of Arganthonius, it is evident that these Hyperboreans were the occupants of Great Britain, which is so accurately described in the above passage, that even one of the earliest editors of Diodorus could not refrain in his index from writing -"See whether this cannot be applied to Anglia." The south of Britain, when visited by sailors, scorched by the summer heat of Southern Spain and Western Lusitania, would certainly be a delightful temperature, and any person who has spent a vernal or autumnal season in Kent, in the Isle of Wight, or in South Devonshire, cannot imagine a more delightful climate; and if we add that there is in Britain what there is not in Southern Europe, two seasons of vegetationin fact, two springs in trees, shrubs, and grasses-we may acknowledge the truth of the description without supposing that the delighted sailors had recourse to Virgil's well-known exaggeration respecting his beloved Italy :

Bis gravidæ pecudes, bis pomis fertilis arbor.

As for the variety of its productions, we have Cæsar's authority that our island produced all that the continent did, with the exception of wine and olive-oil.

But we have other, and I must say more important, testimonies, as tending to prove the universality, within certain limits, and at a certain period, of the religion connected with megalithic structures, and of its prevalence in Eastern Asia, Western Europe, and the intermediate regions.

Pindar, the great lyric and religious poet, who was born, according to some, B.C. 560, according to others 540, writes thus, Ol. ode iii. verse 12, respecting the Cotinus, Oleaster, or wild olive-tree, from the twigs of which the wreaths worn by the victors in the Olympic games were woven :-" (This olive), the son of Amphictyon, transported from the shady fountains of the Ister, that it might become an illustrious badge of the Olympic games, after he had persuaded the community of the Hyperboreans, a people who are ministers of Apollo." "His spirit led him to the Istrian land." In pursuit (of the

golden-horned stag) he saw that land at the back of the cold blast of Boreas."

Here is a clear proof that the Hyperborean land was not placed where later authors wished to find it-somewhere beyond the Rhipæan Hills, and near the North Pole, but somewhere about the sources of the Ister or Danube. Another passage from the Tenth Pythian Ode, v. 49, is equally satisfactory respecting the non-arctic position of these renowned Hyperboreans:-" But to the Hyperborean race you will not obtain a wonderful access either in ships or on foot." Here Pindar seems to insinuate that he knew that some Hyperboreans lived in an island which required both travel by land and a voyage by sea, before it could be reached from Hellas. He then proceeds: -"Now, among these formerly feasted Perseus, leader of hosts. He, having entered their hall, found them sacrificing renowned hecatombs of asses. Now, in these sacrificial banquets and vocal songs of these people, Apollo takes incessant and most intense delight, and laughs while he views the petulance of the restive brutes. The Muse, moreover, is not a stranger to their haunts, but everywhere tuneful choirs of virgins, and the voice of harps, and the tones of pipes, are set in motion; and the assembly, crowned with wreaths of the golden laurel, banquet merrily. Nor do diseases nor decaying old age affect the sacred race; and they live free from toils and wars. Nevertheless, Danaë's son, animated by a bold spirit, once visited them; and Athena led him to this happy people, whence (setting out) he slew the Gorgon."

Every scholar, who compares this poetic description of the Theban swan with the prose myth of Hecatæus, cannot fail to see that one must either have copied from the other, which, if we remember that they were contemporaries, is not probable, or that they drew their information from a common source, which is most likely.

The close connection of the visit of Perseus to the Hyperboreans and his adventure with the Gorgon seems to have

puzzled an ancient scholiast on this passage in Pindar, whose later ideas respecting the position of the Hyperboreans were shocked by this juxtaposition. He therefore observes :-" It is asked how Perseus went to the Hyperboreans for the purpose of cutting off the Gorgon's head? For the Hyperboreans dwell near the North Pole, but the Gorgons, according to some, in the Erythræan and Ethiopic regions, which are to the east and south, but according to others in the extremities of Libya, which are to the west. But it is clear that the Gorgons are not near the North Pole, because no author has placed them there."

Perhaps the question of the honest scholiast may still receive a satisfactory answer.

The next author of name and note who mentions the Hyperboreans, is the tragedian Eschylus, the son of Euphorion, who was, perhaps, some thirty years younger than Pindar, who died B.C. 480, the very year in which Eschylus fought so gallantly at Salamis. In a chorus of his, "Choephora" (and young scholars should be reminded that in the earlier stage of the Athenian drama, nothing could be introduced into a chorus which was not familiar to the public mind), the Coryphæus thus speaks

"O child, you speak of things more excellent and greater than the gold and great prosperity of the Hyperboreans."

The wealth and supposed prosperity of the Hyperboreans must have been proverbial topics, before this allusion could have been made before the Athenian audience.

From a passage in Strabo, we know that Simonides had mentioned the Hyperboreans with an especial allusion to their long life; and Clemens Alexandrinus enables us to state that Hellanicus had described them in not very favourable colours.

I venture to make one quotation more under this head, although I have not been able to ascertain the age of the author, and scarcely anything else about him, except from a passage in Athenæus, who calls him "Pherenicus, a Heracleote by birth."

Now, a Heracleote might be either a citizen of

Heraclea, on the southern shores of the Euxine, or on the Tarentine Gulf. If he was an inhabitant of the Italiot Heraclea, his testimony is doubly valuable. The words are to be found in the old Scholiast-a highly valued authority-upon the third Olympic Ode of Pindar, v. 28.

Pherenicus says the Hyperboreans were of the Titanic race. He thus writes :

"Around the Hyperboreans, who inhabit the extremities under the protection of the Temple of Apollo, where they are free from war. Now, their priests sing that they have sprung from the blood of the Titans, prior in time, and dwell under the sky-clear house of Boreas."

This distinct allusion to the great temple is peculiarly valuable.

Hitherto my course has been rather easy, and the authorities naturally lead us to look for the Hyperboreans in a country abounding with olives, laurels, and asses; and for the island of Hecatæus in the ocean off the coast of "Celtica." But after this period a new element entered into the description, which has been productive of sad confusion. The author of this confusion was Herodotus, a man who deserves and justly has won the approbation of every inquirer into the history of mankind, and the loss of whose works would have been an irreparabile damnum to the archæological student.

But still Herodotus, with all his merits, was a victim to those failings which are now called "crotchets." Among the most prominent of those was a marked hatred of poetical mythology, a great distrust of all writers who had preceded him either as poets or prose writers, and a firm conviction that, were he on any disputed fact to procure the testimony of one eyewitness, it was sufficient to outweigh all that poets might imagine, or mythologists enigmatically suggest. It is with these prejudices strongly influencing his mind, that he entered on the question of the locality of the Hyperboreans, who never were supposed by preceding writers to have been a separate nation like the Thracians, Scythians, Celtæ, &c.,

but merely to have been so denominated from their position in the line of "climates." I first quote the following passage from the thirty-second chapter of his fourth book :

But some things have been said by Hesiod about the Hyperboreans, and something also by Homer in the Epigoni, that is, if Homer is truly the author of that poem.'

The portion of Hesiod's work in which the Hyperboreans were mentioned, and also the great epic of the Epigoni, have perished; but the very fact that the word was used by Hesiod and the author of the Epigoni, enables us to test its meaning by comparing it with similar compound adjectives in the still surviving Homeric writings; and I can boldly appeal to every Homeric scholar, who may choose to examine this question by the light of Seber's Index, that almost without an exception the adjectives compounded with the preposition Tε gain nothing but intensity by this prefix. But Herodotus chose to assign a new value to the compound adjective, and to assume that "Hyperboreans" meant "people beyond the blasts of Boreas," and not "a very northerly people." Reasoning on this new principle, he directs his whole argument to prove that there were no such things in rerum natura as the Hyperboreans described in the Arimaspian hexameters of one Aristeas, a Proconnesian, who, in rather a fabulous style, had described his travels to the north of the Euxine, where he had thus graduated the nations from the south to the north,first, the Cimmerians on the Euxine; next, the Scythians; next, the Issedones; and lastly, the Hyperboreans. It is against this theory of the Proconnesian, who, according to Herodotus, must have been coeval with Hesiod, if not with Homer, that the Father of History directs his wrath, and proves satisfactorily from his own inquiries, among both the Scythian occupants of the northern shores of the Euxine and the Mæotic Lake, and from the numerous Greek colonists in the same regions, that there could not be to the north of these well-informed people, any race of men which could be possibly mistaken for the Hyperboreans of the Arimaspian poct.