chausen, he was saluted as the "father of lies." Now, on these calumnies, it is pleasant to know that his most fervent admirer no longer feels it requisite to utter one word in the way of complaint or vindication. Time has carried him round to the diametrical counterpole of estimation. Examination and more learned study have justified every iota of those statements to which he pledged his own private authority. His chronology is better to this day than any single system opposed to it. His dimensions and distances are so far superior to those of later travellers, whose hands were strengthened by all the powers of military command and regal autocracy, that Major Rennell, upon a deliberate retrospect of his works, preferred his authority to that of those who came after him as conquerors and ru lers of the kingdoms which he had described as a simple traveller; nay, to the late authority of those who had conquered those conquerors. It is gratifying that a judge, so just and thoughtful as the Major, should declare the reports of Alexander's officers on the distances and stations in the Asiatic part of his empire, less trustworthy by much than the reports of Herodotus: yet, who was more liberally devoted to science than Alexander? or what were the humble powers of the foot traveller in comparison with those of the mighty earthshaker, for whom prophecy had been on the watch for centuries? It is gratifying, that a judge like the Major should find the same advantage on the side of Herodotus, as to the distances in the Egyptian and Lybian part of this empire, on a comparison with the most accomplished of Romans, Pliny, Strabo, Ptolemy, (for all are Romans who benefited by any Roman machinery,) coming five and six centuries later. We indeed hold the accuracy of Herodotus to be all but marvellous, considering the wretched apparatus which he could then command in the popular measures. The stadium, it is true, was more accurate, because less equivocal in those Grecian days, than afterwards, when it inter-oscillated with the Roman stadium; but all the multiples of that stadium, such as the schoenus, the Persian parasang, or the military stathmus, were only less vague than the coss of Hindostan in their ideal standards, and as fluc

tuating practically as are all computed distances at all times and places. The close approximations of Herodotus to the returns of distances upon caravan routes of 500 miles by the most vigi lant of modern travellers, checked by the caravan controllers, is a bitter retort upon his calumniators. And, as to the consummation of the insults against him in the charge of wilful falsehood, we explain it out of hasty reading and slight acquaintance with Greek. The sensibility of Herodo. tus to his own future character in this respect, under a deep consciousness of his upright forbearance on the one side, and of the extreme liability on the other side to uncharitable construction for any man moving amongst Egyptian thaumaturgical traditions, comes forward continually in his anxious distinctions between what he gives on his own ocular experience (ofis—) what upon his own enquiries, or combination of enquiries with previous knowledge (iorogin)—what upon hearsay (ax)-what upon current tradition (oys.) And the evidences are multiplied over and above these distinctions, of the irritation which besieged his mind as to the future wrongs he might sustain from the careless and the unprincipled. Had truth been less precious in his eyes, was it tolerable to be supposed a liar for so vulgar an object as that of creating a stare by wonder-making? The high-minded Grecian, justly proud of his superb intellectual resources for taking captive the imaginations of his half-polished countrymen, disdained such base artifices, which belong more properly to an effeminate and over-stimulated stage of civilization. And, once for all, he had announced at an early point as the principle of his work, as what ran along the whole line of his statements by way of basis or subsumption, (παρα παντα τον λόγον ὑποκειται) – that he wrote upon the faith of hearsay from the Egyptians severally: meaning by "severally," (ixar)—that he did not adopt any chance hearsay, but such as was guaranteed by the men who presided over each several department of Egyptian official or ceremonial life.

Having thus said something towards re-vindicating for Herodotus his proper station-first, as a power in literature; next, as a geographer, economist, mythologist, antiquary,

ing of the western tribes, not always by bodily presence, but by the actio in distans of politics. And the birth of Herodotus was precisely in the seventy-first year from that period. It is the greatest of periods that is concerned. And we also as willingly, we repeat, would offer our contingent. What we propose to do, is to bring forward two or three important suggestions of others not yet popularly known-shaping and pointing, if possible, their application-brightening their justice, or strengthening their outlines. And with these we propose to intermingle one or two suggestions, more exclusively our

own.

I.-The Non-Planetary Earth of Herodotus in its relation to the Planetary Sun.

Mr Hermann Bobrik is the first torchbearer to Herodotus who has thrown a strong light on his theory of the earth's relation to the solar system. This is one of the præcognita, literally indispensable to the comprehension of the geographical basis assumed by Herodotus. And it is really interesting to see how one original error had drawn after it a train of others-how one restoration of light has now illuminated a whole hemisphere of objects. We suppose it the very next thing to a fatal impossibility, that any man should at once rid his mind so profoundly of all natural biases from education, or almost from human instinct, as barely to suspect the physical theory of Herodotus-barely to imagine the idea of a divorce occurring in any theory between the solar orb and the great phenomena of summer and winter. Prejudications, having the force of a necessity, had blinded generation after generation of students to the very admission in limine of such a theory as could go the length of dethroning the sun himself from all influence over the great vicissitudes of heat and cold -seed-time and harvest-for man. They did not see what actually was, what lay broadly below their eyes, in Herodotus, because it seemed too fantastic a dream to suppose that it could be. The case is far more common than feeble psychologists imagine. Numerous are the instances in which we actually see-not that which is really there to be seen-but that which we believe à priori ought to be

there. And in cases so palpable as that of an external sense, it is not dif ficult to set the student on his guard. But in cases more intellectual or moral, like several in Herodotus, it is difficult for the teacher himself to be effectually vigilant. It was not any thing actually seen by Herodotus which led him into denying the solar functions; it was his own independent speculation. This suggested to him a plausible hypothesis; plausible it was for that age of the world; and afterwards, on applying it to the actual difficulties of the case, this hypothesis seemed so far good, that it did really unlock them. The case stood thus:-Herodotus contemplated Cold not as a mere privation of Heat, but as a positive quality; quite as much entitled to "high consideration," in the language of ambassadors, as its rival heat; and quite as much to a "retiring pension," in case of being superannuated. Thus we all know, from Addison's fine raillery, that a certain philosopher regarded darkness not at all as any result from the absence of light, but fancied that, as some heavenly bodies are luminaries, so others (which he called tenebrific stars) might have the office of "raying out positive darkness." In . the infancy of science, the idea is natural to the human mind; and we remember hearing a great man of our own times declare, that no sense of conscious power had ever so vividly dilated his mind, nothing so like a revelation, as when one day in broad sunshine, whilst yet a child, he discovered that his own shadow, which he had often angrily hunted, was no real existence, but a mere hindering of the sun's light from filling up the space screened by his own body. The old grudge, which he cherished against this coy fugitive shadow, melted away in the rapture of this great discovery. To him the discovery had doubtless been originally half-suggested by explanations of his elders imperfectly comprehended. But in itself the distinction between the affirmative and the negative is a step perhaps the most costly in effort of any that the human mind is summoned to take; and the greatest indulgence is due to those early stages of civilization when this step had not been taken. For Herodotus, there existed two great counter-forces in absolute hostility— heat and cold; and these forces were

incarnated in the WINDS. It was the north and north-east wind, not any distance of the sun, which radiated cold and frost; it was the southern wind from Ethiopia, not at all the sun, which radiated heat. But could a man so sagacious as Herodotus stand with his ample Grecian forehead exposed to the noonday sun, and suspect no part of the calorific agency to be seated in the sun? Certainly he could not. But this partial agency is no more than what we of this day allow to secondary or tertiary causes apart from the principal. We, that regard the sun as upon the whole our planetary fountain of light, yet recog. nise an electrical aurora, a zodiacal light, &c., as substitutes not palpably dependent. We, that regard the sun as upon the whole our fountain of heat, yet recognise many co-operative, many modifying forces having the same office-such as the local configuration of ground-such as sea neighbourhoods or land neighbourhoods, marshes or none, forests or none, strata of soil fitted to retain heat and fund it, or to disperse it and cool it. Precisely in the same way Herodotus did allow an agency to the sun upon the daily range of heat, though he allowed none to the same luminary in regulating the annual range. What caused the spring and autumn, the summer and winter, (though generally in those ages there were but two seasons recognised,) was the action of the winds. The diurnal arch of heat (as we may call it) ascending from sunrise to some hour, (say two p. m.,) when the sum of the two heats (the funded annual heat and the fresh increments of daily heat) reaches its maximum, and the descending limb of the same arch from this hour to sunset-this he explained entirely out of the sun's daily revolution, which to him was, of course, no apparent motion, but a real one in the sun. It is truly amusing to hear the great man's infantine simplicity in describing the effects of this solar journey. The sun rises, it seems, in India; and these poor Indians, roasted by whole nations at breakfast-time, are then up to their chins in water, whilst we thankless Westerns are taking "tea and toast" at our ease. However, it is a long lane which has no turning; and by noon the sun has driven so many stages away from India, that the poor creatures begin to come out of their

rivers, and really find things tolerably comfortable. India is now cooled down to a balmy Grecian temperature. "All right behind!" as the mail-coach guards observe; but not quite right a-head, where the sun is racing away over the boiling brains of the Ethiopians, Lybians, &c., and driving Jupiter- Ammon perfectly distracted with his furnace. But, when things are at the worst, the proverb assures us that they will mend. And for an early five o'clock dinner, Ethiopia finds that she has no great reason to complain. All civilized people are now cool and happy for the rest of the day. But, as to the woolly-headed rascals on the west coast of Africa, they "catch it" towards sunset, and "no mistake." Yet why trouble our heads about inconsiderable black fellows like them, who have been cool all day whilst better men were melting away by pailfuls? And such is the history of a summer's day in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. As to little Greece, she is but skirted by the sun, who keeps away far to the south; thus she is maintained in a charming state of equili brium by her fortunate position on the very frontier line of the fierce Boreas and the too voluptuous Notos.

Meantime one effect follows from this transfer of the solar functions to the winds, which has not been remarked,

viz. that Herodotus has a double north; one governed by the old noisy Boreas, another by the silent constellation Arktos. And the consequence of this fluctuating north, as might be guessed, is the want of any true north at all; for the two points of the wind and the constellation do not coincide in the first place; and secondly, the wind does not coincide with itself, but naturally traverses through a few points right and left. Next, the east also will be indeterminate from a different cause. Had Herodotus lived in a high northern latitude, there is no doubt that the ample range of difference between the northerly points of rising in the summer and the southerly in winter, would have forced his attention upon the fact, that only at the equinox, vernal or autumnal, does the sun's rising accurately coincide with the east.

But in his Ionian climate, the deflexions either way, to the north or to the south, were too inconsiderable to force themselves upon the eye; and thus a more indeterminate east

would arise-never rigorously corrected, because requiring so moderate a correction. Now, a vague unsettled east, would support a vague unsettled north. And of course, through whatever arch of variations either of these points vibrated, precisely upon that scale the west and the south would follow them.

Thus arises, upon a simple and easy genesis, that condition of the compass (to use the word by anticipation) which must have tended to confuse the geographical system of Herodotus, and which does in fact account for the else unaccountable obscurities in some of its leading features. These anomalous features would, on their own account, have deserved notice; but now, after this explanation, they will have a separate value of illustrative proofs in relation to the present article, No. I.

II.-The Danube of Herodotus considered as a counterpole to the Nile.

There is nothing more perplexing to some of the many commentators on Herodotus than all which he says of the river Danube; nor any thing easier, under the preparation of the preceding article. The Danube, or, in the nomenclature of Herodotus, the Istros, is described as being in all respects saganana, by which we must understand corresponding rigorously, but antistrophically, (as the Greeks express it,) similar angles, similar dimensions, but in an inverse order, to the Egyptian Nile. The Nile, in its notorious section, flows from south to north. Consequently the Danube, by the rule of parallelism, ought to flow through a corresponding section from north to south. But, say the commentators, it does not. Now, verbally they might seem wrong; but substantially, as regards the justification of Herodotus, they are right. Our business, however, is not to justify Herodotus, but to explain him. Undoubtedly there is a point about 150 miles east of Vienna, where the Danube descends almost due south for a space of 300 miles; and this is a very memorable reach of the river; for somewhere within that long corridor of land which lies between itself, (this Danube section,) and a direct parallel section, equally long, of the Hungarian river Theiss, once lay, in the fifth century, the royal city or encampment of Attila. Gibbon placed

the city in the northern part of this corridor, (or, strictly speaking, this Mesopotamia,) consequently about 200 miles to the east of Vienna: but others, and especially Hungarian writers, better acquainted by personal examination with the ground, remove it 150 miles more to the south-that is, to the centre of the corridor, (or gallery of land inclosed by the two rivers.) Now, undoubtedly, except along the margin of this Attila's corridor, there is no considerable section of the Danube which flows southward; and this will not answer the postulates of Herodotus. Generally speaking, the Danube holds a headlong course to the east. Undoubtedly this must be granted; and so far it might seem hopeless to seek for that kind of parallelism to the Nile which Herodotus asserts. But the question for us does not concern what is or then was the question is solely about what Herodotus can be shown to have meant. And here comes in, seasonably and serviceably, that vagueness as to the points of the compass which we have explained in the preceding article. This, connected with the positive assertion of Herodotus as to an inverse correspondency with the Nile, (north and south, therefore, as the antistrophe to south and north,) would place beyond a doubt the creed of Herodotus-which is the question that concerns us. And, vice versa, this creed of Herodotus as to the course of the Danube, in its main latter section when approaching the Euxine Sea, re-acts to confirm all we have said, proprio marte, on the indeterminate articulation of the Ionian compass then current. Here we have at once the a priori reasons making it probable that Herodotus would have a vagrant compass; secondly, many separate instances comfirming this probability; thirdly, the particular instance of the Danube, as antistrophising with the Nile, not reconcilable with any other principle; and fourthly, the following independent demonstration, that the Ionian compass must have been confused in its leading divisions. Mark, reader, Herodotus terminates his account of the Danube and its course, by affirming that this mighty river enters the Euxine-at what point? in what direction? Opposite, says he, to Sinope. Could that have been imagined? Sinope, being a Greek settlement in a region where such