ct to this latter
people, is so much more copious than that which has come down to us with
regard to the Medes, that, without repeating anything from the former
place, our materials will probably enable us to give to the present
chapter considerable dimensions.

The woodcuts of the preceding volume will have made the reader
sufficiently familiar with the physiognomy of the Persians, or, at any
rate, with the representation of it which has come down to us upon the
Persian monuments. It may be remarked that the type of face and head is
uniform upon all of them, and offers a remarkable contrast to the type
assigned to themselves by the Assyrians, from whom the Arians evidently
adopted the general idea of bas-reliefs, as well as their general mode
of treating subjects upon them. The novelty of the physiognomy is
a strong argument in favor of its truthfulness; and this is further
confirmed by the evidence which we have, that the Persian artists aimed
at representing the varieties of the human race, and succeeded fairly
in rendering them. Varieties of, physiognomy are represented upon the
bas-reliefs with much care, and sometimes with remarkable success, as
the annexed head of a negro, taken from one of the royal tombs, will
sufficiently indicate. [PLATE XXIX., Fig.1.]

[Illustration: PLATE XXIX.]

According to Herodotus, the skulls of the Persians were extraordinarily
thin and weak--a phenomenon for which he accounted by the national habit
of always covering the head. There does not seem to be in reality any
ground for supposing that such a practice would at all tend to produce
such a result. If, therefore, we regard the fact of thinness as
established, we can only view it as an original feature in the physical
type of the race. Such a feature would imply, on the supposition that
the heads were of the ordinary size, a large brain-cavity, and so
an unusual volume of brain, which is generally a concomitant of high
intellectual power.

The Persians seem, certainly, to have been quick and lively,
keen-witted, capable of repartee, ingenious, and, for Orientals,
far-sighted. They had fancy and imagination, a relish for poetry and
art, and they were not without a certain power of political combination.
But we cannot justly ascribe to them any high degree of intellectual
excellence. The religious ideas which they held in common with the Medes
were, indeed, of a more elevated character than is usual with races not
enlightene