shall save much time and labour in beginning our inquiries from the last-mentioned country. To enter into the wide field of Asiatic research would be tedious to our readers, and answer no purpose, especially as all traditions on that subject are obscure at the present day. One of the most learned of our countrymen, who visited India, remarks— "The Egyptians, or Ethiopians (for they were clearly the same people,) had indubitably a common origin with the old natives of India, as the affinity of their languages and of their institutions, both religious and political, fully evince. The hieroglyphics of Egypt bear, indeed, a strong resemblance to the mythological sculptures and paintings of India."* The same writer adds: "We may reasonably conclude, that both Greeks and Hindus received a knowledge of the Zodiac and other information from an older nation, who first gave names to the luminaries of heaven, and from whom both Greeks and Hindus, as their similarity in language and religion fully evinces, had a common descent." He further states, "It is not the object of this essay to correct the historical errors, nor to defend the astronomers of India from the charge of gross ignorance in regard to the figure of the earth, and the distance of the heavenly bodies; I will only remark, that in our conversation with the Pandits, we must never confound the system of Jyautishicas or mathe * Sir William Jones's Discourses. matical astronomers with that of the Pauránicas or poetical fabulists, for to such a confusion alone must we impute the many mistakes of Europeans on the subject of Indian science. A venerable mathematician, now in his 80th year, visited me lately at Crishnanagar, and part of his discourse was so applicable to the inquiries which I was then making, that as soon as he left me I committed it to writing. The Pauránicas, he said, will tell you, that our earth is a plane figure studded with eight mountains, and surrounded by seven seas." strongly inclined to think," pursues Sir William, "that a connexion subsisted between the old idolatrous nations of Egypt, India, Greece, and Italy, long before they migrated to their respective settlements."* "I am The ancient Greeks have left to posterity imperishable records of their military achievements, and proofs of their intellectual elevation. Arts and arms, with them, flourished simultaneously; their architects, orators, poets, philosophers, and sculptors, still survive in their works, and give laws to modern students. Human genius shone with great Sir W. Jones's Works, edited by Lord Teignmouth." It appears that the circular arch was not known to the Greeks in the early period of their history, otherwise their copious language would not have wanted a name, properly Greek, by which it could be distinguished. The Greeks knew something of the pointed arch at an angle of 45°, but the semicircular arch adopted by the Romans in the erection of bridges and aqueducts, was not known by them. lustre in Greece, bequeathing rich evidences to succeeding generations. Its inextinguishable light, after streaming faintly through the middle ages, burst again into wide effulgence when man once more emerged from barbarism. - Such is the immortality of genius; but genius, in a few individuals, does not, as we have already remarked, imply information and prosperity in a people. In considering the state of ancient civilisation, let us not be tempted, by the intellectual glories of Greece, to form rash conclusions, and imagine that society had reached the most perfect state of which it is capable-that the science of government was thoroughly understood that virtue characterised the people-or that all the requisites for the formation of civilisation, or of public opinion, might be found in the Hellenic states. In fact, this was not the case. In the Grecian republics, considerable activity and enterprise existed. They had a middle class, and a small lower class (the manual labour being performed by slaves); and there were few exceptions to the above ranks. Although the activity and intelligence of the Greeks, their proficiency in arts, and their great superiority over the barbarous nations by which they were surrounded, enabled them to form a middle class, yet this advance in social life was insufficient. The requisites for civilisation, as we have already defined them, were undeveloped; moral principle, founded on true religious faith, did not exist, -nor were the means of circulating information adequate to the want.* Like the various populations of Asia, the Hellenic race advanced to a certain point or limit, and could advance no farther. "The sensual worship of nature, the basis of all heathenism, must have been very prejudicial to Greek morals. It gave rise to great corruption even in the more simple period of society: this already-prevalent corruption must have increased to a frightful extent in the general degradation of the state. † Innumerable examples, afforded by the conduct of the Greeks in former days, abundantly prove their sanguinary barbarism, and total deficiency in moral principle. The massacre, in cold blood, of four thousand Athenians, by the Spartans, in the Hellespont; the reduction of many cities to an abject state of slavery by the Athenians; the extermination of the inhabitants of Melos and of the citizens of Hysia §; the slaughter of a thousand Mitylenians; the cruelties at Skione, Ægina, and Cythera; the precipitating neutral merchants or travellers into pits; the atrocities perpetrated in the civil war at Miletos, where the Gergethes, having beaten the townspeople, seized their child As instances of want of facility of communication, Cicero says, that a messenger from Rome to Cilicia was forty-seven days on his journey. (Epist. ad Att., lib. v. ep. 19.) From Rome to the south of Spain required forty days.- Cicero, Epist. ad Fam., lib. x. p. 33. † Schlegel's Phil. of Hist., vol. i. p. 338. Thucy., iii. 70. § Id. v. 83. Thucy. ren, and threw them under the feet of oxen in their stalls to be destroyed; or the retaliation of the inhabitants, who, on being victorious in their turn, took all their prisoners, men, women, and children, covered them with pitch, and burnt them alive*; the annual massacre of the Helots, and the treachery of withdrawing the suppliants from their sanctuary and coolly butchering them, all these acts bear evidence of Grecian barbarism, and of the absence of all moral principle. Let us even look a little further into the habits of Hellenic society. Neither war nor piracy was sufficient to supply the vast multitude of slaves whom the Greeks considered it necessary to retain. A race of kidnappers sprang up, who, as pirates, roamed about the shores of the Mediterranean, capturing solitary or unprotected individuals. † Nothing could be more atrocious than the cruelties practised on these defenceless beings. The licentiousness of Greek women was universally notorious, and admitted by their own people in the days of Socrates. § The conduct of the Greeks in their wars, and of the Spartans, par *Heracl. Pont. ap. Athen., xii. 26. † Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece, St. John, vol. iii. P. 6. Pignor. de Servis, p. 5. Feith, Antiq. Hom., ii. 20. § Plat. de Legg., t. vii. p. 204. |