PRIMITIVE STATE OF EUROPE. 013 



CHIEF EVENTS IN THE CIVILIZATION OF EUROPE. 



The Odyssey presents us a vivid picture of the state of Europe a 

 thousand years before the birth of Christ. A twilight was Euro e emer _ 

 breaking on the most eastern verge in the countries adjoin- ing from bar- 

 ing the Hellespont, but the West and the North were im- b 

 mersed in a night of barbarism. The unfolding mind is ever prone to 

 fill darkness with imaginary creations, and it was with the white race at 

 that period as it is with a child. Every shore of the Mediterranean 

 and Black Seas was full of prodigies. To the Greek no fiction was too 

 marvelous for belief if- it was separated from his view by a hundred 

 years or a hundred miles, the exaggeration of tradition confirming it in 

 the one case, and the difficulties of travel in the other. His horizon was 

 crowded with enchantresses like Circe, sorcerers like Tiresias, monsters 

 like the Cyclops. Gods and goddesses were perpetually flying through 

 the air ; every hill had its supernatural legend, every forest its phantom. 

 Even the mouth of hell was on the farther side of the Euxine. 



A religion of superstition is very liable to be connected with a life 

 of evil works. The maritime enterprise of those days seems to have re- 

 ceived no little incitement from the temptations of piracy a profession 

 to which, even at a later period, the Greek appears instinctively to turn ; 

 nor were these felonious expeditions restricted to the taking of goods ; they 

 drew an additional profit from the stealing of men. The evidences of 

 even a still darker crime may also be discerned, since there were people 

 accused by common fame of eating the captives who fell into their hands. 

 The white man, therefore, emerges from his state of barbarism a pirate, 

 a slaver, a cannibal, cruel in his moment of power, and debased by an 

 incredible superstition in his moment of fear. 



Unable to originate his civilization for himself, he drew the elements 

 of it from another country. By the concurring testimony of Civilizatio 

 all authors, as well as the internal evidences of ancient history, originated 

 that great blessing is the gift of Egypt. For thirty-four cen- X1 

 turies before our era that country was governed by dynasties of kings, 

 succeeding each other without interruption. Its soil, proverbially fer- 

 tile, sustained a population, estimated, in the most prosperous times, at 

 about seven millions ; and repeated military expeditions into Asia and 

 Ethiopia had, in the course of ages, concentrated in it immense wealth, 

 the spoils of conquered nations, and crowded with captives and slaves 

 the Valley of the Nile. 



For this long continuance of the Egyptian polity satisfactory reasons 

 may be assigned. In early ages, when maritime expeditions Ancient condi- 

 were necessarily feeble, the country was open to invasion tion of Egypt, 

 only across a narrow neck of land on the east, and was protected from 

 any attack on the west by impassable and interminable deserts. Under 



