On Some of the Bearings of Ethnology Upon Archaeological Science

ETHNOLOGY may have been regarded as a series of fanciful, and, probably, futile inquiries, leading to no very definite ends; and the ethnologist, as a sort of harmless visionary, led hither and thither by trifling indications, and exciting more smiles than looks of satisfaction.In such a region, hypotheses have been very prolific, and the pertinacity of their inventors has usually been in the inverse ratio to the stability and the number of the facts on which they have built them.Great learning has often been expended, even by men of sterling merit, upon investigations into the origin, migrations, and settlements of early nations, without any fixed principles or sound philosophy, to guide or to support the inquiries entered upon.Frequently some fancied, especially when recondite, resemblances, have led to a search for facts and appearances to give countenance to the theories they have suggested.Ethnology, therefore, in this sense, is mainly an abstraction of the mind.Such vague lucubrations may be very fascinating, but are chiefly to be tolerated on the principle of the old French maxim : " Du choc des idees jaillit la lumiere."This, however, is but a description of the early stage of ethnology, like that of many other branches of research, which have grown into sciences.The wild, if not groundless speculations, not based upon facts and sound principles, of some antiquaries of the last century, perhaps even of more recent timeswhich speculations have commonly been as erroneous in their 1

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