ART. XVI.—On an Ancient Inscription in the Neu-chih Language

Extract

An indigenous record of the nomade tribes of Tartary, who shook the world with their conquests during the middle ages, would no doubt form an interesting episode in universal history. Although the Mongols made their power to be felt from east to west, comparatively little was known in Europe of their actual condition; but that little is sufficient to stimulate curiosity, and while the names of Genghiz and Tamerlane have gained a world-wide celebrity, very much that pertains to their people, as a nation and as individuals, is left to be filled up by the imagination. Tokens of former grandeur are still to be met with in the northern wilds, suggesting to the mind of the traveller a host of questions, which receive no satisfactory solution from the erratic nomades who inhabit those sterile regions. How many monarchies were overthrown by these children of the desert; how many kingdoms reduced to desolation; how many nations subdued, their power broken, and their inhabitants dispersed ? Questions allied to something higher than the mere inquisitive faculty attach to some of these points; and, while we scan the débris of bye-gone generations, we are impelled by the conviction that all efforts in that direction are auxiliary to the more mature knowledge of the history of the human racé.