diftinct in appearance both from Indians and Tartars.

A fimilar diverfity has arifen, I believe, from fimilar causes, between the people of China and Japan; on the fecond of which nations we have now, or soon shall have, as correct and as ample instruction as can poffibly be obtained without a perfect acquaintance with the Chinese characters. KÆMPFER has taken from M. TITSINGH the honour of being the first, and he from KÆMPFER that of being the only, European, who, by a long refidence in Japan, and a familiar intercourse with the principal natives of it, has been able to collect authentick materials for the natural and civil history of a country fecluded, as the Romans used to say of our own island, from the rest of the world: the works of those illuftrious travellers will confirm and embellish each other; and, when M. TITSINGH fhall have acquired a knowledge of Chinese, to which a part of his leifure in Java will be devoted, his precious collection of books in that language, on the laws and revolutions, the natural productions, the arts, manufactures and fciences of Japan, will be in his hands an inexhaustible mine of new and important information. Both he and his predeceffor affert with confidence, and, I doubt not, with truth, that the Japanese would resent, as an infult on their dignity, the bare

fuggeftion of their defcent from the Chinese, whom they furpafs in feveral of the mechanical arts, and, what is of greater confequence, in military fpirit; but they do not, I understand, mean to deny, that they are a branch of the fame ancient ftem with the people of China; and, were that fact ever so warmly contested by them, it might be proved by an invincible argument, if the preceding part of this difcourfe, on the origin of the Chinese, be thought to contain just reasoning. In the first place, it seems inconceivable, that the Japanese, who never appear to have been conquerors or conquered, should have adopted the whole fyftem of Chinese literature with all its inconveniences and intricacies, if an immemorial connexion had not fubfifted between the two nations, or, in other words, if the bold and ingenious race, who peopled Japan in the middle of the thirteenth century before CHRIST, and, about fix hundred years afterwards, established their monarchy, had not carried with them the letters and learning, which they and the Chinefe had poffeffed in common; but my principal argument is, that the Hindu or Egyptian idolatry has prevailed in Japan from the earlieft ages; and among the idols worshipped, according to KÆMPFER, in that country, before the innovations of SA'CY A or BUDDHA, whom the Japanese alfo call AMIDA,

we find many of those, which we fee every day in the temples of Bengal; particularly the goddefs with many arms, representing the powers of Nature, in Egypt named Is Is and here ISA'NI' or Isı', whofe image, as it is exhibited by the German traveller, all the Brahmans, to whom I showed it, immediately recognized with a mixture of pleasure and enthusiasm. It is very true, that the Chinese differ widely from the natives of Japan in their vernacular dialects, in external manners, and perhaps in the strength of their mental faculties; but as wide a difference is obfervable among all the nations of the Gothick family; and we might account even for a greater diffimilarity, by confidering the number of ages, during which the several swarms have been feparated from the great Indian hive, to which they primarily belonged. The modern Japanese gave KÆMPFER the idea of polished Tartars; and it is reasonable to believe, that the people of Japan, who were originally Hindus of the martial class and advanced farther eastward than the Chinas, have, like them, infenfibly changed their features and characters by intermarriages with various Tartarian tribes, whom they found loosely scattered over their ifles, or who afterwards fixed their abode in them.

Having now fhown in five discourses, that the Arabs and Tartars were originally distinct races,

while the Hindus, Chinese, and Japanese proceeded from another ancient ftem, and that all the three stems may be traced to Iran, as to a common centre, from which it is highly probable, that they diverged in various directions about four thousand years ago, I may seem to have accomplished my defign of investigating the origin of the Afiatick nations; but the questions, which I undertook to discuss, are not yet ripe for a strict analytical argument; and it will first be necessary to examine with fcrupulous attention all the detached or infulated races of men, who either inhabit the borders of India, Arabia, Tartary, Perfia, and China, or are interfperfed in the mountainous and uncultivated parts of those extenfive regions. To this examination I fhall, at our next annual meeting, allot an entire difcourfe; and if, after all our inquiries, no more than three primitive races can be found, it will be a fubfequent confideration, whether those three ftocks had one common root, and, if they had, by what means that root was preferved amid the violent fhocks, which our whole globe appears evidently to have fuftained.

THE EIGHTH

ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE,

DELIVERED 24 FEBRUARY, 1791.

BY

THE PRESIDENT.

GENTLEMEN,

WE have taken a general view, at our five last annual meetings, of as many celebrated nations, whom we have proved, as far as the subject admits of proof, to have defcended from three primitive stocks, which we call for the present Indian, Arabian, Tartarian; and we have nearly travelled over all Afia, if not with a perfect coincidence of fentiment, at least, with as much unanimity, as can be naturally expected in a large body of men, each of whom must affert it as his right, and confider it as his duty, to decide on all points for himself, and never to decide on obfcure points without the best evidence, that can poffibly be adduced: our travels will this day be concluded, but our historical refearches would have been left incomplete, if we had paffed without attention over the numerous