ARTS IN THE STONE AGE. 343 



successful issue will leave him, in the words of his late friend Sir 

 Roderick Murchison, " the most glorious of all explorers in African 

 geography," it is not to be forgotten that he has other, and what must 

 be admitted to be nobler, aims. With his never-relinquished idea of 

 establishing a central trading-mart, and purging Africa from its slave- 

 trade, whether Portuguese or Arab, he exhibits the old steadiness in 

 completing a self-set task, the same tenacity of purpose. He is certain- 

 ly endeavoring to end as he thought good to begin: "It is better to 

 lessen human woe than to discover the sources of the Nile." Fmser's 

 Magazine. 







ARTS m THE STONE AGE. 1 



TTTHEN" Shakespeare represented his philosophical Duke as find- 

 V V ing " sermons in stones," and " books in the running brooks," 

 he was but unconsciously exhibiting the prophetic faculty which has 

 been attributed to all true poets. He could hardly have foreseen that 

 his pretty yet fanciful conceit would one day be found to be sober 

 earnest. But so it is ; we have here a goodly volume of more than 

 six hundred pages, illustrated by nearly as many excellent woodcuts, 

 discoursing learnedly of nothing save stones and streams, and finding 

 in them sermons of great and, to many readers, novel interest. 



It might have been supposed, when Mr. Evans had published his 

 well-known work on " The Coins of the Ancient Britons," that he had 

 gone back as far as possible in the history of our land and nation ; but, 

 in archreological as in other sciences, there is in the lowest known 

 depth one lower still remaining to be fathomed ; every chamber opened 

 to the light discloses others lying beyond it. From a people who had 

 no literature, or none of which they have left any trace beyond the 

 rude characters inscribed on their rude coins, we are now carried back 

 to tribes and races which possessed neither coins nor letters ; people 

 who have left us neither their sepulchres nor their ashes, nor indeed 

 any trace of their existence, save the rude triangular or subtriangular 

 fragments of worked stone which served them for tools or weapons ; 

 and even these are usually found buried beneath the wreck and ruin, 

 it may be, of continents or islands which have long since been worn 

 and wasted away. 



The publication of this work is remarkable as an evidence of the 

 quickened pace which characterizes scientific research in our days. 

 Paleontology and geology, vigorous and flourishing as they are, are 

 still hardly "out of their 'teens;" but prehistoric archaeology has 



1 " The Ancient Stone Implements, "Weapons, and Ornaments of Great Britain." By 

 John Evans, F. R. S., F. S. A. (New York : D. Appleton & Co., 1812.) 



