OF THE PHONETIC ALPHABET. 81 
tory through which they could establish a commercial intercourse 
with those distant countries. 
Nor was the enterprise of the Greeks stimulated by the proximity 
of a northern market for the luxuries of India. The inhabitants of 
the boundless and desolate regions of the north easily supplied by 
domestic art and industry the simple exigencies of a pastoral life, 
and were uncivilized, in those early times, below the consideration of 
mercantile adventure. The mountains of Thrace and Macedonia? 
_ precluded an intimate communication with those districts; and the 
distant voyage of the Hellespont, the Euxine, and the Danube, was 
interdicted by ferocious hordes of barbarians, more ready to plunder} + 
than to purchase the costly manufactures of civilized nations. 
Greece, therefore, did not occupy that central position between the 
producer and the consumer essential to the possession of a commercial 
monopoly. In after ages, the grandeur of 35 Venice and Genoa, of 
Livorno and Pisa, arose out of the incipient luxury of the same re- 
gions, which, in Grecian days, were conversant only with the arts of 
savages or of shepherds. 
Not so the Pheenicians : driven from their piratical ascendancy? ¢ 
33 In countries uncivilized by the arts and manufactures, it has been found 
impracticable to establish commercial intercourse with mountainous districts, 
the inhabitants of which retain pertinaciously and bring into civilized com- 
munications the predatory habits and morals of their recesses. The moun- 
tains of Wales and Scotland offer few temptations at this late period to mer- 
cantile enterprise ; and the commerce of Geneva is confined principally to 
the northern banks of the Lake of Leman, the gentle slopes of which are 
advantageously contrasted with the precipitous and threatening heights of 
the Alps, which are based on its southern border. The Welsh, the Scots, 
and Savoyard mountainers are in bad note on the ledgers of the British and 
Swiss manufacturers and merchants. 
34 The Black Sea acquired its ancient appellation as well from its tumul- 
tuous waters as from the no less fierce wanderers that inhabited its shores ; 
and the title A£svo;, axenos, or inhospitable, is perpetuated in the days of 
civilization under the corrupt epithet of Euxine. 
85 They arose out of the taste for arts ingrafted into Europe by the rem- 
nant of fanatics who had returned from the rescue of the holy sepulchre, 
and which was the only salutary result of the ill-conceived, the ill-conducted, 
and the ill-fated crusades : this taste was gratified by the encouragement of 
the Indian trade, over land and by Egypt. The merchants of the towns 
named in the text established the arts of commerce throughout the north, 
and allying themselves to the potentates of Europe, wore out a prejudice 
which had excluded the pursuit of merchandize from all consideration under 
the military despotism of Rome. 
9° Kas aby hooov Anoral houv of ynowmras, Kats rs ovres xa) Dolvinss, od ras yee 
bh ras wAtiorus Tay viowy wKiav— Thucydides, Ay. The islanders also were 
VOL. IX., NO. XXV. 1] 
