settlements were rare, was notorious to all the world as the flourishing emporium, on the south shore of the Black Sea, of a civilized people, literally hustled by barbarians. Consequently-and this is a point to which all commentators alike are blind-the Danube descends upon the Euxine in a long line running due south. Else, we demand, how could it antistrophise with the Nile? Else, we demand, how could it lie right over against Sinope? Else, we demand, how could it make that right-angled bend to the west in the earlier section of its course, which is presupposed in its perfect analogy to the Nile of Herodotus? If already it were lying east and west in that lower part of its course which approaches the Euxine, what occasion could it offer for a right-angled turn, or for any turn at all-what possibility for any angle whatever between this lower reach and that superior reach so confessedly running eastwards according to all accounts of its derivation? For as respects the Nile, by way of close to this article, it remains to in form the reader-that Herodotus had evidently met in Upper Egypt slaves or captives in war from the regions of Soudan, Tombuctoo, &c. This is the opinion of Rennell, of Browne the visiter of the Ammonian Oasis, and many other principal authorities; and for a reason which we always regard with more respect, though it were the weakest of reasons, than all the authorities of this world clubbed together. And this reason was the coincidence of what Herodotus reports, with the truth of facts first ascertained thousands of years later. These slaves, or some people from those quarters, had told him of a vast river lying east and west, of course the Niger, but (as he and they supposed) a superior section of the Nile; and therefore, by geometrical necessity, falling at right angles upon that other section of the Nile so familiar to himself lying south and north. Hence arose a faith that is not primarily hence, but hence in combination with a previous construction existing in his mind for the geometry of the Danube, that the two rivers Danube and Nile had a mystic relation as arctic and antarctic powers over man. Herodotus had been taught to figure the Danube as a stream of two main inclinations-an upper section rising in the extreme west of Europe, (possibly in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh,) whence he traveled with the arrow's flight due east in search of his wife the Euxine; but somewhere in the middle of his course, hearing that her dwelling lay far to the south, and having then completed his distance in longitude, afterwards he ran down his latitude with the headlong precipitation of a lover, and surprised the bride due north from Sinope. This construction it was of the Danube's course which subsequently, upon his hearing of a corresponding western limb for the Nile, led him to perceive the completion of that analogy between the two rivers, its absolute perfection, which already he had partially suspected. Their very figurations now appeared to reflect and repeat each other in solemn mimicry, as previously he had discovered the mimical correspondence of their functions; for this latter doctrine had been revealed to him by the Egyptian priests, then the chief depositaries of Egyptian learning. They had informed him, and evidently had persuaded him, that already more than once the sun had gone round to the region of Europe; pursuing his diurnal arch as far to the north of Greece as now he did to the south; and carrying in his equipage all the changes of every kind which were required to make Scythia an Egypt, and consequently to make the Istros a Nile. The same annual swelling then filled the channel of the Danube, which at present gladdens the Nile. The same luxuriance of vegetation succeeded as a dowery to the gay summer land of Trans-Euxine and Para-Danubian Europe, which for thousands of years had seemed the peculiar heirloom of Egypt. Old Boreas, we are glad of that, was required to pack up "his alls," and be off; his new business was to plague the black rascals, and to bake them with hoar-frost; which must have caused them to shake their ears in some astonishment for a few centuries, until they got used to it. "the sweet south wind" of the ancient mariner, leaving Africa, pursued "the mariner's holloa" all over the Euxine and the Palus Mæotis. The Danube, in short, became the Nile; and the same deadly curiosity haunted its fountains. So that many a long-legged Bruce would strike off in those days towards Charlotte Square. But all in vain : "Nec licuit populis"or, stop, to save the metre Whereas "Nec poteras, Charlotte, populis tum parva videri." Nobody would reach the fountains; particularly as there would be another arm, El-Abiad or white river, perhaps at Stockbridge. However, the explorers must have "burned" strongly (as children say at hide-and-seek) when they attained a point so near to the fountains as Blackwood's Magazine, which doubtless was going on pretty well in those days. We are sorry that Herodotus should have been so vague and uncircumstantial in his account of these vicissitudes; since it is pretty evident to any man who reflects on the case-that, had he pursued the train of changes inevitable to Egypt under the one single revolution affecting the Nile itself as a slime-depositing river, his judicious intellect would soon have descried the obliteration of the whole Egyptian valley, (elsewhere he himself calls that valley dagov Tou Nuhou-a gift of the Nile,) consequently the obliteration of the people, consequently the immemorial extinction of all those records (or, if they were posterior to the last revolution in favour of Egypt, at any rate of the one record) which could have transmitted the memory of such an astonishing transfer. Meantime the reader is now in possession of the whole theory contemplated by Herodotus. It was no mere lusus naturæ that the one river repeated the other, and as it were mocked the other, in form and geographical relations. It was no joke that lurked under that mask of resemblance. Each was the other al ternately. It was the case of Castor and Pollux, one brother rising as the other set. The Danube could always comfort himself with the idea-that he was the Nile "elect;" the other, or provisional Nile, only "continuing to hold the seals until his successor should be installed in office." The Nile, in fact, appears to have the best of it in our time; but then there is "a braw time coming," and, after all, swelling as he is with annual conceit, father Nile, in Parliamentary phrase, is but "the warming-pan" for the Danube; keeping the office warm for him. A new administration is form ed, and out he goes bag and baggage. It is less important, however, for us, though far more so for the two rivers, to speculate on the reversion of their final prospects, than upon the present symbols of this reversion in the unity of their forms. That is, it less concerns us to deduce the harmony of their functions from the harmony of their geographical courses, than to abide by the inverse argument-that, where the former harmony was so loudly inferred from the latter, at any rate, that fact will demonstrate the existence of the latter harmony in the judgment and faith of Herodotus. He could not possibly have insisted on the analogy between the two channels geographically, as good in logic for authenticating a secret and prophetic analogy between their alternating offices, but that at least he must firmly have believed in the first of these analogies-as already existing and open to the verification of the human eye. The second or ulterior analogy might be false, and yet affect only its own separate credit, whilst the falsehood of the first was ruinous to the credit of both. Whence it is evident, that, of the two resemblances in form and function, the resemblance in form was the least disputable of the two for Herodotus. This argument, and the others which we have indicated, and amongst those others, above all, the position of the Danube's mouths right over against a city situated as was Sinope, (i. e. not doubtfully emerging from either flank of the Euxine, west or east, but broadly and almost centrally planted on the southern basis of that sea,) we offer, as a body of demonstrative proof, that, to the mature faith of Herodotus, the Danube or Istros ran north and south in its Euxine section, and that its right-angled section ran west and east-a very important element towards the true Europe of Herodotus, which (as we contend) has not yet been justly conceived or figured by his geographical commen tators. III.-On the Africa of Herodotus. There is an amusing blunder on this subject committed by Major Rennell. How often do we hear people commenting on the Scriptures, and raising up aerial edifices of argument, in which every iota of the logic rests, unconsciously to themselves, upon the accidental words of the English version, and melts away when applied to the original text; so that, in fact, the whole has no more strength than if it were built upon a pun or an équivoque. Such is the blunder of the excellent Major. And it is not timidly expressed. At p. 410, Geog. Syst. of Herodotus, he thus delivers himself:"Although the term Lybia" (so thus does Rennell always spell it, instead of Libya) “is occasionally used by Herodotus as synonymous to Africa, (especially in Melpom., &c. &c.,) yet it is almost exclusively applied to that part bordering on the Mediterranean Sea between the Greater Syrtis and Egypt;" and he concludes the paragraph thus: "So that Africa, and not Lybia, is the term generally employed by Herodotus." We stared on reading these words, as Aladdin stared when he found his palace missing; and the old thief, who had bought his lamp, trotting off with it on his back far beyond the bills of mortality. Naturally we concluded that it was ourselves who must be dreaming, and not the Major; so, taking a bed-candle, off we marched to bed. But the next morning, air clear and frosty, ourselves sagacious as a greyhound, we pounced at first sight on the self-same words. Thus, after all, it was the conceit mantling in our brain (of being in that instance a cut above the Major) which turned out to be the sober truth; and our modesty, our sobriety of mind, it was which turned out a windy tympany. Certainly, said we, if this be so, and that the word Africa is really standing in Herodotus, then it must be like that secret island called Exße, lying in some Egyptian lake, which was reported to Herodotus as having concealed itself from human eyes for 504 years-a capital place it must have been against duns and the sheriff; for it was an English mile in diameter, and yet no man could see it until a fugitive king, happening to be hard pressed in the rear, dived into the water, and came up to the light in the good little island; where he lived happily for fifty years, and every day got bousy as a piper, in spite of all his enemies, who were roaming about the lake night and day to catch his most gracious majesty. He was king of Elbo, at least, if he had no particular subjects but himself, as Nap was in our days of Elba; and perhaps both were less plagued with rebels than when sitting on the ampler thrones of Egypt and France. But surely the good Major must have dreamed a dream about this word Africa; for how would it look in Ionic Greek-An? Did any man ever see such a word? However, let not the reader believe that we are triumphing meanly in the advantage of our Greek. Milton, in one of his contro. versial works, exposing an insolent antagonist who pretended to a knowledge of Hebrew, which in fact he had not, remarks, that the man must be ignoble, whoever he were, that would catch at a spurious credit, though it were but from a language which really he did not understand. But so far was Major Rennell from doing this, that, when no call upon him existed for saying one word upon the subject, frankly he volunteered a confession to all the world—that Greek he had none. The marvel is the greater that, as Saunderson, blind from his infancy, was the best lecturer on colours early in the eighteenth century, so by far the best commentator on the Greek Herodotus has proved to be a military man, who knew nothing at all of Greek. Yes, mark the excellence of upright dealing. Had Major Rennell pretended to Greek, were it but as much as went to the spelling of the word Africa, here was he a lost man. Blackwood's Magazine would now have exposed him. Whereas, things being as they are, we respect him and admire him sincerely. And, as to his wanting this one accomplishment, every man wants some. We ourselves can neither dance a hornpipe nor whistle Jim Crow, without driving the whole musical world into black despair. Africa, mean time, is a word imported into Herodotus by Mr Beloe; whose name, we have been given to understand, was pronounced like that of our old domestic friend the bellows, shorn of the s; and whose translation, judging from such extracts as we have seen in books, may be better than Littlebury's; but, if so, we should be driven into a mournful opinion of Mr Littlebury. Strange that nearly all the classics, Roman as well as Greek, should be so meanly represented by their English reproducers. The French translators, it is true, are worse as a body. But in this particular instance of Herodotus they have a respectable translator, Larcher read Greek sufficiently; and was as much master of his author's peculiar learning as any one general commentator that can be mentioned. But Africa the thing, not Africa the name, is that which puzzles all students of Herodotus, as, indeed, no little it puzzled Herodotus himself. Rennell makes one difficulty where in fact there is none; viz. that sometimes Herodotus refers Egypt to Libya, and sometimes refuses to do so. But in this there is no inconsistency, and no forgetfulness. Herodotus wisely adopted the excellent rule of "thinking with the learned, and talking with the people." Having once firmly explained his reasons for holding Egypt to be neither an Asiatic nor an African, but the neutral frontier artificially created by the Nile, as a long corridor of separation between Asia and Africa, afterwards, and generally, he is too little of a pedant to make war upon current forms of speech. What is the use of drawing off men's attention, in questions about things, by impertinent provisions of diction or by alien theories? Some people have made it a question -Whether Great Britain were not extra-European? and the Island of Crete is generally assumed to be so. Some lawyers also, nay, some courts of justice, have entertained the question-Whether a man could be held related to his own mother? Not as though too remotely related, but as too nearly, and in fact absorbed within the lunar beams. Yet, in all such cases, the publicist-the geographer -the lawyer, continue to talk as other people do; and, assuredly, the lawyer would regard a witness as perjured who should say, in speaking of a woman notoriously his mother, "Oh! I do assure you, sir, the woman is no relation of mine." The world of that day (and, indeed, it is not much more candid even now) would have it that Libya comprehended Egypt; and Herodotus, like the wise man that he was, having once or twice lodged his protest against that idea, then replies to the world-" Very well, if you say so, it is so;" precisely as Petruchio's wife, to soothe her mad husband, agrees that the sun is the moon; and, back again, that it is not the moon. Here there is no real difficulty; for the arguments of Herodotus are of two separate classes, and both too strong to leave any doubt that his private opinion never varied by a hair'sbreadth on this question. And it was a question far from verbal, of which reflecting on the disputes, at different any man may convince himself by periods, with regard to Macedon (both Macedonis the original germ, and Macedonia the expanded kingdom) as a claimant of co-membership in the household of Greece: or on the disputes, more angry if less scornful, between Carthage and Cyrene as to the true limits between the daughter of Tyre and the daughter of Greece. The very colour of the soil in Egyptrich black loam, precipitated by the creative river-already symbolized to Herodotus the deep repulsion lying between Egypt on the one side, and Libya, where all was red; between Egypt on the other side, and Asia, where all was calcined into white sand. And, as to the name, does not the reader catch us still using the word "Africa" instead of Libya, after all our sparring against that word as scarcely known by possibility to Herodotus? But, beyond this controversy as to the true marches or frontier lines of the two great continents in commonAsia and Africa-there was another and a more grave one as to the size, shape, and limitations of Africa in particular. It is true that both Europe and Asia were imperfectly defined for Herodotus. But he fancied otherwise; for them he could trace a vague, rambling outline. Not so for Africa, unless a great event in Egyptian records were adopted for true. This was the voyage of circumnavigation accomplished under the orders of Pharaoh Necho. Disallowing this earliest recorded Periplus, then no man could say of Africa whether it were a large island or a boundless continent having no outline traceable by man, or (which, doubtless, would have been the favourite creed) whether it were not a technical akté such as Asia Minor; that is, not a peninsula like the Peloponnesus, or the tongues of land near Mount Athos-because in that case the idea required a narrow neck or isthmus at the point of junction with the adjacent continent-but a square, tabular plate of ground, "a block of ground" (as the Americans say) having three sides washed by some sea, but a fourth side absolutely untouched by any sea whatever. this word aklé, as a term but recently On 1842.] drawn out of obscurity, we shall say Then he VOL. LI. NO. CCCXV. non (for to them it was inexplicable) a B |