^^0 Mil lu titc ©Itu of 2Jcm ^Jovli gibritriij TWELVE LECTURES ON PRIMITIVE CIVILIZATIONS. >¥^ TWELVE LECTURES PRIMITIVE CIVILIZATIONS THEIR PHYSICAL CONDITIONS. 'delivered at the ALEXANDRA COLLEGE) JOHN P. MAHAFFY, A.M., FELLOW AND TUTOR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. CO J.. COLL. 1 ^IKIjuAja 1. X Goethe. N YORK LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. MDCCCLXIX. DUBLIN : rRINTED BY PORTEOUS AND GIBBS, WICK LOW STREET. ;5-- 1 L TO MY WIFE I gebitat* THESE RECREATIONS OF OUR LEISURE HOURS. 11887 .\ CORRIGENDA. Page 1^ for 1207, read 1307. Page Wj^for Solymic, read Solymi. Page 141, y^r Dadalus, read Daedalus. Page 263, for Geirestein, read Geierstein. Page 264, I had forgotten the struggle of Schamyl with the Russians. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Preface PAGE xiii LECTURE I. Introductory. — Difficulties of History — Permanent and variable elements — Examples of permanence — Science of Anthropology — Race and Language — Progress ...... r LECTURE II. Egypt. — Its stationary civilization — Its antiquity — De- tails of old Egyptian life — Their religion — Physical features — The Nile — Consequences . . 23 LECTURE III. Egypt — Mesopotamia. — Diffusion of knowledge in Egypt — Hieroglyphics — Effects of heat on food — Of cheap food on civilization — Despotism — Physical features of Mesopotamia — Cuneiform writing — Sculp- ture — Contrast with Egypt . . -45 LECTURE IV. Mesopotamia. — Origin of writing — The alphabet — Commerce and manners — Effect of climate on indus- try — Contrast of the East and Europe — High and low wages — Slavery in Egypt . . .66 X Table of Contents. LECTURE V. The Semites —Arabia.— Unity of the race — Their re- ligion —morals— philosophy— art — politics— Physi- cal features— Sabaea — Want of commercial enterprise 9 1 LECTURE VI. The Semites — Palestine and Phcenicia. — The Hebrews — Their religion — politics— Dean Stanley on the features of the country — The Canaanites — The Philistines — The Mediterranean — Tyre and Sidon — Their religion— commerce— colonies — Mi- nos — Cadmus — Manufactures — Idea of a commercial empire ,...•• 118 LECTURE VIL The Semites — Phcenician Commerce. — Tyre — Hiram and Solomon — Spanish commerce — Immense variety of Phoenician imports — Value of money in Palestine — Mines — Timber of Lebanon — Ships — Carthage— Hannibal and the Romans — Shopkeeping politics . . . . ■ -149 LECTURE VIIL Asia Minor and Greece. — The Carians — The Ly- cians — Their tombs— The Phrygians — Their music —The Greeks — Unity of Asia Minor and Greece — Their climate — Geographical peculiarities of Greece —Their consequences— The Greeks not a primitive people . . . • • .176 CHAPTER IX. The Greeks— Homeric Society.— Their language— primitiveness— Traces of older history— The shield of Achilles— Analysis of the pictures— Hospitality- Humanity — Comparison with the Malays . .201 Table of Co?ite?7ts. xi CHAPTER X. Forests. — Damp and dry forests — Forest gods — Forest preservation by the Germans— Game laws — Descrip- tion of the German forest tribes — Low condition of primitive man ..... 223 CHAPTER XI. Mountains. — Importance of their direction — Arme- nian Mountains — Alps — Gloom of the peasantry — Mr. Ruskin's explanation — Political effects — Beauty 246 LECTURE XII. Methods of Colonization. — Great examples in America — First method in California — Its history — .Second method at Utah — Its history — Summary — Permanent effects of race — Fixed types of counte- nance — Geography as an aid — as a hindrance — Ver- dict of Physiology — Results . . . 266 PREFACE HE learned reader will not find anything very new in this volume. The facts adduced have been borrowed from the best and most well-known authorities,, and have not even been distorted to suit any peculiar theory. Anyone familiar with ancient history will not fail to recognize the sources of the author-'s information. But the ordinary reader^ who is not versed in French and in German^ as well as Greek and Latin authors, and who has not devoted much time to the consideration of the subject, will be able to obtain, within a short compass, some idea of the empires and the man- ners of ancient days. He will not find a list of dynasties and dates, nor will he be troubled with chronological tables ; he will not obtain an apercu of the whole ancient world. He will rather find a few epochs, and a few countries, brought before him at their most brilliant periods, and treated with a view to understanding their character and xiv Preface. their culture. He will learn a little History, as contrasted with compendiums of history, and may perhaps be stimulated into prosecuting its study for himself. The following lectures were delivered in the hope of attaining this end. The author was invited to instruct a class at the Alexandra Col- lege, in Political Geography and Ethnology ; but he found it impossible to discuss the effects of climate or of race on History, without pre-sup- posing an acquaintance with the inner life of ancient nations, not to be found in school-books. He saw himself face to face with a difficulty often encountered in his University teaching, that of explaining what Ancient History really is, to those who thought they had learned it, or learned to hate it, from the ordinary handbooks. There is no greater obstacle to the true study of History than these compendiums, which issue in swarms from the press. Not to speak of inac- curacies, they train the youthful mind to take statements upon trust, without reasons assigned, or consequences adduced. By implying that a series of barren facts and dates are all that we can learn about the lives of the ancients, they have induced a very general belief among young people, that History is a dry and uninteresting study. In the same way, many boys have been taught to believe that they hated Mathematics, Preface. xv by being forced to learn Euclid's Elements by heart for months. In order to meet this difficulty, it seemed ad- visable to commence the course with a series of sketches of ancient civilizations, interweaving the effects of climate and of race at suitable intervals. These sketches, at the desire of the class, ulti- mately became the chief subject of the lectures. Intended originally as a means, they insensibly became an end. They do not profess to be ade- quate, as a course of instruction on the subject, but were intended to act as an incentive to the minds of a highly intelligent and zealous class. They are rather offered as stimulant, than as nutriment, and were written from week to week during moments of spare time. Had they even been the offspring of complete leisure, the learned reader, who knows the complexity and difficulty of so great a subject, will be ready to excuse their many imperfections, and the inconsistencies into which the author may have been betrayed. The volume is, however, published at the desire of several very competent judges, who heard some of the lectures, and approved of their scope and design. And yet the fact that the author is responsible, not merely for himself, but to some extent for the institution whose teaching he brings before the public — this fact has naturally made him xvi Preface. hesitate. The Alexandra College^ founded under the usual amount of disfavour and criticism^ that meet all attempts to raise the gentler sex in this country, has succeeded very rapidly and com- pletely in gaining the confidence and the respect of the higher classes in Dublin, and even of English critics. It has done so, not only on account of the efficiency of its management, but because it never aimed at unattainable objects. No more is intended than to make girls better sisters, and wives, and mothers, than they were heretofore. Thev learn to understand something about the more serious subjects which are dis- cussed among men in general society. They learn to know what it is to be properly taught, and to practise accurately such things as arithmetic, and the speaking and writing of foreign languages. If they are unable hereafter to teach their children themselves, they will at least know whether they are being properly taught, and they will take an interest in seeing it done. They learn, by a very carefully restricted competition, whether they are indeed as superior to their fellows as they ima- gine themselves to be. Above all, they learn to take an interest in general literature, and to raise their minds above the ordinary novels and perio- dicals of the day. If they show a desire to excel, they can go a great deal farther. But the peculiarity of the Preface, xvii Institution is this, that, for a very moderate fee, they can obtain sound teaching on all the sub- jects they require, from men of education, without leaving its precincts. The lectures in the College, apart from their subjects, naturally fall into two great classes, as has already been hinted. Some of them are chiefly instructive, others merely suggestive.* If the reader is desirous of seeing an example of the instructive lectures, he cannot do better than read Mr. Richey^s ^^ Lectures on the History of Ire- land,^^ where he will find, perhaps for the first time, the true principles of that history developed and illustrated. Suggestive they are also, as all philosophical teaching must ever be. But the suggestion is subordinate to the instruction. The following lectures are an attempt on the other side, and endeavour to make the instruction secondary to the suggestion. If this were done frequently, there can be no doubt that serious disadvantages would arise. At times, however, it is necessary to relieve students by laying aside the elements, and showing them the results to which their study will lead, and the fruits which * In the University of Dublin, we distinguish these classes by calling the former lectures, the latter prelectiojis. The lec- ture admits of interruption, and of question and answer ; the prelection, practically, does not. The distinction has, however, not been generally adopted. xviii Preface. they may reap by their long labour. In History especially^ this has not been done often enough. With regard to the tone of this book^ some good people^ whose views as to the early history of the world are very clear and definite, may be surprised, and perhaps offended, that the author does not express himself more dogmatically. But his object throughout has been to avoid this very feature, even in touching upon subjects like the history of the Hebrews, where dogmatism is generally considered not only excusable, but praiseworthy. Scripture and Church History being both taught by other professors in the Alexandra College, it was thought more useful to cite the ancient documents of the Hebrews simply as precious historical evidence, and to draw from them the conclusions which they war- rant merely as such. Many young people have the historical character of the Old Testament completely hidden from them, by being taught to read it only from a spiritual point of view. It is to such people, if they have historical tastes, a book of new and strange interest, when it is examined like any other book, from a purely secular aspect. There is no reason why this latter aspect should be the least inconsistent with the reverence due to the Scriptures, as the result of Divine inspiration. The reader will remember, that although no Preface. xix references have been inserted^ as the work is adapted for those who are not likely to verify them^ yet there is not a single fact stated throughout the volume without the best autho- rity. Among the ancients^ Homer, Herodotus, and Thucydides have been carefully consulted. Among the moderns, the great work of Duncker, those of Renan, of G. Curtius, of Movers, of T, Mommsen, of Waitz, have been freely used, and at times even transcribed. For example, the sketch of Celtic character in the first Lecture is borrowed from Mommsen^s ^'^ History of Rome.^^ Many French authors, of less importance, have also been placed under contribution. This enu- meration is necessary in common honesty, and will be sufficient to guide the curious student to sources of larger information. He will also find a full indication of the subjects treated, at the head of each page. Trinity College, Dublin, October, l86q. -i^ \ YORK J INTRODUCTG-R^r HE researches of learned men may fairly be divided, at least for our present purpose, into the study of external nature, and the study of man. The former is generally called exact science, the latter the science of history. And among the many contrasts which are observable in these two pursuits, none is more remarkable than this : that in general, the more closely you examine an object of Nature, the greater are the results you will discover, and the more complete and marvellous will that Nature appear. She, indeed, will tolerate the most minute inspection, the severest criticism. In History, on the contrary, it but too often happens, that when we come to examine closely what had at first appeared true and curious, objects become hazy and vanish into mist; and not only does the inquirer feel himself disappointed in all his labour, and in all his hopes of arriving at solid results, but he finds that his critical researches have shattered the fondest beliefs, and the most beautiful pictures of his child- hood; and he has to content himself with the scanty B 2 The Legend of William Tell, reward of having stripped his mind of some dear and cherished error, though there is nothing but a melan- choly blank, with deep marks of erasure, to supply its place. I do not here wish to cite disputed examples, and I desire especially to avoid the application of this criticism to Scripture history. But let us turn to the history of the middle ages. There is, perhaps, no hero who has occupied a nobler position in the beliefs of the middle ages than the celebrated William Tell. Every patriot has been fired by his example, and the very history of his nation has been moulded by the behef in his great- ness. Yet, when we come to examine the details of his life, the most striking and pathetic event handed down to us cannot be submitted to critical tests. The mortal agony of the father, when he was com- pelled to shoot the apple from his son's head — this striking scene in the play of Schiller, has only been attached to the great national hero by subsequent romancers. Though the facts are supposed to have happened in 1207, a.d., no mention of this story ap- pears before the year 1499 ; and when we find that the same story has been told of other heroes among other Indo-European nations ages before the time of William Tell, we are forced to the conclusion, that this is but one more instance of the well-known ten- dency in the human mind, of fitting a good story to the most suitable existing character that can be found. This tendency is by no means confined to barbarous or primitive ages ; you may find it existing in the present day before your eyes. The very same aiid of the Siege of Troy. 3 good stories which were attached to the celebrated old Vice-Provost of Trinity College, known as Jacky Barrett, in our parents' time, were, in my college days, transferred, at least in part, to Dr. Wall, the patriarch of the period ; and even now these stories are floating about, waiting for another name, suffi- ciently venerable or eccentric, to which they will doubtless attach themselves, and start into new exist- ence. You may remember, in the same way, that a few years ago every good joke, however originated, used, in Dublin, to attach itself to the late Arch- bishop. I venture to predict, that whenever there arises another man of equally high position, and of equally jocular disposition, these same stories will take refuge under his wing, and flourish beneath the shadow of his name.* But though critical history has stripped William Tell of some of his most romantic adventures, the real existence of that hero has not been subjected to question. There are other cases where not merely a part, but the whole of a great legendary story has been destroyed by its searching fire. The great epic of the Siege of Troy, the mighty pageant of chiefs and ladies that delights us as we read the pages of Homer, all has vanished into shadow and illusion before the light of historical inquiry. Helen, we are * This principle, called the recurrence of myths, can be traced through many instances in ancient history. The story of a royal infant being suckled by a wolf, and the appearance of Castor and Pollux at or after great battles, are among those often repeated. 4 Historical Scepticism. now told, is the dawn, whom the Trojans, the powers of night, have stolen away, and Achilles is the sun, who brings her back from the east. This is to be our substitute for the wrath of the swift-footed son of Peleus, and its mighty consequences ! So King Arthur and his Table Round, the perfection of purity and chivalry, the model of many a knight, the ideal of many a king — all this has been overthrown by the same searching and destructive process. But, if possible, a sadder result than these is in- duced by the suspicious habit of mind with which we have now come to regard legends, even when their truth has not been openly assailed or questioned. When a good old story is proved false, or, at least, unfounded, it is quite fair and truthful to abandon it, dear though it be ; but, owing to the constant dis- appearance of these legends under the crucible of critical research, many vain and idle persons get a sort of general idea that nothing old or picturesque is to be trusted ; and so we have among us a race of cold sneering critics, whose sole faith consists in ridiculing that of others. If this school of thought becomes paramount — a danger now really to be apprehended — I believe that many of the simple and honest feelings of our nature will be blighted, and that our civilization will suffer seriously ; above all, the proper education of children will become more and more difficult, and the cultivation of their ima- ginations well nigh impossible. The discovery of truth ought, indeed, to be our only object; but I know no instance where we find Nature of History. 5 it so hard to reconcile to ourselves. The great deeds, as we believed them to be, of ancient days, which wound themselves about us in childhood, and which fired our imagination in youth, must be laid aside for some dry skeleton of facts, and the history of the past, once so beautiful, fades into unsubstantial nothing : " Like that long-buried body of the king, Found lying with his urns and ornaments, Which, at a touch of light, an air of heaven, Slipt into ashes, and was found no more." But, despite of these painful results, what study is so engrossing as that of the history of man ? Vv'hat can there be to us on this globe so interesting? The very uncertainty of the study has its delights. There is something strangely attractive in tracing out obscure and doubtful outlines, in striking out ingenious conjectures, in weighing opposed proba- bilities. There is, in fact, a certain excitement about the uncertain, which is absent from the cold demon- strations of positive science. And then, consider the wonderful variety of historical researches ; for by history, and the study of history, we do not mean the mere reading of a certain number of books which pro- fess to treat of certain periods, but a living, constant inquiry into the real state of man at the various epochs of his history. There are not only the lists of kings and high officers of state, and the details of alliance and intrigue amongst these personages; there are not merely the stories of battles and of sieges, and the articles of treaties and conventions, the de- 6 Permanent Elemejits. velopment of their constitution, and the abstracts of their laws ; some of these are, indeed, most impor- tant portions of a nation's history, and how many his- torians have thought it to be nothing else ! But far more intricate and interesting details are yet to be added. There is the literature of a nation, the ex- pression which its mind and character have found through the lips of its most gifted members. And next to the monuments of its literature come those of its art, in which its sense of truth and beauty have been symbolized and perpetuated. Then there is the moral and religious development of a nation — its creed of dogmas, and its code of honour. All these subjects form each of them an element in the life of a nation, and must be taken into account if we would understand its history. r'" But all these things wax and wane; they come with a nation's youth, and vanish with its age ; and they are not original or fixed features in a nation's cha- racter, but depend upon remoter and more recondite causes. These causes are the permanent features in history, the elements which remain the same while all else changes. The principal of these permanent causes are geographical position, race, and language, which lie at the basis of all history, and w^hich, as silent, ever-present causes, mould events and modify \ results. All these subjects, the varying and the permanent, must be worked in together — all these separate threads connected in one great web — before we can say that we have honestly and thoroughly considered The Celtic Character. 7 the history of a nation. But who can undertake to teach all these things together? Who can attempt to weave this precious cloth of gold, this rich and wondrous tapestry ? For my part, I am only going to spin two or three of the threads for you ; I am only going to supply you with a fraction of the mate- rials for your history. But, as in weaving, there are upright threads first to be fixed, across which you ply the shuttle with its woof; so there are in history (as I have said) permanent, perpetual agents — not, perhaps, prominent in ordinary histories, just because they are perpetually present, and, therefore, unob- served, but yet vital in the decyphering of human annals. And not only do these features underlie and interpenetrate all present history, but, as we recede in time, they come out in ever stronger relief These perpetual features are, I repeat it, race and language, which are themselves modified by physical conditions of soil and climate. Absolutely perpe- tual, perhaps, they are not; and some philosophers think that race is a mere consequence of food and cli- mate; but yet, comparatively speaking, we may call them everlasting. For example, a certain type of peo- ple called Celts have shown indubitable and marked peculiarities from the days of Julius Caesar to the present ; so much so, that a brilliant description of the Gauls, by a great living German historian, miglu pass for an account of the present Irish peasantry. We give his own words : — " Every page of Celtic history confirms the severe 8 The Celtic Character. saying of one of the few Romans who had the judg- ment not to despise the so-called barbarians— that the Celts boldly challenge danger while future, but lose their courage before its presence. In the mighty vortex of the world's history, which inexorably crushes all peoples that are not as hard and as flexible as steel, such a nation could not permanently maintain itself; witb-'reason, the Celts of the continent suffered the same fate at the hands of the Romans as their kinsmen in Ireland suffer down to our own day at the hands of the Saxons — the fate of becoming merged as a leaven of future development in a poli- tically superior nationality. On the eve of parting from this remarkable nation, we may be allowed to call attention to the fact, that in the accounts of the ancients as to the Celts on the Loire and Seine, we find almost every one of the characteristic traits which we are accustomed to recognize as marking the Irish. Every feature reappears : the laziness in the culture of the fields ; the delight in tippling and brawling ; the ostentation; the language full of comparisons and hyperboles, of allusions and quaint turns ; the droll humour ; the hearty delight in singing and re- citing the deeds of past ages, and the most decided talent for rhetoric and poetry; the curiosity — no trader was allowed to pass before he had told in the open street what he knew, or did not know, in the shape of news — and the extravagant credulity which acted on such accounts; for which reason, in the better regulated cantons, travellers were prohibited, on pain of severe punishment, from communicating The Celtic Character. g unauthenticated reports to others than the public magistrates; the childUke piety, which sees in the priest a father, and asks him for advice in all things; the unsurpassed fervour of national feeling, and the closeness with which those who are fellow-country- men cling together almost like one family in opposi- tion to the stranger ; the inclination to rise in revolt under the first chance leader that presents himself, and to form bands ; but, at the same time, the utter incapacity to preserve a self-rehant courage equally remote from presumption and from pusillanimity — to perceive the right time for waiting and for striking — to attain, or even barely to tolerate any organization, any sort of fixed military or political discipline. It is, and remains, at all times and places, the same in- dolent and poetical, irresolute and fervid, inquisitive, credulous, amiable, clever, but — in a political point of view — thoroughly useless nation; and, therefore, its fate has been always and everywhere the same." In the scanty remnants, too, of the Gallic language we can find the fuller forms from which the present Celtic tongues have been derived and corrupted. But these Celts have lived under hard masters, in divers countries, and in intercourse mth many other nations. Take an instance of an undisturbed people, and see the effects of race, how permanent they are. Take the Arabs, who belong to one of the most ob- stinately marked races in the world, and who have occupied an unconquerable and inhospitable country, an ocean of sand. Since the time of Abraham, these lo The Berber Language. nomad tribes have altered neither their dress, their manners, nor their language. But there are far more astonishing examples of the permanence of language. On the north coast of Africa there dwelt, from, time immemorial, the Berbers, an African race who have given their name to Bar- bary. Their language is one of the most ancient for- mation, and apparently akin to the old Egyptian alone of all civilised tongues. Seven or eight centuries before Christ, these people were conquered by the Phoenicians, who built there many great cities, who civiHsed and cultivated the country, and taught them a new language. For six centuries these Phoenicians maintained a brilliant and prosperous empire am.ong the Berbers, till the end of the ill-omened Punic Wars, when Carthage sank in ashes before the iron strength of Rome. Then began a like Roman occu- pation for six more centuries; and not only was the province of Africa a part of the Roman Empire, but it became in time the chief glory and centre of Latin Christianity. "Africa," says Dean Milman, "not Rome, was the parent of Latin Christianity;" and the great names of Tertullian, Augustine, and Cyprian, show the vigour of the Roman tongue and the Christian Church in the land of the Berbers. The Empire of the West, in its turn, decayed ; then came the Arabs, and founded, for the third time, a kingdom of strangers on these fruitful coasts ; and they, too, swayed their six centuries, and passed away. All these conquerors made themselves a home among the Berbers ; they taught them their laws, their arts, Permanent Elements. 1 1 and compelled them to use their languages. But in one thing they failed ; neither the wily Phcenician, nor the inexorable Roman, nor the fierce, intolerant Arab, was able to make them forget the tongue of their fathers, and they still retain the ancient lan- guage with which their ancestors addressed the first Phoenician traders who came as strangers to their coasts six and twenty centuries ago. These features, then, have remained the same through lapse of time, and change of climate, and progress in civilization, and so may be called, com- paratively at least, permanent When, therefore, you have studied and mastered all that can be known on these subjects, you have laid a basis in your minds of the history, not of this nation or of that, but of all nations ; so that when you see such sciences as anthro- pology and comparative philology beginning to occupy the attention of scholars, you will understand that such sciences are a general introduction to all history, both ancient and modern — and a necessary introduction, too, if you want really to master the characters of na- tions, and their deepest feelings. The utility, there- fore, of this subject cannot be overrated. But I am more disposed to press upon you the extraordinary interest attached to it ; for, from its very conditions, the subject forces us to go back to the earliest ages of the human race. It brings us in contact with the vague and the unknown. It endeavours to interpret and explain to us the meaning of those ancient rehcs which have been the wonder and the puzzle of centu- ries of men. We have to investigate remote and for- \) 1 2 Science of Anthropology. . gotten nations and their civilization, and to compare the habits and feeUngs of fifty centuries ago with our present culture. Nay more, we must strive to pierce through the veil that shrouds from us the origin of our race, and we come to consider epochs when civiliza- tion did not as yet exist, and when the inhabitants of the fairest portions of the globe lived after the manner of the lowest savages of the present day. And when I say like the most savage nations of the present day, this very comparison shows how wide are the sympa- thies and how diverse the studies of the true historian. In the older civilization of the Greeks and Romans, all outlying nations were regarded as unworthy of the consideration of the learned ; and though it often dawned upon these old Greeks and Romans that they themselves had arisen from some similar origin, it never occurred to them to look for their own primi- tive history among savages. To us, on the contrary, nothing has become of deeper interest than the most trivial superstition or custom among these primitive people. Historical inquirers* are now describing the private life of savages with a detail and an interest far deeper than that which attaches to our every-day life. And why? Because in the primitive conditions of the human race there is an astonishing parallelism, a marvel- lous recurrence of 'ideas and customs and habits, which can be accounted for by no intercourse, no * Such as Waitz, in his great Anthropology ; Wood, in his Natural History of Man; and Keyser, in his Private Life of the Old Northmen. Recurring Custojus. 13 admixture of blood. So greatly has a late inquirer been struck with this curious feature, that he declares himself in total despair. He had wished to find out manners and customs peculiar to certain savage races ; and, however curious, however trivial, how- ever local these habits, he found them reproduced in the farthest corners of the globe, and under the most opposite conditions. It might be accounted for by necessity, that the , very same description of lake dwellings, of which the remains are found so frequently in Ireland and in Switzerland, built perhaps six or seven thousand years ago, are also described by Herodotus as being used in his day in Thrace, in the fifth century e.g., and that these very same lake dwellings are now being built and inhabited by the savages of New Guinea. Men may be disposed to account for similar myths and traditions about spirits and invisible powers by an original revelation. The very conditions of savage-/' life may show the archetype of those curious sym- bolical ceremonies in all primitive nations, whereby a bride is carried forcibly from the house of her parents, and treated as the booty of the bridegroom. But why should little trivial every-day habits be the same? AVhy should the most random fancies be ever of the same type ? • There was probably a period when this uniformity j. ; extended over the whole habitable world. There /i may have been a day when there could not be found i' / two distinct races in the same region ; and many are disposed to look upon the first step in pre-historic ^ 14 Pa-maiience of Races. history as of this character. But still I do not include food and climate among the permanent elements of history ; and I think the philosophers who look upon race as a consequence derived from them, seem to me to ignore that the evidence of history, as far as it goes, is against them. It is cer- tain that in early times food and climate had the greatest possible influence in promoting wealth and civilization — that they have helped and improved races; but I know no proof or evidence that they have created races. On the oldest Eg}'ptian monu- ments we see in many pictures the negro type just as distinct and as opposed to the Semitic as it now,» is, and we know these various and widely diverse races to have lived in climates very similar, if not the same. If, then, climate did ever produce such a dif- ference as that between Arab and Hottentot, it can only have been done in some most enormous ante- historic period, perhaps millions of years in duration. So much for the influence of food and climate in early times, when they were the necessary condi- tions, though not the causes, of civilization. But in the present day their influence has greatly waned. The power of man has overriden and almost anni- hilated it ; so that while race and language still separate men almost as much as before, food and climate are modified by most men, so as to become the servants, not the masters, of the human race. But there is no scientific proof, even supposing differ- ences of climate annihilated, that^^en were ever of one family or language over the whole earth. On the Development of Races. 1 5 contrary, at its first origin, we must rather believe language to have been immensely diverse, if it existed at all — differing in every tribe, in every family. Then came a day when certain tribes got the upper hand — at first, chance aggregates of indi- viduals; but presently impressing their type upon those around them, and so languages first became de- fined. From that day to the present, race and language have run side by side, as distinctive features whereby to separate the confused peoples of the globe. But at first it seems as if all those who had spoken one language and belonged to one race had been en- dowed with like gifts and like capacities. The primitive stock of words common to all the Indo- European languages shows a clear, consistent picture of a simple shepherd race, in which no one could have foreseen the promise of such mighty develop- ments. Then comes a later period, and that upon the threshold of history, when sections of a race break off from their brethren into higher paths, and carve out for themselves a name and future of their own. So it was that, four or five thousand years ago, a portion of the Semitic race developed that wondrous civilization in the great plain of Mesopotamia, of which the Tower of Babel was the highest monu- ment and the type. So it was that that strange and solemn people, the ancient Egyptians, whose very countenances speak that quiet majesty which awxs us in their sphinxes, and that repose which still breathes from their sitting giants in the desert — these ancient ? 1 6 Deciphering of Inscriptions, Egyptians also created for themselves a culture of which traces have bidden defiance to the ravages of time. And, remember, that but for these remains, the accounts given us of such ancient civilizations by the Greek historians would have seemed fabulous and unreal. The book of history, like all other books which are exposed to the ruthless hand of time, has indeed lost its title-page, and the earlier leaves of its introduction are sadly torn and defaced; these great monuments alone have preserved to us what had else been lost for ever. But now they speak with a clearness which was not vouchsafed to former generations. It is but within the recollection of the present generation that the interpretations of the cuneiform and hieroglyphic writing have been proved correct, and we can now decipher with cer- tainty what was a sealed book to the observers of two thousand years ago.'" * The hieroglyphics were deciphered by the discovery of inscriptions with Coptic and Greek translations appended to them. That lately discovered at Canopus by Dr. Lepsius fully corroborates the previous theories on the subject. The cuneiform inscriptions were only read in consequence of a happy guess, I believe, of Grotefend's ; for neither the language, thealphabet, nor the sense of the writing was at first known. In various parts, however, of some of the excavated palaces, various inscriptions were observed, identical in form, with the exception of one group of letters which varied in each. It was conjectured that these inscriptions commemorated, in some stereotyped formula, the building of the separate wings of the palace by different kings ; and that therefore, the changing characters must repre- sent the names of these kings. On farther examination, it was Ptohkms to be Discussed. 1 7 But how do all these things bear upon my sub- ject? What have they to say to the permanent elements of history? Race, language, and physical conditions are the subjects of our investigation. They are the permanent elements of history. The distinctions both of race and of language originated far back in the cradle of the world's life. We must, then, investigate all that remains of the history of man, before that history came to be written — the testimony of sculptured stone, and lettered brick, and painted obelisk. We must picture to ourselves all that can be known of early civilization, in order to ascertain what is really the origin of these marked and now indelible distinctions of race. Is race the » consequence of food and climate, or is it an original I difference? When this has been settled, we must proceed to the similar question of language. Was it originally one or different ? How are the present inhabitants of the globe connected in this respect ? And when these questions are answered, you will see how curiously the one throws light upon the other. It even remains for us to endeavour to reach farther back, and to attempt the obscure question of the age and original condition of man upon the earth. I feel as deeply as anyone can, how comprehensive found that the letters in the names of various Persian kings corresponded in order and number with these unknown and varying groups. On this basis the alphabet was constructed, the language analysed, and the inscriptions read. The histor)- 3f this discovery is one of the most remarkable in modern imes. 1 8 Benefits of Education. and how ambitious is this undertaking, and how httle competent I am to cope with its difficulties. We must raise many questions, and find but here and there an answer. And yet if you can but understand these problems, and obtain for yourselves an interest in them, a great object will be gained. The best and the noblest use you can make of this Institution is not to come here and gather in a store of facts — that you can do anywhere and at any time. You should rather seek to apprehend the scope, and nature, of those great inquiries which have occupied, and by occupying, have ennobled, the minds of men. It is by acquiring a sympathy with these absorbing pur- suits that you will raise your lives to a higher level than the atmosphere of petty household cares, or of the frivolous amusements of ordinary society. Nay more, it is by this sympathy that you will fit your- selves for the highest and noblest of duties — the duty of educating those around you. I say, the noblest of duties, for its effects reach far beyond your sphere and your surroundings, and may penetrate even into the distant future. Every individual w^ho helps honestly in the enlightenment and the educa- tion of the race, contributes his or her share to make the world better, and to ennoble its coming history : so that when later generations come to survey with gra- titude and with wonder the great annals of human pro- gress, they will honour and respect all these nameless and undistinguishable, but not forgotten, educators. For there is, I firmly believe, a real progres i in the affairs of men; and this is the greatest and tl / I Apparent Retrogression. 19 most permanent element in history. Should the day come when the distinctions of race and language vanish, they will be the noblest and perhaps the last victims at the altar of Progress. Surely the human race has been and is advancing. I know that the very subjects we have discussed to-day have led many to doubt it. The mighty kings of Egypt and of Babylon thought their civilization peraianent, and built great monuments wherewith they desired to equal the glory of far-removed posterity. And yet all this greatness had no power to withstand dis- integration. The sand of the desert has not been able to cover their material structures, but the darkest ignorance has long since crushed the last spark of cultivation in the minds of their people. The in- intellectual and even moral splendour of Greece and Rome seemed destined at one time to leaven the whole world, and raise it to a higher stage; and yet the day came, when the grasp of civilization was again relaxed in death, and knowledge found her tomb in the dark ages. Who knows whether even the boasted culture of the present time has not within itself also the seeds of decay, whether the poison of communism or of infidelity will not infect its system, and cause it some day to become paralyzed or to collapse? But even were the great capitals of Europe to crumble into dust, and were but a faint echo of their civilization to reach succeeding centuries- were the remains of our cities to become as strange and obsolete as are to us the palaces of Thebes 2 o Natuj-e of Historical Progress. and of Nineveh, yet still should I believe in human progress, still should I hope for the great future of the race. We are, indeed, placed, like children, a few moments upon the shore of time; we see waves dashing in and again retiring, and we can at first see no system in their motions. Civilizations have flou- rished and decayed — great waves of ignorance have covered the earth, but have again receded ; and yet, though our few thousand years of observation are but as a moment in the history of man, even in that moment we can see signs, upon the whole, of a steady advance. Kingdoms have been gained, and again lost, but still the world never returns again to its former state. Every succeeding civilization seems sadder with the memories of the past, and soberer with the examples of former failures. Yet even could our momentary survey of the great tide of human history show us no certain progress — even should we be compelled to lay aside with disap- pointment the records of the past, and exclaim : We see here change, but no advance— even then would the believer in a benevolent Providence not waver in his faith ; but gathering into his view that great harmony of discords which we call the world, would exclaim with confidence : All these perfections and these marrings, all this pleasure and this pain, all these hopes and these perplexities — all this must have been created for some purpose, and that pur- pose must be good ! The idea of progress is not, indeed, like race and language, coeval with the origin of man, nor can it Hopefulness of oiir Civilization. 21 be even traced very far back in human history. But, like the human soul, which may start into existence early or late, but when it has once received life, will endure till time shall be no more ; so the great idea of human progress, begotten by Christianity, nursed and fostered in mediaeval Europe, has had indeed an historical beginning, but will never have an end. This it is which gives hope and vigour to our mo- dern civilization, and will at least save it from decay- ing through despair, as did the glories of Greece and Rome. Which of us would now deign to revert, as they did, to the earliest condition of the human race, and call that the golden age of men, when it was only their childishness and ignorance that could give them even the semblance of happiness and content- ment? Nay, so deeply are our minds imbued with this faith in Progress, that were we offered the con- dition of Adam and Eve in their garden, I think that we would not, I am sure that we ought not, accept it — so thoroughly have we adopted hope for the future, and abandoned regret for the past. This hope breathes in the philosophy and the litera- ture of all Europe, and even transpires in the utter- ances of pessimist preacher and surly satirist. But to the representative poet of our day, it has afforded the theme, I may say, of his noblest poem — the sub- ject of his noblest utterances : — "Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood. M7\ Teiinysotis Creed of Progress. " That nothing walks with aimless feet, That not one life shall be destroyed, Or cast as nibbish to the void. When God hath made the pile complete. ' ' Behold we know not anything, We can but trust that good shall fall At last— far off— at last, to all, And every winter change to spring. " LECTURE II. EGYPT. IT is remarkable that the countries which have in the earliest times developed a high civilization, have not been able to maintain it for more than a definite, and generally a small, number of centuries. If we seek now to re- visit the scenes where ancient history was enacted, where the greatest men lived, where the most thrill- ing events occurred, we must prepare ourselves to encounter barbarism and desolation. Where once there existed populous cities, smiling harvests, and great thoroughfares, we now find sand and deserts ; and the great monuments and weather-beaten re- mains of ancient times stand in solitude, as if mourn- ing over the glories of long departed years. But, as it were in anticipation of the coming ages of neglect and decay, it is remarkable that these early people exhausted themselves in piling up great testimonies of their glory and their power, which would surpass all that came after them in strength and durability, and give the lie to any sceptic who ventured to deny their ancient fame. 24 Waste of Labour. Such are the monuments of Assyria and of Eg}^pt. But while we stand with astonishment before the pyramids", before the sphynx, and before the winged bulls of the palaces of Babylon and Nineveh, we cannot but reflect upon the fearful waste of labour expended on these colossal structures ; and when we consult the ancient authorities upon the subject, we find that the Egyptian priests almost gloried in repeating how many thousands of lives had been lost in the building of each of these artificial moun- tains. We are led to believe, then, that the condi- tion of the lower classes was miserable in the extreme, and to suspect that this may have been an important cause of the gradual decay and ruin of these early civilizations. This is the first important point to which I call your attention. But farther, a careful survey of the monuments of Egypt and of Assyria, leads us to wonder that we cannot trace a more distinct progress and improvement in their art and in their civiliza- tion. There are indeed some paintings and carvings ruder than others, there are doubtless some points of improvement in the paintings of the catacombs of Thebes, as compared with the ornamentation of the pyramids ; but there is no distinct and regular pro- gress ; there is no evidence of gradual inventions — of epochs where new sciences have caused revolutions in society and in art. To the very last, the Egyptians moved the great masses of stone which they used for their buildings by brute force, and without any mechanical appliance but ropes and rollers. And Stationary Civilizations. 25 the origin and first rudiments of these civilizations are strangely obscure. They are indeed divided from us by so great a cloud of centuries, that it can hardly be expected that we should see them dis- tinctly; but were the civilization of Europe to be disclosed to some future generation, I think it would present a very different aspect. Apart from the con- trast between the practical tendency which our re- mains would exhibit, there would be marked stages, at which new inventions, or the birth of great men of genius, would alter and improve our sciences and our life. This is not the case in Egypt and Assyria, or at least very partially so, as far as I have been able to gather from a review of their various monuments as represented in the best authorities ; and I think the fact is naturally connected with what I observed just now — the miserable condition of the lower classes. It is the verdict of all history, that any country where the lower classes are altogether de- pressed, cannot maintain a high position in civiliza- tion. If the nobility or the higher classes form a society or caste, and exclude the poorer people from intermarriage, and from improvement generally, such privileged classes always decay, and lose their genius and their greatness. It is by the infusion of blood and of ideas from the lower classes, that the aristo- cracy, and with it the civilization of a people, are maintained. If you wish to have an example of this, contrast the aristocracy of England with that of Spain, once the greatest, and still the proudest, in Europe. Our 26 Effects of Caste Systems. higher classes are constantly recruited by the intro- duction of those whose ability or beauty has gained for them wealth and position, though often obscure in birth; and it is no uncommon thing for a mar- riage to take place between persons born in totally different spheres of life. Hence our nobility is still a living, growing, thinking power, and all the lower classes are stimulated by the hope of attaining the highest positions in the country by their own efforts. In Spain, on the contrary, the nobility scorn to admit any intruder within the pale ; their race is not refreshed by new blood or new ideas ; and this, toge- ther with a priestly dominion very similar in effect to the caste system in Egypt, has kept the lower classes ignorant and degraded, and has caused the higher classes to lose all their intellect and their energy. Now in Egypt there seems to have been a similar exclusive aristocracy, consisting of priests and of nobles ; and that they must have been exclusive, appears from the fact that they were castes. The warrior caste and the priestly caste had lands re- served for them, they had immunities from taxes, they were in every way privileged. The poorer classes, on the contrar)^, were so degraded and ne- glected, that in times of famine they were glad to sell their property, their labour, and their liberty to the king in return for food.* Hence they were compeUed to work themselves to death in building * A very simple and clear account is given of this proceed- ing in the narrative of Joseph's administration of Egypt, in the Book of Genesis. Position of the Kings. 27 up enormous and useless edifices to gratify the pride of the king and the priests. Their Hves and their labour were squandered in such a way as to show that they were thought of no value. Under such circumstances, it will not surprise you to hear that the kings of Egypt were oriental despots in the strictest sense of the word. They counted among the people as gods. They were heads of reli- gion as well as of state, and were obliged, in conse- quence, to undergo so fearfully irksome a discipline of life, in order to preserve their purity and dignity, that the intelligent Greek observers wonder how they could be persuaded to submit to it.* There was, of course, no such thing as any Parliament — any council of nobles, any discussion of public affairs. The whole country implicitly obeyed the one sovereign master. * Some of these regulations were simply hygienic. The Egyptians seem always to have had a great talent for medicine, as appears from allusions even in Homer. Every one was a doctor there, according to some of the Greeks, and could cure himself According to others, each disease had its special doctors — a very late and advanced feature in our own civiliza- tion. This fact speaks volumes for the Egyptian knowledge of the subject. "Thus," adds Herodotus, "the country swarms with medical practitioners ; some undertaking to cure diseases of the eye, others of the head, others again of the teeth, and some, those which are not local." Some of the mummies found at Thebes have their teeth stopped with gold. Pliny tells us they made post-moi'tem examinations, and also, that if the doctors deviated from the prescribed methods of treat- ment, the patient's death was counted as a capital crime. But they were allowed to alter the treatment under these con- ditions. 2S Antiquity of their Civilization. This, the common defect of all the Asiatic king- doms, was also the great bane of Egypt. Hence no one was concerned in improving or changing the existing state of things ; a dull quiet conservatism lay with its heavy lethargy upon all their policy; and so centuries passed away, and still they were found in the same state of civilization. But what was that civilization? I have been dwelling upon so many radical defects in their poli- tical arrangements, that you will perhaps imagine that their cultivation has been overrated. By no means. At an epoch when no other nation of the world had emerged from barbarism, these wonderful old Egyptians had learnt the arts of writing, sculp- ture, painting, architecture, the sciences of astronomy and mensuration, the manufacture of glass and pot- tery, as well as of linen and silk. The names of their months are found in monuments at least 2000 years before the Christian era. How much civiliza- tion does that imply?* Upon all these things we * A very curious fact proves conclusively the antiquity of the Egyptian Calendar. Their old year, consisting of 365 days, was a quarter of a day too short. Hence, in process of time, the feasts fixed for certain seasons fell in advance of the real season, according to the sun, and caused the priests great trouble, and the people great perplexity. We are told that in the year 1322, B.C., the increasing variation between the Egyptian and Solar year had reached the amount of 365 days, so bringing the feasts round to their proper seasons. As it required 1460 years to produce the result, the Calendar cannot have been fixed later than 2782 B.C. But this is not all. The hieroglyphic signs, and names, of the months then fixed as Evidence of Herodotus. 29 can speak with greater certainty than the first Greeks who visited and described the country. You should know, that our great ancient authority is Hero- dotus, the first, and perhaps the greatest, historian that ever Hved. He undertook about the year 450 B.C., to give a full account of the celebrated Persian wars, and among various interesting digres- sions, he gives us at length a visit he paid to Egypt, and describes its people and its monuments. He was ignorant of their language ; for the Greeks of that day did not condescend to learn the tongues of the barbarians, yet most of what Herodotus saw and heard is amply confirmed by the remaining monu- ments. Not only do we see from the beauty and finish of their structure, that the people who built them were a civihzed people, but the pictures w^hich we still find, especially in the tombs of Bersheh and Beni Hassan, fully corroborate this opinion. We there get a full view of the agriculture of Egypt more than two thousand years before Christ. Slaves and oxen are seen drawing ploughs, of which there seem to have been five varieties in use ; sheep and July, August, September, and October — the period of the in- undation — apply not to this phenomenon, but to the growing of the seed, which was sown in November : and so throughout the rest of the year. It is evident, then, that even in the year 2782, the Egyptian year had run four months in advance of the true time, the difference having been at first not observed. We must go back nearly to the year 3300 B.C., to account for the growth of this variation. If the Calendar Avas fixed so early as these facts prove, we can hardly conceive the civilization of Egypt as having commenced much after the year 4000 B.C. 30 Trades a?id Ma fiufacf tires. goats are employed in treading the seed into the ground, left soft and muddy by the retreating Nile. The corn, when cut, appears tied into sheaves, trodden by oxen, and carried in sacks to the granary. We see them loading flax on asses' backs, and gathering the fruits of the lotos, the fig-tree, and the vine. We see them pressing out the grapes, pouring the juice into vessels, and storing it in cellars. Others are water- ing their fields, planting gardens, cultivating onions. We see the steward, accompanied by his clerks, super- intending ; we see him examining charges of neglect against his slaves, and ordering them to be punished by bastinado ; this being done, he prepares a written report of the case for his master. With the same detail can we behold their management of cattle ; we see herds of oxen, cows, and calves, asses, sheep, and goats, both in stalls and out grazing ; we see them milking cows, preparing butter and cheese, and we wonder at their enclosed yards filled with ducks and geese of various kinds. The graves of Beni Hassan show us their manufactures also ; we see spinning and weaving, and pottery in all its shapes, from the preparation of the clay to the completing of the rounded vessel ; carpenters and cabinet makers, sad- dlers and shoemakers, iron and gold smiths, are seen at work ; swords and spears, bows and arrows, clubs and battleaxes, are in preparation ; and we see all the various stages in the making and the blowing of glass. Again, in other pictures, we see times of war and tumult ; soldiers and officers, military rank and discipline, engines of war, sieges and battles, are dis- Dress and Eiitertai7imenfs. 3 1 played before us. And farther on, again, they are laying snares for birds with traps and nets, are angling for fish, and joining together in hunting. We see sports and amusements also — wrestling and dancing, playing at ball, chess, and draughts. The houses of the higher classes were built in a light and graceful style, as opposed to the solid masonry of the palaces and temples; they had several stories, and were provided with the galleries and ter- races still usual in the East. They were surrounded with shady walks, cut in accurate lines and curves, like the French or Italian gardening, still unfortu- nately in fashion. As to dress and costume, while the poor people wore only a linen shirt, and over it a woollen mantle, and the lowest caste even a good deal less, the nobility showed great taste in apparel. Ladies, who in ancient Egypt mixed much in society, wore manifold ornaments, necklaces, earrings, brace- lets, and all manner of rings ; their hair was dressed with an intricacy exceeding even that of the present day, except, perhaps, among certain tribes in the in- terior of Africa. The rooms of their dwellings were tastefully fur- nished, and we see in them not only the servants, often busily engaged in preparing for an enter- tainment, but also dogs, cats, and monkeys kept as pets. We see the guests arriving in palanquins or carriages, attended by a retinue of domestics, some of them even by dwarfs and hunchbacks — a sign, I may observe, of a very luxurious and decaying civiliza- tion. We see the elegantly dressed guests conversing 32 Dinfier Parties. in the apartments, while slaves — some fair and some negroes— hand them garlands and refreshments ; a poor man outside is rewarded for holding the walk- ing sticks of the company, by the head of the animal cooked for the feast. We see the table laid ; bread, figs, and grapes in baskets, wine in glass bottles, fowl and vegetables are served up. Though they did eat solids with their fingers, they used spoons for fluids ; and, indeed, they seem > not to have been as moderate at their banquets as we should have wished. Herodotus tells us, that, at their feasts, a small wooden mummy-image was handed round with the words, " Behold this, eat, drink, and make merry; when thou art dead such shalt thou be." We see them, yes, even the ladies, carried home by their attendants, though intoxication was one of the forty-two mortal sins of the Egyptians. During dinner dancers appear, and bands of men and women playing on harps, guitars, flutes, and tambourines; and at times the company joined in the concert; jugglers and tumblers also play no unimportant part among the professional providers of pleasure. Such was the domestic life of this wonderful people ; and time would fail me were I to describe to you the extended and various commerce carried on by cara- vans and ships with foreign lands. Their special manufacture of fine linen, which was quite transpa- rent, and of paper from the papyrus plant, are well known; nor have I paused to describe the magnifi- cent and finished structure of the temples, nor the beauty of the pictures, and what was more wonderful. Egyptiafi Religion. 33 the picture wTiting, of this gifted race.* I must pass by their astronomy too, although it helped them to determine their seasons, and has shown us with exact- ness the age and date of their monuments. But there is one point in their civilization which must necessarily occupy us for a few moments longer, and that is their religion ; for as you could not be said to understand the character of any people with- out knowing their worship, so, in the case of the Egyptians, this is the most remarkable, and, I think, the most difficult to explain of all their peculiarities. I must however be brief, and only note the principal points. First, then, they worshipped a number of principal gods, such as Osiris, Isis, Horos, and Seth, which evidently represented the powers of Nature. The sun, the-moon, the blessed river which enriched their land, and the fierce blasts of the Sahara which blighted their crops, these were personified and wor- shipped under such names. Yet, strange to say, when represented on the monuments, these great deities are pictured in the forms, or at least with the heads of various animals, generally domestic animals, and these were thought their fullest and best repre- sentatives. Probably the regularity in their life, the absence of caprice in their habits, and the unerring nature of their instincts, made them the best repre- sentatives of the deities who ruled the perfectly re- gular course of the seasons with unchanging wisdom. For example, Ptah was their eldest and first god, ♦ A short account of the hieroglyphic writing is given in the next lecture. D 34 Divinity of the Lower Aiiimals. the father of the sun and moon, who ordained that these mighty globes should roll in their courses. Now there is a certain beetle, the scarabmis sacer, as it is called, which at night often rolls before it a globe of clay, in which it ultimately takes shelter. The Egyptians believed these globes to be its eggs. Here, then, they found a suitable image for the god Ptah, who rolled the great world about as his offspring. Hence he is represented as having a scarabaeus on his shoulders instead of a human head. So Ra, the sun-god, is represented by either the sparrow-hawk, the white ox, or the cat, on account of the variation in the pupil of its eye. In Upper Egypt again, Ammon corresponded to Ptah, and was represented by a ram's head. The conceptions they had of these gods were, that the beneficent useful influences of nature were always at war with the destructive ones. Generally the good deity is put to death by the evil one, but revives again in greater splendour ; so the night is conceived as hostile to, and destroying, the day, so the fierce heat destroys the spring and the green herbs, but in due time they are recovered, and return. The uniform victory of the good over the evil principle at the close of the struggle, shows the clear and healthy moral sense of the Egyptians. The legend of Osiris, the sun-god, may be given as a specimen. He is represented as a benevolent king, ruling over Egypt, and teaching his people agriculture and the useful arts. Typhon, however, conspires against him, with seventy-two men. (The excessive heat was said to Two-fold Aspect of Religioji. 3 5 last exactly this number of days.) His body, placed in a coffin, and cast into the Nile, is carried to Byblus, where the sorrowing Isis, his wife, finds it, and brings it back to Egypt. Horos, the son of Osiris, avenges his father, and after a conflict of many days, slays Typhon. But Osiris was not dead ; he had descended into the nether world, there to reign over the spirits of the departed. The hateful deity, Typhon, or Zephon, who slays Osiris, was represented under the forms of the cro- codile, the hippopotamus, and the ass, or with ass's ears \ and accordingly, when the Egyptians slew a crocodile, (and they seem often to have hunted him,) the priests used to bury the body with religious care. But the more beneficent animals and birds, such as the dog and cat, the ibis, and ichneumon, were honoured and sacred over all Egypt; and we find in the tombs whole series of these animals em- balmed like human beings, and preserved in their last resting-place. It seems impossible now to ascertain how far the educated classes may have separated the symbol from the thing signified ;''' but there can be no doubt * There is clear evidence, at a later period, of a contrast between the esoteric and the exoteric in the Egyptian religion. Here are two fragments, the first perhaps as old as 2000 years B.C., the second from about 400 years B.C., which will illustrate the fact : — (I.) Praised be thy cpuntenance, Creator, Lord, Praised be thy countenance, Almighty Ptah, Thou that hast formed the whole world, Heaven and earth, and all the stars of heave.i ; 36 I?}iinortality of the Soul. that among the mass of the Egyptians this beast- worship became a stupid and degrading superstition. Yet, strange to say, we find it associated and closely combined with the noblest and most spiritual idea to be found in any religion — I mean the immortality of the soul. This elevating and pure doctrine the Eg}^ptians held with a clearness which puts to shame the ancient Hebrews and the Greeks. Indeed Hero- dotus tells us distinctly, that they were the first nation that ever held the doctrine. We are struck indeed, at first sight, with the extra- ordinary care bestowed on the preservation of the bodies of the dead. We are told that the Egyptians considered the space of this life as very short, but the time after death to be very long. Hence they called their earthly dwellings inns, because men stay there but a brief while ; the tombs of the departed they called everlasting mansions, because the dead dwell in them for ever. So they spent but little trouble on the former, but spared no expense on the latter. Praised be thy countenance, Father of the world, Thou that dost adorn the universe, Now as ever with thy gifts ; Praised be thy countenance, preserver of the world. Thou that dost govern and judge the world, That destroyest the wicked, and rewardest the just. Praised be thy countenance, Ruler of the world. (II. ) Oh thou wise Cat ; thy head is the head of the sun-god ; thy nose is the nose of Thoth, the doubly great Lord of Hermopolis. Thine ears are the ears of Osiris, that hear the voice of all them that call upon him. Thy mouth is the mouth of the God Atmu, the Lord of Life, he has pre- served thee from all uncleanness ; thy heart is the heart of Ptah ; thy teeth are the teeth of Chumsu ; thy legs are the legs of the god Horos, &c., &c. Pyramids a7id Catacombs. 37 And indeed nodiing could exceed their care to obtain for the dead cool . and quiet resting-places, where they might sleep in security. This was the first and most sacred duty of the living. It is to these great tombs that we owe most of our knowledge concerning Egyptian life and manners. While they only meant to perpetuate the bodies of their dead, they have handed down to us the reflections of their living minds, the chronicles of their history, the articles of their religion, the portraits of their manners. The more ancient kingdom of Memphis has left us the pyramids, once seventy in number, of which three exceed the rest in size, and were built about the year 2700 b. c. The greatest of them was 7 1 6 feet square at the base, and 480 feet high ; but the tomb of King Chufu, who lay beneath, was 100 feet below the soil, hewn out in solid rock, nearly 600 feet below the summit. The kings of Thebes have left us their mighty catacombs, which reach for miles along the rocks in the neighbourhood of that city. The interior of these sepulchral chambers is adorned with bright paintings, describing the fates of men in life and death. Passage upon passage, chamber upon cham- ber, gallery upon gallery, these storied labyrinths preserve thousands of the dead, with pictorial de- scriptions of their life and acts. They seem to have thought that the preservation of the body had some connection with the after con- dition of the soul, though we cannot positively affirm, that under any circumstances would they have be- 38 Future Judgment. lieved the soul to be absolutely destroyed by dis- honouring the body. For beyond all doubt, the Egyptians believed most firmly in the immortality of the soul. As their great Deity, Osiris, had been slain, and had come to life again as king of the lower world, so the just man should, after death, join him, and live in eternal happiness. There was a certain book or roll, called the Book of the Dead, which was placed in the coffin beside the mummy. We have found some of these, and they give a full account of the Egyptian ideas about future life. As the sun sank, the soul of the departed sank beneath the earth, and arrived at the hall or vestibule of the under world. Here Osiris, clothed as a mummy, sits in judgment, at- tended by the forty-two spirits of the nether world, adorned with ostrich feathers (the emblem of purity and justice.) The number forty-two refers to the forty- two mortal sins forbidden by the laws of Egypt. The deceased entreats Osiris to be received among the blessed, and protests his purity. He goes into full detail, denying his guilt of each sin ; he worships the glory and honour of Osiris, and exclaims, "I am clean, I am clean !" Then his soul is weighed in the scales of justice by the dog-headed Anubis, the accuser of the dead, and by the hawk-headed god, Horos. If it be found guilty, it is sent to the regions of darkness, where it will never see the sun, and will be tortured according to the besetting sin of its life. There are pictures of these tortures much like the Physical Features, 39 corresponding pictures of the middle ages.* The righteous, on the contrary, are presented with ostrich feathers, and are bathed in the waters of Hfe. They pass safely by the fierce monsters who guard the entrance to bliss, and reach the field of the sun-god Ra in the East. They are represented cutting com, pulling flowers and fruit, walking in shady gardens, and bathing in cool waters. Such were the strange and lofty beliefs held on this all-important sub- ject by these worshippers of dogs, cats, and beetles! I fear we must content ourselves with this brief sketch of Egyptian civilization, and hurry on to its connection with physical conditions. But it seemed necessary to say at least thus much, because, to state that a country was highly civilized, is to most people a vague expression, and carries with it no definite image. You will find many of these details, with very full and accurate information on the subject, in " Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians." At first sight the north of the continent of Africa would seem the least favourable in the world for developing culture. The whole north is one vast plateau of sand, surrounded by sterile chains of mountains, and scorched by a burning sun. Between this enclosing ridge of rocks and the sea, there is a narrow fringe of land, generally formed in descending terraces, through which the rivers, which have burst *The Egyptians seem to have believed in two sorts of punishment for the wicked, that alluded to in the text, and also migrations into the bodies of unclean beasts, such as swine. 40 Course of the Nile. the mountain barriers, force their way to the sea. But there are no deep bays or indentations in the coast, and hence there are no fruitful valleys ; and there is, so to speak, no access to the interior. Over this whole vast tract of land, with the exception of Abyssinia and Egypt, there have dwelt from time immemorial the Negro races— races which have never risen from the rudest barbarism. Age upon age has left them in the same degraded state. But, though there are many isolated depressions fomied by rivers on the north coast of Africa, they are separated by barren and wild ridges of rock ; in one place only is there a continuous tract of cultivated and fruitful land ; and in general it may be observed, that the vegetation of Africa is remarkably rich, wherever there is a sufficiency of water. This continuous valley, of which we are going to speak, is formed by a peculiarity in the rocky ridges which bound the great desert in the East. Instead of forming a single barrier, they here form two; and these two, separated only by a few miles, when they have admitted the great River Nile between them, guide it for hundreds of miles along the coast without permitting it to fall into the Red Sea. Had the Nile forced its way eastward, where it breaks over the first barrier in mighty cataracts, and turned into the Indian Ocean, how different would the world's history have been ! As it is, however, after breaking through the barriers of rocks opposed to it, in numerous cataracts, it reaches a marshy and wooded country, where it is Inundations. 41 joined by the Blue Nile, coming from Abyssinia. And again, the great river bursts over the numerous ridges of rock which lie across its passage, and after numerous cataracts, reaches Syene. From this to its mouth, the mighty stream, about three thousand feet broad, pursues a quiet course of over five hundred miles. On both sides it is confined by desert and sandy mountains, which leave a valley about eight miles wide for the river to fertilize. There is no rain in Upper Egypt, and very little in Lower Egypt ; but this want is supplied by the marvellous Nile. After seventy-two days of greatest heat, the Nile, at the summer solstice, begins to rise gradually, and continues to do so for one hundred days, till at the end of September, it is usually twenty feet over its winter level. Gradually it falls, and in a little more than four months returns to its original bed. It leaves the whole valley covered with a rich fertili- zing deposit, and the ground has been thoroughly moistened and cooled. Then the Egyptians begin to sow their seed. From the earliest times speculations were rife as to the cause of the peculiarities of the Nile, which have not varied in the least for the past six thousand years ; and many curious hypotheses were started by the ancients. It has now been settled by the intrepid researches of Speke, Grant, and Baker, that the Nile rises in the lakes Albert and Victoria Nyanza, and is swelled by violent summer rains. Egypt is then an exceedingly fertile valley, of great length, no part of which is separated from the rest 42 Absence of Wild Beasts. by any barren or mountainous tract ; it is all essen- tially o?ie valley. If you desire to go from Thebes to Memphis, any raft will transport you without the smallest effort. Do you want to ascend from the Delta to Thebes, there are north winds blowing for eight months of the year, which enable a sailing boat to force its way against the stream ; and not only is the country o?ie, but it is eminently blessed with a per- fect equability of climate. Not only is the Nile never- failing and punctual in its overflow, but the country has been spared those convulsions of nature which in other lands have often impeded, and even ruined civilization. Though earthquakes are not uncommon in Arabia and in Abyssinia, they are almost unknown in Egypt; at least I am not aware that there is any tradition or history alluding to them, save that mentioned as having happened in the year 27 B.C., which overturned the great statue of Amenophis III., afterwards celebrated as the Musical Statue of Memnon, But the general condition of the monu- ments shows, that they cannot have been either fre- quent or vehement. Nor is the absence of this plague counterbalanced by other evils. The great wild animals with which Africa abounds, and which are so ruinous to cultivation — the elephant and rhinoceros, do not, and apparently never did, frequent Egypt. The hippopotamus was, at a very early period, driven back to Upper Egypt, and now to Abyssinia. Nor do we find the lion in the fertile plain, though he inhabits all the deserts around it. I suppose the barrenness of the adjoining mountains, together with Agriculture and Astronomy. 43 the annual overflow of the river, made it difficult for them to bring up their young in safety ; for they must have every year had their choice between death through want of food or abundance of water. Those animals only which can live in water like the hippo- potamus, or can guard against it like man, are able to thrive in this pecuHar land. Consider what effect all these features must have had on the primitive inhabitants. The watering and fertilizing of the soil were taught them yearly on a gigantic scale by nature herself Hence they could not fail to turn from pastoral habits to agricultural ; and they were farther taught by practical necessity, to watch the times and the seasons, if they wished to save their herds and their other property from the floods. Agriculture, then, including irrigation and some rude measuring of time, were forced upon them by Nature ; and the sky being almost always clear, the motions of the constellations must have been obviously their best measure of time. Hence, we should expect to find the study of astronomy pre- valent among such a people; and we should also expect to see this most important duty of regulating, and foretelling, the seasons for agricultural operations placed in the hands of a special class, to whom it would be an especial care to preserve and hand down the wisdom and experience of each generation to the next. Farther, when we reconsider the imity of the land of Egypt — the fact that the valley is not divided or separated by barren tracts, or by tri- 44 P7'otecti07i fro7n Invaders. butary rivers; — we should be led to expect that from very early times one government ought to have ex- isted over the whole country. The only possible division, the separation of one bank of the Nile from the other, would have left each territory from three to four miles wide, with the other within sight, in which case the stronger could not have failed to conquer the weaker. And as to foreign invaders, the country, considering its extent, was protected in the most remarkable way by a desert on one side, and the Red Sea on the other; so that in early times, when long expeditions were impossible, the only prac- ticable places of attack were the northern and southern extremities, which are themselves protected by sea, desert, and mountains, and where, even when an enemy did enter, he must still traverse and conquer by inches the whole length and breadth of the coun- try. Hence, we might expect that so large and populous a tract of land, united under one govern- ment, would be able to withstand foreign invasions, would remain undisturbed, and be enabled to de- velop its resources and its civiHzation. But a fuller consideration of this and other points of interest we must postpone until the next lecture. LECTURE III. EGYPT CONCLUDED— MESOPOTAMIA. OU will remember that we spent the last lecture in giving — first, a sketch of Egyp- l^^^y] tian civilization, and then, in endeavouring to show how some of its principal features were necessary results from the geographical position of the country ; and it may be well for me to recapitulate the principal points which I urged at the end of the discussion. We observed that Egypt was the only large and continuous valley of rieh land in all the long ries of the Sahara and the sea. The rocky barriers^ fringe of available soil which lies between the bounda- in other places single, and allowing the rivers, which break through them, to rush straight into the sea — have, in the region north of Abyssinia, formed them- selves into two parallel ridges, over one of which the Nile bursts, and is then confined between them, to be led along the coast for five hundred miles into the Mediterranean. We observed that this long and rich valley was not intersected by any other rivers or barren mountains, but formed one country, hemmed in altogether, and separated from the rest of the world, 46 Diffusion of Knowledge. except at its extremities. These features would naturally lead to one strong government, and to a feeling of union among the people. We saw that their land was fertilized for them by nature, and was not inhabited by noxious animals — that the operations of nature were singularly regular, and tended to excite the human mind to observation, and to the keeping of records. The Egyptians could hardly have helped being good husbandmen. They were compelled by nature, as it were, to study the heavens, and so ob- tain measures of time; the unity of the country would also suggest one ruler, one lord, to govern over the whole of this rich valley. Let us add that the constant traffic up and down the Nile, the great high-road which nature had made through the whole land of Egypt, must have tended to make all the inhabitants well acquainted with one another. I notice this fact in contrast to the features of Greece, a country subdivided more than any other by nature into separate states. When we come to consider the civilization of the Greeks, we shall speak at greater length of this contrast. Not being con- fined to one litde valley, the Egyptians would natu- rally learn from one another their discoveries and their experience. Hence knowledge would be naturally diffused throughout the country. This, by the way, is amply confirmed by intelligent Greek observers, who inform us that general education was more diffused among the lower classes in Egypt than in Greece. " We ought," says Plato, " to make free men learn those particulars which the great mob System of Educatio7i. 47 of children in Egypt learn along with their letters. For first, indeed, with regard to arithmetic, there is a particular way of instruction specially invented for children, to make them learn with sport and amuse- ment." This was done by numerical arrangements of apples, and garlands, and other objects, in themselves interesting to children. " And so," he adds, " dove- tailing the use of arithmetical truths into their sports, they benefit their pupils for the more serious concerns of after life, and make them altogether more useful to themselves — that is, to the government, who de- vised this system of education — and also more wide- awake as men." It were well if these sound princi- ples were more generally adopted in our own methods of education. Although Plato lived as late as the fourth century, B.C., anyone who considers the conser- vative nature of Egyptian civilization, where the music and the pictorial type had been determined by the gods, or by divine lawgivers, from immemorial antiquity, and where the government would not allow even a poet or painter to depart from the consecrated type — in such a state, this general diffusion of arith- metic probably existed at a very remote period. " You Greeks," said an Egyptian priest to Solon, illustrating this feeling, "you Greeks are always chil- dren ; there is no such thing as an old Greek. You are young in your minds, for you have in them no old opinion obtained from ancient tradition, nor any knowledge hallowed by venerable age." The study of letters, indeed, seems to have existed in wonderfully early times in the land of Egypt. 48 Hieroglyphics. Their very earliest monuments show the existence of picture writing. This has been the first form of writing everywhere— in Babylon, in China, in Mexico, and among the North American Indians. But the troublesome process of engraving on stone led them to curtail and simplify these pictures, as much as pos- sible, for frequent use. So a house came to be repre- sented by a square ; water, by two or three undulating lines, and when they wished to indicate some parti- cular liquid — say, wine — a wine jar was drawn beside the lines. Even abstract ideas were indicated by these pictures : as, for example, generosity, by a hand offering bread ; and deceit, by a foot in a trap ; or else by purely symbolical representations, such as the idea of good, by a lyre ; of evil, by an unclean sort of fish ; and of truth, by an ostrich feather. At an early period, however, this clumsy method was greatly improved by the introduction of signs for sounds, instead of ideas ; and from the year 1300 B.C., we find this feature rapidly extending itself, so that numbers of pictures, which had been used symboli- cally, were now applied to indicate sounds only. This was done by writing for the letter A, for example, the picture of some object, whose name began with A. Unfortunately, they did not adhere to one picture, as there were many names equally appropriate in their initial letters. Hence arose great difficulties, as in the hieroglyphic writing some pictures were used in the old way to symbolize ideas, and others only meant sounds. Additional marks were conse- quently appended, to signify which sense the writing The Statue of Memnon. 49 meant. In the latter case, a sketch of a mouth was inserted; to show that sound alone was intended. Such was the complicated system invented by the Egyptian priests — clumsy, indeed, as compared with our alphabet, but used at a time when no other nation in the world was able to keep any record of its his- tory. We should look, then, with reverence upon this remarkable, though rude, discovery, which has preserved to us the annals of mankind, from an age which would else have been hidden from us for ever in complete darkness. But to return from this digression." * I have been asked, before leaving Eg)'ptian antiquities, to say a word, also, concerning the celebrated statue of Memnon. Its history is very curious. King Amenophis III., who reigned 1 520- 1484 B.C., built himself a mighty palace, and set up, as a portal, two colossal statues of himself, each forty-eight feet high, carved from a single block of sandstone, representing him sitting in silence, with his hands upon his knees. The palace is in ruins, but the two statues are still there, looming in solemn majesty over the desert plain. The king had made expeditions into Asia, and his name became known to the Greeks, under the form of Memnon, who was fabled a son of the Dawn, and was supposed to have come from the far East. In the year 27 B.C., an earthquake overthrew the upper part of the northern statue, and from that time, the portion that re- mained was heard to emit a musical sound at sunrise. The poetical imagination of the Greeks thought it to be the saluta- tion of the Dawn by her son, and that she in turn bedewed his statue with her tears. Greek inscriptions, scrawled by travellers in the time of Nero, assert that the writers had heard the sound. Since its restoration, in the time of the Emperor Sep- timius Severus, we hear nothing more of the marvel. Several French savants have noticed, in other old Egyptian structures, E 50 Effects of Cheap Food. The commerce up and down the Nile must also have suggested to them to extend their journeys into the ocean. But, then, we find that the produce of the country itself was so abundant and so rich, that they had need of little but luxuries, and so the ex- ports were far greater than the imports. The imports were conducted by the Phoenicians, a most remark- able people, into whose civilization we shall inquire at greater length on a future occasion. But, hitherto, we have only spoken generally of the effects of the rich soil on the Egyptian civiliza- tion and poHtics. This subject requires a more careful consideration, for great plenty of food, though it, in the first instance, makes life easy and comfort- able, is not always the most favourable circumstance for improving and establishing the general condition of a country. For example, there can be no doubt that the extraordinary plenty and cheapness of pota- toes before the famine of 1 846 in this country, contri- buted greatly to the impoverished, and hence discon- tented, state of its inhabitants, then and now \ and there are few sensible persons who would wish to see the old state of things in Ireland renewed, even though many poor, hungry creatures, might thereby obtain immediate relief for their daily wants. If the old plenty and cheapness of potatoes in Ireland returned, there would also, probably, return the old that when the sudden heat of the sun follows upon a cold night, a tinkling sound is emitted, evidently owing to natural causes. Some exceptional circumstances probably increased this pecu- liarity in the broken statue of Amenophis. Diet in Hot and Cold Climates. 5 1 improvidence, the old excess of population, and the old contentment with what should have contented nobody. Hence, you see, great plenty of food in a country, though certainly a material advantage, may be politically a danger, and an injury at least to the lower classes in the country. Let us apply these principles to the case of Egypt. But it is impossible to do so, without taking in the question of climate, as the amount and the nature of the food necessary to keep man alive, and able to work, differ greatly according to the temperature in which he dwells. I request your earnest attention to the general discussion into which I am now about to enter. Perhaps you may think it hard and uninteresting at first, but, when you come to digest it, it will not be so, and it will form the basis of many of our investi- gations. It is, then, absolutely necessary for you to comprehend it accurately. Let us now compare the diet of nations living in cold climates with that of those that dwell in hot regions ; and to make the contrast more striking, let us compare the hottest with the coldest climates. How does the diet of the Greenlander differ from that of the Hindoo ? The one lives chiefly on rice and ghee, a very simple and poor fare, which is produced abundantly by the soil in hot climates. On what does the other subsist ? Not on vegetables thrown up by the soil, but, as Mr. Buckle most poetically remarks, " on the fat, the blubber, and the oil of pow- erful and ferocious animals." Nor is this the only dif- ference. The diet of different climates differs in quan- 52 Functions of Food. tity as well as in quality. "While the lazy Hindoo re- quires and eats but Httle food, the dwellers in Arctic zones consume an enormous quantity of provisions. I suppose the difference of consumption between them is fully as great as that between the appetite of the two sexes in this country. These differences are arranged by natural laws, the laws which regulate the results produced in the human body by heat and cold, by exertion and fatigue. For, let us go a Httle farther back, and inquire what it is that our food does for us. First, it repairs the waste of tissue caused by exertion and consequent fatigue ; and, secondly, it keeps up the necessary quantity of animal heat within us. Hence, a certain quantity of food goes for fuel, so to speak, and a certain quantity for nourishment. One of the ele- ments in our food is nitrogen. This element is said to have a feeble attraction for oxygen ; and as oxygen sets combustible elements on fire, nitrogen, when combined w^th them, saves them from this fate. Hence, that portion of our food which contains nitrogen goes to supply the waste in the tissues. The other part which contains no nitrogen does combine with oxygen, such as the oxygen which we inhale, and then, (especially the carbon con- tained therein,) being set on fire, so to speak, by the oxygen, produces that internal heat which is neces- sary to life. And observe, that food containing nitrogen is called azotized, and food not containing it is called non-azotized. These terms I shall now employ. Now, as soon as you come to contrast the inhabi- Less Food required in Hot Climates. 53 tants of hot and cold climates, with respect to these peculiarities of food, it is obvious that there is plenty of animal heat produced by the climate in one case ; and hence such people as the Egyptians and Indians do not require to take food for that purpose. Hence, non-azotized food is not much required in these coun- tries. Farthermore, while the inhabitants of northern climates undergo severe exercise in seeking their food, and are, indeed, prompted to do so by the cold, the southerns are rendered lazy and idle by heat ; and hence, there is no waste of tissue or fatigue ana- logous to that induced by severe exercise. It follows that, even in the other description of food, azotized, which is intended merely to repair waste of tissue, northerns should consume more food than the dwellers in low latitudes. We have now come in sight of the first important conclusion on this subject, and one which has in- fluenced civilization from the earliest times. Food in hot climates is not so much required as in cold climates: Hence, the same quantity will support more people. Hence, the growth of population in hot climates will be greater than that of cold climates. For you know, of course, that, as people cannot in- crease when they have nothing to eat, so they are almost sure to increase when they have plenty. So remarkably true is this, that even in the present day it can be shown, that the number of marriages in the country yearly increase or diminish with the price of corn. The great majority of marriages must, of course, take place among the lower classes. 54 Eff^(^ of Carbonized Food. and among them, if food be cheap, they will many, and if food be dear, they will refrain. Hence arises the law of which I speak. If a country be really prosperous everybody gets married.^ But these interesting reflections are leading us away from the subject in hand, I had just proved that less food was required in hot climates, and that, therefore, populations must increase more rapidly. Yet even this is not all. Food in hot climates is not only more plenty, it is also cheaper. By cheaper, I mean not merely cheaper in money value, which is an artificial thing, but cheaper in costing less labour and trouble, and in making larger returns. And I fear we must return for a moment to our chemistry to show this. We observed just now that the necessary inter- nal heat of the body was kept up by a combination of oxygen -with our food, especially with the carbon contained it The combustion produced by oxygen and carbon always creates a great amount of animal heat. You must also remember that there must be a certain proportion between the elements. A very large quantity of oxygen will not combine with a very small one of carbon, and produce heat. Hence the more oxygen we inhale, the more carbonized food we shall want. Now, in cold climates the air is denser ; and hence in them we breathe more * I may mention, that on paying a visit to Birmingham lately, and going a good deal among the manufacturing and mercantile classes, where there is great plenty and wealth, I do not think that I met almost any lady over twenty who was not, at least, engaged. Conditions of Cheap Food. 55 oxygen. Farthermore, the quantity of exercise necessary in cold climates makes us breathe faster, and so even increases the amount of oxygen natu- rally inhaled. It follows that as carbon will only combine with oxygen in certain proportions, that men require more highly carbonized food in cold climates. And this scientific conclusion is verified by experience. The inhabitants of cold climates live on meat diet, and very far north on animal oils, such as that of whales and seals, while within the tropics such food would soon destroy life — men there live on rice, corn, and fruits. Now, these animal oils are found, when analyzed, to contain very little oxygen (which is what the air there supplies), but rather six times as much carbon as the fruits eaten by tropical natives. These latter, on the contrary, are full of oxygen — a thing not so much needed in the tropical atmosphere. Such being the case, it will require no proof to see that the highly-carbonized food of the arctic regions is more expensive and harder to obtain than the oxy- genous food of the tropics. In every part of the world wherever great heat and great moisture are combined, vegetation becomes enormously rich and luxurious f and if among the in- digenous plants of a country, there are some fit for * In the Malay Islands, fourteen days' labour spent on the sago- palm will support a man and his wife for the rest of the year, of. Waitz Anthrop. v. 128. In our own country, up to the year 1846, the cultivation of the potato afforded similar, though by no means such wonderful returns. 56 Priority of Tropical Civilization. human food, then the greatest population can be provided with ample sustenance without any trouble or danger. In cold countries, on the contrary, where men must hunt active and ferocious animals, or must domesticate tame species for their support, it is evident that the human race is under greater difficulties, and must propagate itself far more slowly. And now let us stpply this series of conclusions to the history of civilization. If all these things be true, it will follow that the human race must have found it easier to increase and multiply in tropical climates; it mil also follow that the trouble and difficulty of obtaining subsistence in cold regions must have retarded the progress of man in early times. Hence all the earliest civilizations ought to be found in tropical regions. Is not this scientific prediction wonderfully verified when we consult the history of the human race? Where were all the early and primitive cradles of science, of art, and of refinement ? In Egypt, in the rich plains of Meso- potamia, in Mexico, and Peru; in fact, wherever great moisture and heat could be found in combina- tion. We see, then, how important were the in- fluences of soil in determining the early civilization of Egypt, which we have been describing. But there is another feature in Egyptian civiliza- tion, which it has in common with all other early civilizations, and which I have noted as the cause of its early decay; and this too was occasioned by the climate and the soil. The first and greatest defect Causes of Despotic Government. 57 we noticed at the opening of the last lecture was the miserable condition of the lower classes in Egypt. We are informed that their lives were wasted in thousands at the bidding of the kings, upon enormous and costly, but for the most part, useless structures. And the same defect is found in the civilization of Asia and America in early times. On the contrary, our modem European civilization does not tolerate such abuses : ' the lower classes are not slaves, but intelligent working-classes, who labour for hire, which they lay up for their own use. Now, a great part of this difference probably arises from the same laws of food which we have been considering at such length ; but I am so much afraid of w^earying you with abstract discussion, that it will be better to postpone it to my next Lecture. You will remem- ber, then, that when we meet next, we must not avoid the important question — how early civilization was disposed to assume the form of despotic govern- ment, owing to the climate and soil in which it first arose. We have already discussed and answered the ques- tion — why civilization started in Egypt at so early a period, and how the population came to be so numerous. We have also seen how many special points in their culture were suggested by peculiar features in their wonderful country. But let us now escape from dry argument, and "plunge into the more pleasant duty of description. We must wander to the north and the east, till we come to the great plain of Shinar. Here, according 58 Fertility of Mesopotamia. to the venerable account of the Book of Genesis,' was the earliest seat of civilization, and the first city was built. Here, too, had been erected the mighty Tower of Babel, which was to reach unto heaven. Later Greek writers have informed us farther con- cerning this mighty monument, which alone can be said to have put the pyramids to shame by its size and height ; though, being built of the more perish- able material of brick, it has not been able to equal in durability the great red granite slabs of the Egyptian monuments. Like the land of Egypt, too, later observers speak with enthusiasm of the fabulous richness of Babylon, of its magnificent fields of com, of its populous cities, of its artificial and highly inge- nious system of irrigation, and of the learning and wisdom of its priests and prophets. Herodotus, who travelled through this country also, and described it — Xenophon, who retreated from it with the ten thou- sand Greeks — Strabo, one of the most trustworthy of ancient authorities — as well as the native historian, Berosos, vie with one another in praising its dates, its apples, its wheat, and its cattle. Here too, it was the natural richness of the soil which made this branch of the Semitic race* advance beyond its fellows. The features of the country are easily described. There rise in the Armenian moun- tains, not very far from each other, two mighty • The resemblance of the Babylonians to the Semites is con- ceded. Some authorities, however, look upon them as anterior to the Semites proper, and rather allied in character to the Egyptians, Description of the Country, 59 rivers— the Euphrates on the north, the Tigris on the south. The former makes a great circuit towards the west; the latter in a direct southerly course breaks through the mountains ; and so they both enter a broken country of rocks, hills, lakes, and forests. The valleys increase in number, as we fol- low the course of these rivers; but the trees diminish, and the country becomes a wild and sterile grazing district, inhabited chiefly by wild asses and ostriches. At the termination of this hill country, about three hundred miles from the sea, the rivers approach one another, and enclose a district of rich dark soil — the Euphrates flowing quietly, the Tigris fiercely, through a rocky bed, and fed by numerous mountain tribu- taries. There is indeed, as in Egypt, little rain ; but the snows of Armenia, melting in May and June, swell the rivers, and cause an annual inundation, not indeed so regular and peaceful as that of the Nile, but still sufficient to render Mesopotamia a most fertile country. The Tigris, indeed, often covers the plains with desolating torrents. But, nevertheless, the two rivers mark off the territory of Mesopotamia as probably the most fertile in Asia, and as separated and protected on the east and west sides by their mighty streams, as well as on the south by the sea. Hence, all new invasions of Babylonia seem to have been made by northern tribes coming down between the two rivers. The earliest of these of which we hear was that of the Chaldeans, who are said to have come from the north, and conquered the original inhabitants ; and so early and so obscure 6o Antiquity of Babylon. was this conquest, that we cannot be certain whether we are describing original Babylonian or Chaldean civilization, except perhaps in their religion, in which the purer Chaldean worship contrasts strangely with the gross worship of nature by the Babylonians. However that may be, we find many branches of their religion tinged with the ideas suggested by their climate and country. The first and original gods were gods of moisture, which rose from the water, and had fishy forms, like the Dagon of the Philistines. There is a good deal of doubt as to the date to which we are to refer the early civilization of Baby- lonia. This much we know, that the Medes who dwelt in the north, and were a poor mountain tribe, were attracted by its riches and splendour, and con- quered it in or about the year 2400 b.c, so that this centre of culture must have been thriving and grow- ing three thousand years before our era. And as their country bore great analogies to Egypt, and as their language was thought not very dissimilar from that of the old Egyptians, so it was natural that tra- ditions should arise of a colony from Egypt having carried the arts and sciences into the East. This tradition you will reject ; for our experience tends to show, that similar conditions of soil and climate will produce similar developments of civilization. It is therefore no just inference to say, that because two nations who live in similar countries build similar monuments, and sow similar crops, and cul- tivate similar sciences, that therefore these nations Cuneiform Writi?ig. 61 sprang from a common centre. There is one case which overthrows all such speculations. The Aztecs in Mexico developed a great civilization, which was just as like the Egyptian culture as was the Baby- lonian. They had astronomy, picture-writing, great temples, despotic rule ; and yet, I suppose, no one will venture to assert, that Mexico was colonized either from Babylon or from Egypt. You will then regard all these countries as having so favoured certain races, that they spontaneously developed their dormant faculties; and when we come to compare Babylonian with Egyptian culture, we shall find that, in spite of general analogies, there are distinct differences and marks of original features in the Babylonian civilization. If the Egyptians had, at a very early period discovered hieroglyphic writing, the Chaldeans perfected, almost as soon, a totally different system of signs— the so-called cu- neiform writing, in which the principle of repre- senting sounds instead of mental pictures became exclusively developed, so that the great difficulty and defect of the Egyptian wTiting was avoided, in which it was always doubtful whether symbols or sounds were intended. Yet they did not advance to the still greater perfection attamed by the Phoe- nicians, for the cuneiform characters always repre- sented syllables, and were not an alphabet of letters. The decipherers of the cuneiform inscriptions have moreover been greatly perplexed by finding three distinct languages represented by the same characters. One of these, the old Persian, has been 62 Weights and Measures. satisfactorily explained ; but the other two, one of which is most probably the dialect of the original Babylonians, are still the perplexity and the despair of the learned. It is not even known whether these languages are to be referred to an Aryan or a Semitic source. Again, the calendar of the Babylonians was quite different from that of the Egyptians — was based upon the changes of the moon, and though more complicated, was far more accurate than the early Egyptian division of the year. For, although the Egyptians had most diligently observed the heavens, the astronomy of the Chaldeans led them to much clearer and more accurate results. They were the inventors of the signs of the Zodiac. In weights and measures, too, the Babylonian were fixed by the priests, as was the case in Egypt ; but the sys- tem was far more complete ; weights were brought into relation with measures, and made to correspond with them ; and so perfect was this system, that it was adopted all through Asia Minor, and even in Greece in early times.* The age of the great artificial systems of irrigation built by the Chaldeans is uncertain, but we find them * Even where the individual weights and measures differed from those of the Babylonians, as in the systems of the Lydians and of Solon, the principle of division was borrowed from Babylon, where a certain cubic measure of water was assumed as the unit of weight, and the length of its sides as the unit of length. The Babylonian talent was about 92 lbs, of our weight, and was divided into 60 parts, called by the Greeks mina:, which were again divided into 50 parts, the sJukels of the Hebrews. Babyloniati Sculpture. 63 in size and variety not inferior to those of Egypt They were, indeed, as Herodotus observes, far more necessary in Babylon than in Egypt, on account of the greater irregularity and violence of the inunda- tions, produced by the Euphrates and Tigris. These inundations have given peculiar prominence in their legends to that of a great flood, in which the adven- tures of their god^ Xisuthros, are closely analogous to those of Noah, as related in Genesis. If the Egyptians had attained to the greatest perfection yet reached in building with stone, the brick and tile buildings of the Chaldeans have never yet been surpassed by any people. In technical merit and in majestic repose, the Babylonian sculpture cannot be considered equal to the Egyptian ; but still it has its merits and its thorough originality. Colossal and majestic like the Egyptian, it aims more at represent- ing the terrible and awful than the calm repose of the Egyptian statues. It succeeds, too, in portray- ing action and power to a degree unknown in Egy^pt. I suppose you are tolerably familiar with the style of the winged bulls and lions brought from Nineveh and Babylon to the British Museum. They have been represented in many excellent books of travels, and nowhere better than in Rawlinson's " Five Ancient Monarchies f and I think when you consider them carefully, you will say that there is more life and nature in them than in the Egyptian statues, though by no means so much beauty and majesty. Like the Pharaohs, the Chaldean monarchs sought to gain reputation with posterity by means of mighty 64 The Tower of Babel. structures, but the want of durable materials prevented a success so complete as that of their rivals. The Euphrates is not, like the Nile, hemmed in by rocky mountains, which afford the finest materials for stone structures. The plains of Babylonia only afford earth suited for making bricks, and the most excel- lent mortar made of asphalt. But with such mate- rials at their disposal, they performed wonders. They faced the outer walls of their buildings with slabs of limestone, brought from a great distance, and then covered them with paintings and reliefs. So vast and powerful are their structures, that the lapse of ages ruined, but could not destroy them; and so beneath the mighty mounds, which seem like natural hills, have been discovered remains sufficient to tell us of their ancient splendour. The great temple of Bel or Babel was 625 feet high — that is to say, about six times as high as Nelson's pillar, and nearly 100 feet loftier than the great Pyramid. This vast tower was built by the Chaldeans about the year 2000 B.C., probably be- cause their god, Bel, was a godj of the mountains, and they could not find a proper place to worship him in the plain of Shinar. The word tower is, perhaps, not a good expression, its base being 625 feet square, exactly the same as its height. A walk running round the outside of the structure led through seven storeys to the summit, where a chamber was prepared for the god, Bel. He was regarded as the god of light and of purity, and as the creator of the world — a conception as lofty as any to be found Contrast of Egypt a?id Babyloft. 65 in the religion of the Egyptians. In this and other ideas of the Babylonian religion, some learned men see the influence of an early communication with the Hebrews. In fact, the Hebrews and the Chaldeans came originally from the same mountain home. We shall resume the subject of Babylonian civilization in the next lecture, and shall also discuss the effects of cheap food on the early civilizations in general. The remains of Nineveh and Babylon do not, in- deed, strike the beholder with such awe and astonish- ment as the colossal statues and temples of Eg}/'pt, nor is there the same repose, the same quiet majesty in their art ; yet the culture of Mesopotamia should have, to us, a far more living interest than that of the Nile. For the old Egyptians were an isolated people, perhaps akin to no civilized nation in Asia or Europe, and so not influencing them in proportion to their greatness. The Chaldeans, on the contrary, were the first to influence the Arabs, the Phoenicians, and, through them, even the Hebrews and the Greeks. For Mesopotamia was ever an accessible territory, while Egypt stood aloof from the rest of the world, and looked with contempt on any foreign policy save that of absolute conquest. So that had Egypt never existed,* the rest of the world's history might not have been materially affected ; but for Babylon, on the contrary, the whole course of European culture would have been retarded, and our present civiliza- tion might have been centuries in arrear. * I speak of the early Egyptian civilization only. F LECTURE IV. MESOPOTAMIA— EFFECTS OF FOOD AND CLIMATE. HAD promised in my last lecture to tell you somewhat more of the civilization of ■^ ^^1 Mesopotamia ; and yet we have already spent so much time on the earliest development of the human race, that I fear I must be brief, and withhold many interesting details; for we have as yet considered nothing but the civilization of the plains; and how shall we find time to review that of the sea, of the mountains, and of the forests ? and all these peculiarities of country have had their marked effects upon the world's history. I had thought, when I commenced this course of lectures, to have proceeded directly from Egypt and Babylon to Greece; but I now see that my review would be incomplete, did I not give you an adequate account of Arabia, Palestine, and the Phoenicians, the earliest trading nations, who spread the knowledge acquired by their immoveable neighbours. No doubt, the remains of these nations are not so stupendous, nor did they exhaust their ingenuity and their energy in piling up vast structures in honour of Semitic Legacies to Mankind. 67 their kings and gods, which could ahnost defy the wasting tooth of time ; though in richness of mate- rials and beauty of design, their temples (I mean those of the Hebrews and Phoenicians) were probably not inferior to any that were ever built. But the legacies they have left us are of a different kind. Though the Temple of Jerusalem be levelled with the ground, and though fishermen have spread their nets upon the rocks of Tyre, the influence of these great cities has left a deeper impress on the world's history than Babylon or Thebes ; for they have be- queathed to us imperishable ideas, the ground-work of our material and our moral development. From them we have learned to supply natural defects of soil and climate by an extended commerce, and to cause artificial riches to compensate for our poverty ; from them have we learnt the true nature of the Deity and the Life to come — a compensation far greater still for the defects and ills of life. These great questions will occupy us in due time, when we have finished our consideration of the civilizations of the plain and their characteristics. The early faith of the Chaldeans has many features very superior to the Egyptian religion. Their idea of Bel as a great spirit, as the king of heaven, and as ruling all the universe, was very grand and pure ; but, unfortunately, they were so given to astronomy, that they began to identify him with the sun ; and then the moon was identified with his wife Mylitta, whose worship was so impure, that it shocked even the Greek travellers who witnessed it. 68 Origin of Writi7ig. It seems likely, as I before said, that the purer elements in the religion were due to the Chaldeans, and were brought by them from their original home in the mountains, while the grosser part of the Baby- lonian worship was indigenous to the country. Here, as elsewhere, we have an instance of the purifying effect of mountains in the moral sentiments of men. The stars, too, were regarded as deities, and a great system of astrology and soothsaying was based upon their revolutions. Without going at greater length into this subject, you will easily see that such long calculations cannot have been made without the use of writing, so that writing must, in all probability, have been long, even centuries, in use before such complicated results were attained. It cannot have been in Babylon later than 3500 B.C.; and if it arose originally from picture writing, it has lost all vestige of such pictures in the earliest in- scriptions which we possess. You will remember how I told you that the bricks of Babylon had to supply the place of stones in Egypt. This difference affected their writing, for there was no room on bricks for large pictures ; hence they were obliged to com- press their signs, so that they soon came to use them not for things, but for sounds. Their cuneiform writing is not unlike a set of notes of admiration arranged in various ordep, and reminds of the Runic and Ogham characters found in Northern Europe. Being far superior to the picture writing of the Egyptians, this alphabet was adopted with little mo- dification by their successors, the Assyrians, the The Phoeniciaii Alphabet. 69 Medes, the Persians, and the Tartars. The Phceni- cians, too, seem to have copied their early characters from the Babylonians, with whom they had much commerce, and from them the early Hebrews took the Hebrew alphabet still in use. Nay, farther, the Phoenicians imparted these characters in the ninth century B.C., or perhaps later, to the Greeks, and this great people modified them, and spread them all over Europe ; so that the letters with which you write, and which you read, are originally the invention of these early Babylonians, whose fertile country set them thinking, and planning, and constructing, perhaps before these islands were even inhabited.'" The ancients are unanimous in praising the ma- nufactures of Babylon. Their robes, carpets, em- broidery, engraved gems, and unguents were specially * It is but fair to mention, that this opinion is contested by some eminent Semitic scholars, who maintain that the Semitic alphabet, in which the Phoenician was originally written, was fully as old as the cuneiform character, and that no ancient Semitic language was ever written in any other. It is quite true that, during the course of history, many Aryan nations have adopted the alphabet of the Semites, but that this obliga- tion was never reversed. The question would be settled, and these scholars refuted, if it were proved that either of the un- known languages in the cuneiform inscriptions were Semitic. But if they are proved non- Semitic, the fact that both hierogly- phics and Phoenician letters are found on the bricks, will go far to show that the scholars I have just cited are right. The fact that no transition stages from the syllabic characters to the alphabet have been found, seems to point in the same direction. In any case, it is more than probable that the so-called Phoeni- cian alphabet was first invented and used at Babylon. 70 Babylonian Commerce. celebrated, and for these they required imported materials. Five and twenty of the richest spices of India and Arabia were said to have been used in the preparation of one of these unguents, called the king's ointment, the price of which, up to the latest times, was extravagantly dear : at one time, at all events, a sum of money equal to ;^6o of our money was readily given for one pound weight of it. The luxury of the old Babylonians was supplied by all the neighbouring nations; the great herds of sheep in Arabia affording them wool. We are told that the Arabs who wandered about on the west of the Euphrates brought all their wool to Babylon, and ex- changed it for corn and for arms; the Armenians floated wood from their forests down the current of the river; India and Arabia supplied the aro- matic plants for the famous unguents ; and we hear everywhere of Babylonian garments as most valuable and highly prized. In the seventh chapter of Joshua, we find the cupidity of Achan excited by a " goodly Babylonish garment," and the events there narrated may have taken place about the fifteenth century B.C. These, as well as the engraved gems, the Phoeni- cians, in particular, obtained from the Babylonians in exchange for the metals which they brought from the islands of the West, for their purple, and for the wine and oil of Syria. And here the Phoenicians first found and introduced to the West the strange pro- ducts of Eastern Asia, which were scarcely known, even in fable, to the Mediterranean nations. Cinna- Dress and Mamiers. 7 1 mon, ivory, and the silk of India and China first found their way to Europe through the Babylonians, and by the hands of the Phoenicians.* Such being the case, you will not wonder that the Babylonian weights and measures were used all over Western Asia and Europe, as well as in India and Sabaea. Of the habits and customs of the early Babylonians we know but little for certain, as they were repeatedly conquered by tribes who adopted, no doubt, many points from them — this all the conquerors of Baby- lonia seem to have done — but added others of their own. We can only say, that they seem to have been elegant in their dress, and luxurious in daily life. Their dress was rich and comfortable ; besides a linen shirt, they wore a woollen garment do^vn to the ancles, fastened about the waist with a girdle, and over it a short white cloak. The hair was allowed to fall be- hind, and was confined in a fillet with loose ends. The use of perfumes was common. They wore seal rings, with engraved gems upon them, and elegant walking- sticks, with designs of flowers or animals carved on their handles, f * This can be readily proved by the Greek names for these articles, most of which are plainly borrowed from the Phoeni- cians. It is a most interesting investigation to examine what terms have been so borrowed, and it is of the highest import- ance in understanding the true nature of the early commerce of the Phoenicians. t I may observe, that the use of walking-sticks was common in ancient Egypt, where, as I already mentioned, we see a poor man employed in holding them for a company assembled at dinner. At Athens, during the most brilliant period of 7 2 EzekieVs Description. Indeed, their civilization led captive their fiercest conquerors, and stamped a certain complexion on all the culture which ever existed in the rich plain of Mesopotamia ; for many successive races laid claim to that garden of Eden, and, under the Assyrians especially, it again became the capital of Asia. Thus, in describing the glory of Assyria, you will see how clearly the prophet Ezekiel saw that the features of the country, the rivers, and the system of irrigation were the causes of its greatness. " Assur," he ex- claims, (chap, xxxi.,) "was as a cedar of Lebanon, with thick shadowing branches, and his summit was in the clouds. The waters made him great, and the floods caused him to wax high ; with their streams they went about his plants, and sent out their canals to all the trees of the fields. Therefore his growth waxed high, and his branches spread themselves abroad. All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches ; for his root was by great waters. The cedars in the garden Greek civilization, they were not only common, but were a neces- sary part of a gentleman's dress. If we are to believe the comic poets, a man coming abroad without his stick at Athens was presumed to be intoxicated, and was accordingly arrested by the police. This single fact will show how widely ancient democra- cies differed from those of our own day ; even all the Greek theo- rists on the subject seem anxious to control the citizen as much as possible in his daily life. The problem among us seems rather how far he can be left totally to himself. Effects of Climate. 73 of God could not hide him ; the fir trees were not h'ke his boughs, nor were the plantain trees his equals. I made him fair in the multitude of his branches, and all the trees in the garden of the Lord envied him." Such were the effects produced upon early races by the combination of rich alluvial soil and plenty of moisture. Such were the civilizations developed on the Nile and on the Euphrates. I have been obliged, indeed, to restrict my observations closely to the civilizatio7i of these nations, and I have avoided giving you even a sketch of their history^ for I desire to state all that I have to say in detail, and to avoid summaries and compendiums, which are the worst method of teaching. But the penalty of treating de- tails in a short course of lectures is the fragmentary character which necessarily results. Nevertheless, despite of this defect, enough has been said to show that, though these developments had many points of difference, though the ancient Babylonians and the ancient Egyptians were probably unlike in personal appearance, in dress, in manners and customs, and in religion, yet there were features so similar in both, as to force us to the conclusion, that climate — that physical geography, is a mighty agent in the earlyhistory of man. We must here turn back and discuss as briefly as possible a question we have reserved for this occa- sion — Why these early tropical civilizations, at least civilizations in very hot climates, tended naturally towards despotism and slavery ? Why was there no constitutional monarchy like England, no republic 74 Degeneracy of the Persians. like those of the Greeks and of Rome, among the Egyptians or the Asiatics? Why do we find that dreary uniformity of tyrants and slaves among them? Does this proceed from the races or from the country? Surely not altogether from the races ; for the Medes and Persians were originally of the same blood and family as the nations of Europe. The Persians, more- over, when they descended from their mountain homes and conquered India, were described by all competent observers as a bold, free, and noble race ; and accord- ing to Herodotus, a witness who ought to have been prejudiced against them, they were not a whit inferior to the Greeks in moral or physical qualities; yet they presently adopted the constitutions of the other Asiatics/^ It must, then, be chiefly the result of climate, and, as I have before hinted, of the cheap- ness and plenty of food, f Of all the results which are produced among a people by their climate, food, and soil, the accumula- tion of wealth is the earliest, and in many respects the most important. For, although in our times it * The rapid degeneration of the free and bold Asiatic tribes, especially the Lydians, seems to have struck Herodotus, or his authorities, so much, that they invented a story to account for it. Croesus was said, after his defeat, to have advised Cyrus, if he vi'ished to keep the Lydians in subjection easily, to train them to the dress and habits of women. By this story we see that the problem was felt, even by the early Greek observers, to be curious, and worthy of solution, but its causes lay deeper than their observation. t The following argument will be found at greater length in Buckle's " History of Civilization. " Origm of Wealth. 7 5 is generally the progress of knowledge which acce- lerates the increase of wealth, it is just the reverse case in early societies. The wealth must exist before the knowledge will begin. As long as every man is kept busy all his life, in trying to find the means of his own subsistence, so long there is no taste or leisure for scientific pursuits. Hence, the first step in early culture is the accumulation of wealth; for it induces leisure, and without leisure there can be no knowledge. Now, if a people con- sume each year all that they possess, there will evi- dently be no residue ; and hence no means of sup- porting idle or unemployed classes. But if the pro- duce is greater than the consumption in a countr)', an overplus arises, which of course increases each year, and eventually becomes a fund, out of which, in some way or other, directly or indirectly, every one is supported who does not himself create the produce upon which he lives. And now first, the existence of what may be called an intellectual class becomes possible, because these men can use what they did not produce ; and so they can devote their leisure to subjects for which at an earlier period the pressure of daily wants would have left them no time. This accumulated surplus is the Wealth of a country. Now, supposing a people to be perfectly barbarous and ignorant,* the rapidity with which this wealth is created must be regulated wholly by the physical peculiarities of the country. Of course, at a later * The reader will notice this assumption. 7 6 Effects of Heat on Industry. period, other causes come into play ; but, in the primitive state, it can only depend on two circum- stances — (a) on the energy and regularity of la- bour — (/3) on the return made to labour by the bounty of nature ; and these two causes are them- selves, to a great extent, the effect of soil and cli- mate. The returns made to man's labour are go- verned, of course, by the fertility of the soil, which again depends on its natural composition, along with the amount of heat and moisture which is brought to bear upon the soil. On the other hand, the energy and regularity of labour will be chiefly dependent on the influence of climate. This will display itself in two different ways. First, and most obviously, if the heat be intense, men will be indisposed, and to some degree unfitted, for that active industry which they might have ex- erted in a milder climate. And secondly, extremes of climate not only enervate men, but also give them idle habits. For example, we find that no people living in a very northern latitude have ever pos- sessed the steady and unflinching character for industry for which the inhabitants of temperate zones are remarkable. This becomes clear, when we remember, that in such countries the severity of the weather, and at some seasons the deficiency of the light, render it impossible for the people to con- tinue their usual out-of-door employments. This is one of the most obvious reasons why the civilization of Europe should be more permanent than that for- merly developed in tropical countries. Similar Effects of Cold. 7 7 The result is, that the working classes, being compelled to cease from their ordinary pursuits, are rendered more prone to desultory habits ; the chain of their industry is as it were broken, and they lose that impetus which long-continued and uninterrupted practice never fails to give.* Hence, there arises a national character more fitful and capricious than that possessed by a people whose climate permits the regular exercise of their ordinary industry. Indeed, so powerful is this principle, that we may perceive its operation even under the most opposite circumstances. It would be difficult to conceive a greater difference in government, laws, religion, and manners, than that which distinguishes Sweden and Norway on the one hand, from Spain and Portugal on the other. But these four countries have one great point in common. In all of them continued agricultural industry is difficult, if not impossible. In the two southern countries labour is interrupted by the heat, by the dryness of the weather, and by the conse- quent state of the soil. In the two northern coun- * I have heard intelligent inhabitants of the Tyrol and Switzerland complain very much of the idle habits produced by the severe winters in these countries. The trade in carved wood-work is, moreover, so lucrative, that the peasants are wont to work for a few days, and then sell their wares for a price which supports them for weeks. The idleness produced by this accident is similar to that produced by an extraordinarily prolific natural produce, like that of the sago-palm in the Malay Islands, or of the potato in Ireland. 78 Appareiit Exceptions. tries the same effect is produced by the severity of the winter, and the shortness of the days. The con- sequence is, that these nations, though so different in other respects, are all remarkable for a certain instability and fickleness of character,* presenting a striking contrast to the more regular and settled habits which are established in countries whose cli- mate subjects the working classes to fewe. interrup- tions, and imposes on them the necessity of a more constant and unremitting employment. These are the great physical causes by which the creation of wealth is governed. There are, no doubt, other circumstances which operate with con- siderable force, and which, in a more advanced state of society, possess an equal, and sometimes a supe- rior influence. But this is at a later period ; and looking at the history of the world in its earliest stage, it will be found to depend almost entirely on soil and climate : * I am not sure that this statement of Mr. Buckle is true with regard to the Norse and Swedes. His theory, however, drives him to say it, as he makes no allowance for differences of race. This instability of character might far more justly be ascribed to the Irish, who live in the most temperate climate in Europe. For in Ireland, not only can a man do his work every day in the year, so far as heat and cold are concerned, but he can even do so in the same clothes, with rare excep- tions ; and yet there is more irregularity in the work of Irish labourers than in that of the southern French, and Germans, who live in a much more unfavourable climate for the purpose. There is, however, a great deal of truth in the theory, though Mr. Buckle overstates it, as is usual with him. Evidence of History. 79 the soil regulating the returns made to any given amount of labour ; the climate regulating the energy and constancy of the labour itself. It requires but a hasty glance at past events to prove the immense power of these two physical conditions. There is hardly an instance in early history of any country being civilized by its own efforts, except it has possessed one of these favourable conditions. In Asia, civilization has been confined in early times to those great alluvial plains, which of them- selves secured to man that wealth which is necessary to intellectual progress. Immediately north of this favoured region, there have always dwelt rude and wandering tribes, who were kept in poverty by the ungenial nature of the soil, and who did not emerge from a savage state till they emerged from their original homes, and conquered the rich plains of their southern neighbours. And Egypt forms the same exception to the rest of Africa.* * Perhaps this remark should be slightly qualified. Although it is certainly true that no nation inhabiting a sterile soil, or an inhospitable climate, has ever developed a very early civiliza- tion, it is by no means so plain that every nation favoured in these respects has done so. Mr. Buckle, indeed, distinctly holds this theory, and endeavours to explain away the instance of South America — a splendid soil and climate with a wretched civilization — by saying that the exuberance of nature was there so great, as to overcome and thwart the industry of man. But •such an evasion will hardly satisfy a calm inquirer, who has no definite theory to support. Race in itself is not sufficient to overcome natural difficulties, neither do we know that soil and climate can create races. But of this again. 8o Contrast of the East and Europe. A general review of early civilization shows that, of the two primary causes of civilization already mentioned, the fertility of the soil is that which in the ancient world exercised most influence. But in European civilization, the other great cause — climate — has been the most powerful; and this, we saw, produces an effect partly on the capacity of the labourer for work, partly on the regularity of his habits. In Asia and Africa, the condition was a more fertile soil, causing a quick and abundant re- turn ; in Europe it was a happier climate, causing more successful labour. Hence we may call it, in the one case the effects of nature on herself — in the other, her effects on man. Now, it is evidently simpler and quicker for nature to produce rich crops than to form diligent men. It requires centuries to do the latter, whereas every year will produce the former. Hence it is that civilization in Egypt and Asia was so long anterior to that of Europe. They got a great start of us by their rich soil. But although their culture was the earliest, it was very far indeed from being the best and the most per- manent ; for the only real and solid progress depends, not on the bounty of the soil, but on the energy of man. Therefore it is that the civilization of Europe, which in its earliest stage was governed by climate, has shown a capacity of development unknown to those civilizations which were originated by soil. For the powers of nature, great as they are, are limited and stationary. But the intellectual progress of man is unlimited ; nor can we set even in imagination a Climate of India. 8 1 boundary where the human intellect will, of neces- sity, be brought to a stand. The reasons of this are obvious. Savages are almost altogether dependent on the bounties and provisions of nature. They have but few resources wherewith to oppose and to overcome physical difficulties in their country. Hence a happy and fruitful climate is absolutely necessary for the prosperity of these primitive races. But when a nation has once become civilized, artificial means are discovered for avoiding the results of extreme heat and cold, or of extreme drought and moisture — for overcoming obstacles to communication, such as sea and mountains ; and so man becomes, as it were, the lord of Nature, instead of her slave. Hence, in more civilized times, certain races are able to bid defiance, so to speak, to geography; and the Anglo- Saxon race, especially, has been able to settle in India and other tropical regions without being sub- dued by an unfavourable climate. Yet even in this case, in spite of all artificial appliances, it is found necessary to bring up little children of our race in this country; and there is reason to think, that if Englishmen settled completely in the country, in a few generations they would either cease to exist, or cease to be Englishmen in physical and mental characteristics. So powerful an influence has climate even in this civilized age ! This example is indeed the more instructive, be- cause a great part of the inhabitants of Hindostan are of the same blood and race as ourselves. Their G 82 Branches of the Ai-yan Race. forefathers and ours dwelt in the same home ; they fed their cattle on the same hills, and cultivated the same valleys. But when the race grew strong, and spurned the confinement of its narrow cradle, it so happened that the ancestors of the Indians turned their faces towards the morning and the south, while our fathers climbed the snowy mountains on the north-west. It may be that, like Abraham and Lot of old, their herdsmen quarrelled ; and we would fain think that our own ancestors, like the great patriarch, said to their brethren, " Behold, the land is before you — choose which way ye will go." And it may be that the others, like Lot, looked towards the south-east, and saw the country well watered, " like the Garden of the Lord ;" and so they chose what seemed the richer heritage. If this was the case, how strange the analogy ! Like Lot in Sodom, they obtained indeed early wealth and riches ; they founded their cities and built their monuments thousands of years before our race had emerged from obscurity. But with these material comforts they inherited the effects of an enervating climate — physical debility and degrading superstition ; and so upon them have descended ages of decay and ruin; while we, who took the poorer inheritance, and found a slower development, carried with us the blessing of the Lord, which maketh rich. But to return. " So far we have been showing how soil and climate affect the creation of wealth. But this is only preli- minary to the special discussion I wish to bring before you to-day — and that is, how the wealth Distribution of Wealth. 83 created is to be distributed; that is to say, what proportion is to go to the upper, and what to the lower classes of society. This question is now-a- days one of the most complicated in that most diffi- cult science, political economy, and would take us too far away from our subject; but in the early stages of society, the distribution of wealth can be shown to depend on physical causes, and it can also be shown that these causes have been active and powerful enough to keep the majority of the inhabi- tants throughout the fairest portions of the globe in miserable and inextricable poverty. For the distri- bution of wealth is also the distribution of power, and will hence show the origin of those terrible social and political inequalities which have ruined all the early splendour in the history of man. " If we take a general view of the subject, we may say, that after the creation and accumulation of wealth have fairly begun, it will be divided among two great classes — those who labour, and those who do not labour; the latter are the more able, the former the more numerous. The fund or produce which supports both classes is produced by the labour of the one, directed and economized by the skill of the other and superior class. One man invents a machine ; he works it by means of several ; he pays them wages, and supports himself too out of the surplus made by the work of the machine. This surplus is called the profit. So then there are in early society two classes — the employers and the labourers. If you think for a moment what Avages 84 High a fid Low Wages. are, you will see that they are the price paid for labour. Now, labour may, like ever)nhing else, be cheaper or dearer. If the supply of labourers out- strips the demand, wages will fall ; if the demand exceeds the supply, they will rise. If, then, there be a given amount of wealth to be distributed between employers and workmen, every increase in the num- ber of workmen will lessen the wages which each can receive. Setting aside, therefore, accidental or disturbing causes, the question of wages is a question of population." You now see our first important conclusion within reach. I trust you apprehended the long and some- what difficult discussion in the last Lecture about the growth of population in Egypt and in Asia. You remember how we showed that less food was required in hot climates — how it was more easily ob- tained, and how these causes conspired to produce population in certain hot chmates, while it was re- pressed in cold. Not only, then, was the population in Egypt and Asia great, but the food was exceedingly cheap. What is the result on wages ? Simply this, that there is a strong and constant tendency in hot countries for wages to be loiu, and in cold countries for them to be high. And surely the first effect of systematic low wages will be to depress and degrade the labouring classes. In Europe, where the climate was colder, food was more difficult of access. Hence labour was always dearer — hence wealth was better distributed, and so the lower classes fared better. Because when wealth is very unequally distributed. Condition of India. 85 political power and social influence will also be very unequal ; there will be tyrants and slaves. " Thus, for example, in India, the general food is rice, the most nutritive of all cerealia, and one which yields to the labourer an average return of at least sixty-fold. Hence there was in India a very early accumulation of wealth, there was a rapidly increas- ing population, and there were very low wages. Ac- cordingly, from the earliest times, in India, we find the upper classes enormously rich, and the lower miserably poor. We find those by whose labour the wealth is created receiving the smallest possible share of it : and hence the immense majority of the people, pinched by the most galling poverty, and living from hand to mouth, have always remained in a state of stupid debasement, broken by incessant misfortunes, crouching before their superiors in abject submission, and only fit either to be slaves themselves, or to be led to battle to make slaves of others." I take the example of India, because most of you, having friends or relatives settled there, will have heard of the slavish and cringing state of the unfortunate natives, most of them sprung from the same ancestors as we are, and how there seems now to remain no method of govern- ing them except as slaves, or at least by means of despotism. It is not easy to ascertain accurately what the rate of wages in India has been, or to re- duce it to an equivalent in English money; but I may say this much, that in any country where the interest on money and the rent of land is high, the wages are always found to be low in proportion. 86 Laius of Ancient India. Now, the interest on money allowed in the old Indian codes was from thirty-five to sixty per cent.,* and the rents are generally one-half the produce ; while, as you ought to know, in this country interest on money very seldom reaches ten per cent., and the rent is estimated at only one-fourth of the produce. Hence, by a simple arithmetical process, called the nile-of- three, you can compute the extraordinary lowness of wages in India. This is corroborated by all intelli- gent travellers, who also descant on the fabulous wealth of the upper classes, a fact no doubt familiar to you all. " Now, from this wealth and poverty have arisen contempt on the one hand and submission on the other; and hence codes of laws which crush and grind down the people, and entail upon them per- petual slavery. In the ancient institutions of the race it is ordained that the labouring class or caste, called Sudras, are not to occupy the same seats with Brahmins. If they sit upon the same carpet, they are to be maimed for life. If a Sudra speak with contempt of a Brahmin, he is to have his mouth burned or his tongue slit. If he were moved with a * In many of the European codes of antiquity, not only was the rate of interest not fixed at so enormous a standard, but there was an aversion to allowing any interest at all to be re- ceived for money. Even so independent a thinker as Aristotle was unable to conquer this prejudice in his own mind. The feeling, however, was certainly boimd up in the minds of the Greek republicans with a jealous care for the interests of the poorer citizens. Cheap Jtess of Life in Egypt. 87 desire of instruction, and even listened to the reading of the sacred books, burning oil was to be poured into his ears ; but if he were found to have committed them to memory, he was to be killed. If he were guilty of any crime, his punishment was to be greater than that inflicted on his superiors for the same crime ; but if he himself were murdered, the penalty was to be the same as that for killing a dog, a cat, or a crow. Were he to marry the daughter of a Brahmin, no punishment could in this world atone for such an atrocity — both he and his father-in-law must go to hell. " We may be sure that these oppressive enactments, preserved for us in the institutes of Menu, had their parallels in ancient Egypt and Babylon. There was the same abundance of cheap food, palm trees afford- ing dates, corn, rice, and the remarkably prolific plant called dhourra^ which yields a return of 240 to I. Besides this, the climate was such that hardly any clothes were worn by the lower classes ; and so cheap were the necessaries of life, that an intelligent Greek observer, nineteen centuries ago, tells us that it cost about thirteen shillings of our money to bring up a child to manhood — a certain cause of the populousness of the country." The degradation of the lower classes is equally well attested. Those of you who have had the pri- vilege of seeing Mr. Poynter's great picture of Israel in Egypt,* will have a vivid idea of the fearful toil and * Exhibited at the Royal Academy in the year 1867. 88 Heat productive of Slavery. misery endured in the building of the Egyptian temples and pyramids, and we have still on record laws similar to those just mentioned in India. "The labouring classes were strictly forbidden to meddle with poli- tical matters, and under no circumstances were they allowed, at a later period, to possess land — a privilege restricted to the king, the-warriors, and the priestly caste. We are told, too, of the thousands of lives squandered by each of the kings with pride, and not with regret. Among the Indian laws, there was one characteristic of all this early civilization, and it was this : that even though his master gave one of the lower classes his freedom, he would, in reality, still be a slave ; for, says the lawgiver, ' Of a state natural to him, by whom can he be divested ?' By whom, indeed, could he be divested ? Where was the power by which such a miracle could be produced ? For in India, in Egypt, in Babylonia, slavery — abject, eter- nal slavery — was the natural state of the great body of the people ; it was a state to which they were doomed by physical laws which they had no power to resist. " There is not, I believe, an instance on record of any tropical country in which, wealth having accumulated, the people have escaped this fate — np instance in which the heat of the climate has not caused an abundance of food, and the abundance of food caused an unequal distribution, first, of wealth, and then of political and social power. Among nations subjected to these conditions, the people have counted for nothing ; they have had no voice in the management of the State, no control over the oppression of the Egyptians. 89 wealth their own industry created. Their only busi- ness has been to labour — their only duty to obey. "Thus there have been generated among them those habits of tame and servile submission, by which, as we know from history, they have always been characterised. " For it is an undoubted fact, that their annals fur- nish no instance of their having turned upon their rulers — no war of classes, no popular insurrections, not even one great popular conspiracy. In those rich and fertile countries there have been many changes, but all of them have been from above, not from below. The democratic element has been al- together wanting. There have been, in abundance, wars of kings and wars of dynasties. There have been revolutions in the government, revolutions in the palace, revolutions on the throne, but no revolu- tions among the people, no mitigation of that hard lot which nature, rather than man, assigned to them. Nor was it until civilization arose in Europe, that other physical laws came into operation, and there- fore other results were produced." And it was not till civilization arose in Europe, that men came to think with sympathy and with pity of the labours of these early martyrs to pride and tyranny. When we are told that 2,000 men were occupied for three years in moving a single stone, that 300,000 men worked for twenty years at one of the pyramids, and that the canal of the Red Sea cost the lives of 20,000 Egyptians, we stand amazed at the inscrutable mysteries of a Providence that 90 Rctrihutioji in History. brought no succour to these wretched myriads of slaves ; and I know not whether we can justly hope that their minds were as debased and callous with ignorance as were their bodies with weary labour. Small comfort were it, indeed, to wish them so. But if the accounts we read of the diffusion of edu- cation in the country are true, their slavery must have been far more galling still. If the contemplation of the noble forms, and chaste colouring of their archi- tecture impressed their minds with any feelings of harmony and of beauty, and made them sensitive to their misery, how fearful must have been their lot ! And yet there was no human heart in those days to pity them — no human eye to weep for their sorrows. Day after day, there came with the fierce sun the fiercer cry of the hard taskmaster — " Ye are idle, ye are idle ; get you to your burdens ;" and doubtless many of them longed for the hour of death, when their limbs would refuse to labour, and their ears be deaf to the threats of the tyrant and his minions. To what end was all this misery ? To secure to the king a resting-place, far hidden from the eyes of men, deep within the earth, and beneath the moun- tain built by his devoted subjects. Is it not, then, a strange retribution, that while the dust of the de- spised victims lies undistinguishable, forgotten, and in peace, the splendid sepulchre has only preserved the body of the sacred monarch, through ages, for the fate which he so deeply abhorred. His remains have been carried to the museums of the distant West, and are there exposed to the unhallowed gaze, and passing jest, of an idle and curious public ! LECTURE V. THE SEMITES— ARABLE. E unfold to-day a new page in the world's history. We must leave the rich alluvial plains of Shinar and of Egypt, which have detained us so long, and must visit the peculiar ha- bitations of Shem. We must Avander over the rich odours and spices of happy Arabia, and the wild pathless oceans of sand, which have proved a truer and kinder mother to their inhabitants than the fer- tile terraces of Yemen. We must cross the deserts of Sinai, and visit the hills and pastures of Judaea, and pass on till the Mediterranean stops our farther way, and we halt in the great marts of Tyre and Sidon. All this country, Syria, Palestine, and Arabia, is the original home of the Semite race — the first race which has distinguished itself in the world for marked peculiarities of character, which no climate or country can eradicate. Here, first, we come in contact with an epoch where soil, food, and climate most certainly do not create but only mo- dify history. And here, of course, our task begins to increase in difficulty; and we pause in doubt before our facts, unable to assign them their certain 92 Lateness of Arab Development. cause. It was easy enough in the case of Babylon and Egypt to show how the soil and the climate developed and nurtured civilization ; but how shall we account for the same features, the same image and superscription, in the deserts of Arabia, and in the fertile plains of Jordan ? It will be well for us first to review the general aspects of this remarkable race. They are at once the oldest and the youngest of nations. While the Hebrews and Phoenicians have handed down to us records of grey antiquity, and played a great part in the history of the world before the European nations were even known by name, the Arab race, of all those that we know, slept the longest sleep of ob- scurity, before it woke up to conquest and to fame ; and when it suddenly started into life, its antece- dents were unknown, not only in the political or religious history of the world, but even to the Arabs themselves. The first centuries of our era are its mythical, the 6th century, a.d., its heroic age. The Arabs borrowed from the Jews their genealogies and their traditions. This sudden awakening of the Arabs was the cause, not the effect of Islamism ; it dates from the century before Mahomet, where we suddenly find an original development of poetic literature, expressed in a wonderfully refined and learned language. Although the last, this was the purest and most characteristic of all the developments of Semitic literature. For a third time, from the same corner of the globe, this strange race started up and sur- passed its rivals. For they did not in early times Unity of the Bace. 93 occupy a large portion of the globe. The chain of Mount Taurus, the Tigris, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, have been the boundaries of their possessions; and yet, their singular con- sistency of character has exercised the mightiest influences on the whole human race. They are marked by speaking varieties of the same lan- guage ; and indeed, unlike the widely diverse idioms of the Aryan races, all the Semitic dialects are so closely allied, that even mediaeval linguists did not fail to perceive it. Indeed it may be said, that the comparative study of languages was first sti- mulated by these oriental languages. Here, first, learned men began to comprehend the scientific problem of the unity of languages, and the laws by which apparent diversities can be reduced to one common prototype. Their great significance in the history of the world has been their influence upon religion. They can hardly be ranked among the great conquering races who overran Asia in early times; for though the language and other features of the empires of Egypt and Babylon have some points in common with the Semites, and perhaps are to be traced to the same remote ancestors, they differ most widely in essential points from proper Semitic civilization. Previous, then, to the impulse given to the Arabs by their new religion, we search in vain for any great Semitic empire. But what they failed to accomplish in outer things, they amply compensated by their conquests over the moral nature of man; and we 94 Semitic Religion. can, without any exaggeration, attribnte" to them half the intellectual progress of man. \^ . That striving towards ' truth,, 'which we honour under the titles of philosophy and science, has been almost strange to them ; but they have always had a special instinct, a superior faculty, for religion. While the more highly-gifted Indo-European race pursued the problems of nature and of creation for centuries by rational processes, by reasonings, by experiments, in short, by human wisdom, to the Semitic race belong those pure and clear intuitions which first disclosed the true nature of the Supreme Being; and, without reflection, without reasoning, nay, even without literature, they reached from time immemorial the highest and noblest aspects of the Deity. As far as we can judge from the history of reli- gions, and the course of human speculation, the belief in the unity of the Godhead is not the first, but one of the last conclusions reached by human wisdom. The more thoughtful of the Greek philo- sophers did indeed attain it, but only after centuries of reflection ; nor do they seem to have even hoped to convert the public of their day to such a beHef. And so, while the sages of the East and West were speculating and refining, and groping after the truth, the Arab in his desert saw the great God who was hidden from, the wise and prudent. Philosophy had its home in Greece and India, among a race curious and deeply interested in the secrets of the universe ; the Psalm and the Prophecy, the wisdom of dark Its Three Phases. 95 sayings and symbols, the solemn hymn, the revealed Book, these are the heritage of the theocratic race of the Semites. Is it not remarkable that the three religions which have hitherto played the greatest part in the affairs of men — the three religions marked by permanence, firmness, and the power of proselytizing — all these sprang up among the Semitic people, and from them set out to extend their conquests over the globe ? There are but a few days' journey from Sinai, where the Jewish religion was promulgated in thunder, to the city of Mecca, from which Mahomet issued to enforce his creed with the sw^ord. There are but a few days' journey from the same Sinai to Jerusalem, where a greater faith was preached in meekness and in love, and inherited a nobler and a more enduring empire.* Yet it would not be true to declare, that for these reasons the Semitic race was the greatest and noblest of the earth. They never possessed that loftiness of speculation for which India and Germany have been * It is remarkable too, that each of these great develop- ments appropriated to itself a peculiar branch of the Semitic languages. The language of the Law and of the Prophets Avas Hebrew, the noblest and most perfect of all the dialects. The language of Christianity was Aramaic, throughout the East at all events, where it was never supplanted by Greek. Inscriptions have been found in China attesting the early spread of this language of Christianity, as well as its principles, into the far East. Arabic, probably the oldest and the richest of all the sister dialects, became, as everyone knows, the medium through which Mahomet preached his faith. 96 Semitic Morals. pre-eminent. They knew not the perfect measure of beauty and of proportion which Greece be- queathed to modern Europe ; nor have they been gifted with that deep and delicate sensibihty which has always distinguished Keltic nations. Even in morality, as apart from dogma — in the love of justice and sincerity, in the appreciation of benevolence and of disinterested actions, they must be considered decidedly inferior to the nations of the West. The administration of justice, for example, has always been remarkably bad among them. In the Book of Proverbs, a judge is hardly ever mentioned without suggesting to the writer or compiler the idea of a bribe.* Semitic thought is clear, but narrow ; it has a marvellous comprehension for unity, but little for variety. Monotheism, the belief in one God, is the root and ground of all the striking features in their character ; and it has been their glory to have attained this great truth centuries before the rest of mankind, and to have taught it to the other races with * It should, however, be observed, that the Semitic nations were by no means singular in this respect. The Aryan Indians and the Turks seem to be in no better condition. The fact that Aristides received the title of jtist at Athens, indicates that this quality was not frequent even among the Athenians, and this is corroborated by ample evidence. It is apparently to the Germanic element in modern European civilization, that we owe the great dignity and impartiality which is commonly attached to the office of judge. But of all nations, the Semites would find it most difficult to separate a man's judicial or political position from his private interests and influence. Semitic idea of God. 97 whom they came in contact. From time imme- morial they comprehended that the government of the world was an absolute monarchy. The errors and beauties of idolatry and polytheism have never influenced them ; and the history of human thought shows, as I have said, that the belief in one God, though the simplest, is the last theory at which un- aided human speculation arrives. After centuries of philosophy, no sect in India — -in Greece, only a few scattered thinkers, attained it. It is by revelation, not by reflection, that the masses of men originally learned it. But the Semites conceived their god without age, sex, or any human attribute ; in fact, the word goddess would be a form almost impossible to con- struct in the Hebrew language. And while God occupied the whole of the Semitic religion. Nature, which was so constantly worshipped in other coun- tries, found no place in their creed; for the deserts in which they dwelt conspired to keep their faith pure. Sublime indeed in their endless uniformity, they encouraged, nay, perhaps even suggested to man, thoughts of the infinite ; but the idea of the constant creation of life, of the incessant change of forms, which fertile plains so constantly display before their inhabitants, from these influences the Semites were saved.* * This view of the religion of the Bedouin Arabs, which is, in the main, that of a great Semitic authority, M. Renan, requires some modifications. There is, in fact, no precise or definite theory on such obscure historical questions, which will H 98 Lesser gods in Arabia. For Arabia has always been the proper home of this ren^arkable race ; and when Mahomet arose, he found already engrained in his people the firm belief in one Supreme Creator and Governor of the world. A grave exception indeed there is to this great virtue among the Semites. There was one branch which fell away from its first love, and debased itself by the cruel and unseemly idolatries of the Gentiles ; but that nation had also abandoned the home and the habits of their fathers ; they had built cities, and made ships; they had traversed many lands, had dwelt among the nations, and had learnt their ways. But this nation, the great trading people of the Phoenicians and Canaanites, were disowned by their brethren, and called in contempt the descendants of not find itself opposed by some awkward and unmanageable facts. According to the evidence of Herodotus and other well-informed Greeks, the ancient Arabs not only worshipped a great male deity, the king of heaven, who seems not unlike the Bel of the Chaldeans, but also a female deity, whom Herodotus calls Alilat, a word jvhich in Arabic actually means the goddess. And we are also told, that the planets and the heavenly constellations, by which the wandering tribes directed their course through the pathless desert, were consi- dered genii, or presiding spirits over the various divisions of the nation. In certain temples of southern Arabia, we hear of their gods being worshipped under the visible form of a square block of black stone. Such a representation, however, seems rather symbolical than imitative ; and there is no doubt, that all the lesser gods, or genii, were strictly subordi- nated to the supreme god. The theory in the text is, then, sub- stantially correct, though the limitations here stated are well worthy of observation. Absence of Epic Poetry. 99 Ham. The Phoenicians, however, will occupy us at greater length in the sequel, as they form the na- tural transition from the East to Greece and to the West.* Speaking generally, then, Semitic religion has seldom gone beyond a pure, simple, patriarchal faith, without theological refinement, without mysticism, and without mythology. And great as was the moral benefit arising from this simplicity of belief, it was also the cause why the race possessed no great epic poetry. In Persia, India, and Greece, the imagination of man was excited by adventures of men with the gods, by the uncertain limit between godhead and manhood, by the constant personifi- cation of the powers of nature ; and so we have them narrating these mysterious beliefs in great heroic lays. All this had no place with the stern Arabs. God to them was a ruler apart from, and above, the world, who foraied it as a potter does his vessel; in Him there was " no variableness neither shadow of turning." And hence has arisen, too, their intolerance— a feature which the European nations have learnt from the Semites; for, among the Indo-Europeans, in * We shall see in the sequel, that the mass of the Hebrew- people, in spite of their splendid monotheistic literature, was, to a great extent, open to the same charge. But at all times there was an indignant protest raised by the higher and purer classes ; and after the captivity, no nation could be more abso- lutely opposed to idolatry. I have, therefore, contrasted them here with the trading Semites. I oo Semitic Philosophy. early ages, religion was never looked upon as abso- lute truth, but as an affair of caste, or the inheritance of a family. On such principles they were ready to criticise faith and theology. But the Semites thought far differently : their own faith was to them absolute truth, and all other religions besides were false. This view they have now forced upon all the civilized world. Closely connected with it is the mighty influence of prophets, true and false, among them. The great changes produced in other nations by politicians are, among the Semites, the action of the prophet, the inspired representative of the Most High, whose utterances are accepted, without criticism, as the oracles of God. Revelation — a notion foreign to other nations, has, among them, been often claimed and allowed. I said already that they possessed no mytholog}^, and hence no epic poetry ; and this, no doubt, re- sulted partly from the climate of their original habi- tations. To them the course of nature Avas nothing but the inflexible will of a superior Being acting directly upon the world. Hence they have never developed science. What need is there of specula- tion, when this simple view satisfies their intellects ? Their highest wisdom has not proceeded beyond the parable and the proverb, just as if Greek philo- sophy had been arrested after the Seven Wise Men uttered their pithy maxims. The book of Job, and that of Ecclesiastes, the highest and noblest efforts at science in the Bible, contain no distinct arguments or conclusions, but revolve round and round the Despair of the Preacher. i o i same problems without obtaining any logical answer. Nay, the latter of these books turns away from the results, which almost seem within its grasp, with de- liberate despair : " Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities ; all is vanity. One gene- ration passeth away, and another cometh, but the earth abideth for ever. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it : the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly : I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that in- creaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." And the conclusion of the whole matter is no scientific posi- tion, but " fear God, and keep his commandments," a precept which we now-a-days know to be not only compatible, but congenial with the highest science. This absence of the thirst for knowledge is closely allied with another remarkable want in the Semitic character, the want of curiosity. They are asto- nished at nothing ; for, to them, the omnipotence of God is so ever-present, that when they are told the most surprising story, but one remark rises to their lips — " God is great ;" and they meet doubts similarly with an apathetic '' God knows." The Arab philo- sophy, of which you may often have heard, was no exception to all these facts. It was Greek philosophy written in Arabic, and nothing more, nor was it ever popular in the Semitic homes, nor among pure Semitic races. The same distinctive features mark I02 Psychological Value of the Psalms. the poetry of the Semites, which has, at times, risen to great beauty and majesty, but it always assumes either the form of proverbs— of which those attri- buted to Solomon are the most perfect — or that of the psalm, an outpouring of personal emotion or experience; and surely, of all the legacies left us by the genius of the Semites, there is none more precious than the great collection known as the Psalms of David.* But there is no trace of fiction in these effusions. The Hebrew poet is always real, and always in earnest. Among their books, in early times, there is little trace of narrative or dramatic poetry. You see, then, that the remarkable race which I am endeavouring to depict to you, is not difficult to describe. There is little light and shade in their character. They have but few ideas, and these they grasp with great firmness and precision. Purely * These unfettered outbursts of joy and grief, of hatred and of love, have become of still deeper value in our modem civi- lization, which teaches suppression of feeling and reserve of utterance. For there the troubled heart, weighed down with a load of unspoken grief, can find, consecrated by an authority that none will gainsay, expressions as vehement as any joy, as passionate as any sorrow. In days of coldness and formality, a consecrated type of language, adequate to represent the depths of human emotion, will not only save the intellect from being overwhelmed by the emotions, but, what is far more valuable, will save the emotions from being stifled and for- gotten by the intellect. For no idea will live and influence the minds of men if it be not expressed in words, and, as it were, fed by human sympathy. This is, I think, the great psychological value of the Psalms of David. Effects of Polygamy. 103 Semitic codes of law seem hardly to recognise any penalties save one — that of death. It is no wonder, then, that historians have com- plained of the monotony of Oriental history, which must ever be made up of the development of a few passions and motives, and these in great extremes. Nor has the character of the Arabs and Hebrews had the same chance, the same fair play of development, as that of the West, for the special reason that poly- gamy has always prevailed among them. For po- lygamy has ever been found to ruin what we call society, as each master of a house finds sufficient company within the walls of his harem, and, accor- dingly, neither goes abroad himself nor allows his household to do so. Farthermore, polygamy has always kept down the more delicate sex in a position where there is neither the liberty nor the cultivation requisite for influencing men. Hence, the Semitic men have developed that stern, inflexible, masculine temper, without the versatility or the grace which is the result of associating with the other sex as equals. Closely connected with this point is the perpetual gra- vity and sedateness assumed by the Semites. They are altogether wanting in the power of laughing ;* * I mean, of course, laughing by way of amusement. *' Laughing their enemies to scorn" was, indeed, a favouri,te practice among the Hebrews, and was thought dignified enough to be often attributed to the Deity. But, as far as I can re- member, any other laughter is looked upon with contempt. " As is the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of fools. " Such is the sour utterance of the Proverbs. And the book of Ecclesiastes tells the young man that, for all his 1 04 Hatred of Plastic Arts. and we are informed that, difficult as it is to as- tonish them, the French, in Algiers, have succeeded in doing so, not by their arts, their civilization, and their inventions, but by their perpetual gaiety and their constant peals of laughter. This solemn race was ignorant of, and averse to, the plastic arts, and would never tolerate, when in its purity, any artificial development of the Beautiful and the Ideal, except music — the most purely sub- jective of all the fine arts, and that which leaves nothing but an emotion as its effect. As for sculpture and painting, they have been most strictly interdicted amongst the Arabs, who do not understand representations or imitations in any other sense than as cheats and delusions, and who have always had a holy horror of finding these arts making the attempt to represent the Deity or the angels. If I may use a hard word, their notions are too realistic to tolerate or encourage the ideal, or the arts which are its embodiment. A Mussulman, to whom a celebrated traveller (Mr. Bruce) showed a picture of a fish which he had painted, after a moment of surprise at the representation, asked him, " If this fish at the day of judgment rises up against you, and accuses you in these words, ' You gave me a body, but did not give me a living soul' — if the fish were to say this, what answer could you make ?" This peculiarity is attested by all their antiquity, and enjoyment, God will some day bring him to account. These passages are, of course, capable of some modification or expla- nation, but the main features are unmistakeable. Semitic Politics. i o 5 the codes of Mahomet and of Moses agree in this point, the perpetual inveighing against graven images, " or the Hkeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth." Even in the present day, the more conserva- tive of the Sultan's subjects heard with horror that he had permitted his photograph to be taken by the unbelievers. With regard to civil and political life, the Semitic race has been distinguished by the same remarkable feature of simplicity. It has never in its original home, and of its own will, developed great organized empires, or commerce, or what we can call public spirit, or a constitution, or even an organized despot- ism. In fact, complete anarchy, to use the expression of M. Renan, has always been the political condition of the Arab race. We find in it the surprising pheno- menon of a society maintaining itself without any vestige of central government. Consequently, the Arabs have proved unable to develop themselves adequately in organized countries like Persia; but whenever they find a country suited to nomad life, such as Syria or Africa, then they are immediately at home. For the same reasons, they have been in- ferior, on the whole, as a military race. To maintain standing armies, David, the Phoenicians, the Car- thaginians, and the Caliphs, all employed mercena- ries. And this has been the frequent cause of the ruin of their kingdoms. Even among their leaders, Hannibal and his great family seem alone to have possessed pure military genius. Mahomet is said to io6 Ufiiformity of the Race. have been, like Abd-el-Kader, rather a man of deep rehgious emotions, and of violent passions, than a real general. The tent has been their palace, the desert their empire, the tribe their nation. The Semitic nobility is one of blood, their rule is pa- triarchal ; as for supreme power, they acknowledge it in God alone. This, at least, is the case, if we take the Semites in their purity, in the wilds of Arabia, before they came in contact with the nations, and learned their ways ; and how strong the feeling is, you will remember in the history of the children of Israel, who, when they asked for a king, were re- proved bitterly by the prophet Samuel for this very thing — the imitation of the heathen around them. We may then sum up the whole matter, and briefly describe the race, as it appeared, and indeed appears, in its primitive cradle, Arabia, as one which pos- sesses neither mythology, nor epic poetry, nor science, nor philosophy, nor fiction, nor plastic arts, nor civil life — all is simplicity, and gravity, and uniformity. Even the highest Moorish civilization was the same, and of the same type, in the most remote portions of their mighty empire ; they were still Semites in Africa, in Italy, and in Spain. In fact, they never colonized a conquered country, nor sent out bands of adventurers to occupy new soil, like the Normans or Anglo-Saxons, but only conquered to proselytize. Hence, the Arab race found for itself no everlasting habitation, and vanishes as soon as its religion has been forced upon its subjects. Africa, indeed, a second Arabia in climate, was really conquered by Habits of the Desert. 107 them, for there they reproduced their nomad Hfe. But no new conditions of cHmate have had any power to change them, and the lapse of time seems to affect them just as httle; the Bedouin of to-day is the same as the Bedouin of three thousand years ago. He rules his life on patriarchal principles, and on the respect due to relatives. The head of the oldest family is the chief of the tribe, and his eldest son receives the authority from him. Their pride and delight consists in the wealth of horses and camels. The heads of families meet in council under the chief, and they not only declare war and make peace, but lead the youth to battle or to plunder ; and their principal occupation is to plunder. Like the early Greeks, who professed piracy openly, so the Arabs make no secret of going out and falling upon a neighbouring tribe, murdering the men, and carrying off the women, cattle, and slaves as lawful booty. Such outrages lead to retaliation, which often continues for generations, until the chief of a third tribe is chosen as arbitrator, and allays the bitter feeling by an arrangement, inflicting a tax of cattle on the original aggressor. After this rude fashion, the Arabs of the desert have, for centuries, practised, along with many vices, at least the virtue of submission and respect to the authority of their chiefs, and have developed a firm and manly character, shown by the strict ob- servance of promises, and noble hospitality ; and it is curious how these honest qualities are combined io8 Semitic Poetry. with lawless robbery and plunder. The estimate, indeed, of the Arab character, given by Mr. Palgrave in his remarkable book, is much lower than that I have described ; but still he does not deny the exis- tence of these qualities. If the stranger enter their tents, the daughters of the tribe bring water to his horses, the chiefs share with him their frugal meal of dates, and kill a sheep to make him a feast ; and his host will lay down his life to maintain the safety of the visitor. When the night descends with refreshing coolness, he is invited to take a seat beneath the clear starlight, and recount to the assembled men of the encampment his adventures and travels. He is expected to tell of his origin and tribe ; and then his hosts take their turn in praising their own ancestry, and their own noble deeds, in battle and in adventure ; nor do they omit to laud the virtues of their steeds, or the swiftness of their camels. As we before said, their only intellectual perform- ances are in poetry and music, and poetry among them is very old — indeed, their oldest known poet (Lokman) is referred to the age of King David; but, from that day to this, it has been merely the occasional outburst of excited feelings in joy or sorrow — short, passionate, and deeply subjective — you understand the term — concerned about the poet's self, his own inner feelings and circumstances; but in plot they are mere occasional poems — dirges, hymns of vic- tory and of praise, of hatred and contempt towards enemies, of hunting, too, and of wanderings in the pathless desert, of the swiftness of horses and of Featu7'es of Arabia. 109 camels.'^ And such poems, suitable to the same ever-recurring circumstances, were recited amid crowds of rapt and excited listeners. It is easy to see that many of these features in the original Semites were the results of the country in which they lived. Arabia is something like a repeti- tion of Africa, on a smaller scale — an immense cen- tral district of sand and barren mountains — no deep indentations in the coast, and with scarcely a river ; but if it does not possess such a valley as that of Egypt, still the deserts of Arabia are not, like the Sahara, a howling wilderness. Dean Stanley, coming from the region of Sinai into Palestine, observes that the transition is marked by the disappearance of trees ; so that the hill country of Judea, which has always been an inhabited country is, in some respects, bleaker and more barren than Northern Arabia. There is, in the latter country, an occasional spring, and here and there a Httle verdure, just sufficient to support a small roving population, who cultivate the soil but little, and live on the fruit of the date-palm, while their cattle are supplied by the scanty herbage. It is this roving life, this constant abandoning of one habitation for another, that has so weakened * The subjective and introspective character of the Hebrew- poetry is another reason of its popularity and adaptibility in all ages of the world. To those accustomed to the early heroic poetry of other nations it seems very remarkable. Many of the Psalms are as deeply introspective as the poems of Keats or of Tennyson. no Geographical Relations. Arab notions of property, and of the rights of indi- viduals over their own possessions. They would have all things in common ; not by common consent, but by a common recklessness, which refuses to be content with what they have, or even cares to keep the same thing for any length of time, but rather delights in spoiling others. Such habits cannot co-exist with city life, with settled habitations, with any social and political development. Whenever the Semitic race came in contact with other and more fixed races, whenever their own climate was fruitful enough to allow them to settle, we find that these predatory habits give way to a safer and quieter mode of life.'^ For Arabia interposed a huge obstacle between the two great centres of civilization of early days, Egypt and Babylon. As soon as these great nations became acquainted with one another, there would naturally arise a commerce between them ; and as this commerce could not pass through the great barren centre of Arabia, it must take place either through the south of Palestine and the Syrian deserts, from the northern extremity of Egypt, or along the * M. Renan, indeed, thinks the pure Arab race is an excep- tion to this rule, and that they never conquered and appropriated any country except Africa, which was, as we have said, a country closely similar to their own. But still, as long as they retained Persia and vSpain, they seem to have been just as well fitted for city and even for literary life as their neighbours. They have, however, left the stamp of nomad habits and of Eastern jealousy on Spain up to the present day. The roving shepherd, feeding his flocks in the wild regions of Catalonia, is said to be very similar in customs and in tastes to the Arab of the desert. Productio7is of Yemen. 1 1 1 southern coast of Arabia by ships, reaching the southern extremity of Egypt and the region about Abyssinia. And the latter traffic, especially, was further stimulated by the great fertility and valuable products of happy Arabia. There, on the south coast, the high central plateau descends in long and gradual terraces to the ocean, and there are most fruitful valleys, cooled by their high position, and the breezes which blow from the sea. This is the home of frankincense, the sugar cane and the coffee plant, of figs, and of dates, of wheat and dhourra fields. This rich country, hidden from the northern world by the great deserts, was known in early times as a region of fabulous riches and beauty. " It seems to be true," says Herodotus, "that the extreme regions of the earth which surround and shut up within themselves all other countries, produce the things which are the rarest, and which men reckon the most beautiful." And then he goes on to relate wonderful stories; how the cassia is guarded by winged animals much resembling bats, "which screech horribly, and are very valiant," and how the cinnamon is brought from some unknown country, probably from that in which Bacchus was born, by great birds, which build their nests with it; and how the Arabians leave pieces of meat in the way so large, that when the birds carry them up to the face of the rocks to their nests, the nests are broken down. And he concludes, "Concerning the spices of Arabia, let no more be said. The whole country is scented with them, and exhales 1 1 2 Riches of Sahcea. an odour marvellously sweet. There are also in Arabia two kinds of sheep worthy of admiration — the one kind has tails three cubits long, and which would trail upon the ground. As it is, all the shep- herds know enough of carpentering to make trucks for the sheep's tails. The trucks are placed under the sheep's tails, each sheep having one to himself, and the tails are then tied down upon them. The other kind of sheep has a broad tail, which is a cubit across sometimes." So far, Herodotus. You may, perhaps, be surprised at my giving you such details as these, but such stories are, once at least, worthy of mention, as showing the mixed information which an intelligent inquirer could obtain about distant regions in those days. It is more than probable that the Phoenicians were Herodotus' informants about Southern Arabia, as they carried on a constant trade through the Red Sea with the Sabaeans. But ages before his day, all these spices had been carried in quantities to Babylon, India, and Egypt ; and hence we hear of a capital of Sab^ea, as that part of Arabia was called, of which the name was Mariaba, now El Mareb ; and we are told the king of the land dwelt there in a stately palace. They were reported the richest nation of the earth, as they received such quantities of gold and silver for their produce, and were too remote to be conquered. Their ordinary household ware was said to be of gold and silver. From what we know of Gades, which was, in some respects, a similarly situated place, in a country abounding with natural wealth, and too Trade in Sabcea. 113 remote to be conquered, we can well believe that these statements are not greatly exaggerated. But the accounts also report the greatest luxury and effeminacy in their manners and customs. All this is perfectly in harmony with the known geo- graphical characteristics of their country. We know that in the third century, B.C., they were still such primitive sailors, that they conveyed their goods across the Red Sea in coracles, similar to those used on the wild coasts of Ireland in our own day;* hence, the Babylonians and Indians must have sent vessels to their coasts in the days of the Queen of Sheba; for that celebrated queen probably came from this very country, which was not more than seventy- five or eighty days' journey from Jerusalem; and, no doubt, the Phoenician ships which, in Solomon's day, found their way to Ophir and Elath (the mouth of the Indus) by sailing down the Red Sea, spread the fame of his wisdom round the coast of Arabia ; for the country was the mart for Indian, East African, and Babylonian wares, which were brought in ex- change for its precious spices. Although the old Greeks speak of the effeminate life of the Sabaean kings, who never left their harems, and the daily cost of whose household was * These coracles are made by stitching a horse or cow hide on ribs of wood, and covering it with tar. The natives of the coast of Donegal will venture out miles into the Atlantic in these nut- shells, and will even bring back cows from the islands tied doAvn in them. If a man steps incautiously on the hide between the ribs, his foot goes through. 114 Remaijis of Irrigation. fifteen talents, yet there are still remaining evidences of energy and of cultivation in the country. These remains are more similar in character to those of Egypt and Babylon, than to those of the proper Semites ; so much so, indeed, that some inquirers have thought the Sabaeans must have been a race akin to the old Egyptians, whose Semitic origin is, at least, doubtful. Their alphabet, however, transmitted to Ethiopia, and there adopted and preserved, has been proved identical with that of the Phoenicians. But, at all events, immense remains of great stone structures, ruins of canals, dams, and basins for water, show that, like all the other early civilizations, these people under- stood thoroughly the value of irrigation. The w^ater which hurried down the descending terraces to the "sea Avas arrested and utilized by artificial means ; and travellers still wonder at the solidity of the masonry and the admirable engineering of these remains. In this, as in all the countries which we have already discussed, cultivation in early ages reached a comparative perfection which has long passed away, probably never to return. I may also observe, before leaving this part of the subject, that the language spoken in Sabaea seems to have been a dialect distinct from Arabia Proper, and akin to the yEthiopic. Its peculiarities were so great, that some scholars make it a separate branch of the Semitic family. I have hitherto spoken almost exclusively of the commerce across the south of Arabia; but a far Caravaft Routes. 115 greater and more lively traffic was ever passing and repassing across the northern deserts. The spices of Yemen being brought up the Red Sea by Phoeni- cian ships, were placed upon the caravan routes, which combined Syria with Babylon in very early times ; and even by land these precious wares were brought through the whole of Arabia for the same purpose. But the land route from Yemen was full of risk and danger; for the traders must trust the wild Bedouins and their camels, to transport and defend their property, and to allow them safe transit through their pathless wilds. These caravans, too, offered a great premium to successful plundering, and so en- couraged this Arab peculiarity from the earliest times. Hence, we can understand the anxiety of the Phoenicians in the days of David and Solomon, to secure the sea route of the Red Sea to the south- ern coast of Arabia. The great land route from Syria into Arabia is even in the Book of Num- bers openly recognized. You will see it men- tioned in the twentieth and twenty-first chapters, and alluded to as the "king's highway." The eastern road to Mesopotamia branched off from this, and also passed through many wild and barbarous tribes ; and the greatest danger was, that these Nomads were always changing their abodes, so that the safe escort of one caravan would not secure similar ad- vantages for the next. All these wandering tribes, interposing a huge parenthesis between the civilized Egyptians and 1 1 6 Wafzt of Com?nercial Enterprise. Babylonians, and the great trading nation of anti- quity, the Phoenicians, still never developed any independent commercial spirit; they were paid for transporting wares; they were the go-between na- tion, the necessary obstacle which merchants must endure and humour; but they were always content with the profits of the day ; they never utilized their extraordinarily favourable position for commerce to increase their capital, or to enter into speculations. All this would have required industry, and plodding attention to business, and from this their country dissuaded them. Diligence cannot be the virtue of nomad tribes, who are unable to form a settle- ment or cling to a fixed habitation ; and had any one tribe done so, it would have been the signal for invasion to all its poorer neighbours. How important, and how decisive in forming cha- racter, are these geographical facts ! For of all the inhabitants of the globe in the present day, the most industrious, thrifty, and careful, are the descendants of Shem, the once despised and timid, yet now the rich, the influential, the clever Jewish race. How, we may ask in wonder, can brethren of the same blood differ so widely ? How is it possible that those who wandered from the free and wild deserts of Arabia could become a nation of wily, unwarlike, merchantmen ? This curious historical problem, the comparison of the character of Abraham and his tribe, with that of the present Jewish nation — a com- parison which would demand an accurate review of centuries of history — will receive unexpected light Contrast of Hebrews and Phoeniciaiis. 1 1 7 from a comparison of the Hebrews, not with them- selves at a later period, but with the Canaanites and Phoenicians, who dwelt on their coasts, and were in daily intercourse with them. We shall thence be able to determine the difference of circumstances, which made one tribe pastoral, poetical, proud, and pious, while its sister tribe was mercantile, matter- of-fact, mean, and materialistic. Such are the subjects to which we shall turn in the next lecture. LECTURE VI. THE SEMITES— PALESTINE AND PHOENICIA. UR last lecture concluded with an allusion to the extraordinary contrast between the fj primitive Semites of Arabia and their modem brethren the Jews. This contrast existed from time immemorial between various parts of the race ; but there was a time when the Hebrews stood with the Arabs, not over against them, in the com- parison. The Canaanites and Phoenicians were the old trading Semites — rich and important, but idola- trous withal — who were separated by a marked line from their purer brethren, and called by them, with contempt, the children of Ham. But although the Hebrews, in their earlier history, present all the pecu- liar characteristics which we saw among the Arabs, we find them, neither in religion nor in morals, of so fixed and permanent a type ; and their authentic and detailed history which has reached us, shows them in an intermediate position between the desert and the city, between cattle and merchandise, and hence between the worship of Jehovah and the rites of Early Training of the Hebrews. 119 Baal. They will afford us, then, a suitable transition to the more brilliant but corrupt civilization of the Phoenician traders. We are not left to tradition or inference to deter- mine the Semitic character of the ancient Hebrews. In the books of Moses, we find them a nation under the special providence of Jehovah, who detennines their habitations as well as their worship. And if we might for a moment suppose that the desert had created the marked features of the Arabs, the strictly analogous temper, and widely different history of Abraham and his descendants must tell us, that this fierce and lofty spirit depends upon other more re- mote causes. Abraham and his clan appear as pil- grims and wanderers, inhabiting now the deserts of Syria, now the rich plains of Egypt. He is promised a settled habitation for his children, he is himself trained to be a nomad shepherd. It would almost seem as if the constant migrations of his race were in- tended to wean them from the manners and customs of their neighbours, and teach them " to worship the Father in spirit and in truth." For no sooner do they become strong enough to smite the city of Shechcm, and inspire the tribes around with fear, than they are transported to Egypt, a country of a different stamp, with fixed institutions, and an established society. There they were surrounded with heathen manners, religion, and civilization. But although Moses "was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," their ideas were utterly repugnant to the proper Semites. The hostility, too, which 120 Effects of Desert Life. arose between them, the estrangement, so great that it was an abomination to the Egyptian to sit at table with them, the fearful slavery to which they were subject — all these circumstances prevented Egyptian culture from having its effects upon them ; even the sublime doctrines of the immortality of the soul, and the future judgment of the dead, seem to have been an idle tale in the ears of Moses, learned, as he pro- fessed to be, in all their wisdom. There is no trace of these beliefs in the earlier Jewish history. In the books of the Law they are never once held out as a threat to coerce secret crime. Bringing, then, as little as possible of the culture of Egypt with them, after their sojourn of two hundred years, they are again reduced to nomad conditions, and wander in the wilderness forty years. Doubtless the generation which came up out of Egypt was debased with slavery, and their history during this period shows us cowardice and obstinacy as their chief characteristics. But the generation nurtured in the wilds of Sinai — that heard the law given in thunder, and depended for subsistence upon war and conquest — were men of very different metal. They entered Palestine not as escaped slaves, but as tri- umphant conquerors; they had been trained, by isolations of centuries, to receive the laws of Jehovah, and they entered the promised land as strangers, to bear witness to a purer faith. The Jews are the worst possible example wherein to show the effect of physical conditions on race. Their development was irregular, supernatural, and thoroughly excep- Idolatry of the Hebrews. 1 2 1 tional ; and the effects of this origin were stamped indelibly upon their after history. And yet, despite of all their isolation, of all their previous preparation, they offered a feeble resistance to the seductive idolatry of the Canaanites. These tribes seem to have been, in race and language, closely allied both to the Phoenicians and Hebrews. The names of their towns and kings are obviously Semitic. There is no trace of any difficulty of communication as to language between Joshua and his enemies. We have constant notices of Canaanite individuals, and even tribes, existing in the midst of the possessions of the twelve tribes. Although a total extirpation of the idolaters had been commanded, the nature of the conquest made it impossible. After the first irruption of the Israelites, there seems to have been no settled plan of action — no general crusade against the aborigines; each tribe fought for a possession with the tribes occupying some isolated valley. The resistance of the Canaanites seems equally local and fragmentary ; and so the religion and the manners of the idolaters soon leavened the pure faith of the sons of Israel. We are, I think, often misled by the literature of the Hebrews to imagine them a great God-fearing people, crowding in countless multitudes to worship Jehovah at His tabernacle or His temple. But the explicit narrative in the thirtieth chapter of the Second Book of Chronicles shows us that the wor- ship of Jehovah had been forgotten, and was even laughed to scorn by many to whom Hezekiah sent 1 2 2 Protest of the Prophets. his proclamation. Since the days of Solomon, we are told, there had not been such a thing as a great Passover at Jerusalem. The whole literature, it is true, preserved to us from Joshua to Malachi, preaches the purest religion ; but all these great works are the protests of a small and indignant minority, striving against the multitude, and hoping against hope, to restore the pure and simple religion of the God of Abraham. There is evidence, even in the reign of Solomon, and just after the building of the Temple, of a great religious laxity both in the manners and the literature of the day. The works attributed to him have less of the purely religious and devotional spirit, than of a philosophic contemplation of nature, and bespeak the man who consorted with the King of Tyre, and had intercourse with the idolaters of Egypt and of India.'" The prophets, it is true, from his time downward — the prophets, the great revival preachers of their age — raised up their voices to witness for the purer truth ; but it was not till Josiah arose with fire and sword, and ruthlessly exterminated the idolaters, that we can really assert the nation to have been worshippers of the true God. The book of the Law was found, * There can be no doubt that the Tyrian artist, Hiram, who was sent to Jerusalem to beautify the temple, was allowed to introduce into it many imitations of the temple of Bel in Tyre. The detailed description of the two pillars, and their names, given in the Book of Kings, points evidently to the pillars seen and admired by Herodotus in Tyre. The subject is further discussed in the next lecture. Hebrew Politics. 123 you will remember, at the commencement of his reign, a forgotten roll, covered with the dust of years. Even his bloody crusade would, doubtless, have had but temporary effects, had not the purified remnant of the nation been presently carried away from the groves of Baal into the far East. There they pre- served that pure and rigid monotheism which we find in every page of their New Testament history, and which refused to admit the claims even of Christ to a share in the Divinity of the Father. This very rapid sketch of the history of the Hebrews will show that we must discard them, when discussing the effects of physical characteristics on the civiliza- tion of Phoenicia and Palestine. It shows us, how- ever, that while they possessed the ferocity and in- tolerance of their Arab brethren, that their hold on monotheism was by no means so strong, or so clear. They also exhibit, to a great degree, the want of combining or organizing power so remarkable in pure Semites. The idea of a king to control the country, by means of a central government, is a late idea in their minds, very imperfectly carried out, and ex- pressly censured by the sacred historian as an imita- tion of their Heathen neighbours. Internal dissen- sions, wars, and feuds, w^re perpetually taking place among the individual tribes ; and the only rulers who seem to have obtained any control over the whole country, did so, not in virtue of their Divine right, but owing to personal popularity, supported, it ap- pears, by strong bands of foreign mercenaries. Eet us turn, then, to the older tribes of Canaan, and the peculiarities of their position. 124 The Rivers of Syria. From the chain of mountains which form a barrier between Syria and the sea, and which run north and south in parallel ridges, spring four rivers, of unequal magnitude, but all remarkable in history, as well as in physical characteristics. There is, first, the Orontes, which flows north to Antioch, the capital of the great kingdom of Seleucidae ; then there is the Leontes, flowing westward into the sea near Tyre — the river of Phoenicia ; the Barada, again, flows east- ward, and loses itself in swamps beyond Damascus, the capital of ancient Syria ; lastly, the greatest and most curious of all these streams w^orks its way south- ward, and hurries through gorges and through lakes, till it reaches the Dead Sea. This is the Jordan, or " descending river," as it was rightly called — the river of Palestine — which the Israelites passed over, and in which our Lord was baptized. There is no river in the known world which makes so rapid a descent as the Jordan, if we except the Sacramento in Cali- fornia. After falling from a considerable height into Lake Merom, it descends three hundred feet more to reach the Sea of Galilee, and then plunges through twenty-seven rapids, one thousand feet more, before it reaches the Dead Sea. Hemmed in by rocky cliffs, it darts to the right and left, as if eager to escape from its bed, so that a distance of sixty miles is in- creased to two hundred by its constant windings. Its marvellous fall of three thousand feet brings it one thousand three hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean. These peculiarities are worthy of mention, for they Unimportance of the Jordan. 125 show you how different were the characteristics of Palestine from those of the countries we have been considering ; neither could the banks of such a river be overflowed periodically, as was the case in Egypt ; nor was it even possible to irrigate the neighbouring country by artificial means, as was done in Mesopo- tamia. A narrow fringe on each bank was covered with rich and luxurious vegetation ; the rest of the adjacent country was often parched with the sun, and barren. There had been, indeed, a fruitful valley — " well watered everywhere as the garden of the Lord, and as the land of Eg}^pt" — towards which Lot turned his eyes, when he parted from Abraham. But a fear- ful visitation from God — a terrible volcanic eruption — had changed this country, once the seat of popu- lous cities and smiling harvests, into a scene of awful desolation. The Dead Sea, with its bitter waves, its sulphureous exhalations, and its crust of white salt along the shore, has always been noticed by travellers as the most melancholy waste on the face of the earth. And when the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were gone, there was no other suitable site for a settlement on the banks of the Jordan ; hence it enters but little into the civilization of Palestine. You must not, then, be misled by seeing on the map, that the Holy Land is traversed through all its length by a considerable river ; and hence, by inferring that this was a cause of its early development. But the land has other advantages which, to some extent, compensate for the deficiency. The great chains of Lebanon in the north, and Sinai in the 126 Charade?' of Palestine. south, do not subside into the plains, but are, so to speak, joined by an isthmus of hills, at first bare and bleak as you go from the south, then intersected by fruitful valleys, covered by green forests and pastures, and finally, in the north, rising to the majestic scenery and eternal snow of Mount Lebanon. It was essen- tially a hill country, not only refreshed by cool breezes, but a land of fountains and of wells. It was isolated by wide deserts on the east and south from the two great early empires of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and so permitted to develop a culture of its own ; for the sea had not yet become the thorough- fare of nations, and, indeed, the coast as far north as Carmel was devoid of good harbours, and not in- viting to commercial enterprize. On the north, the mountains of Lebanon formed, it is true, a barrier, but through its ravines the Syrian and Assyrian con- querors did pour down upon Palestine ; so that this was the only vulnerable point in early times. The country, then, though small, had the advantages of isolation and physical variety, which more than com- pensated for its narrow boundaries. And, besides, it was on the great thoroughfare of commerce. The traders who went from Babylon to Egypt must needs pass through the land ; and we shall see presently how the Phoenicians used this advantage to wrest the commerce of the world from their neighbours, and turn it to their own profit. All these features must have produced the most powerful effects upon the imagination, and hence upon the literature of the inhabitants j and I shall Variety in the Country. 127 best conclude this part of my subject by quoting a remarkable passage from Dean Stanley's book on "Sinai and Palestine," in illustration of what has been discussed. " It is said by Volney, and apparently with justice, that there is no district on the face of the earth which contains so many and such sudden transitions. Such a country furnished at once the natural theatre of a history and a literature which were destined to spread into nations accustomed to the most various climates and imagery. There must, of course, under any circumstances, be much in the history of any nation, eastern or western, northern or southern, which, to other quarters of the world, will be more or less unintelligible. Still, it is easy to conceive that whatever difficulty is presented to European or American minds by the sacred writings, might have been greatly aggravated had the Bible come into existence in a country more limited in its outward imagery than is the case with Palestine. If the Valley of the Nile or the Arabian Desert had wit- nessed the whole of the sacred history, we cannot but feel how widely it would have been separated from the ordinary thoughts of a European ; how small a portion of our feelings and imaginations would have been represented by it. The truths might have been the same, but the forms in which they were clothed would have affected only a few here and there, leaving the great mass untouched. But, as it is, we have the life of a Bedouin tribe, of 128 Dean Stanley's Reflections. an agricultural people, of seafaring cities ; the ex- tremes of barbarism and of civilisation; the aspects of plain and of mountain ; of a tropical, of an eastern, and almost of a northern climate. In Egypt there is a continual contact of desert and cultivated land; in Greece there is a constant intermixture of the views of sea and land ; in the ascent and descent of the great mountains of South America there is an inter- change of the torrid and the arctic zones ; in England there is an alternation of wild hills and valleys, with rich fields and plains. But in Palestine all these are combined. The Patriarchs could here gradually ex- change the nomadic life, first for the pastoral, and then for the agricultural ; passing insensibly from one to the other as the Desert melts imperceptibly into the hills of Palestine. Ishmael and Esau could again wander back into the sandy waste which lay at their very doors. The scape-goat could still be sent from the temple courts into the uninhabited wilder- ness. John, and a greater than John, could return in a day's journey from the busiest haunts of men into the solitudes beyond the Jordan. The various tribes could find their several occupations of shepherds, of warriors, of traffickers, according as they were settled on the margin of the Desert, in the mountain fast- nesses, or on the shore of the Mediterranean. The sacred poetry which was to be the delight and support of the human mind and the human soul in all regions of the world, embraced within its range the natural features of almost every country. The venerable poet of our own mountain regions used to Sea and Mountains. 129 dwell with genuine emotion on the pleasure he felt in the reflection that the Psalmists and Prophets dwelt in a mountainous country, and enjoyed its beauty as truly as himself. The devotions of our great maritime empire find a natural expression in the numerous allusions, which no inland situation could have permitted, to the roar of the Mediterra- nean Sea, breaking over the rocks of Acre and Tyre; ' The floods lift up their voice, the floods lift up their waves,' — the 'great and wide sea,' whose blue waters could be seen from the top of almost every moun- tain, 'wherein are things creeping innumerable.' 'There go' the Phoenician ' ships' with their white sails, and 'there is that Leviathan,' the monster of the deep, which both Jewish and Grecian fancy was wont to place in the inland ocean, that was to them all, and more than all, that the Atlantic is to us. Thither 'they went down' from their mountains, and 'did their business in ships,' in the 'great waters, and saw the wonders of the deep ;' and along those shores were the havens, few and far between, where they would anchor when ' the storm became calm, and the waves thereof were still.' Hermon, with his snowy summit always in sight, furnished the images which else could hardly have been familiar — 'snow and vapours,' 'snow like wool,' 'hoar-frost like ashes,' 'ice like morsels.' And then again, the upland hills and level plains experienced all the usual alternations of the seasons — the 'rain descend- ing on the mown grass, the early and the latter rain,' the mountains 'watered from His chambers, K 130 Ancient Cities of Canaan. the earth satisfied w^th the fruit of His works' — which, though not the same as the ordinary returns of an European dimate, were yet far more hke it than could be found in Egypt, Arabia, or Assyria. " Such instances of the variety of Jewish expe- rience in Palestine, as contrasted with that of any other country, might easily be multiplied. But enough has been said to show its fitness for the history or the poetry of a nation with a universal destiny, and to indicate one, at least, of the methods by which that destiny was fostered — the sudden contrasts of the various aspects of life and death, sea and land, verdure and desert, storm and calm, heat and cold ; which, so far as any natural means could assist, cultivated what has been well called the ' variety in unity,' so characteristic of the sacred books of Israel ; so unlike those of India, of Persia, of Egypt, of Arabia." Canaan, or the lower country, as opposed to Aram, the higher country on the east side of Jordan, seems to have been inhabited and cultivated at a very early period. The cities of Damascus, of Hebron, and of Gaza, are known to have been founded as early as 2000 B.C. We have accounts, in the hieroglyphics, of expeditions made against these cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries B.C. by the kings of Egypt ; and when the Hebrews attacked them, they were evidently possessed by a civilized people, who dwelt in fenced cities, and were not only versed in the arts of war, but the mention of the city Kirjath-Sepher, the Canaanite Religions. 131 town of the book, shows that wTitlng was knowTi to them, as it was to most Semites from the earHest times. But the Canaanites, being merchantmen — indeed Canaanite is the word for merchantman in the early- books of the Bible — had learned not only letters and measures from the Babylonians, but also their religion ; for with this people they had actually more sym- pathy than with the Egyptians, as it was perhaps Semitic, and probably spoke a similar language. All the features of the religion of Babylon reappear in the idolatries with which the prophets upbraid the people of Israel. There is the worship of Baal and Aschera, the god of light, and the goddess of moisture, as well as that of Moloch and Astarte, who represented the destructive heat of the sun, and the power of death and of war. These deities w^ere worshipped both in voluptuous orgies, and in those terrible human sacri- fices, which have left their traces in sad legends over many parts of Europe to which the Phoenicians pene- trated. This was the point in which these merchant Semites differed most widely from their nomad bre- thren, the Hebrews and the Arabs ; and yet we have already seen, that no sooner were the former well established in Canaan, than they showed a tendency to leave the better way, and follow the abominations of their misguided brethren. We have been hitherto considering the country but a few miles from the coast ; let us press onward till we come within sight of the Mediterranean. " The great highway of the human race seems to 132 The Medite7'ra7iean. us to have been the Mediterranean Sea alone ; and certainly there is no spectacle on the earth which can call up so many historic memories — such throngs of thoughts associated with other ages. If each wild wave upon its surface were vocal, it might speak a history; for all that was glorious in profane story, and all that was holy in sacred,, centered there. It is the natural expression of a thoughtful mind, when a modern traveller thus describes his first sight of the great and beautiful sea that touches the shores of three continents : — ' I was looking upon the Medi- terranean : it was the first time those haunted waters had met my gaze. I pondered on the name — the Mediterranean — as if the very letters had folded, in their little characters the secret of my joy. My inner eye roved in and out along the coasts of religious Spain, the land of an eternal crusade, where alone, and for that reason, the true religiousness of knight- hood was ever realized ; it overleaped the straits and followed the outline of St. Augustine's land, where Carthage was, and rich Cyrene ; onward it went to " old hushed Egypt," the symbol of spiritual darkness, and the mystical house of bondage ; from thence to Jaffa, from Jaffa to Beyroot ; the birthplace of the Morning, the land of the world's pilgrimage, where the Tomb is, lay stretched out like a line of light, and the nets were drying on the rocks of Tyre ; onward still along that large projection of Asia, the field ploughed and sown by apostolic husbandmen ; then came a rapid glance upon the little ^gean islands, and upward through the Hellespont; and, The Philistines. 133 over the Sea of Marmora, St Sophia's minaret sparkled like a star ; the sea-surges were faint in the myriad bays of Greece ; and that other peninsula, twice the throne of the world's masters, was beautiful in her peculiar twilight.' " We reach this historic sea for the first time to-day, and we reach it at the cities of the Philistines. This tribe, probably connected with the Hycsos, or shep- herd kings, who invaded or conquered Egypt about 2000 B.C., had resisted the Hebrews successfully, and maintained themselves in their five cities on the coast. Their customs and worship seem to have been the same as those of the other Canaanites; but, owing to their maritime position, they probably had intercourse with Crete and Cyprus, and the mer- cenaries of David, called Cherethim and Pelethim, are believed to have been levied on the coast. The enterprise of the Philistines, however, was totally eclipsed by that of the Phoenicians, who possessed the coast north of Mount Carmel. The heights about Carmel separated them, to a great extent, from the twelve tribes of the Hebrews ; and no close inter- course seems to have arisen till the time of Solomon, whose empire was greatly enhanced in brilliancy and power by a close alliance with the King of Tyre. But in earlier times, Phcenicia developed herself apart from the rest of Palestine — first, as the most active conveyer of produce to and from Babylon : after- wards, as the greatest maritime power of the time, spreading the arts of peace through all the coasts of the Mediterranean. 134 Constitution of Tyre a? id Sidon. There can be no doubt that Sidon was the older of the two great Phcenician cities. But when we come to investigate the earher history of this re- markable people, our materials are exceedingly scanty ; for, strange to say, the people whom the ancients confessed to have taught them the use of letters, have themselves left us no records : a few inscriptions, most of them made for commercial purposes, and the names of their heroes, these are our only indications of their language. It would, indeed, have been a subject of surpass- ing interest to have known the political constitution under which the cities of Tyre and Sidon developed their marv^ellous commercial prosperity. What were the modifications introduced into the old Semite notions of patriarchal government ? How did they represent all the various commercial interests in their councils? It is, of course, impossible that any mercantile and trading State could ever keep up a really despotic constitution. The co-operation of the middle and lower classes becomes so necessary, that they soon begin to feel their importance, and to know that they can command their own terms by a timely rebellion. Although our information is scanty, we can, nevertheless, perceive that all the principles upon which later mercantile States acted, were understood and carried out in Tyre and Sidon. Al- though kings ruled from time immemorial in these cities, yet in the description given by the Hebrew prophet, and other contemporar)^ observers, of their greatness, it is " the merchants" of Tyre, and not Co7istitution of Carthage. 135 the king, to whom all the splendour and luxury is ascribed. These pictures produce an almost un- conscious belief that Tyre and Sidon were republics ; and I am sure many intelligent persons, who have not studied history, must be under this impression. The legends of the disturbances at Tyre, at the time of the colonization of Carthage, show a great power in the lower classes ; in fact, many of the nobles are said to have deserted the tOAvn, and joined the colony, through disgust at this very fact. The constitution of Carthage, too, which has been described by Aristotle, and which is, to some extent, known to us through Roman sources, appears not to have been monarchical, but to have been founded on the principles of alternating power, and of govern- ment by a senate or council of elders. But there were special reasons, as we shall see hereafter, why the constitution of Carthage may have differed com- pletely from that of the mother cities ; so that the assertion is still painfully true, that of the political organization of Phoenicia we know almost nothing. It is remarkable, that the federal principle, which had prevailed from early times in the cities of the Philistines, where we hear of the " lords of the Philistines" as the chief power — it is remarkable, I say, that this very civilised principle was not adopted by the Phoenicians. But their connection with the southern inhabitants of the coast seems slight, as if the barrier of Mount Carmel had separated them from this branch of their brethren. Indeed, their religion and their habits point unmistakably to a 136 Age of Sido?i. close connection with the Babylonians, (who may have been Semites) — that is to say, with the commer- cial and political, not with the nomad and pastoral aspects of the race. Some inquirers have, indeed, been so struck by the contrast between these races and the Arabs, as to imagine that both the Babylonians and Phoenicians belong to an earlier people, whose glories passed away before the real Semites developed their greatness. But the example of the fierce and haughty Jews transfomied into the merchants of mediaeval Europe, and that of the Arabs reduced to all the meanness of retail trading in Barbary and Algeria, show that these contrasts are rather apparent than real in the race. The language of the Phoenicians was certainly nearer to the Hebrew than to any other of the cognate dialects, so near, indeed, that a pas- sage in the Carthaginian dialect, put into the mouth of a Punic trader in one of the Latin comedies of Plautus, has been deciphered by Hebrew scholars. The traditions of the Sidonians asserted that the original home of their race had been in the far south-east, on the Persian Gulf, and this consistent report confirms our belief in the close relations of the Phoenicians and Babylonians in early times. If they dwelt on the lower Euphrates, they must have taken part in the trade with Southern Arabia by sea — a trade which they eagerly sought to secure in historical times. The time of their migration from these original settlements is uncertain. If Herodotus' information be correct, Tyre, the younger of the two great cities, was built about 2750 B.C., so that their Worship of Moloch. 1 3 7 arrival on the coast of Palestine must have taken place as early as 3000 years before Christ. All the other evidence, indeed, points to a very early origin. Sidon is considered by the Hebrews to have been as ancient as Damascus, which is mentioned as a well- known city in the days of Abraham. The ships of the Phoenicians had reached the Atlantic in the twelfth century B.C.; and, surely, so perfect a mari- time development implies the experience of countless generations. The Egyptian hieroglyphics describe expeditions of Tuthmosis and Amenophis in the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries B.C. into Syria, and the conquest of many towns, some of them certainly Phoenician. The book of Joshua speaks of " great Sidon" and of " the strong city of Tyre.'' All this accumulated evidence compels us to place the origin of Sidon not later than 2000 B.C., or about the time when the shepherd kings made their suc- cessful expedition into Egypt. In religion, the Sidonians differed little from the rest of the Canaanites. The fearful worship of Moloch, the king of Heaven, whose wrath was ap- peased by human sacrifices, is but too well known to us from Phoenician and Carthaginian history. The dearest possession was to him the most accept- able sacrifice, and often the first-born or the only child fell a victim to his destructive rage. The fright- ful episode in the second book of Kings, (iii. 26), where the King of Moab offered his son upon the wall, will occur to you all. Baal was worshipped under the title of Melkart by the Phoenicians, espe- i;^S Pillars of Hercules. cially at Tyre, where Herodotus saw his temple, and was amazed at its richness. He especially notices two pillars, one of gold and the other of emerald, which was probably made of glass, as the Phoenicians learnt this manufacture in the earliest times from the Egyptians. As Herakles was the Greek form of Melkart, so the Greek legends concerning the la- bours of Herakles are borrowed from the Phoenician mythology about the sun-god Baal, and his dominion over the twelve signs of the zodiac. The " pillars of Herakles" in the west were originally brazen pillars, erected in the celebrated temple of Melkart at Cadiz, corresponding to those which Herodotus saw in his shrine at Tyre.* But I must refrain from examining at greater length the religion of the Phoenicians, and must turn to a brief consideration of their geographical position and the physical advantages of their country. The cities of Phoenicia were indeed "planted in a pleasant place;" it was a land of rich valleys and pastures, frequent rivers and lofty mountains, " a land whose stones were iron, and out of whose hills thou may est dig brass." The mineral products of Le- banon were celebrated from the earliest times, and gave the first impulse to the trade in precious metals, which produced them such enormous wealth. The * The pillars set up in the temple of Jerusalem, by Hiram, and named Jachim and Boaz, must have been set up in imita- tion of these pillars of Baal Melkart, It will be remembered that all the workmen who built the temple, or, at least, the principal men among them, seem to have been Tyrians. Trade through Palest'me. 139 great abundance of fish to be found in this part of the Mediterranean, first led them to build boats ; and then accidents would bring them as far as Cyprus and the mouths of the Nile. And there they found themselves the natural mediators between the great kingdoms of Babylon and Egypt. The Phoenician coast was, in fact, the natural outlet for the riches of Babylon, and the easy journeys to the islands of the West, could not but suggest to the wily traders a traffic between the natural products of the Mediter- ranean, and the artificial manufactures of cultivated Assyrians. In this way trade was developed at an early period in Palestine and Phoenicia. Abraham pays for a field, three hundred shekels, " current money with the merchant/' and the Ishmaelites who carried Joseph into Eg}^pt, were evidently following a regular pursuit. Achan is seduced into sin by a Babylonish garment; and the measures and weights which the Hebrews found in Canaan in the four- teenth century B.C., were those of Babylon. Remains of Egyptian manufacture are found in the ruins of Nineveh. In all probability, the success of the shepherd tribes in Egypt opened its commerce to their brethren, the Phoenicians, whose development in trade cannot date below the seventeenth century before Christ. They supplied Babylon with the metals of Lebanon and the spices of Happy Arabia, as well as with the wine and oil of their own coasts. The invasion of Canaan by the Israelites was but the last of a series of migrations towards the West, which must have produced a great pressure of popu- 1 40 Pressure of Population. lation on the domain of Tyre and Sidon. And this supposition is amply confirmed by the dates of their earhest colonies towards the West. The arrival of Cadmus, the Phoenician, in Greece, and the settle- ments made by him and his followers in the islands of the Levant, are to be placed, according to Hero- dotus, in the fourteenth and fifteenth century B.C. The reign of Minos in Crete appears to have been considered about a century later. These traditions correspond very fairly with the ascertained date of the founding of Utica and Gades, in the year 1 1 GO B.C. The more distant colonies w^ould natu- rally come at an interval of some generations from those nearer the home of the merchants. It is evident, as I said, that the exiled Canaanites, by crowding into the cities of the coast, produced this change in Phoenician life. How often in his- tory has an apparently untoward accident been the cause of a nation's greatness ! How often have men only discovered their power and their resources from being compelled to use them by emergencies! The Phoenicians found it necessary to transport their brethren across the sea, and settle them in the island of Cyprus. Its capital, Citium, or Chittim, was so called from the Hittites who settled there. For centuries after the Greeks took possession of the country, its coins show the ox-head of Moloch stamped upon them ; and we find traditions of hu- man sacrifices still lingering among the people.* * Strange to say, inscriptions in an unknown alphabet, and as yet undeciphered, are found along with the Phoenician King Minos. 141 The splendid cedar-wood of Lebanon afforded timber for such ships as could brave the dangers of longer and more ambitious voyages. Presently Rhodes and Crete were attained. From these all the islands and coasts of the yEgean were colonized ; so that the whole of the Levant became, in fact, a Phoenician lake. These remarkable events have been only recovered by deciphering a few confused and dark legends preserved by the Greeks, who con- quered and expelled the Semites from these coasts, and inherited their civilization. The first is that of King Minos, who from Crete reigned over all the islands, suppressed piracy, insti- tuted just laws, and finally was translated to be a judge of the dead in the nether world. Herodotus distinctly calls him a barbarian. He was said to have kept at his court the monstrous Minotaur, to whom the Athenians were obliged to send yearly an offering of youths and maidens, till the Greek hero, Theseus, liberates his country by slaying the mon- ster. The worship of Moloch is here evident. In Crete too, the Greeks placed the cunning artist, Dadalus, from whom they learned the first rudiments of architecture and painting; and the whole com- plexion of the legends concerning Crete at this period, prove it to have been the seat of a civiliza- tion older and more complete than that of the Greeks. writing in the island, and point to a previous and forgotten civilization before the advent of the Semites. Its explanation will probably be found to depend upon a greater knowledge of .Syrian antiquities. 142 Cadmus in Greece. Similar are the legends of Cadmus, to whom the Greeks ascribed the colonization of the islands in the north of the yEgean, which were rich in mineral wealth; for to him they refer not only the intro- duction of letters into Greece, but also that of min- ing. Herodotus saw the remains of his mining in the island of Thasos. The Phoenicians had " turned a whole mountain inside out." They then proceeded to the mainland, and settled in Boeotia. The great aqueducts about the Lake Copais, the cultivation of corn, and the introduction of the alphabet — all these improvements were consistently ascribed to Cadmus. Such colonies literally opened mines of wealth to the enterprising Semites. Cyprus had been rich in copper, as indeed the name proves; but Thasos and the coast of Thrace possessed abundance of gold; and the south coasts, especially about the island of Cythera, were rich in the purple shell which afforded them their most precious dye. This celebrated dye was, as you know, prepared by means of a small shell-fish found on the coasts of Phoenicia. Its reputation outlived the power of Tyre and Sidon by centuries. Its colour was more usually red than purple, though there can be no doubt that all shades from the brightest scarlet to black were used. The shells were pounded into fragments, and the dye obtained by boiling them down. The material to be dyed was imported from Egypt. The colour most highly prized was that called the double-dyed Tyrian purple, and was compared to the colour of congealed blood. Of course the supply of shells soon failed The Phmnician Purple. 143 on the Tyrian coast, and the Phoenicians went in search for them along the shores of Cyprus, Crete, Laconia, Thera, and Rhodes. Though many other dyeing factories were afterwards estabHshed through the Mediterranean, the reputation of the Tyrian purple remained supreme. Strabo, who lived in the first century, a.d. tells us, " that Tyre has overcome all her misfortunes by means of her shipping and dyeing. For the Tyrian purple is really far the best in the world. The number of factories makes the city very unpleasant to live in; but in them consist its great riches." The Asiatic monarchs used this purple for curtains, carpets, and garments, and piled up in their treasure-houses quantities of these stuffs along with their gold and jewels. The supply found in Susa by Alexander is estimated by Plutarch at five thousand talents. The greater economy of the Greeks and Romans induced them to content them- selves with stripes of purple on their robes, just as you now often see ladies trimming their clothes with sealskin, or other expensive furs. An ordinary purple dress at Rome could not be had under ;£^4o, and the more valuable kinds brought fabulous prices. The materials for this rich trade, however, could be easily obtained by barter from the savage abori- genes, just as we now trade with beads and toys on the coast of Africa. All these colonies in the Greek waters were made by the Sidonians before the rise and greatness of Tyre. And many legends lingered among the Greeks about the so-called Amazons, a race of armed wo- 144 Fhoenician Slave Trade. men who carry on wars with Theseus and the old Hellenic heroes. It is not improbable that these stories refer to the armed priestesses of their god- desses, Aschera and Astarte, who came to be identi- fied with one another under the form of an armed goddess of love. The war dances of these priest- esses, who seem to have been very numerous, gave rise to the legends, which are observed to refer ex- actly to those portions of Greece in which we know that Phoenician settlements had been made. But as I said, all these things had passed aw-ay long before the dawn of history in the west. Even in the days of Homer the Phoenician empire was gone in the Greek waters; and they there appear as daring mariners, sailing in single ships, landing at strange cities, and bartering their goods for as long a space as a year, when they suddenly disappear, car- rying with them their gains, as well as whatever chil- dren they are able to kidnap at the last moment. These children they sold as slaves in distant lands ; and affecting stories are told of the vicissitudes of well-born persons owing to this nefarious traffic. In the Hebrew prophet, too, we find the hatred with which they inspired the Jews for the same reason — " The children of Judah also and Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border. Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompense upon your own head ; and I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of the children of Edom; and they shall sell them to The Phoenician Alphabet. 145 the Sabaeans, to a people far off; for the Lord hath spoken it." Such are the words of Joel. But with the exception of this trade, which they transmitted to the pirates of Cilicia, and which con- tinued to prevail in these waters till almost the time of the Christian era, we cannot say that the com- merce of the Phoenicians had an evil effect upon the world. Though they have transmitted to us no lite- rature, yet there are two eternal legacies for which all mankind will have reason to thank them. Not to speak of the diffusion throughout the world of those material luxuries which they borrowed from the Babylonians, they transmitted a still greater inhe- ritance. I am far indeed from underrating the value of material luxuries in humanizing and civi- lizing men. The use of rich garments, and of cere- mony in daily life, insignificant as they appear in themselves, are of no mean importance in turning men's minds towards general refinement, and in im- proving not only their manners, but also their morals. In all these things the Phoenicians were the great civilizers of the West. They were the first school- masters of the Greeks ; and who knows how many centuries later Athenian life might have been deve- loped but for these early instructors ! Yet far beyond all these creature comforts was the diffusion of the Alphabet. There were, no doubt, other methods of conveying sounds to the eye ; and some such must ultimately have been discovered by all the nations of the West. If, however, we consi- der the clumsy syllabic systems invented by the 1 46 Idea of a Co??ime?'cial Empii-e. most ingenious of ancient nations — the complicated picture-writing of the Egyptians, the intricate arrow- heads of the Assyrians — we are forced to the convic- tion, that never w^as there a greater service done to Hterature, and through it, to the advancement of man, than by the simple and comprehensive alpha- bet of the Semites. To those who will consider how greatly Thought depends upon adequate language wherein to express it, and how much the perfection of language depends upon its more perfect forms being crystallized and stereotyped, not in the doubt- ful and changing tablets of tradition, but in the im- perishable surfaces of brass and parchment — to such these observations will not seem exaggerated. Who knows whether the poems of Homer would have survived, had they been entrusted much longer to the memories of men ! who knows whether the genius of Pindar and of ^schylus could have arisen, had not the culture of their country fostered the flame kindling within their breasts, and created an audience to sympathize with them, and to admire their glorious poems ! There is yet another discovery due to the Phoe- nicians ; and this is surely one for which they alone can claim credit. Possibly the alphabet may not have been of their own origination ; they may have brought it from Babylon, and only transmitted it to the West. But they were certainly the first race of those we know, who conceived the idea of an em- pire obtained and developed by the arts of peace — of a power extended not by violence, but by diplo- The PhcEuicians and the Spaniards. 147 macy — of a wealth depending not on oppression, but on exchange. Situated between great mihtary em- pires, their position compelled them to have recourse to the arts of diplomacy and of negociation, in order to preserve their freedom, and to repel their mighty neighbours by balancing them one against the other. We are told by historians, that the Ptolemies of Egypt were the first to make Balance of Power a guiding principle in their policy. But, surely, the Phoenicians must have acted on this principle long before them. If this be so, they were the real fore- runners of the great commercial states of the middle ages, and of our own day. Would indeed that their example had been more widely followed by Christians ! Historians speak wath horror of the sacrifices offered to Moloch, of the altars reeking with the blood of helpless children cast into the flames. What are these few exceptional sacrifices when compared to the wholesale extermina- tion practised by the Spaniards in America ? " The most Christian of nations " worshipped a far more in- satiable idol ; for the Love of Gold will not be appeased by mere occasional sacrifices ; and so, where the hea- then Phoenicians would have traded in peace, the Christian Spaniards swept from the earth a gentle and inoffensive people. Is it not strange, that an- cient civilizations seem to have had the power of living side by side with barbarism, leavening without destroying, extending without exterminating; whereas even we, with our boasted benevolence, our feelings for the good of others, our open Bible, and our just 148 The Secret of Lnprovifig Savages. laws — we cannot settle on the coasts of any primitive nation, without carrying with us the seeds of ruin, of desolation, and of decay? The Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Romans, were possessed of a secret which seems now to be lost — the secret of teaching their languages, their laws, and their literature to savage races, without destroying them. There seem to have been natural points of contact among nations that have now vanished, and which have not been compensated by our supposed superiority in Chris- tian benevolence, in policy, and in the arts of peace ; or shall we say, that like individuals, so the nations of the world possessed in their youth that plastic temper, which yields to influence and to example, but which departs from the firmer setting of the limbs, and the hardening of the features in maturer age ? LECTURE VIL THE SEMITES— PHCENICIAN COMMERCE (C0^XLUDED.) E were considering the spread of Phoenician commerce over the Mediterranean at the conclusion of my last prelection, and we paid special attention to the development of the Sidonians, which was the earliest, and which deve- loped itself through the ^gean Sea and the coasts of Greece. I told you that, even when Homer wrote, the great kingdom of Minos, and the worship of Astarte in Attica, were already things of the past. The aggressive and busy interference of the active and intelligent Greeks had gradually expelled the Phoenician settlers, first from the mainland, then from the islands. But, meanwhile, a great new development of Phoenician colonization had taken place ; and the practical and peace-loving Semites, finding they could not hold the Eastern Mediterranean without an ap- peal to war and to arms, left these coasts clear to the enterprising Greeks, and sought for themselves 150 Homer's Ideas of the West. new fields of commerce in the far West — a land of fable and of mist to the minds of the early sailors, and the home of wonders and of miracles in the poems of Homer. A great part of the Odyssey, as you probably are aware, is filled with strange adven- tures and hair-breadth escapes of the hero Ulysses in the western seas. Scylla, Charybdis, Calypso, Circe, and last, but not least, the "monster Polypheme," in- fest the regions about Italy and Sicily. But the whole geography of this part of the world is hopelessly confused in the mind of the writer of the Odyssey. Whatever we may think of the marvels which he relates, there are two safe conclusions to be drawn from them : first, that in the eighth century B.C., or, at all events, in the ninth, these western Avaters were almost totally unknown to the Greek sailors. The poet takes care to relegate all his wonders to a region where his accuracy cannot be readily tested, or, if the poet was of easy faith, his informants have evidently done so. Secondly, when we consider that all these coasts in the western Mediterranean were perfectly and intimately known to the Phoenician traders for centuries before this period, we are able to estimate the extraordinary care and jealousy with which they concealed their knowledge from the adventurous Greeks. No doubt, the Phoenicians who sailed in the Hellenic waters were still Sidonians, (as appears from almost all Homer's allusions,*) who had them- * The Phoenicians are hardly known to him under any other name, and he always speaks of Sidon as the chief city of the country. Foundifig of Tyre. 1 5 1 selves never sailed into the far West ; but still they cannot possibly have been in anything like the same state of ignorance about Italy and Sicily that we see displayed in the Odyssey. As I have just said, however, these settlements were due chiefly to the city of Tyre, not of Sidon. Herodotus tells us, that on an island opposite the city was the great temple of Baal Melkart ; and the priests told him this had been built, together with the town called Old Tyre, (on the island,) in the year 2750 B.C. But in 1254 B.C., a number of Sidonian families, owing to the causes to which I adverted in my last lecture — I mean the pressure of population towards the coast — left their homes, and founded the city of New Tyre on the coast opposite the island, and then the two towns coalesced and became one. This increase of strength enabled Tyre to vie both in commerce and colonization with Sidon. As the latter had already monopolized the trade with Egypt, from which they had succeeded in excluding the Greeks, that in the yEgean Sea, and that even of the waters about Sicily, (for Malta seems to have been a Sidonian colony,) the Tyrians outran them to the south and west, and turned their efforts to the coasts of Africa and Sardinia. On the coast of Africa they founded Utica, and afterwards Carthage, and in the twelfth century the)' occupied even the coasts of Spain. The rich pro- ducts of this country in gold and silver, and in wool, rapidly increased the power and influence of Tyre ; so that, in the days of Solomon, we find Hiram, King 1 5 2 Hiram and Solomon. of Tyre, the acknowledged head of the Phcenician cities on the coast of Palestine, and leading the way to open a new route of commerce by the Red Sea to India. You will do well to read w^th care the account of the intercourse between Solomon and Hiram, King of Tyre, preserved to us in the fifth and seventh chapters of the first Book of Kings, and the second chapter of the second Book of Chronicles. Many interesting details are given as to the timber trade between Tyre and Jerusalem. It appears that Solo- mon's servants were not expert enough even to hew the cedars and fir trees of Lebanon, without being directed by the Sidonians — " For thou knowest that there is not among us any that can skill to hew tim- ber like unto the Sidonians." We then find that it was conveyed by floats to Joppa, from which it came to Jerusalem. For all the finer work of the temple workmen were sent from Tyre. In this and other passages of the Old Testament there is the most valuable historical information, all the more trust- worthy because it is indirectly and accidentally con- veyed ; thus, for example, we see the marriage of Ahab with Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, Prince of Tyre, accompanied by a great revival of the reli- gion of Baal in Israel. The altars of the Lord are cast down. His worship forgotten, and Elijah is the only open professor of His religion. We hear, in the chronicles of Tyre, of a great famine about this time, said to have been averted by offerings to Baal. It seems that the sublime narrative of the encounter of EzekieVs Descriptio?i. 1 5 3 Elijah with his priests was specially intended to answer and expose this false statement.* The twenty-seventh chapter of the prophet Ezekiel, at a later period, give us a striking picture of the riches and luxury of this wonderful city : — " The word of the Lord came unto me, saying. Now, thou son of man, take up a lamentation for Tyrus ; and say unto Tyrus, O thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art a merchant of the people for many isles, thus saith the Lord God ; O Tyrus, thou hast said, I am of perfect beauty. Thy borders are in the midst of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty. They have made all thy ship-boards of fir trees of Senir : they have taken cedars from Lebanon to make masts for thee. Of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars ; the company of the Ashurites have made thy benches of ivory, brought out of the isles of Chittim. Fine linen with broidered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail ; blue and purple from the isles of Elishah was that which covered thee. The inhabitants of Zidon and Arvad were thy mariners : thy wise men, O Tyrus, that were in thee, were thy pilots. The ancients of Gebal and the wise men thereof were in thee thy calkers : all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to occupy thy merchandise. They of Persia and of Lud and of Phut were in thine * The worship of Baal iNIelkart, was peculiar to Tyre, and affords a criterion to determine by which of the two cities a colony was founded. Thus, the worship of Melicertes at Corinth shows that Tyre must have encroached on Sidon's preserves. 1 5 4 EzekieVs Description. army, thy men of war : they hanged the shield and hehiiet in thee : they set forth thy comeUness. The men of An-ad with thine army were upon thy walls round about, and the Gammadims were in thy towers : they hanged their shields upon thy walls round about; they have made thy beaut}- perfect. Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches ; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs. Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, they were thy merchants : they traded the persons of men and vessels of brass in thy market. They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses and horsemen and mules. The men of Dedan were thy merchants : many isles were the merchandise of thine hand : they brought thee for a present horns of ivory and ebony. Syria was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of the wares of thy making : they occupied in thy fairs ^Wth emeralds, purple, and broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and agate. Judah, and the land of Israel, they were thy merchants: they traded in thy market wheat of Minnith, and Pannag, and honey, and oil, and balm. Damascus was thy merchant in the multitude of the w^ares of thy making, for the multitude of all riches ; in the wine of Helbon, and white wool. Dan also and Javan going to and fro occupied in thy fairs : bright iron, cassia, and calamus, were in thy market. Dedan was thy mer- chant in precious clothes for chariots. Arabia, and all the princes of Kedar. they occupied with thee in lambs, and rams, and goats : in these were they thy merchants. The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, EzekieVs Description. 155 they were thy merchants : they occupied in thy fairs withchief of all spices, and with all precious stones, and gold. Haran, and Canneh, and Eden, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad, were thy merchants. These were thy merchants in all sorts of things, in blue clothes, and broidered work, and in chests of rich apparel, bound with cords, and made of cedar, among thy merchandise. The ships of Tarshish did sing of thee in thy market : and thou wast replenished, and made very glorious in the midst of the seas." Yet truly they had earned this description. The people who, in the eleventh century B.C. — two hundred years before the daring Greeks had even clearly inves- tigated the coasts of Italy and Sicily — had crossed and recrossed every corner of the Mediterranean, and had begun to venture into the open Atlantic, were no ordi- nary people ; for the pillars of Hercules, the modern Gibraltar, w^ere looked upon as the limits of the habitable globe^ beyond which all was conjecture and fearful doubt. Beyond the circumambient ocean- stream some thought that the Hyperboreans dwelt — a peaceful and happy people, but whose climate was dark and dreary, for the sun was ever hid in mist and fog. Some thought that the islands of the Blest were there ; and in the poems of Pindar, the bard draws a striking picture of the life of the righteous, who shall inhabit a happy home for ever in these glorious regions beyond the setting sun. But the Phoenicians applied their practical spirit to the solution of these doubts. They had already found in Sardinia and Spain rich mines of metal, 156 Founding of Cadiz. which repaid them amply for their eighty days' sail across the Mediterranean ; and the whole coast of Sicily was covered with marts, some of which, like Palermo, have remained down to the present day. These coasts and islands had been occupied in old times by the Phoenicians, says Thucydides, in order to carry on the slave trade with the aborigines. But an oracle told them to go farther, and that they should found a city at the pillars of Herakles. They sailed into the far West ; and when they arrived at Mount Calpe, which they said was not large, but lofty and steep, and they saw the straits close in, they thought they had reached the limits of the earth, and they landed. But the sacrifices were unfavour- able, and they sailed home. After repeated attempts, at last some more venturous than the rest actually entrusted themselves to the wild ocean, and finding an island and a good roadstead at the mouth of the river, afterwards called the Bsetis, (Guadalquivir,) they built a town facing the west, which they called Gader. The word means fortification in Punic, was pronounced Gades by the Greeks, and is preserved to the present day in Cadiz. There is probably no town in Europe with an older name. This happened in the year 11 00. Here they built a great temple to their god Baal Melkart, facing the West, where he sank daily into the waves of the ocean; and in this temple they erected, as was their wont, two bronze or brazen pillars to their great god, corresponding to those which Hero- dotus had admired in his temple at Tyre. These Voyages in the Atlantic. 1 5 7 pillars of Melkart were called the pillars of Herakles by the Greeks, who told that their hero had set them up as the limits of his wanderings.^ We may even suspect, from the fables of the islands of the Blest, and from that of the garden of the Hesperides, that some daring merchantmen may even have reached the Canary Islands ; and in one of Plato's dialogues, there is a very extraordinary " Phoenician story" told about the great island Atlantis, which lay in the ocean to the far West, and had been well known to the old world, but had been submerged by some great con- vulsions in the sea, more terrible than those which were said to have befallen the island of Tortola a few days since. At all events, they seem certainly to have coasted northwards till they reached the coasts of Britain, and to have obtained tin from mines which they constructed in Cornwall. The same daring which the Arabs had always shown in tra- versing the pathless desert, their kinsmen displayed in venturing across the stormy ocean; and, no doubt, the lawlessness of the former found its analogy in the piracy practised by the latter, but of which very faint traces are preserved to us. * It is very remarkable that the Tyrian artist, Hiram or Huram, who came from Tyre to ornament Solomon's temple for him, is represented (i Kings vii. 13, &c.) as erecting two similar pillars in the temple court of Jehovah. The great detail in which they are described, and the names given them, afford still stronger suspicions, that an imitation of the worship of Baal Melkart was intended. If this be so, it will be an additional and striking proof of the heathenizing tendency of Solomon's policy. 158 Riches of Spain. What would we not give for some brief account of the wondrous travels of these ancient mariners ? What would we not sacrifice for a sketch of the western world in these primitive times ? But over all these daring voyages there lies the dark mist and almost total obscurity. No historian ever recorded them, nor was it the Phoenician policy to reveal aught which might allure rivals into their wake. They took the greatest precautions to keep the Greeks, especially, in ignorance — the Greeks, who had already stripped them of their lucrative commerce in the eastern seas. We are told that an early Phoenician mariner ran his ship aground and lost it, in order to destroy a mer- chantman who sought to follow him into the western seas, and that the authorities of Carthage indemnified him for his loss. It is added, that any foreign mari- ners who were accidentally driven by storm to Sar- dinia or Gades were forthwith cast into the sea ; so that the Phoenicians for centuries kept the land of gold for themselves. The accounts we hear of the wealth of its natural products sound almost fabulous. When the Phoeni- cians first reached Spain, they obtained silver at so cheap a rate from the aborigines, that, having loaded their vessels as much as they could bear, they struck off all the lead from their anchors and keel, and sup- plied its place with silver. The first Greek vessel, a Samian, which was driven there accidentally by a storm, about the year 630, b.c, though the Phoenicians had been there for five centuries, at once made a clear profit of ;^2 0,000 on its cargo. You will see Products of Spain. 159 at once how strong an analog}^ these facts bear to the accounts of the Spaniards, when Central America was first discovered, and visited by their adventurous sailors. The same extraordinary plenty of precious metals, the same innocence prevailed among the aborigines ; but, fortunately, the Phoenicians were not followers of the true faith, nor did they deem it necessary to claim the country in the name of the High Priest and Vicar of Baal. They did not con- cern themselves to save the souls of the savages by torturing their bodies, nor did they attempt any pro- selytising. In rapacity, I dare say, they may have almost equalled the modern Spaniards. The great geographer, Strabo, tells us, that no country in the known world equals in riches the country through which the Guadalquivir flows. This river indeed bears a Phoenician name — " Wadi al Gebir" means " the great river." Gold is here ob- tained, he tells us, not merely by mining, but by washing it, for the rivers carry down with them gol- den sand ; and pieces of half a pound in weight are often found in this sand. Rock-salt is found there too in plenty ; and its banks feed quantities of sheep and cattle, which produce extraordinarily fine wool, not to speak of corn and wine. The coast is co- vered by purple shells, and the sea supplies excel- lent fish. This was the country which the early Phoenicians colonized. They founded Malaga, Se- ville, and many other cities of celebrity ; and, in fact, made a kingdom for themselves in the land. The twenty-third chapter of the Prophet Isaiah i6o Conwierce with the Scilly Isles. speaks of Tarshish as a country subject to Tyre, and identified with her in interests. Cadiz was the very centre and heart of their wes- tern commerce for centuries. "This city," says Strabo, " though built on a barren island, at the very ends of the world, has became so great through the energy and industry of its inhabitants, that it is second to no city of the habitable globe in wealth, and to Rome alone in the numbers of its population. It sends the greatest number of ships into all the seas, and the largest merchantmen; the ships of Tarshish come to Ostia in numbers not inferior to the corn-ships from Libya, which supply the city of Rome." From it there went forth to the south colo- nists who settled on the coasts of Marocco ; and in the north others discovered islands far away in the high seas, where, we are told, the inhabitants, though pastoral, mined and collected tin, which they were willing to exchange for salt and pottery. These were the Scilly islands, off the coast of Corn- wall ; and this allusion is by many centuries the first which we hear to the British islands; for about the same time, the Phoenicians obtained, along the north coast of Germany, amber, which they sold for orna- ments to Homer's heroes. This places their disco- very of the tin islands in the tenth century B.C. And at later epochs, not content with their precious imports, they salted great quantities of fish, which they conveyed to Greece and Italy. This dried fish from Spain is mentioned among the delicacies at Athenian dinner-parties. From the plains of Africa Immense variety of their Cominerce. i6i too, there came corn and dates, figs and pomegra- nates, and from the coasts, purple shells and fish. They were in close connection with the Berbers, the wild tribes of the interior, who brought them alum and nitre, lion and panther skins, buffalo horns and ivory, ostrich eggs and feathers, and black slaves. And we know from the Etruscan tombs what com- merce they had in Italy. For in these remains, some of which date from the eighth century B.C., there are Babylonian and Assyrian vessels, which could only have reached the Etruscans through the Phoenicians. In fact, there was no part of the habitable globe with which the Sidonian and Tyrian merchants did not stand in close relation. All the western pro- ducts w^hich I have just enumerated, they imported into Babylon and Nineveh, along with the copper and iron of Mount Libanus, the oil and wine of Syria, and the wool of the deserts ; and so there was found in their great capital, the gold of Thasos, the silver of Spain, the tin of Britain, the copper of Cyprus, the spices and odours of Arabia, the glass and the drugs of Egypt, the pottery of Greece, the ivory and plumes of Africa ; and they carried back from Babylon into the west, the webs and stuffs of Mesopotamia, and the celebrated spices which were there made of the very materials which they had imported. I had almost forgotten their intercourse with Armenia, and with the Black Sea, from which they brought Caucasian slaves, horses, and iron, perhaps the best known, and the most valued in the ancient world. M i62 Value of Money in Palestine. I would willingly add one other curious point about the effects of their commerce on the value of money in the land of the Jews, their neighbours. You know, of course, that the value of money varies just like that of any other article; that when either precious metals, or in these latter days, when credit is scarce, that the price of money rises. You have, of course, all heard, that in Queen Elizabeth's reign a sheep could be bought for one shilling; and doubt- less, most of you have read with amusement the entry quoted from an early account book in Mr. Hallam's " Middle Ages," in which a lawyer's fee is put down at fourpence and his dinner. Now we find the most curious alternation in the value of money in Pales- tine, according as the effects of Phoenician com- merce were brought to bear on their neighbours. Money was very scarce in early times among the Hebrews. Abimelech, the son of Gideon, (as ap- pears from the ninth chapter of the Book of Judges,) seems to have been able to hire an army of fol- lowers, and to have reigned for three years, on seventy shekels of silver, which are not much more than ;£io of our money. In David's reign, Joab seems to think about £i los. an adequate reward for the head of Absalom, the king's son, who was in open rebellion. If we contrast this with the parallel announcements which cover the walls of our city at the present time, offering thousands of pounds for the apprehension of miscreants of the lower classes, and that without the smallest effect, you will see practically the contrast between a cheap and a dear Alternations in the Value of Money. 163 condition of money ; and in Israel we find, that no sooner has Hiram, king of Tyre, made a treaty with Solomon, no sooner does Phoenician trade obtain free access and transit through Palestine, than prices rise enormously. Each of the guardians of the royal vineyards appears to have been paid about £,2Z per annum. About the same time the price of a horse in Egypt, according to the concluding verse in the eleventh chapter of ist Kings, was about ;£"2 2, and the price of a chariot nearly £,<)o. These seem much like the prices of our own day, but are mentioned by the historian of the time to illustrate the statement, " that silver was in Jerusalem as stones/' As soon as this treaty was surrendered, money be- comes dear; and again, when under Jeroboam 11. and Uzziah, Phoenicia and Israel came into union, and the caravan routes are again opened through Palestine, we are told that the land became full of silver and gold. The variation in the price of slaves, the most interesting article of commerce, is more difficult to estimate, as it depended partially on the regulations of the Mosaic law, partly on the quantity of Syrian and African slaves which the Phoenicians were able to import The Phoenicians, I should add, were always most anxious to keep open the sea route down the Red Sea to India, and seem to have made efforts in this direction from early times. They appear to have had a mart at Mount Casius, not far from Pelusium, the only Egyptian port then open to them; and here they transacted not only their commerce with 164 The Book of Job on Mining. Egypt, but here the caravans from Palestine and Arabia met. From the fact that some of the places where the children of Israel halted, on their depar- ture from Egypt, had Phoenician names, such as Migdol and Baal Zephon, it appears that they en- deavoured to establish from this point a connection with the Red Sea. It is plain, too, that their mining had impressed the author of the Book of Job with astonishment. If this author be indeed of Arab origin, the well-known passage in the twenty-eighth chapter will prove, that the mineral products of that countiy were investigated by the indefatigable mer- chants : — " Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone. He that setteth an end to darkness, and searcheth out all perfection : the stones of darkness, and the shadow of death. The flood breaketh out from the inhabitant ; even the waters forgotten of the foot : they are dried up, they are gone away from men. As for the earth, out of it cometh bread : and under it is turned up as it were fire. The stones of it are the place of sapphires : and it hath dust of gold. There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen : the lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it. He putteth forth his hand upon the rock ; he over- turneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth out rivers among the rocks ; and his eye seeth every pre- cious thing. He bindeth the floods from overflow- ing ; and the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to Mines i?t Spain. t6 light."* To the remark I quoted from Herodotus, in my last lecture, about the appearance of their mines in Thasos, I should add the testimony of Diodorus concerning the gold, silver, and copper mines on the right bank of the Guadalquivir. He observes, that all the mines in Iberia had been made by Phoenicians and Carthaginians, none of them by the Romans. They were many hundred feet deep and long, divided into horizontal, and oblique, passages, crossing one another in many di- rections. The water was pumped out of them by Eg}q)tian pumps. He speaks of the smelting of the ore, and tells, that in the case of silver, the process was carried on in lofty buildings, to allow the poi- sonous gases to escape, without injuring life. All these mighty advantages which I have de- scribed became the privilege of the Phoenicians, owing to their geographical position, at least partly. It did not create their character, for they were the same in all the lands whither they went, but it stimu- lated their energies, and gave them products which, from the very outset, threw great riches into their hands. Amid the variety of facts which I have been col- lecting for you, I had well nigh forgotten to mention * Throughout the rest of the chapter, wisdom is obviously compared to Phoenician luxuries— the gold of Ophir, the topaz of Ethiopia, and other precious stones. I confess, the seven- teenth verse, which says : ' * The gold and the crystal cannot equal it," leads me to suspect, that the writer had seen the celebrated pair of pillars in the temple at Tyre. 1 66 The Timber of Leba7ton. one most important feature in their comitry, the oak and cedar forests of Mount Lebanon, which afforded them the finest timber in the world for building ships. We may safely say that but for this assistance, the Phoenician marine would never have attained any importance, and I suspect that the great inferiority of the Greeks as a seafaring nation to the Phoenicians was mainly owing to the superior shipbuilding of Tyre and Sidon. You will remember the words I quoted to you in the last lecture from the Book of Kings, in which the Sidonians are spoken of as the most cunning of men to hew timber. In later times, we hear, indeed, from intelligent Greeks, that Phoeni- cian ships, when they came to Greek harbours, were a sight worth seeing, for the extraordinary neatness and tidiness with which everything was stowed away and arranged ; and people went to see it, just as we often do to see a man-of-war in our own harbours. This might, you think, point to a real superiority in seamanlike habits on the part of the Phoenicians ; but it must be remembered, that superior natural advantages create by degrees the superiority in small things and in business habits, and that the long and hazardous voyages which the Phoenicians undertook were, in the first instance, owing to the remarkable timber of their ships, and that these very voyages then reacted upon the national character, and made them practical and clever seamen. In very early times, while the Greeks still directed their course by the Great Bear, the Phoenicians had discovered the greater advantages of the less obvious Polar Ships of larshish. 167 Star in the lesser Bear, which was accordingly called by the Greeks the Phoenician Star. The ships of the Sidonians and Tyrians were of three kinds. There was the old merchant vessel, which was never superseded for ordinary use, called the gaiilos, with its high prow and stern, both rounded off to match, and propelled by one large sail and twenty or thirty oars. Then they used the long and narrow fifty-oared galley, rather for piratical than mercantile purposes. After the discovery of Spain and its fabulous wealth, then came the great ships of Tarshish, which the Hebrew prophets speak of as one of the greatest marvels to be seen. You may remember that Ezekiel compares Tyre herself to one of these stately vessels. These great mer- chantmen could transport five hundred passengers, besides the crew, and were well armed against the pirates, who looked upon them as the greatest prizes. They must have, in this respect, resembled the trea- sure galleys of the Spaniards and Portuguese in the days of their great foreign trade. The ships of Tar- shish seem to have been able to sail, on an average, thirty miles a day faster than the celebrated Venetian galleys. It is well knoA\m that the Greek men-of-war were not much inferior in speed to our steamers. I observed that the whole colonization of the Phoenicians was one merely of trade and of the arts of peace ; and this is true with one exception — an exception which was forced upon them by the aggressive spirit of the Greeks in the western Medi- terranean. In the city of Carthage, we find the 1 68 Foundation of Carthage. gentle, cautious, quiet Phoenicians changed into the lords of a great empire, with subjects and depen- dencies, with armies and fortresses — in fact, with a complete State system. The empire and the power of Tyre and Sidon, which was fading away gradually through the successive attacks of the Assyrians and the Greeks, was renewed in the western seas. Ac- cording to the legend, now rendered celebrated by the gi-eat episode in Virgil's ^neid, a number of Tyrians, flying under the guidance of Elissa from Tyre, landed at Utica, and proceeded to choose a site for a new settlement. They bought from the Berbers as much land as an ox-hide could cover, and then cut it into narrow strips, so as to encircle as much as possible. Here they built, about the year 850 B.C., Carthada, or New Town. The fact that Byrsa or Bozra is the Phoenician for citadel^ while it is the Greek for hide^ seems to have been partly, at least, the origin of the legend. Nothing is more common than to invent a story to account for a name of curious and remarkable sound. It is in this settlement alone that the Phoenicians appear as a great military power, not as mere traders ; and yet here, too, there are evidences that this state of things was exceptional. They had, indeed, a great army, but it was one of mercenaries, not of citizen soldiers ; and when days of trouble came, this reed, upon which they trusted, broke and pierced them. They had, indeed, a great number of subject cities, such as those which supplied Rome with her armies. But the Phoenicians were totally devoid of the instinct of Warlike Policy of Carthage. 169 political assimilation, which the Romans developed so perfectly, and which made them the masters of the world. Carthage appears to have held out no hope of better conditions to her subjects. There was none of them, (except Utica,) w^hich would not have been benefited by her fall. Accordingly, the Carthaginians could allow no fortifications in these towns, and the country was open to any invader who chose to land on the shores of Africa. This is shown by the invasions of Agathocles and of Re- gulus ; and, in spite of all their force, we are in- formed that, up to a late period, they paid ground rent for the city of Carthage to the Lybian tribe, from whom they had originally hired the place, whereon to settle and to build their town. These facts show that they were not a warlike nation, that they took up arms merely to defend their trade, and to save their riches. This, too, was really the case. For the adventurous Greeks began to press after them into the western seas. Towards the end of the eighth century B.C., they covered all the south coast of Italy, and the east coast of Sicily with their cities. And the Phoenicians soon saw that except they had recourse to arms, their western traffic was gone. They remembered that they had been driven in the very same way from the Eastern Mediterranean, from the islands of the ^Egean, and from the coasts of Greece, by the maritime develop- ment of the Greeks. They felt that the power of the mother cities was waning, and they prepared for the struggle. lyo Rome and Carthage. As far as the Greeks were concerned, the Phceni- cians succeeded completely. They had a better navy, a greater concentration of power, and a closer unity of interests than the va- rious colonies from different parts of Greece, who were often hostile, always jealous of one another. And so the Carthaginians succeeded in saving their marts in Sicily, especially Palermo, from the Greeks. Nay, farther, they prevented them from intruding into the extreme West. Greek colonization was ar- rested in Sicily and Magna Grsecia; and the rich countries of Spain and Gaul were left in the hands of the Phoenician traders. For centuries the mer- chants monopolized this great source of wealth. But at last their day came. They had formed a state system firm enough to resist the scattered Greeks, able and warlike though they were. Yet there was arising nearer to the west, and therefore in a position far more dangerous to themselves, a power, which in its turn developed a state system, whose solid structure proved more than a match for any Semitic organization. And yet when the power of Carthage came into collision with the iron strength of Rome, it was not till after one hundred and fifty years of varied conflict — it was not til Italy had been devastated by Phoenician soldiery, that the proud republic of the Semites at last sank into dust and ashes beneath the Aryan lords of Italy. And we hear that the stern general who gave the last stroke, and who was present at the burning of the proud colony of Tyre, could not restrain his emo- War turned into a Speculation. 171 tion, and shed tears at the sight of the prostration of Rome's last formidable rival. For the days had been when Hannibal had reined his horse before the walls of Rome, and Italian nurses, even in later days, would hush to silence their children with the terror of the great Carthaginian's name. The issue of this great war has, indeed, a more than usual historical interest. It is a solemn warning to the nations of the world that a rotten oligarchy will not be able to contend against the earnest deter- mination of an honest people, even when supported by the most brilliant genius, and the most ample pecuniary resources. There was never a nation whose finances were in a more prosperous condition than the Phoenicians. They understood the manage- ment of state loans, and the use of a token currency, like our paper money. They were able to turn a war into a pecuniary speculation, and compute the cost of subduing their enemies. They had abundance of mercenaries at their command. Beyond all this, they had the wonderful good fortune of having among them a family endowed with genius of the first order. Politically, strategically, from every point of view, there are no men in ancient history who strike us with more astonishment than the great Hamilcar, and his still greater son. In spite of all these excep- tional advantages, the innate jealousy, meanness, and incapacity of a narrow mercantile oligarchy brought ruin upon itself. In the late American war, had the south possessed ample resources, and even more genius than it displayed, the struggle would 172 Providential Defeat of Hannibal have been not very dissimilar; for the agricultural system of the Carthaginians was very like that of the planters in the slave states, more lucrative per- haps, but just as cruel. Therefore I firmly believe the issue would not have been different : the selfish- ness of a narrow oligarchy will never overcome the irresistible force of an honest nation's determination. Nevertheless, so great is the genius of Hannibal, so strange and romantic is his life, that he invests his cause with an interest that does not belong to it ; and, I must confess, that for my own part, I was always inclined to sympathize with the Carthagi- nians in their struggle with Greece and Rome ; and yet, I suppose that the Divine Providence, which regulates the course of history, can seldom be shown, even by us, to have acted more wisely in arranging the future rulers of the world. For the character of the Phoenicians and their colonization were never so high or so beneficial to the world as that of the European nations. If you wish to know what sort of people the old Phoenicians were, look at the mediaeval and modem Jews. I am convinced that there is no modern people elsewhere, so similar to an ancient and extinct race, as the Jews are to the Phoenicians. Both present the same curious and accurately fixed combination of mental qualities. The ancient Phoenicians were the most industrious people in the world, and the greatest accumulators of money. They never indulged in any other pur- suit but merchandize ; they bought no lands ; they inherited no property. In their original homes, they Sieges of Semite Cities. 173 were in fact, a great nation without a country to live in. They are always represented as very subtle, shrewd, and anxious to drive hard bargains; and they would submit to any hardship, any tax, pro- vided their power of making money was left to them. Can anything be more similar to the Jews of me- diaeval and modem times.* But, like the Jews of ancient and modern times, there is a point at which all this pliability, all this forbearance, all this timidity vanishes, and there is developed a tremendous tenacity of despair, which has made the siege of their capitals real epochs in history. The sieges of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, the siege of Carthage by Scipio, and the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, all these show the same national features in the Jews and Phoenicians : they show a heroism of despair excelled by no other nation in the known world. The Semite is no proper colonist. Either he drives out the aborigines, or he uses them merely to his own advantage. He never seeks consciously to civilize or improve them. With the exception of the letters which they brought to the Greeks, and the good system of agriculture w^hich the Ro- * I do not mean, of course, to speak of individuals. My experience of them in England is, that they are fully as honourable and high-spirited as any of us, and on an average, a great deal more able than the Anglo Saxons. Give them fair play, and they will certainly make their way faster than any other people. There are plenty of conspicuous examples before us in science, in art, in literature, and in politics. I y 4 Comme7'cial Politics. mans learnt from them in Africa, we look in vain for any legacy left by the Phoenicians to the world except the development of peaceful trade. They taught the world no politics, no religion, no arts. They have left us no orators, no poets, no historians ; and yet it may be, that in this they have only suf- fered the fate of vanquished nations. Who knows but that had they defeated the Romans, they might have perfected a literature equal to that of the Hebrews. But still they could never have replaced the Greeks in politics, in the arts, and in the general power of assimilating other nations to themselves, and themselves to others. For this reason they were swept away, as soon as they had done their work, and produced their effect upon humanity ; and they had to make place for other and higher teachers. Is it not to be feared, that we, who have inhe- rited a position in the world similar to that of the Phoenicians of old — we whose ships pass and repass over all the oceans of the globe — we whose traffic makes us known in every land — we whose capital can boast of luxury equal to that of the merchant princes of Tyre and Sidon — we whose trade has made us lavish of our honour, and taught us to submit to insult rather than forego our bags of gold — is it not to be feared that we have not taken the lesson taught us by the fall of this great nation ? For all history tells us, that except a mother city assimilates her colonies to herself, except she consi- ders with the greatest care their interests, her mer- The Foreign Policy of Traders. 1 7 5 cantile sway will be of short duration. Every mer- chant power must live by her children — every mer- chant city fears to draw her sword, because war ruins commerce. And yet every year we see the foreign politics of England taking more and more the complexion of shop-keeping and common trad- ing. Is it not possible to buy indeed a present peace, or postpone an impending war, by a course of indifference or of cowardice, which will lower the national character, and tend to make us in due time the prey of a younger and more vigorous race, whose hopes are still aggressive, and whose policy is something more definite and more respectable than the mere avoiding of collisions .? LECTURE VIII. ASIA MINOR AND GREECE. E must pass to-day from the East, and from the civihzation of the Semites, to consider a widely different people, inhabiting a different climate, and hence, upon all grounds, des- tined to inaugurate a new epoch in the culture of the world. But the geographical distance from the home of the Semites to that of the Greeks was not less than is the difference in moral and intellectual character- istics ; for they are separated by the vast continent of Asia Minor — a land occupied from early times by many obscure tribes, which contributed their share in civilizing the West, but to whom history has as yet not been able to assign their respective positions. There is no more interesting or more intricate problem than the investigation of the parentage and character of these nations, who were certainly, to some extent, the forerunners of the Greeks in the fine arts and in general culture. So little is as yet known concerning them, that in many cities we are unable to determine accurately whether they arose from a Semite or an Ar)^an origin. The Carians and Lycians. 1 7 7 The high plateau which extends across the country is bounded on the south by the chain of Mount Taurus, which leaves but a narrow border towards the sea, intersected by spurs striking off from the main chain. Owing to this conformation, the principal rivers run northwards and westwards. The southern and western coasts of the country have been always the foremost in civilization, the centre of the plateau being, for the most part, a bleak, wild, and cold country, rocky, and in many places volcanic in character. The tribes occupying the southern coast, and sepa- rated from their neighbours by the snow-clad heights of Mount Taurus, were principally of Semitic origin, and were the Cilicians, the Solymic, and the Carians. According to the testimony of the ancients, and from the remains of their religion, there can be no doubt that they had kindred gods, and a kindred language, to the Phoenicians. The Greeks are said to have borrowed their armour from the Carians ; and, I sus- pect, the piratical habits of the island Greeks were also, to some extent, copied from the same people, who were, like the Phoenicians of early times, noto- rious for freebooting on the sea. The most remarkable nation on this coast was, however, the Lycian, which had forced its way into the fruitful plain of Xanthus, and there developed a culture in many respects peculiar. From the relics of it that have been found, there can be no doubt that this tribe was of Indo-European origin. Their language, though not a dialect of Greek, was un- doubtedly akin to it, and was written in the same 178 The Lycians. character ; yet their principal monuments, which con- sist of tombs and sepulchral chambers, show that pecu- liar care for the remains of the dead, which rather belongs to the Semitic than the Aryan race. There seems no doubt that this and the other Aryan tribes of Asia Minor were profoundly influenced in religion, as all their brethren have ever been, by the early Semites. The country they occupied was one of extraordinary beauty, and of a lovely climate, so that their imagina- tion seems to have been stimulated to appreciate beauty of form and colour. But the use of the Greek form of the alphabet prevents us from dating their remains earlier than the eighth century B.C., and the more perfect of them show distinctly an imitation of Greek art. They worshipped, in their great temple at Patara, the sun-god, whom the Greeks knew under the titles of Lycian Apollo, and also as Bellerophon. In the days of Homer, they were evidently regarded as the most chivalrous and civilized nation of Asia Minor. There is no finer or nobler hero in the whole Iliad than Sarpedon. Herodotus mentions many peculiarities in their dress, especially that of wearing plumes in their helmets, and says that their relationships were counted by the mothers' side; this we know to have been an usual custom among primitive nations. The remains of their capital, Xanthus, are very striking. The walls were built massively, in Cyclo- pean fashion. Within the ruins of the walls, and sur- rounded by the remains of other buildings, are a The Lycian Tombs. 1 7 9 multitude of tombs ; so that among the Lycians, the dwelHngs of the Hving and the dead were not se- parated. Not only are there artificial sarcophagi brought from a distance, but isolated rocks have been modelled into great chambers ; and the tall perpendicular walls of rock, with which the region abounds, have been hewn out, and formed into sepul- chral vaults. The face of these rocks has been carved in innumerable facades — graceful and elegant in de- sign, but evidently imitating wooden structures, which were probably their earliest description of building, and the design of which remains the same up to the present day in the country. In the simpler facades, a flat roof — in the more elegant, a pointed gable — is represented. The isolated tombs show the same imitation of wooden buildings, and seem, in most cases, prepared for three persons. There are nume- rous remains of pillars and obelisks about these sepa- rate tombs ; their ornamentation is rich and accurate, representing the life of animals, birds, and men, in great variety. There are still remains of bright colouring on many of them. The inscriptions which have been deciphered tell us that these tombs were built during the life of the owner for himself, his wife, and his family. He in- vokes the wrath of the gods upon all who disturb him in his tomb. The massiveness of these sarcophagi and chambers shows that the Lycians were as anxious as the ancient Egyptians to secure for the dead ever lasting resting-places; and their ornamentation proves that they seem to have regarded the state of man i8o The Phrygians. after death as one of peace and rest. The sculptures on the tombs represent happy scenes of family life, agricultural occupations, social and festive meetings. There is no trace, even in the battles represented, to remind us of the terrors of death, or of future judg- ment. Mothers with their children, processions, riding parties, battles, all manners of life are depicted. I have gone into some detail concerning this re- markable people, because they seem to show us a culture intermediate between the Semites and the Greeks — a transition stage, so to speak, from the East to the West. From a similar point of view, the Phrygians are equally interesting, and they also were an Aryan tribe settled amidst innumerable Semitic neighbours. They are also believed, by some modern historians, to have been the progenitors of the Helle- nic race, who developed an independent culture in the West, as the Lycians had done in the South. The thoroughly eastern type of their religion and of their music would, indeed, have misled us, had not the analysis of their language proved their Aryan origin. This nation, settled in the very centre of the great plateau of Asia Minor, must have attained con- siderable enlightenment in the eighth century B.C., when their kings sent costly presents to Delphi, in Greece. The remains of their dwellings are very curious. In the wide district about Rhyndacus and Iconium there are mountains, clifts, and isolated rocks exca- vated to serve for habitations. The softness of the stone greatly facilitated this labour. There are walls Phrygian Music. i8i of rock chiselled out in stories one over the other for two hundred feet, lighted by apertures, and connected by steps and corridors. The interior is, strange to say, without any furnishing whatsoever; there are no signs of seats, fire-places, or couches ; recesses and niches alone are to be found. The portals of some of the dwellings are decorated with pillars and carving. Such habitations point to a rude and early age ; but Strabo mentions that, in his day, there were still tribes who dwelt after this fashion — inaccessible, and therefore invincible. The tombs of the Phrygian kings have been discovered, very similar to the Lycian tombs, hewn out in rock, and carved, in imitation of buildings, with wooden frames. The architecture, however, of the Phr}^gians, though original, was by no means the most remarkable of their contributions to civilization. The Phrygian music was kno\\Ti as that, of all others, best calculated to excite the deepest emotions of joy and grief. So feverish and overpowering, indeed, was the excite- ment produced on Greek minds by the Phrygian flute, that sober lawgivers and educators endeavoured to prevent its use, and pointed to its injurious effects in softening and debasing the intellect ; even in the legends this feeling appears, for Apollo, the god of the harp, is challenged by the Phrygian Marsyas, a flute-player, to a contest, in which the latter is de- feated, and flayed alive. The worship of the Phry- gian Mother, which afterwards became popular through Greece, and even in Italy, brought with it this wild music, and strange stories were told of the 1 8 2 Moral Effects of Music. effects it had upon the excited worshippers. But the pennanent effects of music on the character must be studied by us with far greater care, before we can hope to understand the opinions of the Greeks on this curious topic. All the thinking men among them, who have left us their opinions on the subject, were agreed that nothing had a gi-eater influence on the temper of the youth, than the music in which they were trained. While the stricter and more sober modes, and the lyre or harp, were believed to tone the mind by infusing modest and reasonable emotions, the wild Asiatic measures, especially the Lydian, were known to have the opposite effect, and to unnerve the mind by dissipation and excitement.''' But I cannot detain you longer with the tribes of Asia Minor. It was necessary that you should have, * I am convinced we can show somewhat of a parallel con- trast in our own day. The perpetual indulging in the modern Italian school of music, the continual rehearsing of romantic love-songs, and strained effects of the voice, in imitation and suggestive of passion — this practice has, to my own knowledge, a most injurious effect in depraving the minds of those who give way to it. On the contrary, the study of the works of Sebastian Bach, or of Mozart, appears to have no such ten- dency. When engaged in very hard reading, during my col- lege career, I used myself to find Italian operatic music in- compatible with it, Avhile string quartets, and other such in- tellectual music, so to speak, were not so. A more accurate analysis of the emotions excited by music, and the nature of the feelings which it can represent, will, I am sure, lead us back to some theory like that of the ancient Greeks — that music is not merely an accomplishment of use in recreation, but a great agent in moral education. Importance of the Greeks. 183 at least, a general notion what their culture had at- tained. I have said nothing of the Lydians — who were, perhaps, the most remarkable, and to whom, it is commonly believed, we are indebted for the inven- tion of coining and stamping metals — because the ordinary historians give a sufficient account of them in connection with the celebrated Croesus. But, as I have already said, great obscurity hangs over all the early history of this country, only to be unravelled by degrees, according as we find more of their in- scriptions, and decipher their languages. Let us proceed to consider the civilization of the Greeks, and its physical conditions. Strange to say, when we have at last arrived at a part of the subject where I feel more at home than anywhere else, I feel a great perplexity how to treat it. I know not what to take and what to leave from the mass of materials which are preserved to us. Yet it is by far the most important branch of ancient geography which we have yet reached ; for it concerns the nation which has excelled all others, of either ancient or modern times, in learning, in the arts, and in accomplish- ments. Conceive what our present civilization would be without the Greeks. Where would be our philosophy, our poetry, our sculpture, our architecture, our drama, our knowledge of the past, our hopes for the future, but for the teaching, the mediation, the traditions, of this great people ? There can be no doubt that the most delicate fea- tures in our modern civilization are due, not to the legacies left us by the Greeks and the Romans, but 184 Modem Influences of the Greeks. to the romantic nature of our Germanic ancestors. Honour among men, dignity among women, are known to have existed among them even when they Hved as barbarians in their primeval forests. But though it cannot be said that the Greeks possessed these higher social feelings at all so much as the Germans, in proportion to their other refinement, surely the most perfect civilization of the ancient world — perhaps of any period of the world — cannot have failed to develop some of the more subtle and delicate graces in our modern life. Yet the extraor- dinary genius and attainments of the ancient Greeks are, I think, more generally acknowledged, than ap- preciated, amongst us. Their ideas have been so universally adopted and imitated, that we are now often unconscious of our obligations, and mistake for our own what we have borrowed. Yet where have we not borrowed from them? Their political history, which has occupied many of the greatest living writers in our own day, has afforded a model for the Re- pubHc of America, the last great constitution the world has seen framed among its nations. Their architecture, while it afforded the noblest types for the public buildings of many centuries, has been even travestied most painfully with unsuitable materials, for unsuitable purposes, and in an unsuitable atmos- phere, by the builders of churches during the past century, and of houses in every modern city. Their sculpture, while it stimulated the genius of a Canova, has led smaller minds to desperate attempts at com- bining the ungainly dress of the present day with the Unity of Asia and Europe. 185 graceful folds of classic drapery — attempts which dis- figure the principal thoroughfares of this and other cities. Nor is the fashionable milliner, when she racks her brains to change the just established fashion, independent of these great masters of grace and re- finement. In short, the civilization of the ancient Greeks has influenced not merely every description of modern art, philosophy, and literature, but even every grade and rank in society. If geography have any influence upon man, surely this instance must be far the most important to examine in all history ; but, in the present lecture, I fear I must, to a great ex- tent, take for granted in you some acquaintance with the national character of the Greeks. I do so un- willingly, as the current accounts of this great people are very deficient indeed. The social aspect of Greek civilization will occupy us in the next lecture ; but to-day I have to discuss the physical peculiarities of the home of the Hel- lenic race, and this home includes the coast of Asia Minor, as well as Greece. We speak, indeed, of Europe and Asia, and unconsciously imagine some sharply-defined line of severance? But where can such a line be found? In the far north indeed, the Ural mountains may form it ; but south of the Black Sea, nature seems rather to have done everything in her power to join them closely and indissolubly. So thickly studded is the yEgean sea with islands, that they look like stepping-stones from Greece to Asia ; and, indeed, this broken sea is a far more passable route than the rough mountains which 1 86 Unity of Climate. separate the respective coasts from the interior of their own land. Hence, the early inhabitants of these coasts were always intimate, and closely connected with one another, while they remained strangers to their inland neighbours. The Greeks became ulti- mately a fringe round the Mediterranean ; they were originally a fringe round the ^Egean Sea, occupying the northern coast, the lands of Greece, the coasts of Asia Minor, and all the islands down as far as Crete and Cyprus. This whole region is one in climate also. Not only the same sea, but the same atmosphere belongs to it all. The same regular trade-winds blow from the Hellespont to Crete, and give the same impulse to the shipping all along the coast. There is hardly a spot between Asia and Europe where the sailor can feel himself in solitude between the plains of the sea and the heavens ; everywhere the eye can catch sight of some cliff or island, and easy journeys waft him from one harbour to another. So it is, that the same races have always occupied the two coasts and the intervening islands. The same language has ever prevailed over them all. Often have politicians and conquerors essayed to draw a line of demarca- tion through the ^gean Sea, and to separate, by an imaginary limit, the eastern from the western coast. But nature has always effaced these artificial boun- daries ; and those "whom God hath joined," the hand of man has not been able to put asunder. The similarity of the eastern and western coasts of the ^gean is not more remarkable than the Va7'iety of Climate. 187 wide variations of climate and soil, when we travel from north to south. No myrtle will grow on the northern coast ; the climate is that of central Europe ; you will find no southern fruits through Roumelia. The fortieth degree of latitude marks the transition ; for on the coast we perceive the traces of a milder sky in the sheltered valleys ; and here we find evergreen woods. But the least expo- sure at once alters the climate; and so, that on Mount Athos almost all the trees which grow in Europe are to be found ; and in the interior, the country which lies a full degree south of Naples, has the temperature of Lombardy, Through Thessaly and Mount Pindus, no olive, none of the produce peculiar to Southern Europe, will live. The mild sea air does not appear to penetrate to the interior till the thirty-ninth degree, and hence, a rapid change is manifest. In Phthiotis, the olive, rice, and cotton are at home. In Euboea and Attica, isolated palm trees are found, of which larger groups grow on the southern Cyclades ; whilst in Messene, even dates will at times come to maturity. At Athens, the more delicate fruits of the south will not thrive without peculiar care. On the coasts of Argolis, a few miles to the south, oranges and citrons grow in rich groves, from which they can be transported in a few hours to a coast where not even vines and olives will live ! Within two degrees of latitude then, the land of Greece reaches from the stunted beech trees of Mount Pindus, to the palm trees of Messene ; and there is, I believe, no region The JEgean Sea. on the surface of the globe — excluding of course the slopes of lofty mountains — where different zones of climate follow one another so quickly. There can be no doubt, that nothing could be more stimulating and exciting to the population than this extraordinary variety in the appearance and the productions of nature — stimulating, I say, not only intellectually, and to the mind's eye, but also to the exchange of products ; and so to an early and widely extended commerce. What a contrast to the solemn sameness of the plain of Egypt ! But, although the coasts of Asia Minor and Greece are so similar, there is a considerable con- trast between the features of their respective inte- riors. We might almost imagine the yEgean Sea had a special power of crumbling into fragments the continents with which it comes in contact; it penetrates everywhere into the land, forming islands and headlands, peninsulas and creeks ; so that the coast line is of immense length as compared to the amount of solid land. I believe that the coast line of Greece is several thousand miles long, while the country is not much larger than Scotland. Such a coast, full of bays and harbours, and bold headlands, the Greeks have always chosen for their home. But the difference between the coasts is this: Asia Minor is only, so to speak, affected by it on the western surface, for, after all, it is a little Asia, possessing like its greater namesake, large plateaus of land, surrounded by high and inaccessible moun- tains, cool and stony, but fruitful in soil ; and the Aspect of Greece. 1 89 mountains which confine it, nowhere approach the sea. A hne drawn from Constantinople down to the coast of Lycia, would mark the limit where the mountains break oft' and the land sinks into rich fer- tile slopes, intersected by meandering rivers ; and here begins the Grecian climate. Here, if any- where, we must draw the line between Greece and Asia. For the nations of the coast have ever been dift'erent in language, in manners, and in religion, from those of the interior. The sea then, if I may so say, has been only able to Hellenize the coast on the eastern side ; but it is far different on the western side of the ^gean. Here, too, a great stretch of land has protruded from the Danube southward into the Mediterranean, with a spine of mountains in its centre, from which offshoots start, chiefly in a south-eastern direction ; but the sea interpenetrates and surrounds it on all sides ; and after striving, as it were, to cut it asunder at the Gulf of Corinth, actually breaks it up into peninsulas and islands. The whole country is com- pletely separated from the Danubian Principalities by the great curved chain of the Balkan, which, stretching from the Adriatic to the Black Sea, inter- cepts all communication, and leaves the southern peninsula to its own laws and its own history. It may be well here to add this general remark, important to all who study political geography, that mountain chains stretching from east to west, are found to be much more effectual barriers to the development and intercourse of man than those 190 The West of Greece Barbarous. which reach from north to south. The principal reason is, probably, the great change of climate which we experience when passing northward over a chain of mountains ; whereas it is but seldom that a journey from west to east, over high hills, Avill pro- duce much difference. If it does, as in the case of Asia Minor, which I have just cited, it appears that such north and south chains conform to the laws of the more important east and west chains. But it is common to find totally different races dwelling within a few miles of each other, when separated by a lofty ridge running from east to west. The Alps, the Pyrenees, the Himalayas, the Carpathians, the Bal- kan, and many others, will occur to you as obvious examples ; whereas, the Ural, the Caucasus, the Ap- penines, and the lofty chains which run down Central Greece, are by no means such decisive boundaries. But to return. The eastern coast line of Greece, which is turned towards Asia, is immensely more advantageous for commerce and for trade than the coast which faces Italy. While the climate of the ^gean is such as I have described, and the whole coast teems with safe roadsteads and harbours, the western side of Greece is raw in climate, and the coast rocky and inhospi- table ; and hence, it has always been far behind both eastern Greece and Italy in civilization. Placed be- tween the two great centres of civilization of the ancient world, with the laws of Rome, and the noble culture of Greece for their models, the eastern tribes have ever remained pirates and barbarians. Geographical Features. 1 9 1 But as soon as we cross the watershed, and look towards Macedonia and Thessaly, we find rivers bursting from lofty springs, and forming rich valleys and lakes between the ridges, which are the offshoots of the main drain. The Axius, the Strymon, and the celebrated Peneus, which formed the historic vale of Tempe, are the principal of these rivers. And between the Axius and Strymon a great promontory juts out, ending in three peninsulas, the eastern of which is the celebrated Mount Athos. Its steep marble cliffs rise above 6,400 feet from the sea, and cast their shadow in the evening, seen as far as the market of Lemnos. Visible over the whole of the northern ^gean, it forms a beacon and guide for the Greek sailors from the earliest times. I cannot think of going into more minute details of the geography of Greece — a subject which would require, not one, but many lectures. You will find an ample account of it in Colonel Leake's Travels in Greece ; and such of you as have had the privilege of visiting that most artistic and interesting of modem cities, Munich, will remember the beautiful gallery of views taken in various parts of Greece by order of the ex-King of Bavaria. Let us rather turn to a general consideration of the features of the country, and seek to determine their effects upon Greek civilization. You will then observe, in the first instance, that not only do the various parts of Greece differ widely in climate, but they are parted from one another almost everywhere by steep and difficult mountain- 192 Nuvierons Sub-divisions. passes ; so that while it was always easy to hold com- munication by sea, travelling by land was difficult, and in many cases impracticable. Attica was sepa- rated from Boeotia, both of them from Thessaly, except at the pass of Thermopylae, by mountain chains from five to eight thousand feet high ; so the isthmus of Corinth separates northern from southern Greece, with its difficult passes, and the various parts of the Peloponnesus, as the Morea was called in ancient times, were far more accessible by sailing round the coast than by endeavouring to cross the wild mountains of Arcadia. These regions resemble in climate the most northern parts of Greece, and were so difficult of access, that the population was never subdued, and remains almost the same in blood to-day as it was 2000 years before Christ. Again : not only are the various parts of Greece separated into small divisions, but the physical pecu- liarities of these divisions differ very widely from one another. Attica, for example, possessed a very sterile soil, not fruitful in corn, but in olives, with very clear atmosphere, and with excellent harbours. Cross the mountains and you find yourself in Boeotia, a land of rich, deep soil, marshy withal, a country of heavy mist and fog, so that the wits of its inhabitants were thought by the Athenians to have been blunted by the atmosphere — a conclusion to which they would never have come, had they been acquainted with the sparkling wit and bright fancies of this our home of fog and mist in the northern seas. Penetrate farther west from Boeotia, and you will Geographical Subdivisions. 193 reach an alpine country, with narrow slopes, in which live a wild, pastoral people, who feed sheep and goats, and who often dwell in caves in the mountains. All these marked differences are repeated in all their varieties in the Peloponnesus ; Arcadia and Elis, Sparta and Argos, contain all this extraordinary con- trast, repeated with no less precision. The isolation, then, of all these tribes and divisions of Greece from one another produced a quantity of little states, each composed of a pecuHar population — all Greeks, all feeling the common bond of one language, and of one religion, but differing in dialect, in manners, in their form of government, in their food and in their amusements, in their trade and in their industry. Can we conceive greater variety within unity — greater scope for the cultivation of originality, or the deve- lopment of taste ? The consequences, indeed, of the subdivision of Greece into separate states has never been, until of late years, recognised by historians, but has influenced both the politics and the literature of the Greeks profoundly. In politics, it naturally produced an effect exactly the reverse of the great plains of Europe and of Asia. There, one ruler and one government must extend their sway over vast tracts of land subdi- vided by no natural boundaries. In Greece, on the contrary, every little valley, every island, every sepa- rate piece of land had its own city, its own govern- ment — in early times its peculiar hero-chief, in later, its own little democracy or oligarchy. Thus the geography of the country discouraged extended em- 194 The Faults of Kings obvious. pire, if indeed the dominion over the whole of the litde region could have been called so. And not only did it oppose a consolidated power, but it equally opposed absolute monarchy. In very early times, not long subsequent to the days when Homer wrote, we find that all the monarchs, who had received their power by inheritance and by Divine right, either abdicate, or are removed in favour of aristocracies or repubUcs. One obvious reason in the change is this : that while in Asia the millions over whom the Great King ruled never saw his face, nor knew his weaknesses, but thought of him some- what like what we Irish people are expected to think of our Queen, as some sort of half mythical, half divine, but almost totally unknown personage ; the Greeks, in their little states, were thrown into close contact with their kings, saw their weaknesses and foibles, and discovered that they were men of like passions with themselves. A man might as well attempt to appear a hero to his valet-de-chambre, (if he were not really one,) as a Greek king to impose on his little community. Hence all small commu- nities have a tendency to republican government — all great kingdoms to the reverse. I may observe, that the same thing is apparent in maritime countries, where the government is unable to prevent the lower classes from travelling abroad in their ships, and from extending both their knowledge of things and their means of accumulating wealth. You remember how different was the case of Egypt, which we discussed at length some time ago, Opposite results are natu- Co-ordinate Literary Dialects. 195 rally to be expected from a country such as Greece, and did actually result in politics. In literature the influence of these physical pecu_ liarities is no less abiding, and no less distinctly corroborated by history. In all these separate little states, each subdivision of the Greek race had its own dialect, its OAvn peculiar genius, and so there were developed a number of co-ordinate literary dialects. What was still more curious, the accident of any one genius of a peculiar order springing up and writing in a peculiar dialect, gave the tone to all subsequent literature in that direction; and so we find, in the literary histor}^ of Greece, special subjects appropriated by particular dialects of Greek. When the Athenians met to honour their gods by a theatrical representation, the choral odes and hymns introduced were composed by Athenian poets in the dialect of their hated foes, the Lacedaemonians, who were ravaging their country at this very time ; because from the earUest times the habits of the Dorians had stimulated choral odes to the gods ; and hence all such hymns were composed in that dialect. In the same way Homer determined all subsequent Greek epic poets to compose their works in the dialect used by him, though it had long ceased to be a colloquial dialect in Greece, and in later times was even imper- fectly understood. Similarly, long afterwards, at Alex- andria, they wrote pastoral poems in Sicilian Greek. It is difficult for us to imagine clearly this state of things. All good English writers use the same literary dialect; and such language as is found in 196 Examples in Modern Languages. Tennyson's " Northern Farmer," or in the dialogues of the lower class Scotch in Sir W. Scott's novels, is quite peculiar, difficult to understand, and introduced merely for dramatic effect — a license to which the Greeks thoroughly objected, except in broad Comedy. Two really parallel cases occur to me — one in medi- aeval, another in modern times. When the troubadour ballad poetry was in high fashion, many literary men, from different parts of Europe, composed this descrip- tion of poems, but all in the Provencal language ; for this was the recognized dialect and language for such effusions. In the present day, the peculiarly sweet and liquid Venetian dialect, which has so charmed any of us who have visited that most picturesque of cities, has been raised to the rank of a literary dialect, and I am informed that several important works on history, and other subjects, have been com- posed in it. In English there is no parallel case : for there is only one dialect spoken in Ireland, with varieties of accent ; and the coarse patois of the outlying counties of England are only a matter of curiosity to the phi- lologist; they have little value in the eyes of the historian of literature. Perhaps I should apologise for occupying your time with these illustrations ; but I desire to impress upon your memories this curious and important point about the Greek literature — the parallel and equal cultivation of several widely dif- ferent dialects. This was, doubtless, promoted by the geographical dislocation of Greece, of which I spoke. Genius of the Gr'eeks. 197 But when we have once discussed the physical configuration of Greece, and desire to approach the character and genius of the inhabitants more closely, we find ourselves in the presence of a subject so vast and so interesting that it would be impossible to attempt it in this lecture. And in truth no geography, no consideration of mere natural causes, so far as we have yet reached, can explain one tithe of what we meet. Why was it that amongst other nations beauty is the exception, while amongst the ancient Greeks it seems to have been the rule ? At least the Greek educators never thought any one a gentleman, in the proper sense of the word, except his appearance were handsome. How is it that no epic poet has been able to attain the excellence of Homer, who wrote com- paratively in the childhood of the nation, 900 B.C. ? And the mention of Homer suggests to me that in his poems you will find a very complete picture of the life, the manners, and the feelings of the higher classes in his day. We cannot, of course, assume that the age which he describes in his poems is accurately represented, but we can be sure that he draws a picture like his own day, and that he repre- sents gods and heroes with the feelings and principles of the Greeks of his own time. And it is most fortu- nate that you can examine these, the most precious of all the relics left us by antiquity, by the light of several excellent translations. If you consult Lord Derby's translation of the Iliad, and either Wright's or Worsley's translations of the Odyssey, you will be indeed astonished at the high and noble feelings, 1 98 Tlie Greeks not a Friwitive People. the delicate sense of honour and of chivalry you will meet, combined of course with many savage feelings, which show you the antiquity and primitiveness of the work. And when we reflect how completely the idea of chivalry towards the weaker sex and the helpless disappears in the later histor}^ of Greece, we shall indeed wonder at the great cultivation shown in the poems of Homer. It is unfortunate that the better and more interesting poem, the Odyssey, has not received the ample justice which the Iliad has done from Lord Derby. I hope to discuss this most inte- resting subject with more detail in my next lecture. When we reach the Greeks we have come to the end of the indigenous peoples of the old world, and we conclude one part of our inquiry.* For from hence we must not only consider what features of its character a nation has obtained from its habitation, but also what features were brought with it from older settlements. Even in the case of the Greeks, it is very uncertain whether they were aborigines in any really remote sense. We find, indeed, but few traces of an older language, or an older race ; but the consistent tradition of the Greeks asserts that they owed a great part of their civilization to intelligent settlers. In some of these legends we have recog- nized traces of Phoenician influence ; others point to * I ought perhaps to except the Chinese, whose civihzation is said to be a perfectly original and independent development, like that of Egypt or Babylonia. This subject, however, would require a long and special study, without which I could not venture to discuss it. Study of Geography. 199 some migrations of races, of which no other record remains. And the whole Greek language bears such close affinities to the Sanskrit and Zend, that it is evident the ancestors of the Greeks must have come from that part of Armenia called Iran at some remote period. It is, perhaps then, well, that our subject should be concluded this term exactly at the point which we have reached. We have discussed the civilization of all the greatest races of the ancient world, which occupied the same country since pre- historic times, and we endeavoured to show in each case what features were due to physical influences, but we must postpone to another occasion a discussion of the natural inferences which we should draw from the body of facts which I had collected. This much is certain, that while at the first daw^n of history geographical features and advantages are paramount, according as we approach our own day their influence seems greatly to diminish, and is, at all events, more difficult to estimate. Still, I trust that when you henceforth consult the geography of the old world, you will do so with a greater interest, and with a feeling that geographical research includes, not mere names and measurements, but some knowledge of the life and acts of the people of ancient days ; and also that you will not forget to think upon the effects of seas and rivers, of mountains and plains, of pro- duce and climate, upon the civilization of the human race. I have laid such stress on this side of the discussion, (because the influence of race was gene- rally supposed to account for all national differences. 200 Conflicting Theories. without farther examination,) that some of you may suppose that I desire to support this opinion. I hope, when we arrive at the proper point, to re-open the discussion, that you may see with what restrictions and limitations these opposing theories may be safely adopted. This, I hope to show, is chiefly owing to the development of the Aryan and Semitic races, which have shown features inexplicable by physical causes, from the very dawn of their history. LECTUR COL. COLL. iLlBRAm N YOKK. THE GREEKS (CONCLUDE D)— HOMERIC , SOCIETY. E discussed in the last lecture the physical peculiarities of Greece, and I intimated that we had now reached a new stage in our inquiries. We had been investigating primitive civilizations, or, at least, civiHzations which appear to our knowledge to be such, and are not known to have been borrowed from their predecessors. Greek civi- lization cannot justly be ranked in this class. Though there never was a nation endowed with more original genius than the Hellenic, there never was a race which learnt more assiduously the virtues and the vices of their neighbours. I state these two qualities in contrast, from deference to an ignorant preju- dice ; it were better to say because they were original, therefore they borrowed largely from the attain- ments of others. Nothing in a nation, nothing in an individual, is a surer test both of ability and of sound sense, than to adopt the discoveries of others. But a nation of geniuses will not only adopt, but assimilate them. This was the great glory of the Greeks. So completely had they assimilated the 202 Mea7iing of Originality. knowledge borrowed from Egyptians and Phoeni- cians, so entirely had they made it their own, that in historical times, we find them oblivious of their obligations, and often asserting their originality, as contrasted with their predecessors in culture. In the legends only, and in the minds of thoughtful observers, we find traces of a time when the Greeks, like curious children, learnt their alphabet from the Semites ; when, like children, they imitated, in minia- ture, the ships of the Semites ; perhaps even when, like children, they were taught to fold their hands, and pray unconsciously to the sun-god of the Eastern traders. There is no more common mistake than to oppose originality to learning, and to imagine that he who reads a great deal, and studies the opinions of others, is inferior to the man who is supposed to draw his knowledge from some sort of immediate inspiration, known under the indefinite title of 07'iginality. The whole history of the human race contradicts this supposed contrast. The man who does not build in literature upon the ideas of his elders will be unin- telligible, or, at all events, will make no impression upon his age. Let me cite the example of Shak- speare. You will all concede him originality in the highest sense. You will all agree, that if he bor- rowed, it is not inconsistent with genius to borrow. But you may learn from any commentator, that in every single case, the arguments of his plays are based upon pre-existing materials. In no case did he invent a new story. I suppose nothing could The Greek Language. 203 have been easier to him. Yet it was in the treatment of his materials, in the assimilation of them, in the re-casting of them, that he found his fame. Such was the case, in a wider sense, with the Greek nation. They borrowed their alphabet from the Phoenicians, but they gradually added to it and made it perfect. They borrowed their pottery from the Egyptians,* but they improved it so vastly that the scholars became in time the teachers. They learned their architecture from some forgotten Asiatic builders, but they infused into it a perfect beauty unknown to all the nations of the East. Their language alone — that inalienable and imperish- able heritage bestowed upon some favoured races apparently at their first birth — their language was truly their owti, and so perfect had they made it, so harmoniously was it developed by their genius, that long before they had learned how to write it, it ex- ceeded all the languages of the world in richness, in flexibility, and in beauty. Let me quote to you before leaving the subject a remarkable passage from St. Augustine, in which the truth I have been advocating is admirably illus- trated : — " Whatever," says St. Augustine, {De Dodr. Chris- tian. II. 40,) "those called philosophers, and espe- cially the Platonists, may have said true and con- formable to our faith is not only not to be dreaded, but is to be claimed from them, as unlawful pos- * Anyone who will examine with care the older specimens in the British Museum will not fail to recognise this fact. 204 All Truth is Public Property. sessors, to our use. For as the Egyptians not only- had idols and heavy burthens, which the people of Israel were to abhor and avoid, but also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver and apparel, which that people, at its departure from Egypt, privily assumed for a better use, not on its own authority, but at the command of God — the very Egyptians unwittingly furnishing the things which themselves used not well ; so all the teaching of the Gentiles not only hath feigned and superstitious devices, and heavy burthens of an useless toil, which we severally, as, under the leading of Christ, we go forth out of the fellowship of the Gentiles, ought to abhor and avoid ; but it also containeth liberal arts filled for the service of truth, and some most useful moral precepts : as also there are found among them some truths concerning the worship of the one God Himself, as it were their gold and silver which they did not themselves form, but drew from certain veins of Divine Providence running throughout, and which they perversely and wrongfully abuse to the service of demons." Our earUest knowledge of the Greeks has not to be gleaned with difficulty from stray inscriptions on tombs or temples ; it comes to us in no fragmentary or disjointed form. Unlike other races, whose writ- ing was as early as their history, they drew pictures of their life and manners in immortal verse, long before they had learned to perpetuate their language on brass and stone. But these poems lived in the memory of the people, till the wise men of a later period gathered them from wandering minstrels, and What is Antiquity ? 205 committed them to safer keeping. Such was the history of the celebrated epics ascribed to Homer. It is no wonder, then, that the mention of the Homeric age suggests to most of us the idea of a most primitive society — a condition of mankind rude and early ; and we are disposed to regard it as dis- closing to us the very origin and first beginnings of society. Nor is this notion extraordinary, when we consider the great antiquity of the Homeric poems, which were probably composed in the ninth century before Christ. A closer survey will, however, show that the Ho- meric society was neither primitive nor ancient in a positive, but in a relative sense. For as to antiquity, what claim can the Greeks have to it, when we think of the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians who all flourished and decayed long before we first hear of culture in the Grecian seas ? And even as regards these, the oldest known empires of the world, can we say that they, in any degree, approached the first origin of the world ? — can we say, that from a higher ancJ larger point of view than ours, even the vener- able pyramids of Egypt are not late, very late, in the history of our globe ? Who knows whether it did not require as many thousands of years to produce these great structures as it will require to destroy them ? When, therefore, we mean by the word anti- quity, any approach to the first days of man upon the earth, I suppose the only remains which can lay claim to such a dignity are the ancient arrow-heads and bows found in the gravel-beds of Picardy and 2o6 Meaning of Primitiveness. the limestone caves of Belgium— deposits of an age far more remote from the records of Egypt, Baby- lonia, and of Greece, than these are from the present day. Discarding, then, the idea of the great antiquity of the Homeric age, we shall proceed to discuss its claims to being a primitive state of society. I hope to show you there also, that it can only be called primitive in a few of its features, and that the general impression produced on the mind is that of a decay- ing, not of a young and vigorous state of things. Before I proceed to details, I must remind you care- fully to distinguish primitiveness from antiquity in civilization. At all the periods of the world's his- tory of which we have any connected information, there were civilized nations, and at all periods down to the present there are nations in what is called a primitive* state. The aborigines of Australia, many tribes of North American Indians, are now in * The word primitive is, no doubt, one of those question- begging appellatives, as Archbishop Whately used to call them, which should be used with caution. In the present contrast, it might seem to be assumed that nations were in a primitive state because they were barbarians — in other words, that man in a state of nature has no culture or civilization. That this is the case with most of the races known to us, is certain. There are, on the other hand, certain exceptional races which can never be proved to have emerged from this condition, as Mr. Buckle would have it. These races have been marked by highly subtle and intellectual languages, as well as by spiritual religions. The reader will therefore understand the text in a general and popular sense. Meafwig of Prim itiveness. 207 that state. So were the barbarians who invaded Europe, and produced that huge gap between classi- cal and modern civilization which we call the dark ages. So were the Germans in the days of Julius Caesar, and so were, according to the critical Thucy- dides, many outlying tribes in the mountainous parts of Greece in her brightest days. There are primitive civilizations at all times ; and there have certainly been full-grown and even decay- ing civilizations throughout the world for at least four thousand years. When we see in the old Egyp- tian tombs representations of lapdogs, of dwarfs, and of jesters, in the retinue of the nobiHty at their feasts, we justly feel ourselves in the presence of a mature and artificial condition of society. Like the beauties of hot climates, their civilization is rapid in growth, but premature in decay ; in both respects our age and country afford a happy contrast. Let us then take up the picture left us by Homer, of the society of his day, and endeavour to show how far it indicates a primitive state of man, and how far a well-established state of culture. Turning first to their political condition, we are there struck with the fact, that the common people are assembled, not only in the cities, but even in the camps, to hear the deliberations, or the results of the delibe- rations, of their chiefs. In the Odyssey indeed, they are called upon by the son of the absent king to in- terfere, and prevent the outrages committed by the suitors of the queen on his palace and property; but it may be fairly urged, that this was an exceptional case, 2o8 Elements of Public Discussion. where the lawful ruler was gone, and the ordinary course of things in abeyance. Still the appeal of Telemachus is very remarkable, for they were not allowed to vote, and it is evident that the chiefs had a great objection to their even expressing their opi- nions. The man who does so in the Iliad, is severely chastised on the spot by Ulysses, and reduced to silence. Nay, farther, (and this is the more important point,) he is represented as a misshapen and worthless wretch, and overwhelmed with ridicule by the poet. Yet there he is, and he cannot be restrained from even criticizing the kings and their acts. Now re- member that Homer was a court poet, and wrote in the conservative interest.* You will see then, even in his day, the first sign of popular discussion, of the limiting of regal authority, of the rise of law against despotism. But even this first dark shadow- ing, this first vague instinct of independence, does not spring up in a generation or in a century. For ages there must have been absolute kings and chiefs in Greece, before the people ever dreamt of even feeling any discontent \ and all the other evidence we have, lead us to a similar result. In the first place, those mighty structures — the * The complete ignoring of the part played by the mass of the annies in battle, is the most remarkable instance of this feeling in Homer. Many critics have been absurdly led into the idea, that the chiefs really did all the fighting, because the prowess of no one else is mentioned in the poem written for recitation at the banquets of nobles. The part taken by the servants of Ulysses against the suitors, shows how false this notion is. Remains of pre-Homeric Ki)igdoms. 209 treasury of Atreus, and the palace at Mycenas, the treasure-house of the Minyae in Boeotia, and similar structures in the vale of Sparta — are all, you will ob- serve, found in those very districts of Greece, which Homer brings before us as the seats of the greatest kings. The labour and the extravagance with which these extraordinary structures were made, bespeak an old, well-established monarchy, settled and safe in its tenure, and commanding an unlimited amount of manual labour. But if we consider the conditions of slavery among the lower classes, which have gene- rally accompanied the erection of these great struc- tures — if we consider the sort of subjects and the sort of rulers that have erected the pyramids and temples of the ancient monarchies in the East, we shall be disposed to consider them long anterior to the Homeric times, when the king had but limited power, a limited amount of the public lands, and de- pended upon benevolences, compulsory perhaps in practice and by precedent, but voluntary, at least in theory, to maintain his splendour. For, though he still has nominally the power of life and death, we find no case of his inflicting death ; he can levy, indeed, upon occasions, oppressive burdens upon his people, but there is evidently a certain limit which he si- lently observes, and which some unexpressed, but well-understood restraints prevent him from trans- gressing. I consider Agamemnon, the king of men, in the Iliad, to have inherited from a long line of ances- tors an empire, rich in treasures, and in splendid p 2 1 o The Shield of Achilles. structures, but gradually weakening and decaying by the greater independence of both subject-chiefs and people, and requiring a man of extraordinary vigour to maintain its supremacy. And the distinct tradi- tions of the more ancient past, all agreed in one point, that these kingdoms had not been the spon- taneous growth of the country, but had been, one and all, founded by immigrants from the East, who had brought with them letters, architects, arts, and agriculture, from Lycia, from Phoenicia, and from Egypt. I know no better way of giving you an idea of what I mean by saying, that society in Homer's time was not just beginning, but had obtained settled and established forms, and was even about to decay, than by quoting to you the beautiful picture he draws, in the eighteenth book, of the Shield of Achilles — And two fair populous towns were sculptured there : In one were marriage pomp and revelry, And brides in gay procession, through the streets With blazing torches from their chambers borne, While frequent rose the hymeneal song. Youths whirled around in joyous dance, with sound Of flute and harp ; and, standing at their doors, Admiring women on the pageant gazed. Meanwhile the busy throng a forum filled : There between two a fierce contention rose, About a death-fine ; to the public one Appealed, asserting to have paid the whole ; While one denied that he had aught received. Both were desirous that before the Judge The issue should be tried ; with noisy shouts Scenes of War. 2 1 1 Their several partizans encouraged each. The heralds stilled the tumult of the crowd : On polished chairs, in solemn circle, sat The reverend Elders ; in their hands they held The loud-voiced heralds' sceptres ; waving these, They heard the alternate pleadings ; in the midst Two talents lay of gold, which he should take Who should before them prove his righteous cause. Before the second town two armies lay. In arms refulgent ; to destroy the town The assailants threatened, or among themselves Of all the wealth within the city stored An equal half, as ransom, to divide. The terms rejecting, the defenders manned A secret ambush ; on the walls they placed Women and children mustered for defence, And men by age enfeebled ; forth they went. By Mars and Pallas led ; these, wrought in gold, In golden arms arrayed, above the crowd For beauty and stature, as befitting Gods, Conspicuous shone ; of lesser height the rest. But when the destined ambuscade was reached, Beside the river, where the shepherds drove Their flocks and herds to water, down they lay, In glittering arms accoutred ; and apart They placed two spies, to notify betimes The approach of flocks of sheep and lowing herds. These, in two shepherds' charge, ere long appeared, Who, unsuspecting as they moved along, Enjoyed the music of their pastoral pipes. They on the booty, from afar discerned. Sprang from their ambuscade ; and cutting off The herds, and fleecy flocks, their guardians slew. Their comrades heard the tumult where they sat Before their sacred altars, and forthwith Sprang on their cars, and with fast-stepping steeds Pursued the plunderers, and o'ertook them soon. 1 2 The Reaping and the Vintage. There on the river's bank they met in arms, And each at other hurled their brazen spears. And there were figured Strife, and Tumult wild, And deadly Fate, who in her iron grasp One newly wounded, one unwounded bore, While by the feet from out the press she dragged Another slain : about her shoulders hung A garment crimsoned with the blood of men. Like living men they seemed to move, to fight, To drag away the bodies of the slain. ******* There too was graven a com-field, rich in grain, Where, with sharp sickles reapers plied their task, And thick, in even swathe, the trusses fell; The binders, following close, the bundles tied : Three were the binders ; and behind them boys In close attendance waiting, in their arms Gathered the bundles, and in order piled. Amid them, staff in hand, in silence stood The King, rejoicing in the plenteous swathe. A little way removed, the heralds slew A sturdy ox, and now beneath an oak Prepared the feast ; while women mixed, hard by. White barley porridge for the labourers' meal. And, with rich clusters laden, there was graven A vineyard fair, all gold ; of glossy black The bunches were, on silver poles sustained ; Around, a darksome trench ; beyond, a fence Was wrought, of shining tin ; and through it led One only path, by which the bearers passed, Who gathered in the vineyard's bounteous store. There maids and youths, in joyous spirits bright, In woven baskets bore the luscious fruit. A boy, amid them, from a clear-toned harp Drew lovely music ; well his liquid voice The strings accompanied ; they all with dance And song harmonious joined, and joyous shouts, As the gay bevy lightly tripped along. Hill Fo7'ts in Greece. 213 The greater part of this beautiful picture does not describe the civiUzation of a primitive race. All the occupations of a higher state of culture are there ; and we must sift and criticize the individual features carefully, in order to determine what elements yet remain indicative of the earliest origin of Greek civi- lization. There is no point in the picture which affords more certain proof of my position than the mention of a walled town, and apparently not on a hill, but in a well-watered valley. We know upon the best autho- rity, that the oldest settlements in Greece were on precipitous cliffs, at first sufficiently protected by a steep ascent, (Thucydides says on account of the poverty and carelessness of the people) afterwards guarded by huge blocks of stone, rudely placed in circles round the most assailable points, such as is described to be the case in the celebrated fort of Dun ^ngus in the Irish islands of Arran. These forts were for a long time the habitation of the ruder tribes of Greeks, even in historical times ; for they dared not venture down to the seaboard for fear of pirates. And the Greek antiquarians tell us that in many places the remains of the old forts were still visible on the cliffs near the towns which had been built by their inhabitants, when they learned the structure of walls, and when life and property became safer. Yet even some of these forts, espe- cially one at Tiryns, not far from Mycenae, are built in the most colossal style, and indicate con- siderable wealth and labour. Owing to these facts, the critical Thucydides looks upon the first stage of 2 14 Tribal Society. Greek civilization as really having resembled the ruder Epirots and Acamanians of his own day ; and I suppose it not to have differed widely from that which prevailed through the rest of Europe, and par- ticularly in Ireland, at some remote period. The passage I have cited contains other evidences which point to a more remote epoch, and which I believe to be traces of a really primitive state of Greek civilization. I allude to the trial described as going on in the market-place about a case of homi- cide. The law on the subject, though not fully then described, is so perfectly familiar to us from other nations, that we can easily reconstruct its details. I suppose most of you heard the clear and lucid state- ment of the subject by Mr. Richey with regard to Ireland.* Now, in the tribal form of society, where there is as yet no state, no obligation to the public weal, no impersonal abstraction called the public at all — in this state of things the only injuries that are done, or felt to be done, are to individuals ; and so if you kill a man, you injure not society, you do not offend against public order — an unknown idea to the minds of primitive men — but you deprive his tribe and his family of their friend and brother. You must satisfy them, and not the State. And they have a right — a legal right — to revenge themselves upon you. This you will see recognized clearly in the law of Moses, which is evidently a great improvement on the older customs ; for it endeavours to limit the right * Since published in his instructive Lectures on the History of Ireland. Primitive Laws on Homicide. 2 1 5 of the avenger of blood in two ways : first, in the direction of lenity, in appointing cities of refuge, within which the involuntary homicide was safe from his pursuit ; secondly, as to severity. He was not to take satisfaction in the case of a deliberate murder. For in almost all primitive countries the distinction between murder and homicide is little insisted upon, and the relations of the deceased are at liberty to take a ransom or fine, if they choose, for the life of their kinsman, which, if they once accept, the homi- cide is free of guilt, and may not be farther molested. But they are also free to enforce this fine, and then he must fly into exile, or accept the consequences. This law, which seems to have existed in Ireland, is one of the most universal facts in all primitive states of man. Mr. Grote illustrates it by parallel cases from the early histories of Lydia and the Germans, and from the present condition of the North Ameri- can Indians and Arabs. In reading lately upon the civilization of the Malays, whose constitution and manners bear a striking resemblance to the Homeric Greeks, I found that exactly the same arrangements prevailed among them also ; and I have no doubt that in almost every part of the world this practice has at one time existed. The really remarkable point in Greek history is the early attempt made every- where to eradicate it, and to substitute for the revenge of the individual the sentence of the law. All the earliest codes of which we hear seem to have directed themselves specially to this question ; and the legis- lation of Drako, generally but falsely supposed to 2 1 6 Czar and Zimnwman. have been a system of rigorous innovations, was remarkable for its just and wise treatment of homi- cide, by referring it to the Areopagus for trial. No feature in the pictures on the shield of Achilles strikes us as more simple and primitive, and justly so, than the figure of the king superintending his own farming operations, and rejoicing in his heart. For while the courts of Mycenae, Argos, and Sparta had been taught great splendour by some forgotten race of foreigners who had settled among them — while Homer describes the naive astonishment of Tele- machus, who came from the rocky Ithaca to the court of Menelaus, when he beheld the gilding of the pillars, the fretted ceiling, the plates of metal glittering on the walls, the gold and silver ware, and such other luxuries ; yet all the while there remained enough of the old manners to permit the king to act as the father of his household, to superintend his own property — in fact, to be not only a king, but still a patriarch. Ulysses, who came from a more outlying and poorer part of Greece, was not only a lawgiver, a warrior, and a courtier, but a carpenter, a shipbuilder, and a ploughman ; and his excellence in these more homely departments is noted by the poet no less carefully, and with no less respect, than his other and more kingly accomplishments. The king seems also to have represented his people as to hospitality ; he seems to have kept open house, and to have looked upon it as a duty to entertain strangers. But when I say a dut}\ I already indicate my belief that the really primitive state of things had Decay of Hospitality. 2 1 7 passed away, when to see and entertain a stranger was not merely a duty, but a pleasure. There are various indications of this in Homer. In the first place, the anxiety and fear with which Ulysses enters a strange king's house, the careful way in Avhich he hurries to the hearth, sits among the ashes, and compels the master of the house, by assuming the rights and privileges of a suppliant protected by the gods, to give him a friendly reception — all these details lead us to suspect that, had such ceremonies been omitted, a stranger might have met with rough treatment. Again : we have the explicit statement from one of the chiefs, that no one would be so foolish as to invite a guest spontaneously to his house, except he were a skilled artizan, who could make himself useful. Of course, he adds, you must receive a visitor if he comes. Similarly, we find the kings offering hand- some gifts to departing strangers, with the open avowal that they will reimburse themselves by levy- ing a tax upon their people. All these things indicate plainly enough a state of things where intercourse had become extended, where visitors had become so frequent as to be sometimes considered a bore; and just as in our own country the introduction of railways destroys that open-hearted hospitality which still exists to the fullest extent in the remote parts of our country ; so the constant traffic in ships, the construction of roads, and other improvements, contributed to make men hesitate in promising hospitality to all who might pass their 2 1 8 Cruelties described by Homer. doors. How different is the picture of the ancient Germans in Tacitus, where the host compels the guest to remain with him till all their provisions are consumed, when they both adjourn to the nearest neighbour, and live upon him till the process of mi- gration has again to be repeated ! But while the hospitality of the Homeric Greeks had to my mind degenerated from its primitive con- dition, I fear that the feelings of vindictiveness, and cruelty to enemies, had not changed in proportion. The mutilation of dead bodies, and the sacrifice of human victims at the tomb of a friend slain in battle, are prominent features in the Iliad. Mutilation of the Hving by way of punishment is also spoken of, and done at times in cold blood by the most civilised of the chiefs, nor does there seem any moral objec- tion made to such cruelty. But withal I think we can perceive traces of a gradual improvement even in these matters. Two practices, both common enough in savage life, are both alluded to in the Homeric poems, but apparently never resorted to, and in the first case we are distinctly told, for fear of the anger of the gods. I allude to the habit of poisoning arrows — a secret which Ulysses obtained from the chief who understood it, owing to a great affection subsisting between them, in spite of the religious objection to making the art kno^vn. The other is the wish or allusion to eating their enemies' flesh raw ; strange to say in both cases used when ladies are concerned. Perhaps this may be merely a poetical way of expressing their intense hatred ; Hovieric Ladies. 2 1 9 ^ut still its recurrence seems to show that such an idea was in their minds, though the habit of doing so barbarous a thing must have passed away for centuries. Take another point — and a point which I suppose is the most accurate index we can find of the civiliza- tion of a nation — I mean the treatment of women. Here again we find the mixture of an early and a more advanced state of society. Let us first take the posi- tion of ladies of rank, the wives of chiefs and princes, and consider it. We shall find them respected more highly, and treated more courteously, than they ever Avere in later Grecian history. Even the ribald and wanton suitors of Penelope receive her with the deepest respect and deference when she appears in the banqueting hall. We see Helen sitting after dinner with Menelaus doing needlework, while he is drinking his wine and entertaining his guests, after a manner, I think, more civilised than the habit in this country of separating as soon as actual dinner is over; and we observe in the conversations which these ladies hold with strangers and visitors, that free- dom, that absence of restraint, which is the evidence of a high morality, and a perfect confidence in the dignity and the influence of the gentler sex. These features have never been found, I think, in a really primitive society. There the dignity of women has seldom, if ever, been recognized ; and of this more savage condition there are also, as I have said, traces in the Homeric world. There is ample evidence that the lower-class 2 20 The Greeks and the Malays. women, the slaves, and even the free servants, were subjected to the hardest and most distressing sorts of work, the carrying of water, and the grinding of hand-mills ; in fact, we see them standing to men- servants nearly in the same relation that the North American squaw stands to her husband — overtaxed, slave-driven, worn out even with field work, while he is idling, or smoking, or sleeping. All these things are great stains upon the early Greek life; and when we consider them, and put them together into a picture, we are led to conclude that the Homeric hero was not much better than the Malay chief of the present day. He, too, lives in a land of coasts and islands — an archipelago, where navigation is safe and commerce extended. He has his tribal arrangements just like the early Greeks, his patriarchal rule, his regulations for homicide and other crimes, his hospitality, and his fondness for social pleasures ; he has, too, that lawless turn for piracy, so common to the Greeks of all ages, who even in Homer's time looked upon it as a profession as respectable, perhaps more so, than commerce ; and yet there was something in the Greeks which made them very different from the people of other lands. There was a germ lying hid in the old tribal society of Homer, which had in it the promise of a great future, to which no other nation in the world (not to speak of the Malays) will ever arrive. I am unable, from want of time, to say even what I know on the subject. Two points alone I shall mention in conclusion ; first, the incipient tendency The Greek Language. 221 to discuss political questions in a public assembly ; secondly, the beauty and the perfect development of the language in which their earliest records are written. The former of these features, more prominent in the Odyssey than in the Iliad, is a faint foreshadowing of the great republics, of historical Greece, where free discussion was first inaugurated, and where we may truly find the prototype of that great and liberal constitution of which we, Irish, are compelled to enjoy the privileges. The second point— their per- fect language — shows a genius in the race which we must acknowledge, but cannot explain — a genius de- veloped in the earliest stages of their civilization, and perfected even at the remote epoch of which we are treating to-day. We have a great and eternal monu- ment of this language in the immortal Homeric poems. These poems alone, or this language alone, were nought else preserved to us of Greece and the Greeks, would prove that they were a people like no other people that have ever existed, and that they were endowed with a mind fitted, above all others, to dis- cover and portray, not only the beauties and the variety of nature, but all the depths of human thought, all the shades of human emotion, and all the noblest aspirations which lead the mind of man to the contemplation of virtue, of philosophy, and of religion. It is in vain for Mr. Buckle to display his array of facts and arguments ; it is in vain for him to tell us that these things are the result of soil and climate. Such civilizations as are purely material 2 2 2 Effects of Noble Races. may be explained by coarse physical causes; but was there ever a civilization purely material ? Was there not, even in the culture of Babylon and of Egypt, a spiritual something — a " particle of some diviner air" — which told men of the supreme God, and of the immortality of the human soul? Lay aside these cases; gi-ant that they can be explained by materialistic theories. We can well afford to concede them. Consider the nobler Semites and the Greeks; reflect upon the religion of the Jews and Arabs, upon the language of Homer and ^schylus, and can any honest inquirer deny that here, indeed, are phenomena dependent not upon brute causes, but upon spiritual agents — not upon Matter, but upon Mind? LECTURE X. INFLUENCE OF FORESTS. HAVE already indicated that the inhabitants of forests and mountains make no great figure in ancient civiHzation. In fact, from the earliest times down to the present, the disappearance of forests has been the mark of civilization ; and wherever the open country and the forest have existed side by side, we find the cultivated people living in the one, and the wild savage in the other. These forests and mountains (for they generally co-exist) have been frequently the retreat, too, of the primitive races, when invaders took possession of a country, and thus the forests became associated with ancient manners and customs, and, above all, with older and ruder forms of religion. Originally the whole of Europe seems to have been covered with trees. But certain portions of it, espe- cially the south-west parts, were cleared at an early period, whether by some great natural convulsion, as with the Irish oak forests, or by the hand of man, I know not ; and the south-west of Europe is exactly where civilization has first spread itself. The Spa- 2 24 Virtues of Oufliuvs. niards, Italians, French, English, and Greeks, are all descended from the peoples earliest civilized in Europe, and also live in the countries first cleared. Among these nations we find, from the earliest ages, forests and mountains associated with barbarism and ignorance. The very words for forest in German and in Latin sometimes mean mountain , and the names for the more barbarous joeople are often de- rived from similar roots.* And when the laws were unequal, and a small body of invaders lorded it over the old population, the forests and mountains were indeed full of men, whose hand was against every man's hand, outlaws and bandits, who in the liberty of these wilds worshipped their ancient gods, and even cultivated certain virtues and a certain respec- tability beyond the pale of civilization. Such were the Irish outlaws of the seventeenth century; cha- racters like Robin Hood; and even now-a-days, if you desire to meet them, you will find them in the forests of Corsica and of Naples. But not only do forests enable barbarous races to maintain their habits, but it seems as if life in forests forces even civilized men to return to the customs of barbarous people. Many intelligent travellers have attested this fact. You will see in Castren's great book on Siberia, how those who leave the more civi- lized parts of Russia, and settle in the wild steppes, soon lose all trace of their previous culture, and become amalgamated with the wild tribes around them. Everyone knows how the North American * Wald, wild, sauvage, selvaggio, silva, and Hindoo djangli. Damp7iess of Forests. 225 squatters have found it necessary to borrow many manners and customs from the Indians, so that the most celebrated of them appear to us as a sort of hybrid characters. Mr. H. Dixon has shown clearly, in his remarkable book on New America, how many of the most objectionable features in the Mormon polity have been borrowed in name from the Old Testament, but in deed from the dissolute savages among whom they dwell. In Australia, the natives are of too degraded a type to afford any model for our settlers ; but still life in the bush greatly modifies them, so that many of them cannot be regarded in any other light than that of respectable savages. In all these cases men adopt, to some extent, the vices and the virtues of savage peoples. You must, however, observe one important point about the effects of forests on the constitution of man. Trees are naturally likely to attract damp ; in fact, in this country you often see people guilty of the barbarity of cutting down ancient single trees, the pride of their demesnes, because they think that they cause their houses to be damp. A larger and more interesting example can be quoted from the recent history of Crete. By the orders, or the negligence of the Turkish Government, the fine forests, which used to cover the mountains, were cut down. The result was, that the quantity of rain which fell in the island diminished to such an extent as to destroy the crops, and ruin the fertility of the country. I believe it has been found necessary to plant the hills afresh. Q 2 26 Inhabitants of Damp Forests. Now, especially in hot climates, forests become so damp as to produce a most injurious effect on the people who inhabit them. They become small, mean, decrepid, and dull of intellect. Examples of this remarkable fact are found in the great jungles of Hindostan, inhabited by the Waralis, and other primi- tive tribes — in the mighty forests of Ceylon, where dwell similar tribes called Veddahs — in Madagascar, the Djolahis — in the great woods of Florida, where the remains of many Indian tribes have fled to avoid the rapacity and oppression of the Europeans. Almost all these various tribes have a miserable, sickly appearance, weak, misshapen bodies, and a low intelligence. It would appear that the luxuriant richness of the vegetation absorbs all vital force and all energy-, and leaves for man merely the power of existing. There is a remarkable forest of this kind stretching along the southern slope of the Himalayas, called the Sal Forest, which is peopled by one of these miserable races, the Mechis, and their country is called the Terai, which means in Persian Dampness. A similar race inhabit the in- terior of some of the Malay islands. The inhabitants of the coast call them ourang-outangs — men of the forest ; and they regard the real beasts which have their home in these great forests, as men whom God has deprived of language in punishment for some crime. Nor is there much superiority in the human inhabitants of these wilds. In the centre of Africa, too, there are some of these miserable beings, where, too, they have a similar theory about monkeys, that The No7'th-AmericaJi Indians. 227 they are lazy men, who refuse to speak lest they should be compelled to work. These beliefs prove at least one thing, that in the opinion of many peoples, living in forests has a degrading tendency. This is strictly true in the case of tropical forests. Nowhere is it so completely developed as in the great swamps of South America, where the vegetation and the damp are probably the greatest in the world. There we have a close, humid air, charged with elec- tricity to an extraordinary extent ; and there we have the Indians of Guyana, some tribes of whom have never yet been explored, owing to their ferocity and wildness. Living in tangled forests, they use the fatal blowpipe and arrows, poisoned with so deadly a drug, that death ensues within a few hours after a wound. They lie in wait in trees, and strike the traveller with the fatal dart from their unseen hiding-places. This sneaking warfare presents a great contrast to the daring Caribs on the open coast. But in contradistinction to all these great tropical forests, there are the forests of much colder climates, which are, indeed, damper than the open country, but still not so close or swampy as to injure the human constitution. In such cases the type developed is rather that of a hardy and vigorous race, who dwell in the wilds, and obtain their food by hunting. The best known of these forest races in modern times are, doubtless, the North American Indians, to whose good qualities full justice is done in Cooper's charm- ing romances. I say romances advisedly, because I am informed by friends who have lived among them 2 28 Virtues of Savages. — more especially by one who was taken prisoner by them in the Rocky Mountains, and narrowly escaped, first, torture and death, and then being made an Indian chief — that these qualities are not now to be found at all among the Red Men. He described them to me as faithless, treacherous, and mean, with no nobility, honesty, or generosity. They seemed no better than the most degraded of the lower classes in the English cities. No doubt, this depraved con- dition may be, to some extent, a consequence of the tyranny and the bad example of the white men who have settled among them. It is well known that savages learn the vices of civilization long before its virtues, simply because this is the first aspect of the question presented to them. However, no one denies them courage, and a great sense of the beau- tiful, shown in the poetic character of their eloquence. They have also a keen sense of Hberty. This latter quality is the great feature of forest nations. But we shall return to it again in connection with the Gauls and Gemians, the parents of our modern personal liberty. We are informed by the celebrated traveller, Castren, that this marks the contrast between the Siberians of the forests and those of the steppes. The first are hunters ; the latter live by agriculture, and are of a mild and placid temper. There is reason to believe that the discovery of the use of fire was rapidly followed by the burning down of many great forests ; for, in those early days, it was the first act of civilization, in order to repress the excessive liberty of forest life ; and upon the The Forest Gods of Greece. 229 clearing away of forests followed quickly the track of the plough, and the sound of waving corn. But even though forests are the type of savage life, though civilized man has, accordingly, in most ages, shown an instinctive aversion to them, they were also the emblem of that primitive state, of that primordial society, the recollection of which has, among all nations, been associated with religious ideas. Forests, by their sombre aspect, and their majestic silence — great trees, by the majesty of their appearance, and the great duration of their existence, have ever in- spired primitive man with profound veneration and awe. They, consequently, play a great part in the superstitions of all ancient nations. The writings of the ancients are full of such allu- sions. Through the Greek tragic writers there is constant allusion, for example, to the god Pan, who dwelt in the wild dells of the mountains, and whom the shepherd feared to rouse from his mid-day sleep by playing his pipe at noon. But in the cool of the evening, the imagination of the poet figured him sitting upon, some hillock, in the midst of an open glade in the forest, playing to the wild Fauns and Satyrs, and to the woodland nymphs, while they danced about him in chorus. The Romans had similar legends. These beliefs seem natural to the human mind; for in ancient Gaul, Germany, and Great Britain, similar beings have been venerated under the various names of Goblins, Trolls, Cobolds, Elves, and Fairies. Nay, even in the in- spired rhapsodies of Isaiah, he does not disdain to 230 The Wild Hunter. picture the satyr dwelling with the owl and the bat in the ruins of the palaces of Babylon. The Waldgeister of the ancient Germans, and the Trolls of the Scandinavians, were conceded power over all the changes of the atmosphere, and were often identified with the spirits of the departed. In many cantons of Germany, such was the reverence with which trees were regarded, that the woodman dared not cut down a tree without kneeling down before it in supplication, with clasped hands and un- covered head. Thus, in the howling of the storm through the branches of the great forests, originated the very wide-spread belief in the wild hunter, iden- tified in many parts of England and in the Pyrenees with Ki^l^^iur, in Windsor Forest with Heme the Hunter, as you may remember in the conclusion of Shakespeare's " Merry Wives of Windsor." In Ger- many, the Erl King is the same personage; and, indeed, there is no part of Europe where this belief does not exist in some shape. But I fear I must leave this most interesting sub- ject, which does not properly belong to my lecture, but which it was necessary to introduce, in order to explain to you the peculiar causes which saved the forests of Europe through the middle ages; for there can be no doubt that, had the Roman civilization continued to extend itself, all the woods of France and Germany would long since have vanished. For although the common people among the Romans shared in the natural superstitions about trees, the enlightened conquerors who carried the Roman arms Forests saved by the Germans. 23 1 across the wilds of Central Europe were quite beyond these primitive beliefs. Julius Caesar, for example, regarded the forests of Gaul and Germany merely as obstacles, which hindered and retarded his conquests, by sheltering the barbarians after he had defeated them. The very same reason actuated the settlers in North America, who in many cases burnt down and destroyed the forests in the eastern states, because they were a shelter to mischievous Indians. Consequently, it was the decay of the Roman Empire and the invasion of the barbarians which saved such great tracts as the Black Forest and the forest of Ardennes ; for when the Germans, especially the Franks, burst in upon Gaul, and upon southern Europe, they found that in a very short time their beloved forests might be all cut down. They were used recklessly for firing and for building, and the great plenty prevented any one from thinking of economy. This was a result which the Germans could not tolerate; for when, in the fifth and sixth cen- turies, they left Germany, it was almost wholly over- grown with trees. These afforded them the neces- saries of life, and supplied to their imaginations the emotions and ideas necessary for their religion ; and at that time they did not understand the art of build- ing houses perfectly proof against the cold and the frosts of winter, and hence they found in the forests' necessary shelter from the icy winds which made open plains to them uninhabitable. The reindeer of Siberia are obliged to take the same precautions, and leave the open mountains in autumn in order to take refuge in the deep woods. 232 Prevalence of Local Worships. This, then, was the first reason which made the barbarians discontent with the clearing of the country. In the next place, we must consider what I have already alluded to — the religious veneration in which these primitive peoples held the woods. The whole life and circumstance of their religion was gone if they were left without their native forests ; for you must remember, that it is a late and spiritual idea — the belief that the Deity is not only in His own pecu- liar temple or cherished abode, but can be worshipped with equal effect in strange lands, and under an altered sky. The early Chaldeans, for example, who seem to have admitted that their god Bel could be worshipped beyond their native mountains, still seem to have thought it impossible or irreverent to adore him in a plain. This, as I told you, seems to have been the cause of their building a great artificial mountain for the purpose. You know how firmly attached the Jewish worship was to the temple of Jerusalem ; how Jeroboam calculated on estranging the people from Jehovah and from His religion, merely by preventing them from going up at stated times to worship at His special seat in Jerusalem ; and you, doubtless, remember how the pious and highly educated Daniel opened his window and prayed towards Jerusalem, the Holy Place of the Lord on High. Even in our Lord's day, we know, from His colloquy with the woman of Samaria, that a fierce controversy was going on between Samaritans and Jews as to the special place suited to worship the God of Heaven. The Religion of all Climates. 233 No sooner does the woman perceive that Christ is a prophet, and Hkely to ask her some unpleasant questions, than she parries these home-thrusts with a dexterity common to most ladies, and plunges into controversy : " Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." I am sure many of you are wont to think the answer a very obvious one — and so it now is ; its truth has been recognized for centuries; but at the time and in the place where He first declared it, it was a new, a strange, and, no doubt, a startling doctrine. "Woman, the hour cometh (yea. He adds, and even now is) when ye shall neither in this mountain nor at Jerusalem wor- ship the Father. For God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth." If, then, in such a pure and high religion as the Jewish, the worship of the Deity was associated with special places, how much more must it have been the case in heathen cults, where some special temple, some grove of peculiar antiquity, some noble and ancient tree, had first localized the worship. All the great Greek and Roman poets commence their poems with invocations to the gods, of which the form is perpetually — "Whether thou inhabitest the rocky island of Delos, with its olive groves, or whether thou dwellest in the snowy mountains of Arcadia, chasing the hart and the boar with thy sister goddess, or whether the rich temples of Lycia possess thee," and so forth. All these facts prove what I am saying — that the barbarians felt they could not worship their gods without their forests. 234 Devastations of the Barbarians. But there was a third reason for their persevering therein, which ultimately outbalanced all the rest. From time immemorial it had been the custom in Asia to reserve great woods for the kings and nobles to enjoy hunting. In the remains of the palaces of Nineveh and Babylon, the whole occupation of the kings seems to be war and the chase ; and the latter appears hardly less important than the former. Simi- larly, the barbarous tribes who came in from Asia brought with them this habit, which was perfectly congenial to the German chiefs. The devastation and destruction of many cities in those terrible days caused forests to re-appear where they had long since been cleared away. For the hand of nature seems to long to conceal the signs of ruin and of devastation branded upon her beauty by the ruthless violence of man. No sooner had an ancient abbey or a flourishing village been desolated — no sooner had its blackened ruins cooled, and the lurid cloud of smoke ceased to brood over its site, than the rich mosses begin to variegate the useless walls, and the creeping convolvulus to hide and soften the square angles and hard outlines — " Here stood a broken archway plumed with fern ; And here had fallen a great part of a tower, Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the clifif, And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers : And high above a piece of turret stair, "Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy- stems Clasped the gray walls with hairy fibred arms, And sucked the joining of the stones, and looked A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a gi-ove." Feudal Game Laws. 235 And yet, with all this beauty, is it not sad to find, as we do, in the Upper Rhine forests, and in the Vosges, remains of flourishing towns actually hidden in the midst of dark forests ? Such were the results of the invasion of the barbarians. These forests were presently parcelled out in great domains, and preserved strictly by the chiefs, who afterwards became the feudal barons ; and an im- mense and complicated legislation arose on the sub- ject of these game forests, and on the rights of seignory over them. These laws are the forerun- ners of the present game laws in this country. But in the feudal times, the oppression of the poor in this matter was most distressing. There remain traces of the persecution and violence — the fearfully severe punishments to which the poor were sub- ject if they destroyed the game, which devoured all their crops. There was a division of property of this kind into forests (for large game) and warrens (for small game). The Salic law and the laws of the Carlovingian dynasty are full of regulations on the subject. By this means numbers of forests in France have been preserved, especially in the Vosges country and in Brittany, as well as the celebrated forest of Ardennes, up to late times the home of robbers and of outlaws. Perhaps I am wearying you with alluding to these matters, which are not very interesting, except when treated in great detail; and to do this would be beyond our present scope. I shall conclude the pre- sent prelection by endeavouring to give you a pic- 236 Roman Descriptions of the Germans. ture of what the life and character of the children of the forest were, who poured in upon civilized Europe, and renovated the effete provinces of the Roman Empire. Even in their better days, the Romans came to know and to respect these races. They had met Julius Caesar in equal conflict ; they had annihilated the legions of Varus, (a.d. 9,) and so formidable did they appear to the wily Augustus, that he left it as his dying advice to his successors, not to attempt to extend the boundaries of the Empire beyond the Rhine and the Danube. Indeed, but for the early conquest of Gaul by the great Julius Csesar, there can be no doubt that these warlike tribes would have appeared far sooner on the stage of history. But as long as the military power of the Empire was vigorous, they remained in a state partly of subjects, partly of allies, partly of independence. And during these times they attracted the observation of intelli- gent historians, who found in them the primitive freshness and the simple manners, which had long since died out from the artificial civiHzation of the Empire. A very striking sketch has been left us, among others, by the great historian Tacitus, who depicts to his countrymen the natural and free life of these barbarous tribes, in such colours as lead us to sup- pose, that his " Treatise on the Manners and Cus- toms of the Germans," is intended as a satire on the vices and luxuries of the age and nation among whom he lived. He tells us, that it was the preva- The Anciefif Germans. 237 lent opinion, that these races (who inhabited the forests and mountains of Germany) had kept them- selves clear from intermarriages with other people. Hence, their type of features were remarkably uni- form — fierce grey eyes, red hair, large bodies, and only adapted to active exercise in war, not able to submit to field labour or regular work; totally unfit for heat and thirst, but well able to endure cold and hunger. The climate was very damp and stormy, the soil rich, but better suited for grazing than for crops, yet the cattle were dwarfed, and often without horns. In the number of their herds was their riches and their boast. " I am in doubt," adds the historian, "whether the gods have denied them gold and silver, through favour or in anger. There may indeed exist veins of both in Germany, but who ever thinks of investigating them ? You see among them silver vessels given as presents among the chiefs, but held in no other honour than earthen pots, though some of them indeed are now learning to use our money; but even yet they value silver more than gold, because its coins are to them more useful, and of less value. They choose their kings according to high family, their leaders according to their bravery. The kings enjoy but limited power, and the leaders command rather by their example than their orders, by leading the van, and being the first to engage the enemy. They submit to stripes or corporal punish- ment from none save their priests, and that rather as a command of the Deity, than as the consequence of guilt. What acts as the greatest possible sti- 238 The Religio7i of the Germans. mulus to their valour is, that their divisions are made up, not of chance men, but of those of the same clan and kindred ; and they have their families close behind them. They can hear in battle the howling of the women, and the crying of their children ; to them they look both to witness and to praise their' deeds. Nor do the women shrink from counting and scrutinizing their wounds. It is said, that many of their battles, when well nigh lost, have been reco- vered by the women rushing into the fray, and adjuring and reminding them of impending slavery, which they fear much more on account of their wives; so much so, that noble maidens are often required as hostages. They think there is something in- spired and prophetic in the sex, and neither despise their advice, nor neglect their admonition ; and all this without flattery, and without pretending them to be divinities. " As to their religion, they do not consider it con- sistent with the majesty of heavenly beings to con- fine them within temples, or to imitate them by any human form ; they consecrate groves and forests, and invoke, under the title of God, that secret mystery, which they see by the eye of faith alone. When they have gained a victory, they are content with great feasts instead of pay ; the spoils are applied to this purpose. Nor could you persuade them as easily to till the land, and expect a crop, as to chal- lenge an enemy, and risk their lives ; it appears to them indeed lazy and mean to obtain by hard la- bour what can be gotten by battle. When not so Their Habits. 239 engaged, they spend their time in sloth, not even hunting much, but given up to feasting and to sleep — a curious contrast indeed, since the same men love idleness, and hate peace. They not only receive, but ask for presents without hesitation ; nor is it the fashion to refuse. No nation indulges more pro- fusely in hospitality. They proceed both to busi- ness and to feasts armed, and think it no harm to spend the night in deep potations ; then, too, do they consult on public affairs. At no time do they consider the mind more honest, or more disposed to glorious exploits. But they reconsider next day their discussions, lest any error should have crept in unawares. Their food is simple — fruits, game, and cheese. Their funerals are plain and unosten- tatious. They use neither unguents nor precious robes ; each man's arms and his horse are burnt along with him. They consider an elaborate monu- ment a useless honour, and oppressive to the dust beneath. They lay aside their tears quickly, their grief but slowly. For the women it is honourable to lament, for the men to remember, the departed." Thus far Tacitus. It seems hardly necessary to remind you that the people so described are of the family of the Aryans. This fact must be always borne in mind in estimating their characteristics ; for while their forest homes no doubt greatly influenced their manners, there has always been in this race, and in the Semites, a certain intellectual elevation, a certain spirituality of thought, which is best shown in their pure conceptions of the 240 Original Dij^erences in Race. Deity, but which is also manifest in their language and in their morals. If the inhabitants of damp and tropical forests are debased and mean, this is no doubt partly attributable to their climate, but more perhaps to the fact, that the better and stronger races have expelled them from the plains and pleasant places, and that they were originally of an inferior type. According to Mr. Buckle, indeed, if you trans- ported the savages of Australia, which are, I believe, the lowest in the world, to the forests of Germany, you would, in due course of time, perhaps in a million of centuries, have the same character produced, as we see depicted in Tacitus. This hypothesis, even if true, is not proveable, except by analogy, or by approximation, in the historical evidence we possess. All this evidence is nevertheless decidedly on the other side. There is evidence that Europe has been inhabited for many thousands of years by the human race, and yet there are no signs of progress till the . Aryans had invaded and occupied it, at a period per- haps as late as 2000 B.C. We can speak with some confidence on this point, because the researches of learned men into the pre- historic remains found in caves and river-beds have brought to light sufficient traces to enable us to draw a tolerably definite picture of the state of men in these ancient days. But all these researches corro- borate the opinion, that there are in the world some races possessing the power of development, but others totally devoid of it. Of course there is yet much ob- scurity concerning pre-historic man ; but the points I Evidence of Skulls. 241 shall now detail may be considered tolerably certain, seeing that the remains to which I allude are pro- bably 10,000, possibly 100,000, years old. This apology will be readily accepted. In the first place, the earliest men in the postplio- cene* period were no giants, but ordinary men, per- haps rather below than above our present average height. Their mode of life, and the climate in which they dwelt, being more nearly related to those of Lapland than any other country I could name, we may imagine them of a somevv'hat similar type. Secondly, as regards their intelligence, we can consult the skulls already found as to the development of brain they possessed ; and though their skulls are as yet very few in number, still among them there appear the very same diversity which would be found among a similar number of individuals taken at random now- a-days. The most ancient skulls found in Switzerland are in fact nearer the present type of the country than the more recent ones. The skulls of Scandinavia are of two or three types, and the Engis skull, of the same age as the cave bear, is of a remarkably intellectual ap- pearance. And just think how narrowly we escaped a dangerous error on this point. Had the Nean- derthal skull been the only ancient one as yet dis- * An account of the investigations into the antiquity of man formed a part of the course, in which all the technical tenns were explained. The lectures on this subject are not here re- produced, as they contained nothing which could not be easily learned from popular English books. K 242 Lolu Condition of Primitive Races. covered, all the learned of Europe would be led to believe that fossil man had been intermediate be- tween the present human race and monkeys. So narrow an escape should teach us great caution. The natural intelligence of men at this epoch may have been much the same as that of savages in the present day. But, thirdly, as whether different races then dif- fered as they now do in civilization and in advance- ment ; to answer this question our materials are as yet totally insufficient. We know, indeed, that in Europe and America man has existed since remote ages, and we know something of his civilization; but what can we yet say of Africa and of Asia— what of the Polynesian Isles ? For all we know he may there have been as far superior to his European brethren, as he was in the days of the greatness of Egypt and of Babylon. At all events, what we have found in Europe indicates a very low stage of culture. None of the natural caves, which are now known to have been inhabited by man, show the smallest trace of having been improved or rendered comfortable arti- ficially. There appear no separate chambers, no excavated shelves, no traces of furniture. The re- mains of their feasts are trodden under foot, and must have made their abodes most suffocating. In the countries where no caves existed, they must have built for themselves some retreat from the weather and from beasts of prey ; but all these have perished long since. Probably they were built of branches, and of skins of the animals they could kill. Irish Method of Killing Deer, 243 As to their means of subsistence, it is difticiilt to say how far vegetables made a part of it, as they have of course vanished where bones have remained ; but the fossil men can hardly have cultivated cereals, as their climate was so severe, and must have been con- tent with berries. Fishing and hunting obtained them most of their food, and hunting in those days can have been no gentle excitement. When we consider the monstrous size, strength, and ferocity of the game, and the wretched weapons in use at the time, I sus- pect the hunting may often have been the wrong way. The wiles and snares by which man replaced his want of strength have not yet been discovered, but such there must assuredly have been.*" The economy * As a specimen of what these devices may have been, I am tempted to repeat what a very old bed-ridden man in the wilds of Donegal told me as to the ancient Irish method of killing the red deer, which were numerous in the country a century ago, and are still to be seen in the Killarney mountains. The country being veiy rugged and rocky, a place was sought on the track of the deer, where they leapt from the rock a few feet to the ground beneath. Here a plank was fixed in the low- ground, furnished with upright wooden spikes, hardened by fire. When the deer leaped upon these spikes they were lamed. The aborigines then went in pursuit, and killed them with clubs. My informant had learned this from a very remarkable character, who was supposed to have lived to one hundred years of age, and who had been an inmate of the same house many years since. If the practice existed, I have no reason to think it was more than two centuries old. The character of my informant, who was dull and surly, and from whom I ex- tracted the statement with difficulty, as well as the complexion of the story, have fully persuaded me of its truth. 244 Primeval Drawings. with Avhich the marrow was extracted from the bones by splitting them lengthways, shows either that it was highly prized as food, or that food was scarce and precious. There is little evidence of the use of fire, which must have been a perfect necessity to them in winter to keep out the cold. Traces of cannibalism have been found, but learned men seem not yet agreed upon the subject. They consist chiefly in human bones split by artificial means, as I have said, to extract the marrow. I shall not detain you with a description of their implements, as they are treated very fully, and good plates of them given, in the seventh chapter of Ly ell's " Antiquity of Man ;" but should advise you strongly to inspect the flints preserved in the Royal Irish Academy, and also the weapons of the savages of Australia and New Guinea in the museum of Trinity College ; for remember these savages are now in their stone period. Let me add a few concluding words on the art of these primeval men. The art ! you will exclaim ; had such people any art ? They had, indeed, one art at least, which has come down to us — the art of drawing on their weapons and other utensils : they have not merely scratched waved lines and pat- terns, with a view to simple decoration, but they have reproduced in engraving upon bones, upon ivory, upon reindeers' horns, and even upon stone, figures of animals, which are often true enough to enable us to recognise the species. These represen- tations are doubly interesting, both as proving the Brutality of Primitive Men. 245 co-existence of their model with man, and in reveal- ing to us that even in those dark days men began to possess enjoyments beyond the mere gratifications of sense. I believe in some cases the representations are even creditable. An elephant, for example, is very distinctly portrayed upon one of these old bones. But I regret to add, that in these, the highest traces of their intellectual development, they have also per- petuated the corruption of their morals. We inquire in vain whether music w^as known to them. Some whisdes have indeed been found. There exists as yet no farther evidence. If, then, the geological record gives no countenance to the theory of Mr. Buckle, that men were gradually developed from the same lower type, by soil and climate, so neither does it harmonise with the notions of primitive simplicity and innocence, in which the poets of all ages have indulged. Savage man has always been the same — brutal, low, unclean, depraved in his habits and life. There is no purity or beauty in the human species, except among favoured races, and under highly artificial circumstances. Religion or civilization may raise men to simplicity and to truth. Nature has done but little for them. You should never forget this remarkable fact, that the savage races now inhabiting our globe show no signs of improvement or advance. Would centuries raise the Australian or North American savage to a higher stage ? How, then, you will ask, did civilization ever arise ? Where did it spring up, and how ? This is indeed the darkest problem in all history. LECTURE XI. MOUNTAINS. OU remember that having discussed forests at some length on the last day of lecture, I promised to say something of mountains to-day; and I already intimated that these natural phenomena are closely connected with one another, and linked together in the world's history. I have never yet seen a great forest that was not situated in the slopes of mountains, and a range of mountains without wooding is also rare. Both of them being, so to speak, hindrances to human progress, we should also expect that a good deal of what has been said concerning the effects of forests on civilization would also find place here. It will, therefore, be needless to repeat many things about the effects of mountains on civilization, which you can apply for yourselves from my last lecture. Omitting, therefore, these things, I desire to consider mountains as hindrances to civilization, as the cradles of races, and also, in conclusion, their effects in educating the human mind. And this latter must occupy us most especially, as it is obvious that if any natural phenomena can possibly have a powerful influence on the human intellect, it Tendency to Westward Migj'ations. 247 must be the savage grandeur, the subHme sohtude, the giant strength of mighty mountains. You will remember a remark, which we must repeat and illustrate at greater length now. I said that we might divide the mountain chains of the world into those running from east to west, and those running from north to south ; and I observed that the diffe- rence in the importance of these two classes of mountains, considered as barriers to human progress, was very great. I know not why, but there seems a wonderful tendency in the great human migrations of primitive times to journey westward. Whether it may be that in most countries the west wind is so soft and balmy, that the ancients fabled the abode of the blessed to be hidden in the western ocean, or whether men felt a longing to follow the imagined course of the sun, and seek the climes which seemed bathed in crimson and gold, (as Faust does in the magnificent burst of imagery in Goethe's great master- piece,) while the east wind was ever cold and raw, and forbad them to face it with its bitter blasts : probably owing to these, as well as to other reasons now unknown, no mountain chain, however lofty, seems to have the power to arrest the tide of emi- gration from East to West. There is no more remarkable instance than that of North America. Here is an enormous country, intersected by vast and rugged tracts of mountain. There are the AUe- ghanies, and the Ozark mountains, and the vast system of chains called the Rocky Mountains, in- cluding the Sierra Nevada, the Sea Alps of the north- 248 Contrast of Europe and A merica. west coast, and the Mexican mountains; and yet even the Indians, when first discovered, seemed to have communication all over the great continent. For it is most remarkable, that of all these great chains, not a single one runs east and west. With the exception of a few short, detached ridges in Guiana, the same remarks apply to South America. There we have the same stock permeating the whole country, formerly of Indians, now of Europeans. It would be impossible to find any other countr>' in the world approaching it in size, where the inhabitants are so homogeneous. It is, of course, an additional cause, that nothing seems to produce greater differences in climate than latitudinal mountain chains, ^\^lere these do not exist, the heat and cold are far more uniform, nor is there any sudden break in the fauna or flora of the country, whereas the north and south slopes of great mountains differ totally in all these details. So it is that we have in Europe a variety of races, of natural products, of habits and customs — all separated by distinct boundaries. Take, for ex- ample, the Pyrenees. They are not to be compared in height, in grandeur, in extent with the Andes, and yet they have formed during the whole course of history a boundary between different races. When we approach the second subject of to-day's lecture, we shall find them more important still. Again, the Balkan is not so high or so extensive as the great chain of the Ural; and yet the Balkan for many cen- turies shut off the Macedonian and Greek races from all the northern barbarians, while the great peaks of The Mount aijis of Iran. 249 the Ural did not prevent the same people from dwelling on both its slopes. I have myself crossed the lofty passes not only of Switzerland and the Tyrol, but of the wild Carpathians ; and in all these cases, with the new vegetation, with the brighter sky, and the milder atmosphere, you meet with a new race, generally a new language, and often a new religion. It is remarkable, that in Europe and Asia all the principal chains, or almost all, run more or less east and west, and so form a series of natural boundaries. Hence we might expect in the old world a great diversity of languages, of religion, and of poHtics, as well as of climate. And this is actually the case. For if we take a short review of the principal nations in our hemisphere, we shall see how distinctly their barriers are marked by lofty ridges. The farther back wx strain our sight into the first origin and dis- tribution of peoples, the more powerful do we find this influence. Let me call your attention to a part of the Old World now become obscure, but once the cradle of the nations and the fountain of history. The dis- trict now called Turkestan, but of old Iran, is tra- versed by a series of serrated ridges running from south-east to north-west, nearly parallel to the course of the Euphrates, and terminating about half-way between the extremities of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Here it is almost met by the Taurus chain, which runs south and west along the coast of Asia Minor, and in the north it is crossed by the range commonly called Anti-Taurus, which forms a 250 Bar7'ier between Aryans and Semites. parallel ridge along the north side of the peninsula. The great range of the Caucasus forms a natural barrier farther north, running precisely parallel to the chain I have described. Now, all the earliest tradi- tions of the human race agree in placing the cradle of the nations of the old continent, (so far as we know them,) somewhere in this region, about the sources of the Euphrates, Tigris, and Greater Zab. To this subject we shall revert again when we come to consider ethnology ; and we shall, then, also come to describe the fundamental diiference between the Semitic and Indo-European races — a difference eter- nally marked by fundamental distinctions of lan- guage. Now, the Indo-European race were so called, because, starting from their original seats in Iran, part of them (exceptionally) went south-east into India, the rest north-west into the upper parts of Asia Minor, and thence into Europe. But they did not cross the mountain ridges, and invade the rich plains of Asia Minor and Syria, which lay quite close to them. So that the great series of parallel serrated ridges formed from the first the marked boundary between the two races. Through the south of Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, and the continent of Arabia, the Semites had, as you know, their home. Here you see how a chain, running more east and west than north and south, has determined per- manently the history and settlement of many peoples. Again, look at the great mountain chains of cen- tral Asia. They all run east and west, and what is The Germans in Italy. 251 the consequence ? — that the peoples of Asia are, and have been, separated from time immemorial by difie- rences profound and lasting, and the north of Asia has been, so to speak, excluded from the course of the world's history. Even now-a-days, we are almost in total ignorance of the history and divisions of the hordes of barbarians who live and wander in this vast tract. And in our own continent, the chain of the Alps has always formed a southern limit for the Germanic races. For, although from the days of Charlemagne to the present, the German Emperors have been endeavouring to keep their foot upon Italian ground — though they have covered many a plain of fair Italy with their dead, and even now the scars of battle are not yet effaced from the blood- stained Custozza, yet are they, still, men of strange race, and hated foreigners, south of their natural boundary, the Alps. The same causes which have made mountains barriers, have also made them to act as cradles, as nurseries for many hardy races, which have, from time to time, inundated the plains, w^hen their popu- lation became effete. And there is nothing more interesting than to see among ancient historians notices of these simple and savage peoples, who, even then, were thought by profound thinkers des- tined to play no mean part in the world's history. Just as Tacitus describes the Germans, the children of the forest, and as Herodotus, in his fourth book, delights in depicting the manners of the Scythians, the dwellers in the steppes of Russia, so Xenophon, -b-' The Barbarians of Asia. under the title of the " Education of Cyrus," gives us a lively picture of the life and habits of the ancient Persians, when they dwelt, a hardy race, in the mountains of Turkestan, and came down to conquer the Medes. This Persian race was kept young and vigorous till the middle of the sixth century before Christ, when all the older and more civilized nations of Asia had run their course, and were sinking into luxury and idleness. On a far larger scale, the great Himalayan chain and its various branches kept all the wild tribes of the north of Asia far from history and from fame, till the decrepitude of the Roman Empire made it expedient that it should be renovated with new blood. " And then, from causes which are hidden in the depths of Asia, and in a dark and ignorant period, which we have now no means of unravelling, came wave upon wave of tribes from the regions of eternal twilight, from these mysterious depths of Asia, outpourings of human rivers along the sides of the Altai mountains, shock after shock throbbing through the barbarian world, and dying upon the edge of civilization." And what is stranger still, these great regions seem to have been so totally exhausted by these vast eruptions, that ever since they have collapsed into an insignifi- cance, and a silence, as deep and total as before their appearance on the stage of history. In all these cases, mountains have been cradles to preserve races in their youth ; in others, they have been to them an asylum in their old age, and have protected them from subjugation or annihilation ; of Melancholy Temper of the Swiss. 253 this, I shall at present quote but two instances. South of the Pyrenees, in the bay of Biscay, lies a part of Spain called the Basque provinces. Here there dwells the remnant of a people older than any in Europe, as is evident from the very curious language which they speak, as well as from the different appear- ance, and political ideas, of the Basque people from those of the rest of Spain. And even in our island, the mountains and moors of the West, easy of access as they are, have been a refuge to the persecuted Celts, who have there preserved their race, their re- ligion, and even a remnant of their language, from their Saxon invaders. It still remains for us to discuss the influence of mountains upon the intellectual and moral con- dition of their inhabitants; and, at first sight, an unexpected phenomenon is presented to us — es- pecially in the Alps, which are the mountains best known to us — that in spite of the highest natural beauty and grandeur, the inhabitants are sad and dull of intellect. We are accustomed, as Mr. Rus- kin tells us, to see upon the stage representations of rustic simplicity and happiness associated with Alps and glaciers, and we ourselves often long to exchange the dull flat scenery of most of our own country, for the ennobling and purifying contemplation of the eternal peaks of snow. And yet the leading feature in the inhabitants of some of these glorious scenes is not only an absence of all feeling for natural beauty, but a capability of enduring and even de- lighting in the contemplation of suffering and terror. 2 54 Various Stimulants for Various Classes. A very important question, then, arises, as to how far this pecuHarity is produced by mountains, or whether it is merely accidental to them, and may be produced by other causes equally. There can be no doubt that the rudeness of the middle ages delighted much more in descriptions of blood and torture than we do now-a-days; and this on the principle that dull, uneducated natures require stronger stimulants to excite them. For example, among you now-a-days, those of the better ranks, and of some education, such as this present class, find ample excitement in reading Miss Braddon's novels ; whereas, your servants, if Protestant, will not be able to get up the same exalted feelings without having recourse to an illustrated edition of Fox's "British Martyrs," the most horrible book I ever read ; if Catholics, they will study those low and seditious newspapers which delight in picturing the alleged tortures inflicted on the Fenian patriots in the British dungeons. And when you reach people in a more primitive state than we are, you will find even the better classes not annoyed by what we think disgust- ing exhibitions of death and hell. Sometimes, how- ever, they are not of a morbid kind. " For example, on the celebrated old bridge of Lucerne, with the pure, deep, and blue water of the Reuss eddying down between its piers, and the far away gleaming of the lake and the Alps alternating on either side, there are painted on the woodwork a series of gaunt pictures from the Dance of Death. But still this gives us no unpleasant picture of the life of the old Gloom in the Moiuitains. 255 Lucernois, with all its happy waves of light, and mountain strength of will, and solemn expectation of eternity." But the gloom is not always of this noble kind. Mr. Ruskin tells us, in the valley already described, " at every turn of the pathway, where the thyme lies richest upon the rocks, we shall see a little cross and shrine set up under each of them ; but go up to it, hoping to receive some happy thought of the Re- deemer, by whom all these lovely things were made, and still consist, and behold beneath the cross a rude picture of souls tormented in red tongues of hell-fire, and pierced by demons. And so down through Italy objects are exhibited— not only pictures, but human deformity and disease— which would not excite pity but disgust in this country. And with this exposure of the degraded human form is farther connected an insensibility to ugliness and imperfection in other things ; so that the ruined walls, neglected chamber, and uncleansed garden seem to unite in expressing the gloom of spirit possessing the inhabitants of the whole land. It does not appear to arise from poverty, or careless contentment with a little, like the reckless and gay squalor of the poor Irish peasant; but there seems a settled obscurity in the soul — a chill and plague — which partly deadens, partly darkens the eyes and hearts of men, and breathes a leprosy of decay through every breeze and through every stone." The causes of this gloom have often occupied philosophers, and many interesting discussions have been written upon it. And yet the question seems 256 The Terror of Earthquakes. not yet fully solved. There is no doubt, that if nature be stupendous and wild beyond a certain degree, though the traveller who sees it occasionally may feel exalted and astonished, the peasant who resides there always is rather stupified and terrified than improved. For in these grand regions the most dangerous natural convulsions are apt to occur fre- quently, in which men are tossed about like chaff, and in which human lives are sacrificed by wholesale, and that to stern, relentless, natural agents, which feel no pity, and regard no suffering. The earth- quake, the volcano, the avalanche, the tornado — all these fearful visitations are more frequent in moun- tainous regions, and, as it were, make human suffer- ing their play and sport. And these are terrible accidents to which men's minds never become accus- tomed. It is a remarkable law, which I have never yet seen stated or explained, that while men become perfectly callous to dangers arising from their fellow- men, from wild beasts, even from diseases, that the very reverse is the case when the danger arises from convulsions of nature. All the travellers in South America, where earthquakes are so very frequent, assure us that the terror of the natives when they feel a shock becomes quite insupportable ; while strangers who have little experience of such things, are comparatively careless about it. And even with- out these abnormal terrors, we cannot wonder that man feels insignificant and mean in the face of nature upon so gigantic a scale. The subject has been handled with a great deal of common sense by Mr. Mr. Ruskin 07i the Alpine gloom. 257 Ruskin, in a passage of which I proceed to give you the substance. I. " It seems that a fair degree of intellect and imagination is necessary before this kind of disease is possible. It does not seize on merely stupid peasantries, but on those which belong to intellec- tual races, and in whom the faculties of imagination and the sensibilities of heart were originally strong and tender. In flat land, with fresh air, the peasantry may be almost mindless, but not infected with this gloom. II. "In the second place, I think it is closely connected with the Romanist religion, and that for several causes. (a) " The habitual use of bad art (ill-made dolls and bad pictures) in the services of religion, naturally blunts the delicacy of the senses, by requiring reve- rence to be paid to ugliness, and familiarizing the mind with it in moments of strong and pure feeling. We can hardly overrate the probable evil results of this enforced discordance between the sight and imagination. (/3) "The habitually dwelling on the penances, tortures, and martyrdoms of the saints, as subjects of admiration and sympathy, together with much medi- tation on purgatorial suffering, rendered almost impos- sible to Protestants, by the greater fearfulness of such reflections, when the punishment is supposed eternal. (7) " Idleness and neglect of the proper duties of daily life during the large number of holidays in the year, together with want of proper cleanliness, in- duced by the idea that comfort and happy purity are s 258 Effects of the Ro??ia?i Catholic Religion. less pleasing to God than discomfort and self-degra- dation." This latter idea was very prevalent among Scotch Protestants at one time, and even still lingers on in the minds of a few, in connection with the ob- servance of what they call "the Sabbath." (h) " Superstitious indignation. I do not know if it is as a result of the combination of these several causes, or if under a separate head, that I should class a certain strange awe which seems to attach itself to minds of the highest purity and keenness; and indeed does so to those more than to inferior ones. It is an indefinable pensiveness, leading to great severity of precept, mercilessness in punishment, and dark or discouraging thoughts of God and man. It is connected partly with a greater belief in the daily presence and power of evil spirits than is com- mon in Protestants, (except the more enthusiastic and also gloomy sects of Puritans,) connected also with a sternness of belief in the condemnatory power and duty of the Church, leading to persecution and to less temperate indignation at oppositions of opinion than characterizes the Protestant mind ordinarily, which, though waspish and bitter enough, is not liable to the peculiar heartburning caused in a Papist by any insult to his Church, or by the aspect of what he believes to be heresy. For all these reasons, I think Romanism is very definitely connected with the gloom we are examining, so as without fail to produce some measure of it in all persons who sin- cerely hold that faith ; and if such effect is ever not to be traced, it is because the Romanism is checked Moral Effects of III Health . 259 by infidelity. The atheism or dissipation of a large portion of the inhabitants of crowded capitals pre- vents this gloom from being felt in full force ; but it resumes its power in mountain solitudes, over the minds of the comparatively ignorant and more suffer- ing peasantry; so that it is not an evil inherent in the hills themselves, but one result of the continuance in them of that old religious voice of warning, which, encouraging sacred feeling in general, encourages also whatever evil may essentially belong to the form of doctrine preached among them. III. " It is assuredly connected also with a diseased state of health. Cheerfulness is just as natural to the heart of a man in strong health as colour to his cheek; and wherever there is habitual gloom, there must be either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly severe labour, or erring habits of life. Among mountains, all these various causes are fre- quently found in combination ; the air is either too bleak or it is impure ; generally the peasants are ex- posed to alternations of both. Great hardship is sustained in various ways, severe labour undergone during summer, and a sedentary and confined life led during winter. Where the ' gloom exists in elevated districts, as in Germany, I do not doubt, though I have not historical knowledge enough to prove this, that it is partly connected with habits of sedentary life, protracted study, and general derangement of the bodily system in consequence ; or else it is fos- tered by habits of general vice, cruelty, and dissi- pation.'" 2 6o Beauty of Mountains. Is there, then, you will say, no benefit in the great beauty of the mountains, or is it that we have no proper ideal of beauty ? Perhaps these wild moun- tains are not really beautiful, as is proved by their melancholy effects upon so many men ; perhaps the hedge-rows, and the rich ploughed fields, and the waving of the heavy corn, are more properly the objects of our admiration, rather than snowy moun- tains. To this difficulty Mr. Ruskin gives, I think, the right answer. He shows, in an argimient of great beauty, in what sense mountains are more beautiful than any other object of nature -.first, owing to the difference produced in the whole tone of the land- scape by the purple, violet, and ultramarine colours which we owe to mountains ; and this you can all see, in even our own hills, which, when removed but a few miles, are always of this rich colour. Next to this peculiarity in masses of colour, he notices the richness and variety of mountain flowers and mosses. Where will you find in lowlands such glory of colour as can be seen even in this island on our heather mountains, where great fields of purple and of gold are framed in the dull greens and browns of mosses and of rock ? And thirdly, we must add the conti- nual presence and power of water, in its clearness, its colour, its fanciful motion, and its wrath. Again^ there are the trees in mountain scenery — trees which have difficulties to contend with, and, therefore, show forth the infinite resource and variety of Nature, rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, hiding from the glacier winds, crowding down to the streams. Their Moral Effects. 261 gathering into companies in the meadows, and in a thousand other ways surprising and deHghting the mind with beauties not of only form, but of resource and contrivance. Finally^ comes the supremacy of the clouds, " The superiority of the mountains to the lowland in all these things is as measureable as the richness of a painted window compared with a white one, or as the wealth of a museum compared with that of a simply-furnished chamber. They seem to have been built for the human race, as at once their schools and cathedrals, full of treasures of illuminated manuscripts for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons for the worker, quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the worshipper. These are the great cathedrals of the earth, with their gates of rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream and stone, altars of snow, and vaults of purple traversed by the continual stars." The beauty, then, of the mountains cannot in any way be denied. But when we come to ask what benefit these features have produced upon our race, the answer is not so obvious. One point certainly does appear on the surface— the effect on the religion of men. Through all ages, from the time when Israel set up idols upon every high mountain, and under every green tree, to the days of the monks of St. Bernard, we find the hills associated with religious observances and with greater sanctity than the plains. You will not forget that the Law was promulgated to the Jews from Mount Sinai in thunder; and He who, with a far greater majesty of simplicity, came to an- 262 Highland and Lowla^id Religion. noiince the higher dispensation, also chose a moun- tain, whereon He spoke those words of undying truth and beauty, the new model of a holy life. And the saints of the middle ages, who generally understood all things in Scripture literally, looked with peculiar awe on mountains, as bearing continual Avitness against the luxury and frivolity of the world. But at all times they have had the power both of exciting re- ligious enthusiasm, and purifying religious faith. And when they even led astray the human mind by the enthusiasm which they inspired — when they promoted, as they ever have, dark superstition and bigoted in- tolerance, we must envy the sincerity and depth of the emotion from which these errors spring. " The enthusiasm of the persecuted covenanter, with his claims to miraculous protection and prophetic inspi- ration, hold the same relation to the smooth proprie- ties of lowland Protestants, that the demon combats, fasts and visions of the mountain anchorite, hold to the wealth and worldliness of the Vatican. No doubt, a vast amount of prudent, educated, and ad- mirable piety is to be found among the ranks of the lowland clergy; but still it is generally true that formalism, respectability, orthodoxy, and caution, live by the slow stream that encircles the abbey or cathedral, whereas enthusiasm, poverty, vital faith, and audacity of conduct characterize the pastor of the hills. Among the fair arable lands of England and of Belgium extends an orthodox Protestantism or Catholicism, prosperous, creditable, and drowsy ; it is among the purple moors of the highland border, the Political Effects of Mount aijis. 263 ravines of Mount Genevre, and the crags of the Tyrol, that we find the simplest Evangelical faith, and the purest Romanist practice/' The same mountain fastnesses, then, which have preserved the spirit of liberty from the tyrant, and the primitive purity of morals from the corruption of luxurious city life, have also been instrumental in protecting remnants of religions, sometimes truth, sometimes error, but always the earnest belief of the worshippers. And many a form of old faith would long since have vanished from the earth, and left a hopeless gap in the history of human thought, but for these great conservators — these mighty bulwarks against frivolity and against innovation ; so that the respect and awe we feel for them is not unreasonable, and need not be discouraged; nay, these facts should ever be before us when we think of the everlasting hills. There was a day when, in politics, this conservative action of the hills was equally valuable and remark- able ; when liberty had to be defended, not by argu- ment or political agitation, but by the resistance of the few and the poor to the many and the rich, these natural fortifications have often assisted the humble and meek, and have contributed to cast the mighty from their thrones. The great contest of the Swiss against Charles the Bold, the battles of Nancy, and Gran^on, and Muerten — a period of history you will find beautifully portrayed in Scott's " Anne of Geire- stein" — the gloomy defile at Kiissnacht, with the archer Tell waiting to avenge the wrongs of his 264 The Cock?iey in the Alps. people — as you may see it described in the magnifi- cent scene near the conclusion of Schiller's " William Tell" — these exciting points of history will easily remind you of what I mean. But now that the age of violence has passed away, these occasions have happily vanished also ; and since the celebrated Tyrolese hero, Andre Hofer, there has been no such struggle between the moun- tains and the lowlands. And, verily, the glorious Swiss and Tyrolese Alps have now been exalted to a higher and more peaceful use — the duty of deHght- ing the English cockney, whose feet wander yearly through their deep valleys and rocky glens, but whose eyes wander not, nor are they raised from his beloved " Murray;" for there he finds all the beauties of the country described in a simpler and more commercial manner than any personal observation of his own could afford ; and he is rapidly introducing that higher luxury and refinement into the Alps which is necessary to the comfort of the Saxon tourist, and which consists in producing, at any cost, imitations of English home-life in a foreign country, and, by natural consequence, trains the population to con- sider the cheating of travellers, and mendicancy, a more convenient way of living than the laborious tilling of the rude and rocky soil. These reflections induce me to conclude my lec- ture, as we do our sermons, with a few words of practical exhortation ; for it will be the lot of many of you to see, some day, these wonderful mountains. I entreat of you to visit them, not in the pride of Practical Exhortation. 265 fashion, nor in supposed luxury of idleness, but look upon such an opportunity as a great step in your education, and as a means of appreciating the per- fection of God's creation. Except you visit the deserts of Arabia and Africa, or the prairies and pampas of America, you can never obtain a notion of solitude such as is given by the vast regions of lonely snow, far above the toil and tumult of men, far above even the rage and riot of the elements. You can never obtain a notion of the majesty of nature, of the grandeur of outline and of mass, until you have let your eye wander over a chain of rugged, serrated Alps. You have never seen the perfection of natural colour, beautiful as this country may be in that respect, till you have seen the sun setting in the mountains, and the calm afterglow causing the white peaks, one by one, to blush with rosy pink. And you have never tested the nectar and ambrosia of the gods, till you have breathed a breath of real mountain air in the cool of a summer's morning. It is, perhaps, difficult for you to feel so deeply on the subject. As for me, who was born and almost brought up among the loveliest of the Alps, it is im- possible to speak of them at any time, or in any place, without affection and respect. LECTURE XII. METHODS OF COLONIZATION. (CONCLUSION.) DID not announce on last day the subject of my present lecture, simply because I was ^2^\ hesitating and considering whether I had not omitted some necessary or important part of political geography in my own sense — I mean the in- fluence of physical peculiarities upon history. Now, all the examples I have as yet treated were in past history; and the condition of peoples in ancient times occupied us, to the almost total exclusion of modern history, and this for the reason which I ex- plained to you at length — that physical influence is far more distinctly seen in fresh races, and in new set- tlements, than when civilization is once stereotyped; and this has for centuries been the case all over the old world. There have either been no large move- ments of nations, or the immigrants (like the EngHsh in India) have been already so highly civilized that they become the lords and not the servants of physical influences. Science has subdued so many great natural agents under our control, that every- Conflict of Races in America. 267 where men can now make way, where of old the ob- stacles would have been insurmountable. But there is one part of the globe where, at all events, things are far nearer a state of nature than elsewhere, where pure barbarians, effete civilizations, vigorous but very rude colonists, still come in con- tact ; in fact, where the state of things is not dissi- milar, in many respects, to that of Europe in the fifth century, when the vigorous, but rude and violent, Franks and other barbarians, came in contact with the decayed civilization and subject races of the Roman Empire. In the great tracts of Western North America, from the Columbia River down to Lake Nicaragua, the North Americans have been in conflict or in treaty, for the last half century, with the miserable decayed Spanish Empire, with the Indians partly civilized and subdued by it, and again with the wild hunting tribes who traverse these enormous wildernesses ; and the great conquests and extensions of the States in this direction have not been made by great civilized bodies, or by invincible armies, but by the indomitable will, the wondrous energy, and the very iniquitous grasping and violence of the trapper, the gold-seeker, and the hunter. These have been the pioneers of civilization in the far west. And yet not without one memorable exception. The parallel with the early middle ages would not be complete if we had no example of a large body, tribe or people, emigrating with their wives and children, and deliberately seeking for themselves new homes, and a new place of rest. As religious differences 2 68 Conflict of Races in America. were the causes of many of the great migrations among the ancient races of Europe and of Asia — as the greatest movements of peoples in India and in Persia can be shown to have sprung from the intro- duction of new religion, and the consequent dis- agreement of the votaries of the old and new beliefs — so of late years in America we have a distinct example of a large body of people driven from their original home, and starting away into the far west to seek a new settlement, and a life of peace, apart from their unbelieving brethren. In the fearful sufferings and disappointments which they endured, we can repro- duce to ourselves what must have been the circum- stances of many of our ancestors, when the great ferment of nations brought them into their new homes in the west of Europe. Under all these circumstances, a brief review of the present condition, and the history, of the settle- ments in the far Western States of America will not only have in itself great interest for geographical students, but will also assist us in another way — it will put before your eyes vividly and presently the state of things which existed when the geography of the globe was first settled ; and you will be able to obtain from the works of intelligent eye-witnesses, or even in the daily papers, a living picture of the course of events which has long since passed away in Europe and in Asia ; and it will moreover direct your atten- tion to a part of the world far the most important in the globe, to those who study historical phenomena and endeavour to foresee future events in politics, Conflict of Races in America. 269 and yet little attended to by the ordinary public. It is indeed no place of fashionable resort, nor distin- guished for elegant society, but in the vastness of its natural resources, and in the energy and force of character of its new inhabitants, it has no equal in the globe. If we turn then to Western North America, we shall at first sight be struck with certain remarkable features. The great territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean is divided, not like European countries, by meandering boundaries, formed by rivers and mountains, but by great straight lines, evidently drawn, in perfect indifference or ignorance of the natural features of the country, along the lines of latitude or longitude. These boundaries were de- termined by legislature, not by nature, and were, many of them, drawn before the country within them was even explored, far less surveyed. Even still there are great tracts in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, which no white man has ever yet seen or explored. Yet mth the boldness peculiar to the North Americans, all these wild countries are outlined and claimed for the United States. Just one hundred years ago the only part of North America colonized by the Anglo-Saxon, was what appears a narrow strip between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic — narrow indeed compared to their present posses- sions, but still a tract of from two to four hundred miles wide. Now the territories west of the Missouri and the Mississippi alone are estimated, so far as they are at all measurable, at one and a-half million square miles ! 270 Rapid Changes in Wooding. There is no possible variety of climate and soil which cannot be found in this vast region. Great rivers, lofty mountains, immense plains, pathless forests, every species of nature is there represented ; and while some great tracts are barren with salt, others are smiling with plenty ; nay, even in some parts of California, there seems a natural provision for more than usual variety in nature, from the ac- counts I heard given by a friend who lived there for many years. You know, I suppose, that it is ascertained that the early forests of Europe changed their character at different epochs ; that the very same country which was once covered with fir trees, afterwards was covered with oak, then again with beech ; to this we shall return again in our etlinolo- gical researches. Now similar changes take place, I am informed, with far greater rapidity in the wilds of Western America. I am unable at present to remember the exact description or sequence of the trees ; but the facts are, that a squatter will come to an original forest, and clear himself a piece of land, and cultivate it for some years. Then he will per- haps be murdered by Indians, or die, or remove to some other quarter. His farm will soon again return to its original state of forest ; but lo ! the site of his labour will be marked by the change in the species of the trees. A patch of beech suppose, in the middle of a pine forest, will mark the spot ; and if some other adventurer, attracted by this peculiarity, and knowing there are no deep roots, or giant stems to be disposed of, in his turn settles upon the same Degradation of Spanish America. 271 place, and in his turn deserts it ; a third species of trees will often grow up in the very same spot. These phenomena have not yet been sufficiently examined by botanists ; but it may be, that here too, as well as in history, America will show us modern examples of processes now become ancient and obscure in the old world. But I am not so much concerned with the phy- sical peculiarities of the country, as with the poli- tical and ethnological conditions which the Ame- ricans found subsisting when they pushed westwards in search of new wealth and of new scope for energy. I said that the similarity of these coloniza- tions to those of the Franks and the Normans con- sisted, among other points, in this, that the colonists came into collision with both half civilized nations, and also with effete or worn out civilizations. There never was an empire, even the decaying Roman Empire, of which this can be affirmed so truly as of the Spanish Empire in Central and North America. Though it may be said, that the Creoles of the new world were degenerate in race, still most of the evil has been produced by the idiotic system of government carried on by the mother country. In consequence, though Spain had enormous pos- sessions in three continents, she sank in Europe to the third rank among powers. This effect was pro- duced by despotic rule, the oppression of the Church, and an absurd monopoly in trade. Spain has ruined her own colonies. Even in her conquests she never had a single idea of civilizing them. She did not 2 72 Oppressive Lmvs. remove the savages, to make room for a higher cul- ture, as was done in the States, but destroyed an- cient Indian and American civiHzation with fire and sword, in order to allow the conquered regions to relapse into a greater barbarism. In fact, the Spa- niards never meant to civilize them ; they merely regarded them as lawful prey for the mother country. This feeling, which was visible indeed in England's early treatment of her colonies, was the ruhng policy of Spain. The Creoles, for example, were forbidden to plant vines and olives ; they were allowed to mine for gold and silver, but not for iron : the individual provinces were allowed no intercourse, and most of the harbours were closed, in order to secure a mo- nopoly of imports and exports at a few places for the mother country. Strangers were discouraged from visiting the country ; books were burnt, not be- cause they were mischievous, but because it was not expedient that Creoles should write books. The Church and the Spaniards secured for themselves all property, all advantages, all offices and patronage — and all this at a period when Spain was unable to send out any quantity of enterprising colonists. Hence, the pure Spaniards soon came to form a small class, hating, and hated by all the mixed races ; and, indeed, none of these mixed races have turned out well. They are totally unfit for republican go- vernment, are lazy, and without enterprise, and never attempted to develop the resources of the great country which they occupied. But I cannot go more closely into the general state of the Spanish First Method of Colonization. 273 Empire in America, than to give you this general description of it, and to explain what I meant by saying, that the North Americans have there met an effete civilization. Colonization will naturally take one of two forms. First, bands of adventurers will outrun all their kins- men, and for the purposes of trade or plunder, wander into unknown regions, where they will at first behave submissively to the local authorities. Presently these people become jealous, and envious of the success and enterprize of the foreigners. They attempt to repress or to extirpate the few ad- venturers, who seem but a handful among them ; and they resort to the devices of the weak and co\\- ardly, to treachery and to deceit. Then the adven- turers cast off all respect for the people whose land they have invaded, declare all treaties at an end, and making use of the footing already obtained by peaceful means, defend themselves with that vigour which the few and the daring always display against the many and the feeble; and then sympathy for them in their own country, and the usual exagge- rations of the riches they have found in tneir new abode, tempt those who remained at home to step in to save their countrymen, and to ask for a share in the spoil. This process I am going to describe to you at greater length in the case of California, one of the most valuable possessions which the Americans ever made in the far West. The country was known to the Spaniards since 1542. But up to the year 1769, they took no pams 2 74 Disendonmieiit of the Franciscans. to examine the capabilities of the coast, till the sea- faring nations of Europe began to visit the Pacific, from which the suspicious and anxious policy of the Spanish Court would gladly have excluded them. But the voyages of Anson showed how hazardous it was to have California unprotected. For, as long as it was not actually occupied by Spain, any other power might step in and claim it. So in 1769, they sent a number of Franciscan Missionaries to found colonies there, the conversion of the Indians having been entrusted to that order. This is the origin of the capital of the district being called St. Francisco. Up to the year 1824, these missions lasted quietly and securely enough, but, as in all the rest of Spanish America, without energy or new life. We find there, as everywhere, the stagnation produced by a priesthood ruling a weak and ignorant popula- tion. The Indians were converted by compulsion, and treated like slaves. When Mexico separated herself from the mother country, California became a Republic. The Mexican Government ordered the Franciscans to liberate the Indians. These latter were so debased by the treatment they had received, that they sank at once into a state far worse than they had ever been in. They became rebellious and unmanageable, and opposed all plans for the im- provement of the country. Presendy the mission- aries were deprived of their lands. They had been the only diligently cultivated parts of the country, and (whatever the other faults of the Franciscans may have been) had always been a model to the Acquisition by America. 275 surrounding country. Up to the capture of the country by the Americans in 1845, we find that the whole shipping they possessed, (and that with one of the finest harbours of the world,) consisted of three small schooners. Individual settlers, Russians, English, Yankees, began to press forward into the countiy, and to settle. They were treated with harshness and sus- picion by the Government, were tyrannized over, and barely tolerated. But when the celebrated Colonel Fremont arrived in 1845, on a voyage of discovery, to find the best route to connect the Pacific by railway with Eastern America, the jealousy and alarm of the governor of Monterey (then the capital) knew no bounds. He forbad Fremont to approach the city, despite of his representations that his mis- sion was harmless, and that he had an escort of only sixty men. Not content with this, the American consul discovered that a trap was being laid for the American engineers. Thereupon Fremont raised his flag, said he would not surrender with his life, and proclaimed to all who would join him, security to life and property, safe government, and real republican institutions. He described and repudi- ated the narrow despotism of the Californian govern- ment, and openly proclaimed war against it. All the Americans in the Sacramento Valley joined him. In a few months the country was won, and openly ceded by the Mexicans to the United States, The rivers Gila and Colorado, and the latitude 32% form the present boundary between California and Arizona. 276 Second Method of Colonization. Such is a brief historical sketch of the process which has so often been repeated in various ages, and by which vigorous races find for themselves new homes. But we can find in America a far more curious example of colonization — one which we are wont to regard as peculiarly that of barbarous and nomad races — I mean that in which a large tribe or body of people migrate together, with their wives, children, and portable property, going out they hardly know whither. Such migrations are so hazardous, the hardships they impose on the weak and the aged are so great, that they are seldom undertaken except by perfect nomads, who always live unsettled lives, or by a people sustained by some extraordinary idea^ some religious faith, some mighty hope. Speaking purely from an historical point of view, all such re- markable phenomena should be examined by us with care, and treated with respect. We are, and have been so long, convinced that we now possess absolute truth in religious matters, that we are not likely even to give a hearing to any one who lays claim to a new revelation from heaven — nay, even beyond that, we are likely to treat with suspicion and contempt all the alleged influences which he may have had upon his fellows. Being, as we think, an impostor in one respect, he is not entitled to credit upon any other. I am not now going to dispute or question this view, as theology is not the subject which I am to discuss from this chair ; but I merely wish to insist on this point, that all religious develop- The Salt Lake District. 277 ments which act upon history, are to be considered carefully and seriously by historians, whether the reli- gion or the morals produced by them are good or bad. And the development we shall now briefly discuss has had such important influences upon geo- graphy, as well as contemporary history, that I cannot pass it over in silence. In the year 1847, a body of many thousand people — men, women, and children — might be seen de- scending from the barren Rocky Mountains upon the valley of the great Salt Lake. And when they came in sight of that remarkable valley — barren, indeed, and waste, but beautiful and picturesque in its out- lines — they all cried out that at last they had reached their promised land. We must describe the region ! more closely. The great Salt Lake is situate about half way between the Mississippi and the Pacific j Ocean, and is separated on all sides from other human habitations by vast Avildernesses. Colonel Fremont, who first described it accurately, remarks ' that this valley has a much more Oriental than Occi- \ dental character, and compares it in many respects 1 to the tracts between the Caspian and Northern I Persia. At first sight, however, it bears, as the Mor- j mons at once observed, and have often repeated, a striking analogy to the Holy Land, and this as well as its isolation, were the probable causes of their choosing it as a settlement. . The great Salt Lake, like the ^^d Sea, has no out- 1)1^ let, is exceedingly salt, and is kept down by great evaporation. It is fed by a rapidly descending river, 278 Effects of Labour in Utah. now called the Jordan, and likely to play a remark- able part in the New World's history, which comes from a great fresh-w^ater lake called Lake Utah, lying, not like the Lake of Tiberias, north, but south of the Salt Lake. This is the tenitory of Utah, or Deseret, as the Mormons are wont to call it, which is a word taken from their mystical book, and means " the land of the honey bee." In the North-West there is an- other salt lake in which rivers lose themselves, and in no part has the district any outlet to the sea. The exhalation of these salt lakes makes a great part of the country bare and barren, only relieved here and there by green tracts lying close beside fresh-water rivers, and the beds of the torrents coming down from the Wasatch Mountains. But these are isolated places ; most of the country consists of dreary barren plains, covered with incrustations of salt, watered by no rain for the summer six months, and the bitter pasture of which is not touched by cattle. This was the land of promise into which the Mormons descended in the year 1847 ; and they soon showed what religious enthusiasm can perform even in our tame days. Within three years the waste and howling wilderness was like the Garden of Eden for fruitfulness. By judicious cultivation, by artificial irrigation, this hand- ful of men have made Utah the garden of the New World; and this because their first great religious idea is that of labour. They have directed all the enthusiasm, all the energy which other visionaries wasted in useless self-abasement and penance, to making the most of their settlement, and increasing Migration of the Mormons. 279 its importance in the world. There is no such ex- ample of industry in the world in our own, or per- haps in any other age. Immediate and most seduc- tive rewards are ofifered to the diligent. But it is impossible for me to enter upon the curi- ous subject of the Mormon civilization. I am here chiefly concerned with the mode and method of their emigration. As to their previous history, suffice it to say, ihat the epoch of the new Church of the Latter- Day Saints was founded in the year 1830, and the Prophet Smith and his people began their temple at an obscure place called Kirtland in Ohio, but it was left unfinished, as a new revelation pointed out the State of Missouri, where Adam had really been first created, and where the altar on which he sacrificed still was visible. Here, however, they were violently opposed by the " heathen," and were obliged to take refuge in Illinois, where they built in 1840 the town of Nauvoo. But the Prophet Smith was arrested, and finally shot by the mob, who were hostile to his projects. It was then that they undertook, under the advice of their present leader, that extraordinary migration, without parallel in modern times. A few scouts were sent in advance to spy out the land. Soon the whole people left their homes in Illinois, reached with difficulty the prairies of Missouri, put up sheds, and sowed a crop of corn in the wilds. The winter turned out one of extraordinary severity ; their sheds and tents gave them no protection against the fierce ele- ments; they dwelt in caves, and in holes in the 2 8 o Disappohitment of their Scheme. ground, worn out by hardships, decimated by cholera. But all these trials they gloried in as a proof of their faith and self-denial During the next summer (1847) they reached the Salt Lake, after scaling with endless difficulty the mountain passes, and traversing the barren plains with terrible privations. But it is very remarkable that all their self-denial has not obtained for them the isolation which they desired. Events which the wisest of men could not have foreseen, the very year after their settlement, brought Utah into the great thoroughfare from east and west, instead of leaving the Mormons in an absolute isolation from the rest of the world. The discovery of the great gold fields of California gave such an impetus to the emigration westward, that a regular land route was established at once over the Rocky Mountains, and the wearied travellers are only too happy to descend and rest for a few days in the Garden of Utah, after the privations of the prairies and of Bitter Creek, And so their ways and doings have become known, and their religious and social views are being dis- cussed by the world at large. With these we are not now concerned. But it seemed to me desirable to turn your attention to these curious phenomena of colonization, as exemplifying processes of history long since extinct in the Old World ; and I trust it \\dll give you a new interest in reading books of travel and of adventure in the far west. We have discussed so many geographical facts, connected with such various parts of the world, and Diversity of Men in like ConditioJis. 281 at such considerable intervals of time, that it seems necessary to give some sort of summary of what has been said, and see to what conclusions we have arrived. And these conclusions may be of grave importance, as influencing our estimate both of human nature and of history. If the constitution and temper of races is perfectly under the control of physical agents, if there be no such thing as an original difl'erence of race, then no historian should approach his subject without being completely versed in geology, in botany, and in the laws of climate and weather. If, on the contrary, mankind are found to possess features apart from, and opposed to, all the influences which climate can have upon them, we may expect results from the pure analysis of human motives, and from the honest and careful narration of the facts of human life and manners. You may remember the very first point I urged upon your attention was this, that in the present day, at all events, climate, soil, and food cannot be said in any sense to determine the characteristics of races. The English, the Scotch, and the Irish have been living together for centuries under the same sky and climate, living, too, to a great extent on the same food, and yet how different are their natures. And if you object that the food of the Irish is not the same as that of the English, and suggest to me that porridge and potatoes are more allied to espi^it, and wit, and natural grace, than beefsteaks, stout, cheese, and whatever other luxuries the lower class English- man is supposed to indulge in, I should answer that 2o2 Uiiity of the Anglo-Saxons. there is, at all events, no difference between the diet and habits of life of the better classes in both coun- tries, and that when the Irishman leaves his unfor- tunate country, and gets promoted to these luxuries in England and in America, he is still the same tur- bulent, reckless, interesting, unmanageable being, at least to government and to statesmen ; for I have no doubt that most of you will some day exhibit the so- lution of this problem so puzzling to English ministers. The same remarks apply to the Englishman abroad, even when his family has left these islands for cen- turies. We were in our last lecture comparing the Spaniards and the Anglo-Saxons in America, and remarking the contrast ; and although the Americans are very modified Anglo-Saxons, and have adopted many new peculiarities, they are still mentally, poli- tically, spiritually, as well as in descent, our brethren. Any American gentleman of the higher class w^ho has been well educated, affords a proof of this statement. He differs in no way from a man of the same class in England and Ireland. I am more cautious in making statements about the ladies ; but as far as my limited observation has extended into this deli- cate investigation, they appeared no exception to the rule stated about the gentlemen. And this identity or great similarity exists in spite of great differences of climate, which act upon the figure and appearance of our race in America, and cause them to contrast with us more in body than in mind. Consider, again, such races as the Gypsies. These people have been now for three centuries driven from Gypsy Music. 283 their original home in Hindostan, and have settled in all the countries of Europe, and yet no climate and no change of diet has been able to strip them of their oriental type. Even where they have well nigh forgotten their language, and altogether their origin, they still remain a distinct nationality. I lay stress on this example rather than the more remarkable one of the Jews, because it cannot be said that the Gypsies are in any sense a highly cultivated people ; they have no literature, no national poetry, no his- toric or legendary recollections, no art save that of music. '^ Here is a people who have adopted the dress, the * Their cultivation of music is so remarkable, that it deserves mention in this place. It can best be studied in Hungary, where every little village has its Gypsy band. They have in- deed a national music, which I have asked them to play, and which appeared to me totally unintelligible and barbarous. What is more curious, they appeared themselves to think this music inferior to the Hungarian melodies, which they had adopted, and which they have so completely made their own, as to lead the Abbe Liszt into the mistake that the great national music of the Hungarians was due to the Gypsies origi- nally. They have, however, so orientalized and transfigured these Hungarian airSj that almost no one but a Gypsy can now perform them, and the natives of the country will not dance to any but Gypsy playing. Their style is so pecuHar that you cannot mistake it anywhere. I remember being struck one evening in the Piazza San Marco of Venice by the sound of a melody from the Norma, sung with an instrumental accom- paniment in this extraordinary style. I at once felt sure that the musicians, who were not within sight, must be Gypsies, though I was not aware that they strolled about in that capacity in Italy. On investigation, my conjecture proved correct. 2 84 Retrospect, language, and even the arts of those among whom they dwell, and still the effects of race remain; so that the experiences of even our own day would lead us to conjecture that, however great the influence of climate might be, even upon rude and primitive races, it would never account for all the peculiarities of races. Nevertheless, our review of ancient peoples, and of the barbarous races of more modern times, has certainly proved that peoples do require some natural advantages to make them thrive and grow civilized. For in my lectures during last term, we established first this point, that countries in which comparatively little food and clothing was required, and where both could be easily and cheaply obtained, were more likely to be civilized early than the rest of the world. Accordingly, we turned our eyes first upon Egypt, the country w^hich of all those we know was far the first in developing culture ; and we showed reasons why it should have been early, very early, before most of the nations of the earth. But I do not think we found any proof why it should have been the earliest. We showed the plenty and cheapness of the food, the heat of the climate, which kept men from wanting much food or clothing, the natural irrigation of their soil by the Nile, their isolation and consequent protection from neighbouring nations ; and when we had detailed all these things, and their consequences, we proceeded to Babylonia, and there showed the existence of similar conditions — so similar that we might have expected just as early a develop- Fixed Types of Countenance. 2S5 ment. But neither was it as early, nor was it exactly of the same type. In religion, in art, in literature, it had its own original features ; and though some of these were explained by the difference of materials with which men worked, yet I cannot but think that there are many points not so explicable. Then we came to consider the civilization of the Sabasans, more effeminate and luxurious, and later still in development. And yet their soil was perhaps not naturally very suitable to promote culture, and owed completely, what Egypt and Babylon owed partly, to artificial irrigation. In all these cases, there is no doubt that the national character was greatly influ- enced by climate and soil ; for, of course, the simpler and more primitive the materials upon which climate and soil have to work, the more they are likely to effect. But there still remains the noble type of counte- nance peculiar to these races, and different from their neighbours ; and if this was originally produced by physical agencies, we are at once driven to the con- clusion, that it would require many myriads of years to effect such a change. Centuries, at all events, will not make '' the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots." So that, except we can find proofs that men have lived for some enormous period, we must fall back upon original distinctions of race. But, however we may hesitate as to the pre-historic nations having been separated and distinguished from one another by the mere accident of physical advan- tages, we cannot hesitate when we come within the 2 86 The Case of the Greeks. pale of proper history. There is no reason why the Phoenicians or the Greeks should have outstripped all the rest of the world in their language, in their material constructions, and in their arts. No doubt the Phoenicians took to merchandise and seafaring, because they happened to lie in the thoroughfare of nations ; but who knows whether they did not actually make it a thoroughfare themselves ; and who will doubt that they would have played an important part in the world, had their position been different. Should any one doubt this case, let him consider that of the Greeks. It is absurd to say that any other nation placed in the same country would have pro- duced the same results. And had the Greeks been placed elsewhere, they might have indeed used a different alphabet, and might have built with bricks or granite, instead of with white marble, but most certainly they would anywhere and everywhere have been a great nation. Again, it is equally plain that the influence of soil and climate does not last for ever in its action upon the same nation, for such an idea is flatly contradicted by the decay and old age of nations still residing in the very same settle- ments where they obtained their first fame. It is clear that whatever the secret charm, the subtle potency may be, which is supposed to have created Egyptian or Greek civilization, the wretched condi- tion of both these countries shows that now this magic influence has passed away. The statue of Memnon answers not now in music to the touch of the rising sun. The prophetic fire no longer flashes Lnportancc of both Race a7id Climate. 2S7 from the twin peaks of Mount Parnassus. The very barrenness and sterility which now deform many lands once like the garden of Eden for plenty, show how much an intelligent population was required to develop their resources ; and I conceive Eg}'pt and Babylon are now far nearer a state of nature than they were in their great days of old. If these views be correct, the fertility of the soil was only an addi- tional stimulus to a people already above their fellows in knowledge, who in most cases conquered it from less competent races, and then followed up all the hints suggested them by nature. I am, then, unable to see how either element can be denied from the beginning — the effect of nature upon man, the effect of man upon nature. But the farther back we go, the more powerful is the physical side ; the nearer we approach to our own day, the more supreme is the intelligence of man. Still, as we cannot conceive any future epoch at which the richness of the soil and genialit}' of the climate will have nothing at all to say to civilization, and to the happiness and the riches of life, so I am unable to conceive a period so remote, that the intelligence of some men over others would not in some measure determine where culture should spring up, and where it should fail. I cannot imagine pure ordinary savages taking advantage of any peculiarities of nature or of soil. The North American savages inhabited for endless generations, not only countries where artifi- cial cultivation was necessary to produce results, like the great Salt Lake district, but also other tracts not 2 88 Geography as an Aid and a Hindrance. to be surpassed in the world for richness and for natural advantages, while the Aztecs made out of the high and naturally barren plateau of Mexico a perfect paradise of vegetation. Now, indeed, under the gentle sway of the most Christian of kingdoms, the land of Mexico has returned to what, I suppose, is its state of nature, and is, perhaps, one of the bar- renest parts of Central America. But see how the North Americans of the present day are developing the resources left fallow by the Indians. As far back, then, as history can reach there seem to be original differences of race, as there are of language. History proper knows no time when all the nations of the earth had one language or one average intelligence. Geography, then, appears to me, when considered in its effects in projnoting civilization, to have been extremely important at early periods; less so, but still very important, when national characters became clearly defined; and cannot, therefore, in the judg- ment of history, be regarded as having created, but only as having aided and abetted, the culture and progress of the race. The theory of Mr. Buckle appears to me as if a man should assert that all the differences between individuals were produced by early education and training, and should deny that there were certain peculiarities of form and temper born with us, which we may modify, but cannot era- dicate or destroy. But when we consider geography as a hindra7ice to civilization, we arrive at some cases in which its in- fluence is paramount. It seems hardly possible that Successive Develop7nent of Races. 289 there should be high or early civilization in Labrador or in Sierra Leone ; and there can be no doubt that great forests, or the too rapid and luxurious growth of vegetation, have often kept down races, which ulti- mately, by means of certain helps and impulses from their neighbours, took a high and noble position in the world's history. We have already discussed how the forests of Gaul and Germany, how the great mountain chains of Asia, secreted great peoples from the highroads and thoroughfares of history, until the fulness of time had come, when they were wanted to renew and revive the energies of the human race. There is something very remarkable in this Di- vine Providence, which does not seem to allow more than a certain number of races to develop themselves to their completeness simultaneously — especially in the early times of the world — when such an occur- rence must naturally lead to a jealous rivalry, and hence to wasting and barbarizing wars. So each nation had ample scope, and, in the language of the French historians, fulfilled its destiny. And among the various analogies between individuals and races which strike us when we consider these things, do not forget what I have already mentioned — that the longer a race seems to be in coming to maturity, the better it lasts when it is brought to perfection. You remember, no doubt, the illustration I used. I said that Nature, like a prudent mother, kept back some nations, so to speak, in her nursery, while their con- temporaries were already taking part in the dissipa- tions of the world ; so that when at length these u 290 Precocity of Moderii Children, mature but blooming peoples appeared upon the stage of history, they put to shame, by their fresh complexion and their youthful manner, their care- worn and disappointed contemporaries, who had already grown tired of the laborious pleasures of society. For not only as comparing individual with individual, but as comparing nation with nation, Ave know that those people who physically come latest to maturity, are those whose strength and beauty last the longest. Tacitus specially notices the lateness of marriages among the Germans, as compared to the Italians of his own day, and himself ascribes to it their protracted youth and vigour ; and, perhaps, it is one of the most dangerous elements in an advanced civilization, that our young people come more and more into an atmosphere of luxury — that they are forced artificially, like hot-house plants, and are grown up when they ought to be children. If there be a cause which we may confidently assert contri- butes to the remarkable decay of nations of which I have been speaking, it must surely be this. But I fear I am wandering a little from the subject immediately under discussion, which is, to estimate the effects of geography in hindering civilization. We may, I think, here assert, that in some cases physical conditions have this absolute power, and that there is over the world a gradual scale of condi- tions, becoming more and more favourable as we ap- proach temperate zones ; for we cannot assert that torrid zones, though they developed far the earliest civilization, were the most favourable to progress. Verdict of Physiology. 291 Those climates where the energy of man was pro- moted and stimulated by obstacles, but where these obstacles were not too great to be overcome, must be considered as the most advantageous to the human race. And in these special climates, the reason of the superior culture seems to be, that vigorous races only are able to surmount the difficulties and em- brace the advantages. Nature does not, so to speak, play into their hands, and make them prosper in spite of themselves. In all such cases, then, the question of race becomes all-important, and seems to determine the matter more certainly than geography. Upon all these grounds, ethnology is a necessary companion and adjunct of political geography ; and we cannot undertake to explain the political divisions of the world and its kingdoms, without forming some notions as to the distribution of races over the globe. This subject has only been studied scientifically for a ver)^ few years ; for it was not till the laws of phy- siology, and of the science of language, were applied to it, that any sure results could be obtained. The theory which derives all the varieties of civili- zation from mere physical conditions, has been so fully brought before you in previous lectures, that I cannot conclude without a brief summary of the opposing verdict of these sciences. Physiology, indeed, draws no fundamental distinction between Aryan and Semitic races, but classes both, as Cauca- sian, under the noblest type which the world has yet seen, and which is opposed to innumerable inferior developments. And although the comparative study 292 Verdict of Phy 'siology. of languages and of Religions discovers to us profound differences which separate these nobler races, yet these very features may fairly be summoned to attest the far wider contrast which divides them from anterior and inferior types. The same spirituality which the Semites have infused into their Religion, the Aryans have imported into their Philosophy. The gramma- tical perfection and richness of the Arabic and the Hebrew have their equals in the tongues of the Greeks and the Romans. The inspired rapture of poetry, and the quaint beauty of simple narrative — these literary gifts are common to both races. In all these perfections they stand opposed, not only to the savage races of the globe, which have never shown any capacities for development, but also to the earlier civilizations of Egypt, Babylon, and of China, which excelled in material construction, in material arts, in material comforts, but which never reached those higher ideas that, indeed, raise man to the image of his Creator. The intercourse which the Aryans and Semites have had, first with anterior civilizations, and after- wards with one another, tends to illustrate still farther this contrast. While the Persians and Hebrews bor- rowed from their richer neighbours, not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also all the discoveries in material comforts which they had made, we cannot find that these older races bought from them, in re- turn, that spiritual oil which alone could resuscitate the dying lamp of their civilization. They were unable to understand or to appreciate the gifts of their Results, 293 poorer and simpler neighbours. On the contrary, the Aryans and Semites have been constantly borrow- ing from one another in science, in religion, and in material arts; but both possessed, from their first appearance on the threshold of history, all their spiritual and intellectual characteristics. Even at the present day, some of the most purely religious and nobly moral of the Aryans are far behind the Chinese in all the material comforts of life. But there is hardly an example of their ever being found in a really savage condition, nor have they ever sunk to the level of the lower races; on the contrary, these inferior types have ever seemed unable to co-exist with them, and, from the earliest times, their occu- pation of a country has been the death-warrant of the savage aborigines. So far, then, as our materials reach, we must adopt some such scheme as the following to account for the phenomena of contrasted races in our hemisphere : — First come the inferior races, which seem to have peopled the globe at a date which historians cannot decide, and which is left to geology to determine. These races have been unable to maintain themselves beside more civilized men, and have, accordingly, vanished from Europe and Asia. They are still to be found in Africa, in Australia, and in the South Sea Islands; and along with great varieties in different parts of the world, they are marked everywhere by an utter incapacity for social development, or intel- lectual progress. Secondly, we notice the first ap- pearance of culture on the globe — in Eastern Asia, u 2 2 94 'Results. the Chinese — in Western Asia and Africa, the races called Cushite and Chamitic. But even these states are all marked by a materialistic character. Their religion and poetry were not much developed. They were more disposed to material comfort than to ideal art, and showed great aptitude for all manual ingenuity. Commerce they understood thoroughly, but political and civil life was strange to them ; their constitutions were despotic, and their lower classes slaves; their languages, particularly the Egyptian and Chinese, were monosyllabic, and devoid of grammar ; their writing hieroglyphic or ideographic. In China alone this type of civilization has lasted till our own day. It has been unable to maintain itself, any more than the older type, before the higher races, which were destined to arise in Western Asia. For, thirdly, there appeared the Aryans and Semites, the first in Bactria, the second in Armenia, about two thousand years before the Christian era ; at first vastly inferior to the Cushites in industry, in commerce, and in the material comforts of life, they, from their very origin, differed from them widely in religious and political ideas, in language — in fact, in genius. From a mili- tary and political point of view, and afterwards in rational speculation, the Aryans have taken the lead easily ; but in religious ideas, the Semites have main- tained an almost undivided sway, until they forced their great conceptions upon their otherwise superior rivals. This answer is not contradictory, nor even incon- sistent, with the reply which we have endeavoured to Results. ?95 extract from interrogating physical geography, and which I have endeavoured to put before you to-day. The latter was distinct, but not positive. Do not mis- take or confuse these words. A statement may be very positive, and yet both false and indistinct, when pro- perly examined. A statement may be quite distinct without being the least positive. Indeed, I suppose the greatest benefit you will ever receive from these and all the other lectures in this place is, that it will make your thinking and speaking less positive and more distinct. The distinct answer, then, obtained from geography was this — How long will you allow me to operate upon men, and in what state do I re- ceive them ? If I only have possession of them for three or four thousand years, I can improve them greatly, but cannot create new races or languages ; and I must get them into my hands with some intel- ligence. In the said three or four thousand years I have not been able to bring gorillas and ourang- outangs one step nearer to man, nor have I been able to raise degraded races to a high moral and in- tellectual state ; but I have kept back many races from progress, nay, in some cases, I have gradually killed the seeds of learning and of the enlightenment which they may originally have possessed with bitter frosts or with burning drought. So you see this answer to which we have arrived, after long, and, perhaps, to you, tedious investiga- tions, only leaves us in the presence of greater and deeper problems, the foremost of which is the Anti- quity of Man. But you will never forget that the 296 Results. Search after Truth is in itself a noble and a profit- able pursuit. I shall not press upon you the opinion held by many philosophers — it is even better and nobler than the possession of Truth itself I shall only observe, that as in our sports and amusements we look upon the exercise, and the excitement of the struggle, as no less delightful than the ultimate success, so in the more serious occupations of life, the philosophic mind values the consciousness of having done its best, no less than the satisfaction of a fortunate issue. PnnteJ by COL. COLL. LIBRARY V N. ^'ORjC jy Porteb«&&*6*t ibbs,. lanWiddiGnstStre^^DubHiJ. -1'. * .?♦. : COLUMB A UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 0068098200 ^^ITTLEOOmf pmmopY