The religion of the Romans was borrowed from that of the Greeks; they worshipped the same divinities, with only a slight variation of names. Their literature also was derived from the same source; in fact, they had no literature to speak of till after the conquest of Greece, though their success subsequently was so signal. The authors of the Augustan age have been already named. Among the other great writers that Rome produced, the names of Tacitus, Seneca, Plutarch, Catullus, Lucretius, Lucian, Juvenal, Martial, the two Plinys, and the two emperors, Julius Cæsar and Antoninus, will be remembered; but no attempt is here made to enumerate them all. Nor was literature the only thing in which Rome distinguished herself, and nearly rivalled Greece. Her paintings and sculptures, and the greatness and beauty of her architecture, also won for her a world-wide renown. These, and especially the last, were generally undertaken by the state; but often, private individuals also vied with their rulers in contributing to the grandeur and beauty of their eternal city. The triumphal arches, porticos, baths, theatres, aqueducts, and highways of Rome are well-known; but the refinement of the inhabitants was so great that private houses always retained their simplicity. There never was a people who in private life lived so moderately; among whom frugality and parsimony were held in greater honour-that is, before the days of their corruption. Perhaps it is this which made them really so great. Their simplicity and moderation made them all the more steady, patient, and laborious; and these, with their love of liberty and their patriotism, led to that elevation which has yet had no equal.

CHAPTER X.

RÉSUMÉ.

WE have noticed, in the preceding chapters, the origin, growth, and decline of many nations, and the vicissitudes that several forms of government have run through in different lands. It only remains now to sum up the results of our inquiry, with special reference to the more important events we have reviewed, and the relation they severally bore to each other. The chief epochs in ancient history that require particular attention are those of (1) the creation; (2) the deluge; (3) the migration of nations: (4) the founding of the great empires of China, India, Persia, Assyria, Phoenicia, Egypt, &c.; and (5) the founding of the later and still greater empires of Greece and Rome. Along with these should be considered the different religious eras of Mythology, Buddhism, Christianity, and Mahomedanism; and also the eras rendered important by the subversion of the several ancient empires, as they dropped off, one after another, from the roll of nations.

Of the first epoch-namely, that of the creation-the best account we possess is that given in the Bible, which is at once impressive, perspicuous, and nearly complete; so much so as scarcely to require any other evidence to corroborate or explain the statements of its sublime Genesis. All the further testimony available to us on the subject consists mainly of fragments and poetical traditions, to which we have referred as supplying much information in regard to those countries which did not fall especially within the scope of the Bible to notice; but we do not say that we believe wholly in the fictions which have thus been preserved, even though we have not considered it advisable. to reject them altogether. Several of the statements fill

up a disagreeable void in the history of nations which, unknown to the Jews, attained the very highest acme of glory and power; and, where these are not outrageously absurd or morally impossible, we have accepted them as not untrustworthy, and therefore useful in explaining the nature of the problem before us, even if they do not quite enable us to solve it satisfactorily. Of such character are the statements that, while Adam and Eve passed their days in the paradise of Chaldea, the same Providence that had placed them there, had also placed, for a precisely similar purpose, Pwankoo and his contemporaries in China, the Brahmadicas and Brahmarishis in India, the Mahábuds in Persia, Protogonus and Æon in Phoenicia, and Hephaestus and his subjects in Egypt. We do not assert that this was so; it is enough for our purpose that it was not im possible that it should be so: and as it appeared to us that an arrangement of this nature was necessary to the simultaneous peopling of the whole earth, and as the evidence of such simultaneous peopling is conclusively overwhelming, we have not refused to receive the only narrations of events bearing on the subject that have come down to us. Since the system of the Genesis will not tide us over the difficulty before us, it would have been simply absurd to reject those other systems and traditions which enable us to do so.

In respect to the second epoch-that of the deluge—we have fully expressed our views already, especially in the first chapter, explaining why we understand that the inundation was not universal, although there is no doubt that it was very general. In Tartary, Persia, and Phoenicia it did not occur at all; the higher regions of China, India, and Egypt were not altogether submerged; Greece has no knowledge except of that deluge which was caused by the Euxine bursting its way through the Bosphorus and precipitating itself into the Mediterranean, which may or may not have been the same deluge as the first one; and Rome does not know of any.

Of course the

destruction of life was very great wherever the inundation

was severe but we have seen that the human race was not depopulated by it; that the higher seats of the race in Central Asia were not at all approached by the waters; and that even the lower plains elsewhere, which were overflowed by them, did not lose all their population. The history of China speaks of damages done, but does not speak of any depopulation therefrom; India names a number of families that were saved; precisely similar evidence comes to us from Egypt; and the Bible history itself, which speaks of general depopulation, expressly refers only to the descendants of Adam and Eve, who had perhaps never extended beyond the limits of Chaldea.

Our first and primary conclusions, then, are, that there was an ancient state of things which necessarily rejects the ideas of Adam and Eve only having been created for peopling the earth, and of the whole population of the earth having been destroyed by the deluge with the sole exception of the family of Noah, which was saved to repeople it; that this first era terminated at about the age of Yáou, Kaiomurs, Tánauk, Satyavratá, and Orus; and that, vague and confused as the traditions respecting it may be, there is enough light to explain the general features of the problem, that provision was made by Providence simultaneously to people all or most of the great regions of the earth, and that they were originally so peopled without reference to each other.

The first migration of nations, we read, occurred from Babel a hundred years after the flood. This was perhaps absolutely necessary to people the surrounding countries which had suffered most from that visitation; but it is absurd to suppose that the family of Noah, with such increase as it had attained in the course of a century, was able to undertake the repeopling of the whole earth. According to our reading no such assistance from it was required, as all the old countries-China, India, Persia, Tartary, and Egypt-were already as well-peopled as Assyria herself; though it is of course possible, and not improbable, that, lured by the fertility of the other

countries, some of the colonising parties from Babel did proceed to them-not to repeople them, but to share in their possession with those by whom they were already peopled. A more general migration of nations commenced about three or four hundred years after from Tartary, where, undisturbed by the deluge, the human race had been expanding largely from the beginning of the world; and it was this migration-not that from Babel—which inaugurated the greatest changes all over the globe. Everything begins anew after the different nations of the earth are thus strengthened; forests are cut down, new hamlets erected, arts invented, societies formed, and laws enacted.

The primitive condition of the human race, both before the flood and for some years after it, exhibits two very opposite phases. Of most countries the traditions commence with a golden age of great innocence and happiness. The scriptures of the Jews and the Christians; the sacred books of the Chinese, Hindus, Persians, Assyrians, and Egyptians; all the records, in fact, which have been preserved among the most ancient nations, are replete with pictures of the happiness and virtue of the first inhabitants. But, on the other hand, the records of old Greece and Rome describe a state of original barbarism and disorder which it took many generations to root out. According to one account, the first ages everywhere were those of gods and heroes, while every succeeding age was one of comparative decline and debasement. The other, on the contrary, anticipating the Darwinian theory, depicts the first specimens of the human race as being scarcely distinguishable from the brute creation by which they were surrounded, and states that they did not attain decent shape and behaviour until after many generations. Perhaps neither of these representations should be rejected as untrue. The first of men were undeniably innocent and virtuous; but frailty and corruption made rapid advances among them, as traditions all over the world indicate, and led to those restraints and ordinances which society im