Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

They will not sell their skins for money, which they declare is of no use, but exchange them for knives, spurs, sugar, &c. They refuse also to buy by weight, which they do not understand; so they mark out upon a skin how much is to be covered with sugar, or anything of the sort which they desire to receive in barter for their property. After their business is concluded, they generally devote another day to Bacchus, and when they have got nearly sober, they mount their horses, and with a loose rein, and with their new spurs, they stagger and gallop away to their wild plains.-HEAD's Pampas and the Andes.'

[blocks in formation]

As silk became of indispensable use, the Emperor Justinian saw, with concern, that the Persians had occupied by land and sea the monopoly of this important supply, and that the wealth of his subjects was continually drained by a nation of enemies and idolaters. An active government would have restored the trade of Egypt and the navigation of the Red Sea, which had decayed with the prosperity of the empire; and the Roman vessels might have sailed, for the purchase of silk, to the ports of Ceylon, of Malacca, or even of China.

Justinian' embraced a more humble expedient, and solicited the aid of his Christian allies, the Ethiopians of Abyssinia, who had recently acquired the arts of navigation, the spirit of trade, and the seaport of Adulis, still decorated with the trophies of a Grecian conqueror. Along the African coast, they penetrated to the Equator in search of gold, emeralds, and aromatics; but they wisely declined an unequal competition, in which they must be always prevented by the vicinity of the Persians to the markets of India: and the emperor submitted to the disappointment, till his wishes were gratified by an unexpected event. The Gospel had been preached to the Indians, a bishop already governed the Christians of St. Thomas on the pepper-coast of Malabar, a church was planted in Ceylon, and the missionaries pursued the footsteps of commerce to the extremities of Asia. Two Persian monks had long resided in China, perhaps in the royal city of Nankin, the seat of a monarch addicted to foreign superstitions, and who actually received an embassy from the isle of Ceylon.

Amidst their pious occupations, they viewed with a curious eye the common dress of the Chinese, the manufactures of silk, and the myriads of silk-worms, whose education (either on trees or in houses) had once been considered as the labour of queens. They soon discovered that it was impracticable to transport the short-lived insect, but that in the eggs a numerous progeny might be preserved and multiplied in a distant climate. Religion or interest had more power over the Persian monks than the love of their country: after a long journey, they arrived at Constantinople, imparted their project to the emperor, and were liberally encouraged by the gifts and promises of Justinian. To the historians of that prince, a campaign at the foot of Mount Caucasus has seemed more deserving of a minute relation than the labours of these missionaries of commerce, who again entered China, deceived a jealous people by concealing the eggs of the silk-worm in a hollow cane, and returned in triumph with the spoils of the East.

Under their direction, the eggs were hatched at the proper season by the artificial heat of dung, the worms were fed with mulberry leaves; they lived and laboured in a foreign climate; a sufficient number of butterflies was saved to propagate the race, and trees were planted to supply the nourishment of the rising generations. Experience and reflection corrected the errors of a new attempt, and the Sogdoite ambassadors2 acknowledged in the succeeding reign, that the Romans were not inferior to the natives of China in the education of the insects; and the manufactures of silk, in which both China and Constantinople, have been surpassed by the industry of modern Europe. I am not insensible of the benefits of elegant luxury; yet I reflect with some pain, that if the importers of silk had introduced the art of printing already practised by the Chinese, the comedies of Menander and the entire decads of Livy would have been perpetuated in the editions of the sixth century. A larger view of the globe might at least have promoted the improvement of speculative science; but the Christian geography was forcibly extracted from texts of Scripture, and the study of nature was the surest symptom of an unbelieving mind. The orthodox faith confined the habitable world to one temperate zone, and represented the earth as an oblong surface, four hundred days' journey in length, two hundred in breadth, encompassed by the ocean, and covered by the solid crystal of the firmament.GIBBON'S Roman Empire,'

1. Justinian was Emperor of Constaninople from A.D. 527 to 565. His laws still influence the legislation of the world. 2. That is, ambassadors from Sogdiana,

a country of Asia, bounded on the north by Scythia and on the south by Bactriana. The people were called Sogdiani. The capital was Marcanda, now Samarcand

[blocks in formation]

THE Greeks did not imbibe or perpetuate the animal worship, the animal transmigration of the soul, the incestuous marriages, the polygamy, or the belief that the gods lived in animal bodies, which Egypt was so attached to. Nor did they admit, but on the contrary resisted and abolished, the dreadful practice of human sacrifice and child-burning of the Phoenicians. The Babylonian law of depraving their females at the outset of life was also avoided and condemned as a shameful institution. These improvements and the substitution of their superior Jupiter to the gloomy and blood-stained Saturn, or Kronos, we know that they effected; and these are enough to prove what a great stretch of progression in human nature was attained, by causing the Greek mind to be educated by their, at first, more civilized teachers, and afterwards to rise so high above them, in the improvements to which they subsequently advanced.

It is interesting to contemplate the gradual training and formation of the Grecian people to this elevating destiny, but this is too large a subject to be part of a letter like the present. It is manifest that the colonies of Cecrops at Athens, Danaus at Argos, and Cadmus at Thebes, already noticed, were the nurses and instructors of their intellectual childhood, for the simple facts recorded on the Parian marbles, as to Athens, show us in what a rude state these foreign teachers found their uncultivated pupils, even in this celebrated place-the great refiner and metropolis of the ancient human intellect.

I will shortly notice these, as they indicate from what a humble condition it was the will of Providence that she should ascend to her appointed glory; by what little steps her first improvements were made, and how completely the process appears to have been under His guidance. For, may we not justly say, that by Him alone, a soil more fit for olive than corn, and a general country nearly as mountainous as those regions where barbaric life has been most continuous, were yet made the homes of the most illustrious and meritorious people who had appeared on our earthly surface, before our Divine Legislator began that new era of wisdom, virtue, hope, and happiness to His human race, which is becoming brighter all over the globe, and which may be expected to be in due time everywhere, to use our Addison's words, "Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight."

K

---

Such rational anticipations of this result appear to me to be visible all around, that I rejoice that I have lived long enough to discern them, and only regret that, at my advanced period of life, I cannot expect to witness the meridian splendour which, as time rolls on its circuits, will spread over our terrestrial hemisphere. Summer clouds and summer storms may attend the glowing rays; but these will be transient, and only augment the effulgence and diversify its fertilizing efficacy.-TURNER'S 'Sacred History.'

[blocks in formation]

HAPPENING to cast my eyes upon a printed page of miniature portraits, I perceived that the four personages who occupied the four most conspicuous places were Alexander, Hannibal,i Cæsar, and Buonaparte. I have seen the same unnumbered times before, but never did the same sensations arise in my bosom, as my mind hastily glanced over their several histories. Alexander, after having climbed the dizzy heights of his ambition, and with his temples bound with chaplets dipped in the blood of countless nations, looked down upon a conquered world, and wept that there was not another world for him to conquer, set a city on fire, and died in a scene of debauch.

Hannibal, after having, to the astonishment and consternation of Rome, passed the Alps-after having put to flight the armies of this "mistress of the world,” and stripped "three bushels" of golden rings from the fingers of her slaughtered knights, and made her very foundations quake-fled from his country, being hated by those who once exultingly united his name to that of their god and called him Hanni-Baal-and died, at last, by poison administered by his own hands, unlamented and unwept, in a foreign land.

Cæsar, after having conquered eight hundred cities, and dyed his garments in the blood of one million of his foes; after having pursued to death the only rival he had on earth, was miserably assassinated by those he considered as his nearest friends, and in that very place, the attainment of which had been his greatest ambition.

Buonaparte, whose mandate kings and popes obeyed, after having filled the earth with the terror of his name-after having deluged Europe with tears and blood, and clothed the world in sackcloth-closed his days in lonely banishment, almost literally

exiled from the world, yet where he could sometimes see his country's banner waving over the deep, but which would not, or could not, bring him aid!

Thus those four men, who, from the peculiar situation of their portraits, seemed to stand as the representatives of all those whom the world calls great—those four, who each in turn made the earth tremble to its very centre by their simple tread, severally died—one by intoxication, or, as some suppose, by poison mingled in his wine-one a suicide-one murdered by his friends--and one a lonely exile!" How are the mighty fallen !"-From FIELD'S Scrap Book.'

[blocks in formation]

THE history of England is emphatically the history of progress. It is the history of a constant movement of the public mind, of a constant change in the institutions of a great society. We see that society, at the beginning of the twelfth century, in a state more miserable than the state in which the most degraded nations of the East now are. We see it subjected to the tyranny of a handful of armed foreigners. We see a strong distinction of caste separating the victorious Norman from the vanquished Saxon. We see the great body of the population in a state of personal slavery. We see the most debasing and cruel superstition exercising boundless dominion over the most elevated and benevolent minds. We see the multitude sunk in brutal ignorance, and the studious few engaged in acquiring what did not deserve the name of knowledge.

In the course of seven centuries the wretched and degraded race have become the greatest and most highly-civilized people that ever the world saw, have spread their dominion over every quarter of the globe, have scattered the seeds of mighty empires and republics over vast continents, of which no dim intimation had ever reached Ptolemy or Strabo, have created a maritime power which would annihilate in a quarter of an hour the navies

« AnteriorContinuar »