enced. Catharine de Atayde died. All All the hopes of his life were gone. He prayed that he might soon rejoin her. He became quite indifferent as to the reacquisition of wealth or the chances of advancement, and seemed to have but one end in life-that of establishing his name and fame as the author of the "Lusiad." And before he could reach Lisbon yet further troubles were in store for him. Barreto (Pedro), the new Governor of Sofala, took him into his train, not from any generous feeling, but from a mean man's desire to have a genius whose name was growing great as one of his entourage. The two, of course, did not agree and parted, Camoens in extreme poverty, in which condition some of his generous friends supplied him with money and clothes. Barreto, to wreak his revenge, basely threw him into prison for a debt which he asserted was due from Camoens for money spent for his needs. His friends paid the money, foiled the base patron who did his best to crush the high spirit of the poet, and sailed with him to Portugal, where in due course his great book, as has been mentioned, was published. But, for some reason never fully explained, the poet of Portugal, despite the fame which he, and the money which the publishers, secured by the "Lusiad," obtained none of the places, pay, and honor constantly distributed at Court to men far his inferior, and he was rewarded for his magnum opus by a miserable pittance quite insufficient for his needs, which was merely the calculated pension due to his rank and military service. Thus, like many another genius in various lands, was the man whose memory all Portugal honors suffered to spend the remainder of his days.

They were not many, nor was there any amelioration in their condition. All educated Portugal was studying the great poem which enshrined the episodes which were their country's pride-the very peasants and muleteers had snatches of it by heart from oral repetition. Luis de Camoens, whose name was in every one's mouth, was living near a convent in wretched poverty, with neither friends nor pleasures. His only relaxation, his only variation and relief from the monotony of Inisery and poverty and sorrow, were his conversations from time to time with some of the learned brethren belonging to the

convent-that of San Domingo. His friends were dead or departed into other regions, his spirits were broken, he met with neglect and oblivion, and so bitter was his need that on one occasion, as he himself said, he had not twopence to give the attached Indian slave who was his trusted and faithful servant wherewith to buy fuel. His living was of the most meagre description, his surroundings of the poorest, and he was desolate and worn with unceasing care and sorrow. Only his thoughts remained to console him, and the knowledge, despite the absence of any reward for it in tangible form, that his great poem, the work of his life, had secured for him a niche in the Temple of Fame; like Danton before the Revolutionary tribunal, he was at least sure that "his name would live in the pantheon of history." One passionate feeling survived. This was his love of his country, despite the neglect and ingratitude with which she had treated him. For Camoens was essentially as much patriot as poet. His patriotism was a real, a glowing, an unalterable part of his being, and its influence had been the motive power of the "Lusiad." Therefore it was that he now, after personal sorrow had been so much his destiny, felt more almost than any of his contemporaries the crushing blow of public calamity, such as that which was experienced by Scotland at the field of Flodden. In a battle with the Moors in Barbary, King Sebastian and the very pick and flower of the chivalry of Portugal were slaughtered en masse-a calamity which meant the cessation of his country's independent existence, and its fall from the haughty position which was surrounded by so many memories of pride, memories of which he himself had been the most brilliant chronicler. To a mind and heart like Camoens's this was a blow not to be understood or appreciated by lower natures. It struck him like an arrow. He was only fifty-five years of age, at a time of life when many men are still in the full vigor of middle age with many years of hard mental work before them. But in his case, sorrow, misery, misfortune and solitude had eaten away his vital powers, and this great public calamity completed the work. Poverty of the most dreadful kind was the accompaniment of this catastrophe. To such straits was the genius of Portugal reduced that

the poor slave, whose fidelity was such a reproach to Camoens's wealthy compatriots, begged every night from house to house for broken victuals to support life in his unhappy master, Ultimately some slight measure of compunction was roused somewhere, and Luis de Camoens was by his grateful country presented with a bed in a hospital, which had he not secured he would probably in a short period have perished from starvation. He did not long tax the hospital's resources, and in 1579 he died. Even after death Camoens the Great, as Portugal calls him, showed how little his country had given him. The winding-sheet in which his remains were enfolded had to be begged in charity from the house of a Portuguese noble; and therein, in the Church of St. Anna, the great Portuguese poet was buried. Well might Continho inscribe years later on his tomb-

Here lies Luis de Camoens,

Prince

Of the Poets of his time;
He lived poor and miserable,
And so he died,
1579.

After his death, as has been mentioned, edition after edition of his poem was published. It became the standard history of

Portugal. It became the subject of continual comment and correspondence, and, as has been said, the theme of a most learned and laborious man's lifelong labors. It was translated into many languages, and was the subject of imita tions more or less ambitious, possibly the sincerest form of literary compliment.

Perhaps in all the melancholy stories of literary life, a subject full of saddest chronicles, there are none which surpass, nor many which equal, for one constant succession of woe that of Camoens. Perhaps of all the many instances of the nations' neglect of living geniuses, to honor them when dead, there is none more vivid than this one. But it is to be noticed that in Camoens's life there are none of the causes assigned which the world is always ready enough to suggest as the accompaniments of an unhappy and gifted career. Luis de Camoens was not a genius who lost himself in dreams or disregarded the teachings of worldly experience. In all respects he united with his genius, common sense, industry, and energy in looking after his advancement. Yet the result is summed up in the pithily pathetic lines on his tomb.-Gentleman's Magazine.

THE connection between physical geography and history is a subject worthy of close attention, but, perhaps, the difficulties of the study, and the very extensive information required, as well as the necessary union of two qualities seldom found in the same person, have hitherto deterred scholars from attempting the task. Dean Stanley's valuable work on Sinai and Palestine is a partial contribution to the subject, and this book by Sir William Dawson is written with the avowed purpose of upholding and illustrating the history of the Bible, by an examination of the physical features of Bible lands, of Egypt and Palestine, and of the coasts of the Mediterranean generally. The book is somewhat pretentious, and the author

* Modern Science in Bible Lands. By Sir J. W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S. With illustrations, crown 8vo. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1888.

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The

takes science in a wide application, and includes a discussion regarding the origin and development of civilization. In such a discussion he must necessarily touch upon some of the subjects most debated at the present time. In the chapters on Early Man in Genesis" and Structure and History of Palestine," he has gathered information which is interesting, if not always trustworthy; but in his wider treatment of his subject he evidently lacks those qualities which are essential in either a judicious scientist or a faithful historian.

Truth is, or ought to be, the one object at which a scientist or a historian must aim. If he should go to the study of his subject with preconceived opinions, or with prejudices already formed, his researches will not be of that independent character which can alone make them valuable, and this not least in regard to any

scientific expositor of Bible lands, or any research into Bible history. But this spirit of independent research Sir William Dawson does not possess. It seems scarcely conceivable that at this time of day, in this learned and liberal nineteenth century, there are minds so narrow and so weak that they are unable to love truth for its own sake, and have so little confidence in the wisdom and consistency of God in all his works, that they are afraid to search deeply either into the problems of science or into the lessons of history, lest they should find some inconsistency in what they believe to be God's purpose-minds unable to appreciate the great spiritual and moral lessons of Scripture unless these are supported by the complete infallibility of its scientific and historical teaching also. But Sir William is one of these, and he has gained some popularity as the champion of orthodoxy. He is not a vigorous thinker, and even in his own special department of study he does not hold a high place; but when he ventures beyond this he immediately betrays the meagreness of his information, both in quantity and in quality. He does not consult original authorities, but gains his knowledge at second-hand, and certainly not from the most trustworthy sources; while, in straining after some illustration to corroborate or elucidate his views of Scripture, he is both crude and puerile. Sir William rejects with unfeigned contempt the Elohistic and Jahevistic views of modern critics, but as he cannot deny the fact that there is an evident difference in parts of the Pentateuch, he feels it necessary to propound a theory so original that it must be given in his own words. It seems that Cain and Abel were already representatives of two types of religion-that of the worship of God as creator, and that of a coming Redeemer, and we are not surprised afterward to hear that the Sethites began to call and evoke the name of Jahveh, and the Cainites Bene ha Elohim. The two tribes were respectively the Christians and the Deists of their day. . . . The one, Jahveh, was the name specially venerated by the Sethites, and the other, Elohim, by the Cainites." And he implies, if he does not expressly maintain, that the employing the two distinct terms does not betoken two distinct narrators, but rather the one narrator kindly accommodating himself to the feelings of one or the other

party-the Cainites or Sethites. This new theory has the merit of being amiable, and no one is likely to dispute its originality. When Sir William has in view to defend the infallibility of the Bible, or rather his opinions in regard to it, no theory is too absurd for his purpose, and he never seems to realize that such puerilities do incalculable harm to the cause he is defending. But a large part of the book is devoted to the solution of the question as to the antiquity of civilization, and as this is the most important part, and as the subject is one of very deep interest, and as our views differ entirely from those held by Sir William, we propose in this paper to give the grounds on which we have arrived at a conclusion so opposed.

It is well to notice that Sir William has receded from the position which he formerly held. He now admits the antiquity of man, though, when the slightest occasion offers, he, with a painful want of decision, still makes an effort to regain and defend the position he has been forced to yield. He holds, however, that the deluge swept away the whole human race with the exception of the family in the ark. Accepting the verdict of Lenormant that the tradition of the deluge is universal, Sir William concludes that the deluge was itself universal, and that the household of Noah alone escaped the terrible cataclysm. In maintaining this, however, he is not always consistent, for he afterward suggests that possibly the negro may be descended from an antediluvian race. But the deluge is made the starting-point, or the limit, behind which no history of civilization can go, though he says that it is quite possible that language and the rudiments of civilization may have been inherited from the antediluvians. however, does not give us any idea of this inherited language, nor of the degree of civilization which had been reached prior to the deluge. In his further treatment of the subject he accepts the chronology of our Bible, and evidently regards it as equally important with the text itself; he therefore maintains that 3000 years is the utmost limit to which the history of civilization can be extended. Our readers will scarcely require to be reminded that there are three leading chronological tables of Bible history, of the Masoretic Hebrew text, of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch, and that the table of our

He,

English version is formed from a comparison of these tables made by Bishop Usher. But these tables were framed at times wholly uncritical, when earnest research was unknown, and when very few of the means which we now possess for forming a correct estimate were even dreamed of; and these tables differ so much from one another that they destroy each other's value. Sir William naturally turns to Egypt as presenting the earliest form of civilization, and he admits that the Pyramids give evidence of a civilization somewhat advanced, and imply a large population, but he suggests that the civilization may have been inherited from the antediluvians, and that the large population is not astonishing, since, in a comparatively short time, the population of the United States has reached sixty millions. We are unwilling to accuse Sir William of disingenuousness, but we are driven to the other conclusion that he is utterly ignorant of the subject, on which, however, he does not hesitate to express a very dogmatic opinion. Surely he must see that there can be no parallelism between the circumstances by which the United States have reached their large population and the circumstances in which a country was placed in times virtually prehistoric. Into the United States all Europe, in fact, the whole world, has been pouring its surplus population; but at the times of the Pyramids there could be no surplus population to pour into Egypt. Certainly, the data on which we might be expected to form an estimate of the antiquity of civilization are not so full or so definite as we might desire the circumstances of the case do not permit it; yet, in the monuments and other remains found not only in Egypt but in other countries, also, we possess most valuable materials which throw much light on the subject. Manetho, an Egyptian, and a scribe in the temple at Thebes in the third century before Christ, wrote in Greek a history of Egypt. This has, unfortunately, been lost; but Josephus and others have preserved some extracts from his book, including a list of dynasties with at large proportion of the names of kings. According to his calculation, a period of 5366 years intervened between the founding of the kingdom by Menes and the last year of Nectenebo, or 340 years before Christ. Herodotus gives 346 generations from Menes to the conquest by Cambyses,

and Diodorus has a list of 476 kings for the same period. The Turin Papyrus also gives a list of kings, but it is, unfortunately, in a very dilapidated state, and is only valuable as it serves to supplement the lists.

Between these lists there are discrepancies which, though not after all very great, are yet sufficient to diminish their value. But we have not to depend on these alone, for we have lists from Karnak, from Saqquarah, and from the greater and lesser temples at Abydos. In each of these cases the reigning king is represented as offering incense, or doing homage to his ancestors, and we may be sure that he would carefully ascertain the legitimacy of the claims of each to the throne; and so we find that in these lists the kings from the twelfth to the eighteenth dynasty-the Hyksos kings-are omitted, as they were always regarded as foreigners and usurpers. But besides these lists of kings there are lists of Court architects, forming a continuous list from Seti to Darius, and these confirm in a very remarkable manner the lists of kings for the same period. But the lists, both of the kings and of the Court architects, for this latter period from Seti, confirm very exactly the lists of Manetho for the same period, and must strengthen our confidence in his lists of the earlier periods also. From a comparison of all these lists we have from Seti, the second king of the nineteenth dynasty, to the birth of Christ, a period of 1558 years. This may be regarded as determined with perfect certainty. From Seti to Menes, omitting the Hyksos kings, we have sixty-five reigns, and, if we take the average durations of the reigns from Seti to Darius as our guide, we have a period of 2166 years, and allowing 500 years for the five dynasties of the Hyksos period we have 1558 +2166 + 500 4224 years as the whole period from Menes, the founder of the monarchy, to the birth of Christ. Brugsch gives 4455 and Mariette 5004 years for the same period, and Sayce adopts Mariette's figures. These three scholars are the highest authorities on Egyptian history, careful and judicious in their researches and calculations. But the establishment of the monarchy by Menes is not by any means the beginning of Egyptian history: there must have been a period during which the Egyptian nation was forming itself. No nation has

=

ever presented the same staid immobile character as the Egyptians. This is a remarkably striking feature and may be observed in the earliest representations. But this could only have been acquired after a lengthened period. The Egyptians claimed for themselves a very long period prior to Menes. Manetho gives a list of Gods, Demigods, and Heroes covering a period of 24,000 years, while Bunsen calculates that not less than 10,000 years was necessary in order to afford the opportunity for the Egyptians to arrive at the degree of civilization they had reached at the founding of the monarchy. We attach little importance to either of these calculations : the first are essentially mythical, and Bunsen attempts definiteness, where no definiteness is possible; yet, as Sayce very judiciously remarks regarding Manetho's mythical characters, "These founders are figures like those of living men, but grander, greater, and nearer the immortal. They are not empty creatures of the fancy, but in them the actual deeds of the earlier ages are personified and endowed with life." It is quite evident that there must have been a period before Menes, and this by no means a short period, during which society was forming itself, when the lines which separate the social classes from one another were being drawn, when art and religion and language were being developed. Though we may not be able to assign dates to that early prehistoric period, we cannot fail to be convinced that it must have taken a very long time for that early civilization to have developed itself. We have to deal not with years, but with cycles; not with individual events, but with developments which are naturally slow. We have, for instance, no means of assigning dates for the growth of language, but as in geology we use terms which are exceedingly elastic, and which are expressive not so much of times as of states and conditions of the earth's crust-such terms as Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene-so in regard to language we may use terms which point out the condition of a language and its growth. Languages may be classified according to these conditions, and regarded as stratified in these conditions. Words are the expression of individual conception, and these conceptions must exist before we can expose them. As, at first, conceptions may be simple and crude, so the

terms in which these conceptions are expressed must be also simple and crude: only with the growth of ideas, with the increase of knowledge, with the more extended requirements of social life do our conceptions become enlarged and more complex. But with this development of civilization comes the development of language; the one must keep pace with the other; language cannot anticipate this development of civilization. But in this development it becomes necessary to express shades of meaning and the relation of ideas to one another, and so language assumes changed forms, and grammar is the law according to which these forms are determined. But it is a very remarkable fact that all the languages are petrified in the earliest forms in which they are known to us, and have undergone no change since. They may possibly have added to their vocabulary, but they have undergone no change in form. Egyptian became inevitably stratified in the form presented by the earliest monuments, and, if we may borrow a term from geology, it is stratified in the earlier Miocene period -the period which Schleicher would distinguish as the period when the roots of ideas were developed, and never reached the confixative state-the state in which the roots of connection are formed. there was no change in the language from the period of the earliest monuments till the Ptolemies. As early as the establishment of the monarchy, upward of 4000 B. C., it was in a state as perfect as it was at any future time. The development of the language must therefore have taken place in that indefinite period between the separation of the Egyptian from the Semitic stem, and the founding of the kingdom under Menes. We say Semitic stem, for we hold that it is Semitic. Sir William calls it Turanian, and he may be allowed the full merit of the new discovery. We are quite aware that Renan, and after him Renouf, are unwilling to classify it with the Semitic, on account of its imperfect development, and would prefer to call it Khamitic, or Prehistoric-Semitic. But this does not impair its legitimate descent from the Semitic. We think that Rawlinson is wrong in saying that its grammar is predominantly Semitic, but if the roots of a language can guide us in placing it, there can be no doubt in determining the Semitic character of the

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