Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/98

 that adorn the visage of man, so the Anglo-Saxon, by his rise in the scale of humanity, has improved his features, enlarged his brain, and brightened in intellect.

Let us see how far history will bear us out in this assertion. We all acknowledge the Anglo-Saxon to be the highest type of civilization. But from whence sprang this refined, proud, haughty, and intellectual race? Go back a few centuries, and we find their ancestors described in the graphic touches of Cæsar and Tacitus. See them in the gloomy forests of Germany, sacrificing to their grim and gory idols; drinking the warm blood of their prisoners, quaffing libations from human skulls; infesting the shores of the Baltic for plunder and robbery; bringing home the reeking scalps of enemies as an offering to their king.

Macaulay says:—"When the Britons first became known to the Tyrian mariners, they were little superior to the Sandwich Islanders."

Hume says:—"The Britons were a rude and barbarous people, divided into numerous clans, dressed in the skins of wild beasts: druidism was their religion, and they were very superstitious." Cæsar writing home, said of the Britons,—"They are the most degraded people I ever conquered." Cicero advised his friend Atticus not to purchase slaves from Briton, "because," said he, "they cannot be taught music, and are the ugliest people I ever saw."

An illustration of the influence of circumstances upon the physical appearance of man may be found still nearer our own time. In the Irish rebellion in 1641, and 1689, great multitudes of the native Irish were driven from Armagh and the South down into