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, cff 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 Exß, 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-AQgizn? 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. pe 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 dant 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 any man may convince himself by reflecting on the disputes, at different 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. On this word aklé, as a term but recently drawn out of obscurity, we shall say a word or two further on; at present we proceed with the great African Periplus. We, like the rest of this world, held this to be a pure fable, so long as we had never anxiously studied the ancient geography, and consequently had never meditated on the circumstances of this story under the light of that geography, or of the current astronomy. But we have since greatly changed our opinion. And, though it would not have shaken that opinion to find Rennell dissenting, undoubtedly it much strengthened our opinion to find so cautious a judge concurring. Perhaps the very strongest argument in favour of the voyage, if we speak of any single argument, is that which Rennell insists on-namely, the sole circumstance reported by the voyagers which Herodotus pronounced incredible, the assertion that in one part of it they had the sun on the right hand. And as we have always found young students at a loss for the meaning of that expression, since naturally it struck them that a man might bring the sun at any place on either hand, or on neither, we will stop for one moment to explain, for the use of such readers and ladies, that, as in military descriptions you are always presumed to look down the current of a river, so that the "right" bank of the Rhine, for instance, is always to a soldier the German bank, the "left" always the French bank, in contempt of the traveller's position; so, in speaking of the sun, you are presumed to place your back to the east, and to accompany him on his daily route. In that position, it will be impossible for a man in our latitudes to bring the sun on his right shoulder, since the sun never even rises to be vertically over his head. First, when he goes south so far as to enter the northern tropic, would such a phenomenon be possible; and if he persisted in going beyond the equator and southern tropic, then he would find all things inverted as regards our hemisphere. Then he would find it as impossible, when moving concurrently with the sun, not to have the sun on his right hand, as with us to realize that phenomenon. Now, it is very clear, that if the Egyptian voyagers did actually double the Cape of Good Hope so far to the south of the equator, then, by mere necessity, this inexplicable phenome VOL. LI. NO. CCCXV. non (for to them it was inexplicable) would pursue them for months in succession. Here is the point in this argument which we would press on the reader's consideration; and, inadvertently, Rennell has omitted this aspect of the argument altogether. To Herodotus, as we have seen, it was so absolutely incredible a romance, that he rejected it summarily. And why not, therefore, "go the whole hog," aud reject the total voyage, when thus in his view partially discredited? That question recalls us to the certainty that there must have been other proofs, independent of this striking allegation, too strong to allow of scepticism in this wise man's mind. He fancied (and with his theory of the heavens, in which there was no equator, no central limit, no province of equal tropics on either hand of that limit, could he have done otherwise than fancy?) that Jack, after his long voyage, having then no tobacco for his recreation, and no grog, took out his allowance in the shape of wonder-making. He "bounced" a little, he "Cretized;' and who could be angry? And laughable it is to reflect, that, like the poor credulous mother, who listened complacently to her seafaring son whilst using a Sinbad's license of romancing, but gravely reproved him for the sin of untruth when he told her of flying fish, or some other simple zoological fact-so Herodotus would have made careful memoranda of this Egyptian voyage had it told of men "whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," (since, if he himself doubted about the one-eyed Arimaspians, he yet thought the legend entitled to a report,) but scouted with all his energy the one great truth of the Periplus, and eternal monument of its reality, as a fable too monstrous for toleration. On the other hand, for us, who know its truth, and how inevadibly it must have haunted for months the Egyptians in the face of all their previous impressions, it ought to stand for an argumeut, strong" as proofs of holy writ," that the voyage did really take place. There is exactly one possibility, but a very slight one, that this truth might have been otherwise learned-learned independently; and that is, from the chance that those same Africans of the interior who had truly reported the Niger to Herodotus, (though erroneously section of the Nile,) might simultaneously have re as a B 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 equity— whether 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. 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. This 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. Na turally 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 seventeen 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 |