130 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 



Commerce and the industrial arts were first 

 carried on on a grand scale by a Shemitic 

 people, or at least by a people speaking a 

 Shemitic tongue, — the Phoenicians. In the 

 middle ages, the Arabs and the Jews were 

 also our masters in point of commerce. All 

 European luxuries, from ancient times to 

 the seventeenth century, came from the 

 East. I speak of luxury, not of Art ; there 

 is a vast difference between the two. 

 Greece, which, as regards taste, had an 

 immense superiority over the rest of man- 

 kind, was not a land of luxury ; there 

 the vain magnificence of the palace of the 

 great king was spoken of with contempt ; 

 and if we could be allowed to see the house 

 of Pericles, we should probably scarcely 

 think it habitable. I do not insist on this 

 point ; for then we should have to examine 

 whether this Asiatic luxury, that of Ba- 

 bylon, for instance, were really the work 

 of the Sheniites ? I, for one, doubt it. 

 But one indisjmtable gift they made us, 

 a gift of the highest order, and which 



