without an application of these opinions to the purposes of daily life, led them ultimately into the most extravagant excesses of idolatry and vice. It was simply knowledge without wisdom which they possessed, the imbibing! of an abstract religion into the head, through an implicit faith, without being habituated to its duties, through a previous cultivation of the feelings and habits. Whereas their knowledge of the physical sciences was called into immediate action, and thus the arts flourished. "Every man," we are told, "had his way of life assigned to him, and it was perpetuated from father to son. Two professions at one time, or a change from that which a man was born to, were never allowed. By this means men became more able and expert in employments which they had always exercised from infancy, and every man adding his own experience to that of his ancestors, was more capable of attaining perfection in his particular art. From this source flowed numberless inventions for the improvement of all the arts, and for rendering life more easy and commodious." It was, therefore, to this system) of professional and practical training, not to its abstract speculations, that Egypt owed its riches and plenty, its glory and magnificence. It was this linking of art to science, of practice to invention, that opened up those fountains of wisdom which flowed forth into all lards, and of which Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, Lycurgus, Solon, and a host of other sages and philosophers imbibed their earliest draughts.

Turning from Egypt, as the land on which the artificial light of education first dawned, to other countries, we see in many of them a reflection of the same errors just mentioned, but operating with a more or less baneful influence, according to the various habits of the people and their different degrees of intelligence. And in proportion to the ignorance of each country, or its

distance from the source whence the light of metaphysical knowledge first streamed, does the mere reflection of the light itself become fainter, tending rather to bewilder than enlighten the people. It is like a benighted traveller proceeding on his way by the rays of a lamp that illuminate only a small circle around his path, but as an impenetrable wall of darkness lies beyond, he suddenly stumbles into some pitfall, or loses his footing on the brink of a precipice. Had he trusted only to the natural light of the heavens, his vision would have commanded a wider range, and if it was less brilliant, it would not at least have dazzled and deceived him; or, if not thus fatal, the glare falling upon surrounding objects, rendering them hideous and distorted to his sight, would only incite his terror and alarm, paralysing his reason and conjuring up to his mind the most uncouth fancies.

In Carthage, there is a striking instance of the baneful effects of mythological terrorism in the cruel habits it induced among the people, and the mischievous power afforded by the partial light of science, in distorting human nature, when under the influence of selfish motives. The training of a national character is in every respect similar to that of individual education. It is the feelings and affections of the heart which furnish the impulses of conduct; and whatever be the particular bias given to the former in infancy, the conduct through life will have a tendency in the same direction. Carthage, the daughter of Tyre, the most commercial city in the world, inherited all her parent's propensities for traffic, and these being brought into vigorous activity by means of the wealth of Dido, between her followers and the surrounding inhabitants of Utica, at once stamped a commercial character upon the infant colony.

The manners, language, customs, laws, and religion of

the Carthaginians, were all grafted upon a spirit of commercial enterprise, or arose out of it. The people were descended from the Tyrians, whose language they spoke, which was a dialect or collateral branch of the Hebrew and Canaanitish, and they were called Pœni, or Phoni, because they originally came from Phenicia. Here it was, then, that letters were invented, and the Pœnic, or Punic, or Carthaginian language had also its birth.

Let it be remarked here, that in its first application as a vehicle for diffusing the previous knowledge of a people, literal writing can only be employed in making a translation or decipheration of hieroglyphics. In doing so, the names of the pictures are substituted for the pictures themselves. The relation and position these bear to one another, are thus capable of being explained and elucidated by conjunctive and auxiliary words. In symbols this connexion may be understood by the initiated, but cannot be represented except in literal writing. Hence the origin of the metaphor and allegory, which simply arise out of a series of objects deciphered into their respective names, their connexion illustrated by additional words, and the whole forming a continuous tale or narrative. Thus the ideas originally intended to be conveyed become enveloped in a double vehicle, and their esoteric sense rendered more obscure. But the exoteric or outward meaning of such allegories immediately appeals to the concrete understanding of a rude people, and while it captivates their fancy, finds a ready access to their faith.

Even at the present day, on looking back through the transparencies of modern literature upon those images and spectral forms that mark its commencement, standing out in bold relief through the long vista of centuries, one is apt to smile at the grossness of the writer's conceptions of metaphysical truths, or merely to be

pleased with the beautiful fictions detailed; but a closer examination often shows that those personifications embody the most beautiful moral lessons and correct facts. For example, when Homer, in describing the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon in the war council of the Greeks, in which the former was in the act of drawing his sword against the "king of men," wishes to show that the prudence of Achilles on second thoughts withheld his hand, he introduces Minerva, who is represented as laying her hand upon the warrior's arm, and whispering counsel into his ear. Wisdom, or prudence, is here personified as a goddess interfering in the affairs of men. But while Homer meant to convey no fiction by this mode of expression, it was enough to create or perpetuate a belief in the existence of such a being. In this allegorical form, therefore, was it, that the mythology of Egypt was transfused into all languages derived from the same source, and would lend a deeper shade to the peculiar characteristics of any people. To an uncivilised or unintellectual people it would evolve a religion of fear, superstition, and cruelty; in a country of higher mental capabilities it would lay the foundation of poetry and romance.

The genius of the Carthaginian people, it has been said, was entirely commercial, and even its warlike character was but an emanation of the same spirit. The necessity of defending their commerce from neighbouring nations, and of extending it and their empire, led them into incessant wars; but the basis of their common wealth and the grand spring of all their enterprises was their predominant passion for gain. All their talents were directed to this end; their chief glory consisted in amassing riches, of the use of which, after all, they knew but little. A course of national training such as this,

could not but meet with its due reward in raising their nation to a high pitch of splendour and glory. But was the happiness of the people increased in a corresponding degree? or could the pure selfishness of such a grasping principle effect anything but a demoralisation of their habits? It was an excessive training of the acquisitive faculty, rendering all the other powers of the mind subservient to its gratification. The guiding motive, indeed, was not only self-gratification but a gratification of the most selfish principle in human nature. It was the miser's feverish anxiety to accumulate wealth, without regard to the advantages it confers in promoting the elegances of life, the cultivation of the mind, or the highest of all luxuries, the power of doing good to others. Hence their education was confined to writing, arithmetic, book-keeping, and whatever related to traffic; but polite learning, history, eloquence, poetry, and philosophy, seem to have been little known among them; so that, in the course of seven hundred years, Carthage cannot boast of more than three or four writers of any reputation.

Nor did their intercourse with Greece and other civilised nations inspire more ennobling sentiments, so utterly prostrated were all the higher aspirations of the national mind before the sordid and engrossing love of gain. And it is a melancholy but true picture of the tendency of the same disposition in every individual that Cicero draws, in describing that of the Carthaginians, when he says, "their distinguishing characteristics are craft, skill, address, industry, cunning, (calliditas,) which, doubtless, appeared in war, but was still more conspicuous in the rest of their conduct, and this was joined to another quality that bears a very near relation to it, and is still less reputable. Craft and cunning