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It is somewhat remarkable that the mists of time should have so darkly intervened as to make at once the poet and his theme matters of dubiety; but so it has happened with the great epic bards of the east and west, with Homer and with Ossian.

“The question as to the truth of the tale of ‘Troy divine,’” remarks Lord Byron, “much of it resting on the talismanic word ‘απειρος;’ probably Homer had the same notion of distance that a coquette has of time, and when he talks of ‘boundless,’ means half a mile; as the latter, by a like figure, when she says eternal attachment, simply specifies three weeks.”

It is no bad example of the mutability and perishing nature of all earthly things, that a realm, whose very existence has become a matter of speculation to the classical antiquary, should have given rise to two of the grandest exhibitions of human genius, in the magnificent epic of the Greeks, and the exquisite epic of the Romans.

“One touch of nature,” as the all-observant Shakspeare remarks, “makes the whole world kin;” and really the little anecdote in the text goes far with me in atoning for the ambitious invasion of the proud and puissant Xerxes; for Nature is so steady and exact in her operations, that no heart but one originally benevolent and generous would have ventured on such an apophthegm at such an hour.

Fate, however, intended these myriads a much shorter duration than that which the monarch lamented, as the field of Marathon too bloodily illustrated—“When the sun set, where were they?”

In the text an endeavour is made to sketch the extent of the Roman empire. Perhaps to the loyal of our own country, it may not be a little gratifying to know, that imperial Rome, at the zenith of her glory, never commanded an extent of population equal to that of Great Britain at the present day. We know of no prouder illustration of the effects of mental energy over nature in a state destitute of cultivation, or paralysed by luxurious sloth.

“Thule,” the Shetland of the ancients, is peetically characterised by Horace as “Ultima Thule,” from its being the most remote situation of olden geography, and consequently considered as one of the “ends of the earth.”

The lines of Seneca (Medea) pointing out the probable effects of future discovery, seem embued almost with the spirit of prophecy, and have been appositely affixed as the motto to the Life of Columbus by Mr Washington Irving.

Never, perhaps, except by the earlier invasion of Pyrrhus, was the independence of the Roman State so severely threatened as by the invasion of Hannibal.

As to the horrible carnage of Cannæ, some notion may be formed from the succinct account of Livy:—“Ad fidem, deinde, tam lætarum rerum, effundi in vestibulo curiæ jussit annulos aureos, qui tantus acervus fuit, ut, metientibus dimidium super tres modios explêsse, sint quidam auctores. Adjecit deinde verbis, quo majoris cladis indicium esset, neminem, nisi equitem, atque eorum ipsorum primores, id gerere insigne.”—Hist. lib. xxiii.

Few traces of ancient Carthage are said to remain, except the ruins of an aqueduct and the site of the harbour, now called El Mersa. The reader may consult Dr Shaw's Travels, vol. i., and Chateaubriand's Travels, vol. ii., although the accounts given by each are very dissimilar.

“The iniquity of oblivion,” apostrophiseth the eloquent Sir Thomas Browne, in his Hydriotophia, “blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the Pyramids? Erostratos lives, who burned the temple of Diana —he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations; and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon. Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.”

Thebes has been more fortunate than either Troy or Carthage, in the circumstance of some of its stupendous structures still remaining. By the modern natives it is called Luxor.

The most recent accounts of this ancient city are to be found in the travels of Belzoni, who collected from amidst the rubbish and sand some of his finest specimens of Egyptian antiquity. See also Carne's interesting Letters from the East.

As to the celebrated statue of Memnon, it may be only necessary briefly to observe, that, according to Pausanias, it was broken by Cambyses. The upper portion was seen lying neglected on the ground, but the lower division emitted duly at sunrise the sound resembling the breaking of a harp-string over-wound up.

From its grandeur Thebes was also called Diospolis, the city of Jupiter, or of the Sun; from its hundred gates it obtained the additional appellation of “Hecatompylos,” to distinguish it from Thebes in Bœotia, and was at one period the finest city of the world.

Memphis, situated on the river of the same name, was once a capital city of Upper Egypt. Of its ancient pride and magnificence but few vestiges now remain; and of the countless thou sands that, generation after generation, flourished within its walls, how many names are now remembered?

One of the chief wonders of this in every way wonderful city was the Temple of the Sun, many columns of which, according to Wood and Volney, yet remain. It is one of the “arcana” of political economy, how a city encompassed by a desert came to attain its power and population; and we would trouble Mr M`Culloch to explain this?

Vide Gospel of St Matthew, chap. xxviii.—The reader need scarcely be directed to that most interesting of all sieges in the history of the Jews by Josephus, or to the recent beautiful scriptural drama, The Fall of Jerusalem, by Professor Milman.

For an account of the present state of a city, on many accounts the most remarkable in the world, whether we refer to its origin, its revolutions, or the scenes it has witnessed, the curious are directed to the Travels of Vicomte Chateaubriand, Dr Shaw, Mr Buckingham, and Mr Rae Wilson; but more particularly to the account of Dr Clarke—one of the finest things that ever came from the pen of that most accomplished traveller.

On this most comprehensive topic, we can barely refer to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Sismondi's Histoire de Republiques Italiennes, Robertson's Dissertation, prefixed to Charles V., and Hallam's History of the Middle Ages.

The Crusaders bore on their banners or arms the symbol of the Cross, as marking out the cause for which they had taken up arms. The first account I can find of its being displayed on the banners and arms of war is in the instance of the troops of Constantine the Great, after his alleged miraculous conversion to Christianity—an account of which may be found in Milner's Church History, vol. iii., as abridged by him from Eusebius.

It is said that to Constantine and his army the figure of a cross had appeared one afternoon on the sky, with the inscription “Conquer by this.” The punishment of the Cross was thereafter abolished throughout his dominions, and the symbol made one of dignity and honour.

Alluding to the Cross, Mr Gibbon says, “The same symbol sanctified the arms of the soldiers of Constantine; the cross glittered on their helmets, was engraved on their shields, was interwoven into their banners; and the consecrated emblems which adorned the person of the emperor himself were distinguished only by richer materials and more exquisite workmanship.”

For a History of the Crusades, and a very interesting one, the reader is referred to the work of the late Mr Mills; and episodically to the Tales of the Crusaders, by the author of Waverley, who has therein found a subject, and produced a work, worthy of his genius.

An allusion to Blondel, the favourite minstrel of Cœur-de-Lion, who, according to the legend, discovered in Germany the scene of his master's imprisonment.

“Having played our parts,” quaintly observeth old erudite Burton, “we must for ever be gone. Tombs and monuments have the like fate:—

Kingdoms, towns, provinces, and cities, have their periods, and are consumed. In those flourishing times of Troy, Mycenæ was the fairest city of Greece—Greciæ cunctæ imperitabat; but it, alas! and that Assyrian Nineveh, are quite overthrown. The like fate hath that Egyptian and Bœotian Thebes, Delos, commune Greciæ consiliabulum, the common council-house of Greece; and Babylon, the greatest city that ever the sun shone upon, hath nothing now but the walls and rubbish left.

Thus Pausanias complained in his times. And where is Troy itself now, Persepolis, Carthage, Cyzicum, Sparta, Argos, and all those Grecian cities? Syracuse and Agrigentum, the fairest towns in Sicily, which had sometimes 700,000 inhabitants, are now decayed: the names of Hieron, Empedocles, &c. of those mighty numbers of people, only left. One Anacharsis is remembered among the Scythians; the world itself must have an end, and every part of it. Ceteræ igitur urbes sunt mortales, as Peter Gillius concludes of Constantinople; hæc sanæ quamdiu erunt homines, futura mihi videtur immortalis; but 'tis not so; nor size, nor strength, nor sea, nor land, can vindicate a city; but it and all must vanish at last. And, as to a traveller, great mountains seem plains afar off, at last are not discerned at all; cities, men, monuments decay:—

The names are only left, those at length forgotten, and are involved in perpetual night.”

Nothing can be more beautiful in itself, or more illustrative of our subject, than that passage in the epistle of Servius Sulpitius to Cicero, wherein, from the contemplation of national, he endeavours to bear him up against personal calamities. “On my return from Asia, as I was sailing from Ægina towards Megara, I began to contemplate the prospect around me. Ægina was behind, Megara was before me; Piræus on the right, Corinth on the left; all which towns, once famous and flourishing, now lie overturned, and buried in their ruins,” &c.

How much and how often has the balance of power fluctuated among the different states of Europe, since the time that Italy was the leviathan among them? What is Italy now, though containing Rome, Genoa, and Venice, in its bosom, in comparison with Great Britain, with Russia, with France, with Austria, and others, which, at the era of her glory, were designated the “barbari,” or “barbarians,” with as little scrupulosity as a modern Parisian dancing-master desecrates the mob under the comprehensive epithet of the “canaille.” As to Norway, her political importance is entirely past, or, at best, merged into that of Sweden; the chivalry of Spain has degenerated into monkish superstition; and Poland, dismembered and torn to pieces, has no place among the modern divisions of the earth's surface.