seems like handling,

With defacing fingers,

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the bloom of a grape, or the feathery gold upon the wing of a butterfly. Our early letter-writer Howel uses the more homely simile of "the wrong side of a Turkey carpet-full of thrums and knots, and nothing so even as the right side;" and Dryden, in one of his prefaces, tells us to the effect that an author would not be pursued so closely by a translator as that he should hurt him by his too near approach. This is especially applicable to poetry. For, after all, what is poetry? In imagination, and feeling, or in the vivid description of external objects, in what respect does it differ from impassioned oratory, or elevated prose-from passages of Burke, or Canning, or Macaulay? Cobbett defined it as something written in lines; and he was not very far from the mark. Its highest attributes are not peculiar to itself. Its distinctive quality is merely an artificial arrangement of words, and their happy choice both as parts of such arrangement, and as new and striking in themselves; and the effect of these cannot be transferred. The attempt must, in most cases, be injurious to character and expression. It deprives the poet of the graces of his own versification; and his thoughts are cramped and distorted by subjecting them to the rhyme or rhythm of another.

There may be exceptions, but, generally speaking, a more exact notion of the originals is conveyed by such prose translations as Mr. Hayward's Faust, or the Ariosto printed many years since by Mr. Johnson, of Lancaster, than by most of our metrical versions. The most popular we possess are the freest. It is scarcely necessary to name such instances as Pope's Homer, Dr. Johnson's Tenth Satire of Juvenal, or the Anacreon of Moore; or, as a later example, the volume of translated Odes of Horace, by Mr. Martin: an attempt so favourably received as to give the promise at least of a similar, if not of as extensive a popularity. Of these also the freest are the most praised. We may take, as a proof, the Ode to Lydia, which, though it has often been quoted, we will again transcribe:

Swains in numbers

Break your slumbers,

Saucy LYDIA, now but seldom;

Ay, though at your casement nightly,

Tapping loudly, tapping lightly,

By the dozen once ye held them.

Ever turning,

Night and morning,

Swung your door upon its hinges;

Now from dawn till evening's closing,

Lone and desolate reposing,

Not a soul its rest infringes.

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With the exception of the last stanza, which, as Lord Byron said of Campbell's, is twisted to a phrase of some obscurity, such may be supposed to be what Horace might have written had he lived in clubs and chambers during the gentle reign of Queen Victoria; but it is not as he wrote at Rome in the reign of Augustus. It has his grace without his grossness: its raillery is not so savage. There is nothing here like the matres equorum and jecur ulcerosum of the original; the satire is refined without being weakened: and it would have been less beautiful had it been less free.

We know that we are treading upon beaten ground, but we have an object in re-entering it.

*

Amongst the remains of Lord Macaulay which have just been published, is the translation of an ode by Filicaia on the "Deliverance of Vienna." It was originally given-we cannot exactly say to the world, though to something more than the world of Sterne's midwife-for it was given, a full generation since, to the world of an extensive provincial neighbourhood in a small volume of Original Contributions printed at Liverpool; and, till now, it has scarcely been known beyond the circle in which it first appeared.

As far as we are aware, it is almost the only translated piece by our great historian that we possess; and, in its execution, it is an additional proof that a free sketch forms the most agreeable likeness, if not the most exact. We have yet to discover the art of applying photography to thought.

Of its subject-in these days of competitive examination, when everybody is expected to have everything at his finger-ends-it is scarcely necessary to say a word. There is nothing so monotonous as history. Some master-mind appears, from time to time, to throw the world into confusion, and the incidents of each career are much alike, except in name and locality. In the instance before us the perturbing spirit was the Grand Monarque, who was magnificently devoting himself

* The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay. Two Vols. Longman and Co. 1860.

to stir up

Convulsions and heats in the bowels of Europe;

and every crowned head was trembling for the safety of its dominions. Austria, as usual, had its own peculiar difficulties arising out of the misgovernment of its dependencies. The Hungarians thought themselves ill-used, and had joined the "malignant and the turbaned Turk" in besieging Vienna. The emperor had quitted his capital, which had to make the best defence it could with the troops he left behind him; and though they were sufficiently numerous, Vienna would probably have fallen before the fury of the invading infidels if it had not been for the timely appearance of the Poles under Sobieski.

It was this memorable event that inspired the spirited verses of Filicaia, to which Macaulay has done ample justice in one of his finest lyrics.

Opening as a Hymn of praise to the "Great GOD to whom revenge belongs," He is described, in His resistless might, as scattering the pagan host:

He smote the haughty race

Of unbelieving Thrace,

And turned their rage to fear, their pride to shame.

He looked in wrath from high,

Upon their vast array;

And, in the twinkling of an eye,
Tambour, and trump, and battle-cry,

And steeds and turbaned infantry,
Passed like a dream away.

The more remote effects of their defeat are described as follows; to the words in italics we shall afterwards refer:

What terror seized the fiends obscene of Nile!
How wildly, in his place of doom beneath,
Arabia's lying prophet gnashed his teeth,
And cursed his blighted hopes and wasted guile!
When, at the bidding of Thy sovereign might,
Flew on their destined path

Thy messengers of wrath,

Riding on storms and wrapped in deepest night.
The Phthian mountains* saw,

And quaked with mystic awe:

The proud Sultana of the Straights bowed down

Her jewelled neck and her embattled crown.

The miscreants as they raised their eyes,

Glaring defiance on Thy skies,

Saw adverse winds and clouds display
The terrors of their black array ;-

Saw each portentous star

Whose fiery aspect turned of yore to flight

The iron chariots of the Canaanite

Gird its bright harness for a deadlier war.

Then, after exclaiming,

Be all the glory to Thy name divine!

The swords were ours; the arm, O Lord, was Thine!

* "Phthian mountains" may seem rather too scholastic a rendering of “ Pelio ed Ossa," which would themselves have equally filled the verse.

he continues:

Therefore to Thee, beneath whose footstool wait

The powers which erring man calls Chance and Fate,
To Thee who hast laid low

The pride of Europe's foe,

And taught Byzantium's sullen lords to fear,

I pour my spirit out

In a triumphant shout,

And call all ages and all lands to hear.
Thou who evermore endurest,
Loftiest, mightiest, wisest, purest,
Thou whose will destroys or saves,
Dread of tyrants, hope of slaves,
The wreath of glory is from Thee
And the red sword of victory.

And the poem closes with a burst of grateful exultation :
Close on their rear the loud uproar
Of fierce pursuit from Ister's shore
Comes pealing on the wind;
The Rab's wild waters are before,
The Christian sword behind.
Sons of perdition, speed your flight.
No earthly spear is in the rest;
No earthly champion leads to fight
The warriors of the West.

The Lord of Hosts asserts his old renown,

Scatters, and smites, and slays, and tramples down.

Fast, fast, beyond what mortal tongue can say,

Or mortal fancy dream,

He rushes on His prey:

Till, with the terrors of the wondrous theme
Bewildered and appalled, I cease to sing,

And close my dazzled eye, and rest my wearied wing.

Now there can be little doubt that the hundred and seventy-eight lines from which these extracts are taken, form a very fine poem in themselves; but a question will arise as to how far we are to attribute their beauties to Filicaia. We will not weary the reader with an examination of the whole the original is easily accessible; and we will confine ourselves to the second of these extracts. The following is the Italian :*

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