PROGRESSIVE DEGENKRACY OF THE HUMAN RACE. 661 



Now these calculations agree with my own in a marvellous man- 

 ner, with the exception of Moses, who I make 13 feet 1 f inches, and 

 of which I am so certain, that I boldly challenge M. Heurien to dis- 

 prove it before any learned society in Europe ; but this I know he 

 will not attempt. 



In the happy days of the protoplast, the existence of man was pro- 

 portioned to his size, and extended nearly to one thousand years ! 

 Alas ! how are we reduced in duration of life and dimensions ! From 

 a glorious ten centuries and more than twice sixty feet, to a miserable 

 maximum of threescore and ten, and a beggarly six feet two in our 

 stocking. From the time of the flood the days of man were cut down 

 to nearly one half; from that event to the Trojan war we find our 

 species rapidly decreasing in length of life and fine proportion. Nes- 

 tor was, accordingly, esteemed old at the moderate age of three hun- 

 dred, which the sybils, I fancy, did not much exceed. In all times, 

 however, there were extraordinary individuals who overstep the 

 bounds of nature such a one was Polyphemus, who, as we learn 

 from Lucilius, an author of great accuracy and research, was two 

 hundred feet in height ; and this account is strongly corroborated by 

 Boccaccio, in the Fourth Book of his Genealogy, who tells us that the 

 body of this very Cyclop was found in a Sicilian cavern, holding in 

 the left-hand the pine-tree which, in the time of Ulysses, served him 

 as a walking-stick. This shillelah was considerably longer than the 

 mainmast of a man-of-war. The extraordinary height of Polyphemus 

 makes nothing against my argument for the progressive degeneracy 

 of mankind ; for this formidable person could hardly be consi- 

 dered of the ordinary race of mortals ; but of that larger class now 

 almost extinct called giants : of such a race he is usually classed by 

 the historians. None but unreasonable sceptics can doubt the exist- 

 ence of such beings of what other race were Goliah, Og, king of 

 Basan, and the sons of Anak? I have myself seen the enormous 

 bones of the Lsestrygones and Cyclops on the vast excavations in 

 which they resided years ago in various parts of Sicily ; nay, I have 

 trod with my feet, and touched with my hands, the identical rocks 

 hurled by the eyeless and enraged Polyphemus at the departing ship 

 of Ulysses, which, in memory of the fact, are to this day called gli 

 scoglj del Ciclope, the rocks of the Cyclops. It is hardly necessary 

 to make further proof; but if any should be wanted, I recommend 

 the incredulous to consult the work of the Abbe Bania, as also that of 

 the Abbe Zilladet, where is clearly shewn, that entire cities and po- 

 pulous nations of giants formerly existed. 



Let us, however, return to the race from which we are actually 

 descended, and examine a little into the size and prowess of the he- 

 roes before Troy men comparatively of our own times, and the un- 

 doubted progenitors of the modern Greeks. Here, then, we are at 

 home positively at our own threshold ; for we have for our guide the 

 unimpeachable testimony of Homer as veracious an historian as he 

 is an admirable poet. The only style of recording events in those 

 days was in poetry ; for it was not until about 550 B.C., that Cadmus 

 of Miletus composed the first history in prose. Homer, it is to be 

 recollected, lived little more than two hundred years after the de- 



