the past in its entire completeness without which no man can judge impartially of any one portion of the world's history.

The prevalent mistake amongst us all when we seek to walk back through the centuries, is our custom of judging of events or of the destinies of nations singly, apart, that is, from contemporary circumstances in other quarters of the globe, or even from the antecedents in bygone ages which may bear most powerfully upon them. It is thus that we are blinded to that calm and glorious harmony of God's own preordained Will, of which we have spoken as pervading the mutability of all sublunary things, and even such as may seem to us the most discordant elements of strife; now from this too common narrowness of view we think our author singularly free.

All things in the spiritual world of God's Providence have their type in His material creation, and there is a very beautiful analogy between the tides of that ocean which seemingly so fierce and uncontrollable, swallowing up men's lives and dashing the great fleets to destruction in the pride of the tempest's strength, yet day and night with abject submission obeys the unseen influence of the pure moon above, and that more solemn ebb and flow of the waves of time as they roll over the world-engulfing generations, making shipwreck of empires, convulsing mankind with the storms of war, and still in silent obedience following out the invisible Will-the Will which through all the seeming anarchy guides each individual soul in its predeterminate career, and ordains the sigh of a babe in the cradle, in the same moment that It calls forth the thunders of some condemned world, and sends it crashing down to its destruction. Such lands as Greece and Turkey are like the deserted sands whence this mighty tide has rolled back, leaving many traces that once the waters revelled there in the clinging sea-weed, clothing the wet rocks, and the shells mingling with bones and relics of the dead. Plainly our author viewed the classic regions where he wandered in this light, and he therefore contrasts favourably with the majority of our countrymen who but too often have their senses so engrossed by the material world and its application to their own condition that they cannot turn the eyes of their soul to look into its spiritual signification. We subjoin some extracts from the reflections to which his contemplative mind was continually led in his wanderings, but first we cannot forbear quoting a passage which displays some of that descriptive power of which we have spoken as Mr. de Vere's peculiar talent.

He was standing on the Acropolis of Athens, and as evening drew nigh he was called upon to witness that sight which is, as we well know, not only one of the most beautiful nature can produce from a rare combination of scenery and climate, but hallowed likewise by association, as being that last spectacle of her varying loveliness, with which our mother earth delighted the dying eyes of

Socrates, ere he drew his final breath within a few yards of the spot where our author stood.

"The poets tell us that nature alone is permanent, while the works of human hand moulder into oblivion. It is not altogether so; the Temple of Victory rises out of its dust, and the Parthenon still opposes its broad brow to the wasting winds of time, while rivers have been dried up, and fruitful lands have become a wilderness. It was thus that I mused on the Acropolis, when my attention was caught by a faint suffusion thrown on a white and prostrate pillar near that against which I leaned; I turned, and saw through a long range of columns the setting sun which had dropped from its vapoury veil a moment before it was to disappear. Swiftly as the progress of some masterly minstrelsy the splendour leaped from cloud to cloud, and lit up the illumination of the west in a few minutes more the east returned it like an echo; the sea burned, and seemed to shake beneath the dark fire; and the far mountain ridges, virginally robed in winter snow, became crimson first, and then seemed to grow almost transparent with the increasing light; infinitude beyond infinitude of pacific glory opened out before me in the heavens, as cloud responded to cloud, and the sacred communion spread throughout the firmament. It was the same glorious and triumphant spectacle, a foretaste, surely, of something higher than men can as yet know or desire, which the great luminary had exhibited before the eyes of successive generations, from the time that Earth beheld it first on the fourth day;' and it will be repeated without speck, flaw, or imperfection, till the day of judgment."- Vol. i. p. 114.

We do not remember to have seen a more truthful and striking picture of the Athenian sunset than the above. Our next extract is taken from the reflections which arose in the mind of our author after a visit to the plains of Marathon, although we feel that we do but scanty justice to his meditations by the necessary curtailment of their train of reasoning.

"We reached home about sunset, eat our dinner with a good appetite, thought we had earned it almost as well as if we had fought in the great battle of Marathon, instead of having only made a pilgrimage to the plain, and passed the evening discussing the effects of that battle, and all the affairs of the Eastern world-Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Turkey, Greece. How marvellously each of these countries was led on from small beginnings to great destinies; and how marvellously from each was its candlestick removed' when it had done its part, and shown itself incapable of doing more! None of these countries perished without leaving to the world a great inheritance: it is on their bequests that we live, and out of their ruins that our social structures have been built. The old Latin adage, that a serpent is powerless till he has eaten a serpent, might be applied to nations. Every nation which has vindicated to itself any true greatness has absorbed, either politically, or morally and intellectually, some nation that had preceded it. The Greek intellect absorbed and assimilated all that was most valuable in the political and philosophic lore of nations farther to

the east, except Palestine. Rome in turn absorbed Greece; and Roman law with Teutonic manners (both fused together by the vital heat of Christianity), built up the civilization of medieval Europe. European commonwealth thus inherited all that antiquity and the East had done and thought: America inherits us. It was Bishop Berkeley who recorded in verse the fact that civilization has ever rolled on in

one great wave from the east to the west. Did he prophesy truly when he said, 'Time's noblest conquest is his last?' Time only can answer. In the meantime how nearly has the wave of civilization gone round the world. When it has reached its western limit, what will remain for it but that, rolling still forward, it should burst again on the shores of the eastern world? It is in vain I suspect that we send our missionaries and our books backward to the east. A retrograde course is not allowed us. On the other hand, what new morning is not destined to burst over the world, when, the first great revolution completed, the second commences, and from populous cities and flourishing states, on the shores of the Pacific, the great and developed European mind breaks in sudden dawn upon the land of Confucius ? That time cannot now be far distant-before the year 2000 it must, judging from the rate of progress at present observable, be at hand. The millennarians might find in this circumstance a philosophical confirmation of their reveries with respect to the new era which is to set in all over the world when the 6000 years since Adam are completed, and a Sabbatical thousand has commenced."—Vol. i. p. 193.

There may be the germ of a great truth in the idea to which our author refers, but the Asiatics would say, and we are disposed to agree with them, that he does not go far enough, and that whilst the progress of light has been hitherto from east to west, yet shall it return, having encircled the globe (and filled the whole earth with the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea) to its original birthplace, there to be concentrated into the full blaze of unveiled radiance. Elsewhere, at Constantinople, we find Mr. de Vere recognizing that "eastern element" in all that we have of good or great, which indicates that the favoured spot, hallowed by the footsteps of our GOD, is the locality destined to be the centre and spring of all good in this mortal world, from whence all blessings rise to be diffused throughout the nations.

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How different in character is that poetic legend, which celebrates the union of Asia with Europe, from the sublime truth at once of faith and science, which impelled the barque of the great European discoverer to a new continent beyond a more perilous sea. The contrast between the artistic love-fiction and the heroic triumph of knowledge, illustrates in no small degree, the opposite spirit which animated the early Hellenic mind, and directed the aspirations of modern Europe. And yet, how much, even for us moderns, is contained in that ancient legend! What mighty result is destined ultimately to spring from the united energies of Europe and America we know not; but we know that it is

from the union of Asia and Europe, symbolised in the rape of Europa, that we owe almost all of high and noble that we possess. It was in Greece that the influences of the East and West first met; and assuredly at the confluence of these two mighty tides the human intelligence mounted to a height never before known. What is there deep or great among us in which an eastern element is not to be traced? All our arts, (elaborated indeed with a zeal which the graver Hebrew would have stigmatised as but a following out of strange inventions') so far as they acknowledge an Hellenic origin, rest on an Asiatic foundation.

All our moral and metaphysical systems are but new adaptations of ancient Oriental philosophy. The whole hierarchical construction of European society, so far as it is based on the idea of graduated orders, and not merely on superior force, is but the development, under whatever name of feudality, clanship, or aristocracy, of a principle as old as the patriarchal times. It is the same in our religion. The Bible (considered in its external relations) was written from one end to the other of both Testaments by Asiatics, and Asiatics of a single race; the earlier General Councils were Asiatic; the Creeds, and the leading principles of the Church government, as far as they are to be counted human in origin, came to us from the East. In most of the greatest minds that have risen up among us, even in modern times, an Asiatic element is to be traced with more or less of distinctness. Wherever we build with solid materials we build on an Asiatic foundation; and Shem, amid the isles of the Gentiles, reposes in those tents which his more active brother Japhet is ever planting and shifting."

It has ever seemed to us that one of the most salutary lessons we can gather from a retrospect of the departed centuries, is the almost fearful influence which it is frequently given to one individual intellect to exercise on the destinies of the world. Or rather should we say—in analyzing the elements of which all great events are composed, we shall ever find that some one master mind diffusing its magnetic influence from soul to soul among his fellows, has been the spring and origin of that which has become the glory of a nation, the very foundation of empires and dynasties. It is salutary, we say, to trace out the power of human agency, because the impression it should produce is of two-fold importance; first, we should find a deep and profitable humiliation in witnessing how very frequently this mighty power given to man has been used for his own aggrandisement alone, and because thus swayed by evil motives hath been evil in its operation; and secondly, we should gather from the contemplation of the extent of its influence even where abused, a hopeful conviction of the mighty works that might be done by human hands, even to the removing of mountains of sin and misery from this our world, if moved to action by such holy purposes as would win for us a blessing of invincible strength. Our author naturally leads to such thoughts by his remarks on the

physical insignificance of that Greece which was the well-spring of nations.

"How wonderful was the variety of politics exhibited in that narrow compass! As if Greece, in its political relations, had been intended to present an epitome of Europe, as Europe does of the world, there exists no form of government, theocratical, monarchical, or republican, aristocratic, democratic, or military, of which her little States did not furnish examples. As if also the history of Greece had been destined to constitute a compendium of all history, these various forms of government were now allowed a gradual development, now brought into sudden antagonism, and now suffered to change into each other, or to combine their civil elements in the most various proportions. Not only was Greece providentially built up into an University in which all nations were to be trained in scientific lore, and an academy in which the arts were to find a perpetual asylum, but it became also a theatre in which human society rehearsed all its parts, and a treasure-house in which history was to preserve its archives and store its lessons. To be familiar with the annals of Greece is to understand the philosophy of history. Compared with it the records of most other communities are but a chronicle of accidents. In it is contained essentially the inner history of each. On that history we look down as on a map; and it becomes intelligible to us because it lies in a narrow limit, and is illuminated by a wide and steady light. All that can take place, intellectually or morally on the globe, is but an expansion of the struggles that may take place in a single breast. The history of a man is the history of a race, the history of a race is the history of the world; but in proportion as the horizon is widened, our eyes are bewildered, and clouds obscure the scene. The history of human society, epitomised in that of Greece, is instructive to us, because it is condensed, and because in shaking off the sophisms of prolixity, and the perplex. ities of detail, it stands before us idealised. Greece, considered politically and morally, is like the tent in the eastern tale, which, when folded, could be carried on a man's shoulder, and when opened, could shelter an army."

One regret we have experienced in reading some portions of this work which has occasionally marred the great pleasure it afforded us. We cannot fail to perceive from our personal experience of these localities, that Mr. de Vere has fallen into the inevitable snare from which it seems scarce possible that any traveller should escape; he has received his impressions of the existing state of matters in the social condition of the East from the missionaries and others of his countrymen resident there, instead of seeking the truth from the natives themselves.

This unfortunate mode of proceeding is generally the natural result of circumstances, and of the inavoidable congregating together of those who are compatriots, but it sorely paralyzes a man's judg ment in his estimate of a strange country. He thus views it