ed that she has nothing to fear, that all the changes proposed are
for the good of the Teutonic race--reminds us very strongly of that
widely known verse in child-literature,--
"Will you walk into my parlor," etc.
We have before us, however, a work which, from its size and from
the labor bestowed upon it, deserves to be ranked above the various
productions that have scarcely called forth more than a passing notice
in the daily press.
The pamphlet named at the head of this article, and which is but a
complement to the volume, is one of the numerous reconstructions and
rearrangements of European limits made in the quiet of the study. Were
it this alone, it would deserve but little attention. It is more. The
author bases his theories upon other than political reasons, having
labored hard to establish many debatable points of Ethnography in the
interesting notes appended to the work, and which form by far the most
remarkable part of it. So we have the question of Races discussed at
full length. There is certainly some philological legerdemain, as may be
seen from some of the convenient conclusions of the author concerning
the Celts and the Gauls. He is full of such paragraphs as this in his
argumentation:--
"It has seemed to us proved, that the names,
Volces, Volsks, Bolgs, Belgs, Belgians, Welsh,
Welchs, Waels, Wuelchs or Walchs, Walls,
Walloons, Valais, Valois, Vlaks, Wallachians,
Galatians, Galtachs, Galls, Gaels or Caels,
Gaelic, Galot, Gallegos, Gaul, and even Ola,
Olatz, and Vallus, were but one and the same
word under different forms."
The point to be established at all hazards is, that the French,
Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Belgians, and even the English and
Greeks, form but one great family, of one hundred and fifteen million
individuals,--the Gallo-Roman. This Neo-Latin world the author would
wish combined in one grand confederation, like the States of America.
Hence his use of the term _Panlatinism_, in opposition to the so much
debated one of _Panslavism_. The merit of the work under consideration
is, that, though decidedly French in all its views, it condenses in
a few paragraphs the present mooted question of race. The idea of
Panslavism, or the uniting of eighty millions of Sclavonians under one
banner, was, in its origin, republican and federal, whatever it may
have become since. Few words have acquired more diametrically opposite
meanings, according as they were uttered
|