exception to the general peculiarities of their race. Little of what we have said respecting the Semitic race in general, applies to them. Unlike their national kindred, the Phoenicians were energetic, they were enterprising, they were artistic, they were grossly immoral, they were freely polytheistic. In short, they were almost everything which the other Semites were not, and scarcely anything that the other Semites were. If they were a pure race, they would go far (as do the Mexicans in America) to shake to its very foundations the conception of ineradicable race-distinctions which have lorg prevailed among so many ethnologists. The arguments against their being Semites is in part derived from the fact that the tenth chapter of Genesis classes them among the children of Ham. The supposition that this was a calumny of national hatred is, says Professor Munk, a very convenient style of criticism, which emanates rather from a certain coquetry of scepticism, than from any desire to seek and know the truth.' But in spite of this severe dictum, it must be admitted that, whatever may be the difficulties in the way of believing the Phoenicians to have been Semites, the difficulties on the other side are far more overwhelming. Professor Munk indeed, accepting a tradition of Herodotus, believes that the Phoenicians were an immigrating, victorious Hamitic race, who adopted the Semitic dialect of the Rephaim and other aborigines

whom they conquered, and he thinks that Hamitic débris* can still be discovered in the few monuments of their language. But can anything be more supremely improbable than the suggestion that such a people as the Phoenicians should have adopted their language from the defeated remnant of a race so brutal as the Palestinian aborigines— a race which, we may remark in passing, are not certainly known to have been Semites at all. One thing, however, is admitted on all hands, and that is that the Phoenician language, even if it had some slight extraneous admixtures, was not only Semitic, but bore the closest possible resemblance to the Hebrew. The names of their two chief towns, Tyre and Sidon, are both Hebrew, the former meaning 'rock,' the latter fishery.' The relics of their language on coins and inscriptions are very few, the most important being the inscription on the tomb of Eschmoun-Ezer, King of Sidon, which is now in the Louvre, and the Phoenician inscription of Marseilles. But, on the other hand, we have several fragments of the language of the Carthaginians, who were their direct colonists, Dido, the legendary founder of Carthage, being, in all probability, a contemporary of the Phoenician princess Jezebel. We know that Carthage itself

* He instances the pronoun anokhi, ‘I,' found in no other Semitic language, except the Hebrew. It is also found in Egyptian, v. Gesen. Thes. i. 126, s. v.

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means in Hebrew, Newtown;' that Byrsa, its citadel, is the Hebrew bozra, a fortress; that bal in such names as Hasdrubal and Hannibal is simply Baal; that Barca, the family name of Hannibal, is the same as barak, lightning;' that suffetes,' which Livy tells us was the name of the Carthaginian magistrates, is the Hebrewshophetim,' or judges; that Lilybæum, the name they gave to the western angle of Sicily, means towards Libya,' li being simply the Hebrew preposition. Finally, not to dwell on other proofs, Plautus wrote a play called Pœnulus, the Little Carthaginian,' and in that play a Punic scene is introduced, which, so far as it has been yet deciphered, is most distinctly Hebraic in its character. St. Augustine, who was himself a Carthaginian, says that Hebrew and Carthaginian differed but little. Since, then, the Phoenicians spoke a Semitic language, we must almost necessarily conclude that they were themselves partially Semites. Perhaps the true solution of the difficulties which meet us in finding them possessed of a civilisation wholly unlike that of the other people who spoke their language, lies in the fact indicated in the book of Genesis by the fraternal relation of Ham to Shem: perhaps, in fact, we may assume that there was at an early period a close intercourse and rapid interchange of relations between the descendants of Ham and those of Shem, and that, in consequence of this intercourse, the Hamites sometimes adopted

the language of the Semites, while they retained tendencies and institutions of a wholly different character.

The relations between the Aryan and the Semitic race have been almost entirely hostile, from the day when Alexander conquered Phoenicia and subjugated Judæa, down to the other day when Lord Napier of Magdala crushed in a single campaign the power of Abyssinia. The Aryan race has almost invariably triumphed in the contest. The Semites were indeed victorious when Judas Maccabeus broke the yoke of Antiochus Epiphanes; and when Hannibal shattered the Roman armies at Cannæ and Thrasimene; and when the Jews defeated Cestius at Beth-horon; and when at Kadesia the general of Omar won the standard of Persia ;* and when, again, advancing by Gibraltar, which still bears his name, the Moorish chieftain Tarik scattered at Xeres the forces of Roderic. But, on the other hand, the Semites were utterly routed by Scipio at Zama, and by Titus when the Roman eagles gathered round the dying carcass of Judea ; and when, in the reign of Adrian, 580,000 followers of the false Messiah, Barchochebas, fell by fire, famine, and the sword; and when, in 732 A.D., in seven days of battle and massacre on the plains of

* Stiff as it was with jewels, it was the apron of the patriotic blacksmith Gavah.

+ Djebel al Tarik,

The

Tours, Charles Martel gave that final and decisive rout to their forces, but for which, as Gibbon observes, perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.' Since that day the entire fortunes and destinies of the Semitic race have declined. glories of Islam, the direct result of their religious enthusiasm, were but the dying flash in the embers of its vitality. The memorials of its splendour are recorded in undecipherable inscriptions in the desert or on mountain-rocks, or lie buried amid the ruins of Palestine, the fisher-tents of Sidon, the broken columns of Carthage, and the mounds of Kouyunjik; nor does there live for it any hope of future history save in the cherished and sacred convictions of a scattered people that the Lord will yet build up Jerusalem, and gather together the outcasts of Judah.'

But still this race did not begin to decline and disappear from the field of history until its work was done. Humanity may advance solely over the wrecks of past ages and the ruins of former people, but it advances still.' Tribes and nations disappear, but it is only to make way for others who have higher problems still to solve. The character of the Semitic race has always been its inveterate isolation.' Even in the days of their dawning glory the Semites did but occupy a small parallelogram of Asia,

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