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mans learnt from them in Africa, we look in vain for any legacy left by the Phoenicians to the world except the development of peaceful trade. They taught the world no politics, no religion, no arts. They have left us no orators, no poets, no historians and yet it may be, that in this they have only suffered the fate of vanquished nations. Who knows but that had they defeated the Romans, they might have perfected a literature equal to that of the Hebrews. But still they could never have replaced the Greeks in politics, in the arts, and in the general power, of assimilating other nations to themselves, and themselves to others. For this reason they were swept away, as soon as they had done their work, and produced their effect upon humanity; and they had to make place for other and higher teachers.

Is it not to be feared, that we, who have inherited a position in the world similar to that of the Phoenicians of old-we whose ships pass and repass over all the oceans of the globe-we whose traffic makes us known in every land-we whose capital can boast of luxury equal to that of the merchant princes of Tyre and Sidon-we whose trade has made us lavish of our honour, and taught us to submit to insult rather than forego our bags of gold-is it not to be feared that we have not taken the lesson taught us by the fall of this great nation? For all history tells us, that except a mother city fassimilates her colonies to herself, except she consi

ders with the greatest care their interests, her mer

The Foreign Policy of Traders.

cantile sway will be of short duration.

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Every mer

chant power must live by her children-every merchant city fears to draw her sword, because war ruins commerce. And yet every year we see the foreign politics of England taking more and more the complexion of shop-keeping and common trading. Is it not possible to buy indeed a present peace, or postpone an impending war, by a course of indifference or of cowardice, which will lower the national character, and tend to make us in due time the prey of a younger and more vigorous race, whose hopes are still aggressive, and whose policy is something more definite and more respectable than the mere avoiding of collisions?

LECTURE VIII.

ASIA MINOR AND GREECE.

E must pass to-day from the East, and from the civilization of the Semites, to consider a widely different people, inhabiting a different climate, and hence, upon all grounds, destined to inaugurate a new epoch in the culture of the world. But the geographical distance from the home of the Semites to that of the Greeks was not less than is the difference in moral and intellectual characteristics; for they are separated by the vast continent of Asia Minor—a land occupied from early times by many obscure tribes, which contributed their share in civilizing the West, but to whom history has as yet not been able to assign their respective positions.

There is no more interesting or more intricate problem than the investigation of the parentage and character of these nations, who were certainly, to some extent, the forerunners of the Greeks in the fine arts and in general culture. So little is as yet known concerning them, that in many cities we are unable to determine accurately whether they arose from a Semite or an Aryan origin.

The Carians and Lycians.

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The high plateau which extends across the country is bounded on the south by the chain of Mount Taurus, which leaves but a narrow border towards the sea, intersected by spurs striking off from the main chain. Owing to this conformation, the principal rivers run northwards and westwards. The southern and western coasts of the country have been always the foremost in civilization, the centre of the plateau being, for the most part, a bleak, wild, and cold country, rocky, and in many places volcanic in character.

The tribes occupying the southern coast, and separated from their neighbours by the snow-clad heights of Mount Taurus, were principally of Semitic origin, and were the Cilicians, the Solymic, and the Carians. According to the testimony of the ancients, and from the remains of their religion, there can be no doubt that they had kindred gods, and a kindred language, to the Phoenicians. The Greeks are said to have borrowed their armour from the Carians; and, I suspect, the piratical habits of the island Greeks were also, to some extent, copied from the same people, who were, like the Phoenicians of early times, notorious for freebooting on the sea.

The most remarkable nation on this coast was, however, the Lycian, which had forced its way into the fruitful plain of Xanthus, and there developed a culture in many respects peculiar. From the relics of it that have been found, there can be no doubt that this tribe was of Indo-European origin. Their language, though not a dialect of Greek, was undoubtedly akin to it, and was written in the same

N

character; yet their principal monuments, which consist of tombs and sepulchral chambers, show that peculiar care for the remains of the dead, which rather belongs to the Semitic than the Aryan race. There seems no doubt that this and the other Aryan tribes of Asia Minor were profoundly influenced in religion, as all their brethren have ever been, by the early Semites.

The country they occupied was one of extraordinary beauty, and of a lovely climate, so that their imagination seems to have been stimulated to appreciate beauty of form and colour. But the use of the Greek form of the alphabet prevents us from dating their remains earlier than the eighth century B.C., and the more perfect of them show distinctly an imitation of Greek art. They worshipped, in their great temple at Patara, the sun-god, whom the Greeks knew under the titles of Lycian Apollo, and also as Bellerophon. In the days of Homer, they were evidently regarded as the most chivalrous and civilized nation of Asia Minor. There is no finer or nobler hero in the whole Iliad than Sarpedon. Herodotus mentions many peculiarities in their dress, especially that of wearing plumes in their helmets, and says that their relationships were counted by the mothers' side; this we know to have been an usual custom among primitive nations.

The remains of their capital, Xanthus, are very striking. The walls were built massively, in Cyclopean fashion. Within the ruins of the walls, and surrounded by the remains of other buildings, are a