ported the phenomena of the sun's course. But we reply to that possible suggestion that in fact it could scarcely have happened. Many other remarkable phenomena of Nigritia had not been reported; or had been dropped out of the record as idle or worthless. Secondly, as slaves they would have obtained little credit, except when falling in with a previous idea or belief. Thirdly, none of these men would be derived from any place to the south of the line, still less south of the southern tropic. Generally they would belong to the northern tropic: and (that being premised) what would have been the true form of the report? Not that they had the sun on the right hand; but that sometimes he was directly vertical, sometimes on the left hand, sometimes on the right. "What, ye black villains! The sun, that never was known to change, unless when he reeled a little at seeing the anthropophagous banquet of Thyestes, he to dance cotillions in this absurd way up and down the heavens, -why, hamstringing is too light a punishment for such insults to Apollo,"

so would a Greek have spoken. And, at least if the report had survived at all, it would have been in this shape as the report of an uncertain movement in the African sun.

But as a regular nautical report made to the Pharaoh of the day, as an extract from the log-book, for this reason, it must be received as unanswerable evidence, as an argument that never can be surmounted on behalf of the voyage, that it contradicted all theories whatsoever-Greek no less than Egyptian-and was irreconcilable with all systems that the wit of men had yet devized [viz. two centuries before Herodotus] for explaining the solar motions. Upon this logic we take our stand. Here is the stronghold, the citadel, of the truth. Many a thing has been fabled, many a thing carefully passed down by tradition as a fact of absolute experience, simply because it fell in with some previous fancy or prejudice of men. And even Baron Munchausen's amusing falsehoods, if examined by a logician, will uniformly be found squared or adjusted-not indeed to a belief-but to a whimsical sort of plausibility, that reconciles the mind to the extravagance for the single instant that is required. If he drives up a hill of snow, and next morning finds his horse and gig

hanging from the top of a church steeple, the monstrous fiction is still countenanced by the sudden thaw that had taken place in the nighttime, and so far physically possible as to be removed beyond the limits of magic. And the very disgust, which revolts us in a supplement to the baron, that we remember to have seen, arises from the neglect of those smooth plausibilities. We are there summoned to believe blank impossibilities, without a particle of the baron's most ingenious and winning speciousness of preparation. The baron candidly admits the impossibility; faces it; regrets it for the sake of truth: but a fact is a fact: and he puts it to our equitywhether we also have not met with strange events. And never in a single instance does the baron build upwards, without a massy foundation of speci ous physical possibility. Whereas the fiction, if it had been a fiction, recorded by Herodotus, is precisely of that order which must have roused the "incredulus odi" in the fulness of perfection. Neither in the wisdom of man, nor in his follies, was there one resource for mitigating the disgust which would have pursued it. This powerful reason for believing the main fact of the circumnavigation-let the reader, courteous or not, if he is but the logical reader, condescend to balance in his judgment.

Other arguments, only less strong on behalf of the voyage, we will not here notice-except this one, most reasonably urged by Rennell, from his peculiar familiarity, even in that day, (1799,) with the currents and the prevalent winds of the Indian ocean; viz. that such a circumnavigation of Africa was almost sure to prosper, if commenced from the Red Sea, (as it was,) and even more sure to fail if taken in the inverse order; that is to say, through the straits of Gibraltar, and so down the western shore of Africa in the first place. Under that order, which was peculiarly tempting for two reasons to a Carthaginian sailor or a Phoenician, Rennell has shown how all the currents, the monsoons, &c., would baffle the navigator; whilst taken in the opposite series, they might easily co-operate with the bold enterprizer, so as to waft him, if once starting at a proper season, almost to the Cape, before (to use Sir Bingo Binks' phrase) he could say dumpling. Accordingly, a Persian

nobleman of high rank, having been allowed to commute his sentence of capital punishment for that of sailing round Africa, did actually fail from the cause developed by Rennell. Naturally he had a Phoenician crew, as the king's best nautical subjects. Naturally they preferred the false route. Naturally they failed. And the nobleman, returning from transportation before his time, as well as re infecta, was executed.

But (ah, villanous word!) some ugly objector puts in his oar, and demands to know-why, if so vast an event had actually occurred, it could ever have been forgotten, or at all have faded: to this we answer briefly, what properly ought to form a separate section in our notice of Herodotus.The event was not so vast as we, with our present knowledge of Africa, should regard it.

This is a very interesting aspect of the subject. We laugh long and loud when we hear Des Cartes (great man as he was) laying it down, amongst the golden rules for guiding his studies, that he would guard himself against all "prejudices;" because we know, that when a prejudice of any class whatever is seen as such, when it is recognised for a prejudice, from that moment it ceases to be a prejudice. Those are the true baffling prejudices for man, which he never suspects for prejudices. How widely, from the truisms of experience, could we illustrate this truth! But we abstain. We content ourselves with this case. Even Major Rennell, starting semi-consciously from his own previous knowledge (the fruit of researches a thousand years later than Herodotus,) lays down an Africa at least ten times too great for meeting the Greek idea. Unavoidably Herodotus knew the Mediterranean dimensions of Africa; else he would have figured it to himself as an island equal, perhaps, to Greece, Macedon, and Thrace. As it was, there is not a doubt to us, from many indications, that the Libya of Herodotus, after all, did not exceed the total bulk of Asia Minor carried eastwards to the Tigris. But there is not such an awful corrupter of truth in the whole world-there is not such an unconquerable enslaver of men's minds, as the blind instinct by which they yield to the ancient root-bound trebly-anchored prejudications of their childhood and original belief. Misconceive

us not, reader. We do not mean that, having learned such and such doctrines, afterwards they cling to them by affection. Not at all. We mean that, duped by a word and the associations clinging to it, they cleave to certain notions, not from any partiality to them, but because this preoccupation intercepts the very earliest dawn of a possible conception or conjecture in the opposite direction. The most tremendous error in human annals is of that order. It has existed for se venteen centuries in strength; and is not yet extinct, though public in its action, as upon another occasion we shall show. In this case of Africa, it was not that men resisted the truth according to the ordinary notion of a "prejudice;" it was, that every commentator in succession upon Herodotus, coming to the case with the fullest knowledge that Africa was a vast continent, ranging far and wide in both hemispheres, unconsciously slipped into the feeling, that this had always been the belief of men; possibly some might a little fall short of the true estimate, some a little exceed it; but that, on the whole, it was at least as truly figured to men's minds as either of the two other continents. Accordingly, one and all have presumed a bulk for the Libya of Herodotus absolutely at war with the whole indications. And, if they had once again read Herodotns under the guiding light furnished by a blank denial of this notion, they would have found a meaning in many a word of Herodotus, such as they never suspected whilst trying it only from one side. In this blind submission to a prejudice of words and clustering associations, Rennell also shares.

It will be retorted, however, that the long time allowed by Herodotus for the voyage argues a corresponding amplitude of dimensions. Doubtless a time upwards of two years, is long for a modern Periplus, even of that vast continent. But Herodotus knew nothing of monsoons, or trade-winds, or currents: he allowed nothing for these accelerating forces, which were enormous, though allowing fully [could any Greek have neglected to allow ?] for all the retarding forces.Daily advances of thirty-three miles at most; nightly reposes, of necessity to men without the compass; above all, a coasting navigation, searching (if it were only for water every nook and

inlet, bay and river's mouth, except only where the winds or currents might violently sweep them past these objects. Then we are to allow for a long stay on the shore of Western Africa, for the sake of reaping, or having reaped by natives, a wheat harvest a fact which strengthens the probability of the voyage, but diminishes the disposable time which Herodotus would use as the exponent of the space. We We must remember the want of sails aloft in ancient vessels, the awkwardness of their build for fast sailing, and, above all, their cautious policy of never tempting the deep, unless when the wind would not be denied. And, in the mean time, all the compensatory forces of air and water, as utterly unsuspected by Herodotus, we must subtract from his final sum. mation of the effective motion, leaving for the actual measure of the sailing, as inferred by Herodotus-consequently for the measure of the virtual time, consequently of the African space, as only to be collected from the time so corrected-a very small proportion indeed, compared with the results of a similar voyage, even by the Portuguese, about A. D. 1500. To Herodotus we are satisfied that Libya (disarming it of its power over the world's mind, in the pompous name of Africa) was not bigger than the true Arabia as known to ourselves.

And hence, also, by a natural result, the obliteration of this Periplus from the minds of men. It accomplished no great service, as men judged. It put a zone about a large region, undoubtedly; but what sort of a region? A mere worthless wilderness, now Ongwong dedicated by the gods to wild beasts, now αμμώδης, trackless from sands, and every where fountainless, arid, scorched (as they believed) in the interior. Subtract Egypt, as not being part, and to the world of civilisation at that time, Africa must have seemed a worthless desert, except for Cyrene and Carthage, its two choice gardens, already occupied by Phoenicians and Greeks. This, by the way, suggests a new consideration, viz., that even the Mediterranean extent of Africa must have been unknown to Herodotus since all beyond Carthage, as Mauritania, &c., would wind up into a small inconsiderable track, as being dispuncted by no great states or colonies.

Therefore it was that this most interesting of all circumnavigations at

the present day did virtually and could not but perish as a vivid record. It measured a region which touched no man's prosperity. It recorded a discovery, for which there was no permanent appreciator. A case exists at this moment in London precisely pa rallel. There is a chart of New Holland still preserved among the xun of the British Museum, which exhibits a Periplus of that vast region, from some navigator, almost by three centuries prior to Captain Cooke. A rude outline of Cooke's labours in that section had been anticipated at a time when it was not wanted. Nobody cared about it: value it had none, or interest; and it was utterly forgotten. That it did not also perish in the literal sense, as well as in spirit, was owing to an accident.

IV. The Geographical AKTE of
Greece.

We had intended to transfer, for the use of our readers, the diagram imagined by Niebuhr in illustration of this idea. But our growing exorbitance from our limits warns us to desist. Two points only we shall notice :—1. That Niebuhr-not the traveller, as might have been expected, but his son, the philosophic historian-first threw light on this idea, which had puzzled multitudes of honest men. Here we

2.

see the same similarity as in the case of Rennell; in that instance, a man without a particle of Greek, "whipped" (to speak Kentuchicé) whole crowds of sleeping drones who had more than they could turn to any good account. And in the other instance, we see a sedentary scholar, travelling chiefly between his study and his bedroom, doing the work that properly belonged to active travellers. Though we have already given one illustration of an Akté in Asia Minor, it may be well to mention, as another, the vast region of Arabia. In fact, to Herodotus the tract of Arabia and Syria on the one hand, made up one akte (the southern) for the Persian empire; Asia Minor, with part of Armenia, made up another akte (the western) for the same empire; the two being at right angles; and both abutting on imaginary lines drawn from different points of the Euphrates.

V.-Chronology of Herodotus.

The commentator on Herodotus, who enjoys the reputation of having

best unfolded his chronology, is the French President Buhier. We cannot say that this opinion coincides with our own. There is a lamentable imbecility in all the chronological commentators, of two opposite tendencies. Either they fall into that folly of drivelling infidelity, which shivers at every fresh revelation of geology, and every fresh romance of fabulous chronology, as fatal to religious truths; or, with wiser feelings but equal silliness, they seek to protect Christianity by feeble parryings, from a danger which exists only for those who never had any rational principles of faith: as if the mighty spiritual power of Christianity were to be thrown upon her defence, as often as any old woman's legend from Hindostan, (see Bailly's Astronomie,) or from Egypt, (see the whole series of chronological commentators on Herodotus,) became immeasurably extravagant, and exactly in proportion to that extravagance. Amongst these latter chronologers, perhaps Larcher is the most false and treacherous. He affects a tragical start as often as he rehearses the traditions of the Egyptian priests, and assumes a holy shuddering. "Eh quoi! Ce seroit donc ces gens-là, qui auroient osé insulter à notre sainte religion!" But, all the while, beneath his mask the reader can perceive, not obscurely, a perfidious smile; as on the face of some indulgent mother, who affects to menace with her hand some favourite child at a distance, whilst the present subject of a stranger's complaint, but, in fact, ill disguises her foolish applause to its petul

ance.

Two remarks only, we shall allow ourselves upon this extensive theme, which, if once entered in good earnest, would go on to a length more than commensurate with all the rest of our discussion.

1. The 330 kings of Egypt, who were interposed by the Egyptian priests, between the endless dynasty of the gods, and the pretty long dynasty of real kings, (the Shepherds, the Pharaohs, &c.,) are upon this argument to be rejected as mere unmeaning fictions, viz. that they did nothing. This argument is reported as a fact, (not as an argument of rejection,) by Herodotus himself, and reported from the volunteer testimony of the priests themselves; so that the authority for the number of kings, is

also the authority for their inertia. Can there be a better proof needed, than that they were mere men of straw, got up to colour the legend of a prodigious antiquity? The reign of the gods was felt to be somewhat equivocal, as susceptible of allegoric explanations. So this long human dynasty, is invented to furnish a substantial basis for the extravagant genealogy. Meantime, the whole 330 are such absolute fainéans, that, confessedly, not one act-not one monument of art or labour-is ascribed to their auspices; whilst every one of the real unquestionable sovereigns, coinciding with known periods in the tradition of Greece, or with undeniable events in the divine simplicity of the Hebrew Scriptures, is memorable for some warlike act, some munificent in. stitution, or some almost imperishable monument of architectural power.

2. But weaker even than the fabling spirit of these genealogical inanities, is the idle attempt to explode them, by turning the years into days. In this way, it is true, we get rid of pretensions to a cloudy antiquity, by wholesale clusters. The moonshine and the fairy tales vanish-but how? To leave us all in a moonless quag mire of substantial difficulties, from which (as has been suggested more than once) there is no extrication at all; for, if the diurnal years are to reconcile us to the 330 kings, what becomes of the incomprehensibly short reigns, (not averaging above two or three months for each,) on the long basis of time assumed by the priests; and this in the most peaceful of realms, and in fatal contradiction to another estimate of the priests, by which the kings are made to tally with as many fv, or generations of men? Herodotus, and doubtless the priests, understood a generation in the sense then universally current, agreeably to which, three generations were valued to a century.

But the questions are endless which grow out of Herodotus. Pliny's Natural History has been usually thought the greatest treasure-house of ancient learning. But we hold that Herodotus furnishes by much the largest basis for vast commentaries revealing the archæologics of the human race: whilst, as the eldest of prose writers, he justifies his majestic station as a brotherly assessor on the same throne with Homer.

ENGLAND! home of the free, asylum of the brave, refuge of refugees, and so forth in heroic prose, and yet more heroic verse, what fine things have, and may be, said and sung on this self-glorifying subject, to the great joy of the gods and goddesses, in one shilling and two shilling galleries! Something about slaves being free the moment they touch British soil, regenerated, disenthralled by the genius of universal emancipation, or some such stuff; we are not sure whether the passage occurs in Curran's Speeches or Tom Thumb, but it takes pit, boxes, and gallery by storm, upon all occasions; it is truly delightful to witness the ardour with which a British auditory compliments itself upon its excursive humanity, transmarine benevolence, and freetrade philanthropy !

There is a disease well-known to opticians, wherein the patient can see distinctly objects a great way off, but is quite incapable of distinguishing such as lie immediately under his nose: the artist applies a spectacle of peculiar construction to remedy this defect: we think it would be a vast advantage to the public in general, if ingenious opticians would turn their attention to a remedy for that longsighted benevolence, which sweeps the distant horizon for objects of compassion, but is blind as a bat to the wretchedness and destitution abounding at their own doors. We confess we think there is an affectation in this gad about benevolence, of which we see now-a-days so much-too much: there seems about it that sort of pitiful ostentation, which induces an Irish gentleman to ask every body he meets to dinner, when he has not dinner enough for his own family at home. We confess we are of opinion that charity, though it need not end, should begin at home; and that it is time enough when severe distress has been relieved at our own door, to walk to the other end of the earth in search of foreign beggars. There is, no doubt, a highly gratifying pride in seeing this free and happy country the asylum of fallen royalty and discomfited revolutionists-the home of the brave, and of the knave-the polar star of

wandering Poles and refugees of all ranks, climes, colours, and nations; but with great respect for Lord Dudley Stuart, there is an order of precedence in charity as in nobility; our fellow-country men demand the pas, and there is quite enough of misery, if we look for it, within the scope of our visible horizon; when we have relieved the pressing necessities of our indigenous tribes, it is quite time enough to cast about for exotics, wherewith to occupy our overflowing benevolence.

We know, of course, that it is nauseous and emetical to be told that our fellow-countrymen starve outside our gates; such recitals of domestic misery interfere with the process of digestion, and, like the sad realities of another place, should never be mentioned in the hearing of ears polite. Nothing can be more vulgar, uninteresting, and anti-sentimental, than the distresses of Hicks, Higgins, Figgins, and Stubbs, and all weavers or others who are neither rebels nor refugeeswho are vulgar enough to work if they can get it-who wear no bristles between their noses and lips, and who have no names ending in rinski !

If you stroll down Regent Street, the Quadrant, and Waterloo Place, any fine afternoon, you cannot fail to remark vast numbers of exotics in glossy black silk hats, with mustaches and whiskers to match, hard, inexpressive coats, flash satin vests, unwhisperables plaited ridiculously over the hips, glazed leather boots, and a profusion of Birmingham jewellery and Bristol stones. These gentry smoke very fast, talk very loud, or rather chatter intolerably, and look killing and impudent at the ladies as they pass.

There is a polished brass knocker at the corner of Grosvenor Square, which, when we have titivated with a burned cork, as we usually do when passing that way, seems the common ancestor of these gentry; certainly they are great fellows, and it is difficult to conceive that the town is not their own. Like Samson, their strength lies in their hair; flowing locks, well-oiled, brushed, and curled, form a fair proportion of their gene