into an imperial position, as England in India, but it was not the end sought; it was a means. Industry and commerce were her chosen pursuits.

Her settlements in Corsica, Ivica and the Baleares were important, as well as in the greater islands Sicily and Sardinia. But I must state her African limits. The original colonies were Utica, Adrumetum, Clypeus or Aspis, Leptis, Hippo and Carthage. On the west, the limit was Hippo Regius, capital of a Numidian king, their dependent ally. On the east, they spread until the barrenness of the soil stopped agriculture near the lesser Syrtis: on the west the natives whether Numidians, Massylians or Maurusians, were more powerful. To the south, the lake Triton was their limit. The highlands of Atlas give plenty of water and fertility. Besides, isolated colonies on the coast westward facilitated distant navigation. A curious fragment is extant;—a Greek translation of a Carthaginian naval expedition to found colonies on the Atlantic coast. It is called HANNO'S Periplus (coasting voyage); and testifies to their distant enterprize.

The old Punic states were all on good soil and produced all our crops, fruits and cattle. Mount Atlas gave them besides,―lions, panthers, elephants and apes. Their public revenue was from Customs, Mines and Tribute. Their nautical skill excelled even the Greeks. The beautiful form of the modern Algerine vessels descends from the Carthaginians.. Instead of triremes, such as Athens used, they employed the quinquereme. Yet the land was with them higher than fleet or army: their nobility was a landed aristocracy.

Both Phoenicians and Carthaginians showed again and again, like the Dutch, that they could fight with the most desperate courage when occasion required. Moreover, their mechanical skill enabled them to carry to the highest perfection all that military art of antiquity which was concerned in the attack and defence of fortified places. These arts were cultivated very early; for we find them painted in Egyptian tombs. The Phoenicians conveyed a knowledge of them to

Carthage; Carthage employed them in Sicily: from them they were learned by the Syracusans and employed by DIONYSIUS the tyrant. PHILIP the Macedonian learned the arts from DIONYSIUS, and the Macedonians by a strange circuit carried them into Asia.

But neither Phoenicians nor Carthaginians were military nations. They did not make war upon system: they preferred mercenary barbarians as troops, and they seldom had good generals. In war they were generally inferior to the Greeks; and, except under three or four generals of high genius, were always beaten by the Romans. Hence these peaceful, industrious and highly useful people were at length trampled down by military hordes from Italy, which, like locusts, devoured all other peoples' prosperity, and added nothing to those whose freedom and manliness they totally ruined.

One gift Phoenicia bestowed on the West, which to this day we all enjoy,—the priceless boon of the Alphabet. Babylonia has cuneoform characters of her own, which assimilate her native literature to that of ancient Media and Persia. These are a peculiar type, apparently coëval with Egyptian hieroglyphics. The Phoenician simplification, once suggested, once known, is held as an eternal possession. Greeks learned it, Etruscans learned it, Syrians and Samaritans, Chaldees and Hebrews learned it. In due time it became Umbrian, Roman, Oscan, Cyrenaic, Coptic, Lycian, Pontic, Parthian, Bactrian. By another line it passed to Arabs, Persians and modern Turks, to Ethiopians and Abyssinians. It has now overspread the Old World from the Atlantic Ocean to the great river Indus. It will cover all Africa, and hold undisputed possession of both Americas and of the isles of the Pacific.

END OF THIRD LECTURE.

FOURTH LECTURE.

ON THE EQUESTRIAN EMPIRES OF ANTIQUITY.*

MORALITY and Reasoning may at length decide all the abstract controversies of Politics, but they cannot decide the fit limits of territory for independent powers. Seas, Desarts or great Mountain ranges have always been the chief arbiters in this undebateable question. Little powers arose where islands and mountains abound; but where wide plains extend, unbroken by formidable desart, there sooner or later great empires arise. On such plains, eminently in ancient times before gunpowder was invented, the chief aid of warfare was the horse. Whether the main wealth of men be in herds of sheep, asses, goats, oxen, camels, or else in crops of precious food, in either case they are liable to fatal depredation from the captain of a powerful cavalry. Nay, and even well-trained heavy-armed infantry on such plains ill-resist the attacks of agile horsemen. The stubborn Lacedæmonians at Platæa, unequipped themselves with bows, showed too plainly their sincere dread of the Persian arrow-shots. CRASSUS and his Roman legions fell thus before the Parthians. The luckier XENOPHION, with his celebrated Ten Thousand, saw that all was lost, unless he could put together against the Persians some cavalry force: for, says he, "when we encounter them ; if we be superior, how many of them shall we slay? and if we be worsted, how many of us will escape?" It is not until infantry is brought to the last perfection, as to missile weapons, and armour neither too light nor too heavy, that it becomes

I. Scythian. II. Mesopotamian. III. Persian.

superior to cavalry in mere fighting: and even then, it can neither catch its enemy nor secure its communications, its provisions or its march, if unaided by friendly fortresses.

Asia is remarkably divided by a long mountain chain stretching almost east and west: which bounds modern Persia on the north. We regard Northern Asia as bounded westward by the Ural Mountains. These with Caucasus and the Black Sea, inark off a wide region of almost continuous plain, which embraces, with modern Russia in Europe, the north of Germany as far as Berlin. All this European region was vaguely called Scythia by the Greeks. East of the Ural mountains was an Asiatic Scythia of unknown extent northward its southern base pressed against modern Persia. I shall call this second Scythia simply Tartary. A third "Scythia beyond the Imaus" was also talked of by the Romans; this is the modern Mongolia and Thibet, with which I must not here concern myself.

Scythia and Tartary has each its characteristic breed of horse. That of Scythia we know as the horse of the Cossack, which is small, active, untiring and hardy. In winter the horses are left wild; they feed themselves even in spite of snow, and in fighting against wolves earn something of the fierceness of the wild horse, whose toughness they retain. This we learn from the moderns only, but it is likely to have been equally true of the ancient horses and ancient manner of treating them.-The horse of the Tartars is the still more celebrated Turcomán, tall and long-backed, larger and stronger than the Arab or the Cossack horse, with long swinging trot like a camel, whose patient toil he emulates, and performs wonderful marches. Each Scythia abounds in grass. To keep horses costs nothing. The African barb, the Arabian steed, have often to be fed on camel's milk from deficiency of suitable provender. No such costly nourishment is ascribed to the northern horses. Moreover Scythia in very early times employed the waggon as the ordinary home of the people. This constituted a high superiority over ancient and modern

Arabs. There must be something in Arabia which resists wheel carriages. The soil perhaps is alternately too rugged with rock and too soft in sand: else, when Arabs had learned every luxury in imperial cities, why did the waggon never come to aid the tent in the desart? Scythia on the contrary had vast arable plains, and long steppes, often of limestone clothed with scanty grass, which, (I presume) like our sheepdowns, were prevalently round and smooth, allowing rude wheels to turn upon them. HORACE, intending to describe the Scythian fashion, says of the Getans, "Whose homesteads flit, drawn by well-order'd teams." Such a pastoral people has taken a wide step higher than the mere tented Arabs. To construct waggons for a whole nation, to turn wheels, and keep such fabrics in repair, implies stores of timber, variety of tools, and art to make tools, nay, to procure iron. On the other hand, so much greater weight can be drawn on waggons than the backs of beasts can carry, that a nation which employs them may be wealthy in a measure quite impossible to Arab rovers. In short, the Scythians may be said to be like an army with all its stores and baggage which must every night be arranged in orderly encampment; the Arabs like an expedition of light cavalry which is cut off from its supports. The ancient Scythians were, no doubt, very barbarous yet, without aid from the towns and resources of civilized industry, they could sustain, not battles only, but campaigns against great powers. But the Arabs, though terrible to an enemy who ventures into their desarts, neither now nor ever could fight beyond them without borrowing the materials and arts of the civilized.

Ancient Scythia did not practically extend very far northward apparently, forests and swamps so blocked up access, that no news of a Ural mountain-chain running north and south reached the Greeks at all. HERODOTUS knew only of the branch which runs east and west, evidently the mere southern base of the Ural, at Orenburg. European Scythia had access to Tartary along the north and along the south of the Caspian.