clined to derive any pure knowledge from the hateful and, as they deemed them, 'godless' followers of Moses."

This subject is amply illustrated in the paper " On Primitive Tradition" in the present volume, which recapitulates most of the doctrines propounded by me in my Homerus, Part I. I may add, that the importance of the poems of the Homeric age, as forming a body of documents whence not only amusement and intellectual enjoyment of the highest character can be derived, but also as the source whence much valuable instruction, for the purposes both of private and public life, may be drawn, has been fully recognized in the popular and admirable paper published in the Oxford Essays, by W. E. Gladstone, Esq., M.P. A writer of the same school has, in a similar article, which appeared in a late number of the Quarterly Review, clearly proved that the tone of moral and political principles displayed by the writers of the Homeric age, is far more healthy and elevated than that of the Euripidean age, when æsthetic art had won its most splendid triumphs in dramatic poetry, in painting, sculpture, and architecture.

My doctrine respecting the language in which Moses and the prophets embodied their revelations, went still further, and I held that it also was, comparatively speaking, a language of separation, and that the long-continued effort to trace the various dialects of the Western world to a Hebrew source, is not among the least striking of the extent to which the errors of good and wise men may be carried, should they commence their inquiries with an inveterate prejudice. And of this character was the glossolatry with which the language of Moses was long and extensively honoured. Should any one language be rationally deemed more worthy than another, it was assuredly that language which the Holy Ghost selected

for the more perfect revelation in Christ, when the wall of separation was thrown down.

κτημα ες αει,

All the Semitic alphabets were, to a certain extent, cryptographic, and all their written documents needed, consequently, a living instructor. When, therefore, the inspired writer and instructor was to cease, then also ceased the divine use of the Semitic language, as an instrument too imperfect to convey the итиμа εç aε," the new will" of God, as revealed in Christ to all the descendants of Adam, to be by them received as the only sure standard of faith, as the only rule of life. That the Greek language was admirably adapted for this purpose, is proved to us from the existence of the Homeric poems, which have brought down to our own days long messages conceived and penned by men who lived and died some three thousand years ago, and respecting whose history, times, manners, customs, habits, laws, and religion, we have no other trustworthy information than what can be gathered from the contents of the documents in which these long messages have been embodied; and yet the Homeric scholar reads in them at this day, the whole stream of thought, intended to be expressed with a facility and distinctness which carries conviction to the mind of every intelligent critic, that the translation propounded by the scholar fully represents the thoughts and words of the world-renowned but, as individuals, unknown poets.

The history of this language and of its offshoots, at later or earlier periods, is the special study of all sound philologists of the present day. Some labour in wider, others in more narrow, fields; my own investigations have been almost exclusively confined to its Celtic, Teutonic, Roman, and Hellenic branches, as they are to be found in our Western world. The reader will find some important information in the essay

"On the Non-Hellenic Portion of the Latin Language." It was written some five-and-twenty years ago, and was published in the thirteenth volume of the Transactions of the Edinburgh Royal Society. Many writers have, without acknowledgment, poached largely upon this my peculiar property. But I leave them unnamed to the tribunals of their own consciences. It, however, brought down upon me the high displeasure of Teutomanes of great influence and even of power, who, in claiming unbounded honours for the Germanic branch, are sure to be backed by all the prejudices of our dominant people, who choose to regard themselves as being all descendants from the Anglo-Saxons, who, in the fifth and sixth centuries after Christ, emigrated into this island. The papers contain certain views which I have since discarded, but have thought right to reprint them as first published.

My essays "On the Ancient Phoenicians and their Language" are merely tentative, and were undertaken in mere despair, as I was utterly unable to see any traces of Aramæan influences in the vocabularies and grammars of the Homeric, Hellenic, and Attic languages, which, if the Sidonians of Homer and of history had been a Semitic people, I concluded must have been the case. In the same manner, the people who brought to this island the Cumraeg, seemed to have had no Semitic elements in their constitution, but were closely allied with all the inhabitants of the European continent. The paper which is being prepared to prove, by the aid of philology, that the Sidonians of the Homeric poems, and their immediate descendants, whether in Boeotia or Attica, or at Sparta, or in the various islands of the Egean Sea, left no trace of a Semitic parentage, is not completely finished, and must therefore, at present, be left unpublished.

The various papers on the Megalithic and Cyclopean Struc

tures are so intimately connected with the first inhabitants of Great Britain, Ireland, and the opposite continent, that they require the particular consideration of every seeker after truth in these and similar disquisitions. The extreme aversion with which the forefathers of the pure English in this island entertained against all the Celtic race, both here and in Ireland, should render the Englishman of the present day more willing to listen with impartial ears to the evidence respecting the existence, from the remotest times, of an ancient branch of the Caucasian race in Great Britain, venerable for its history, its primeval civilization, and for its preservation of an important dialect of the common language which the Japetida brought into Europe. It is too late in the day to overlook this overpowering evidence, and to class the Britons, whom Julius Cæsar had to encounter here, with the Red Indian and with the Australian savage.

For further information on this subject, as well as respecting the high and true philosophy embodied in the Cumric language and literature, the reader is referred to my Gomer, where the whole subject is thoroughly investigated and explained.

"

In the two papers, the one "On the Virgilian Cosmogony," the other "On the Aristotelian Expression Mera Tu Ducina," I have endeavoured to make patent to the common reader the doctrine respecting the formation of our globe and its inhabitants, which is usually called the Epicurean system, not invented by Epicurus, but borrowed by him from the works of a much greater man, the famous traveller in the Eastern world, Democritus of Abdera, and also the doctrines on very important subjects, ascribed by Aristotle to the philosophers whom he styles the Tauraλaio-"the altogether ancient." Aristotle himself may justly be termed the great exponent of truths

connected with the material creation, and with the laws of human thought, while reasoning on things comprehensible. He either ignored or disbelieved all spiritual existence; a иоσμos Texεparμevos was his favourite doctrine; nor does he seem to have known that it was as incomprehensible by human thought as a κοσμος απέραντος.

The paper "On the Megalithic Structures of Auvergne," I regard as conclusive with respect to the people who built them, both in that province and in other parts of the world. I hold it equally certain that the Britons were the Hyperboreans, described by Hecatæus the Milesian.

I hope that the statements made by me on the Cumric records, and especially the abstracts drawn up by me of the Report made by the Count Villemarqué, and read before the Institute, will serve to rouse my own countrymen in general to the present unsatisfactory state of many of the existing monuments of our past history as a nation. There is certainly a danger that the present reigning dynasty in France, a pure Celtic race, may be tempted to occupy the ground neglected by its natural patrons, and to publish, at its own expense, the rich remains of our British literature.

One of the Imperial Princes of France is already one of the best Celtic scholars in Europe, and, in a late visit to Wales, charmed all that had personal intercourse with him by the purity and fluency with which he conversed with them in the language of the Ancient Britons.

JOHN WILLIAMS,

Archdeacon of Cardigan.

LONDON, January 4th, 1858.