504 COSMOS. 



thought worthy of especial attention. Thus were established 

 regular official notices of the occurrence of storms.* The 

 Aqu&licium, the art of discovering springs of waters, which was 

 much practised by the Etruscans, and the drawing forth of water 

 by their Aquileges, indicate a careful investigation of the 

 natural stratification of rocks, and of the inequalities of the 

 ground. Diodorus, on this account, extols the Etruscans as 

 industrious inquirers of nature. We may add to this com- 

 mendation, that the patrician and powerful hierarchical caste 

 of the Tarquinii offered the rare example of favouring physical 

 science. 



We have spoken of the ancient seats of human civilisation 

 in Egypt, Phoenicia, and Etruria, before proceeding to the 

 highly-gifted Hellenic races, with whose culture our own 

 civilisation is most deeply rooted, and from whom we have 

 derived a considerable portion of our early knowledge of other 

 nations, and of our views regarding the universe. We have 

 considered the basin of the Mediterranean in its characteristic 

 configuration and position, and the influence of these relations 

 on the commercial intercourse established with the western 

 coasts of Africa, the extreme north, and the Indo-Arabian Sea. 

 No portion of the earth has been the theatre of greater changes 

 of power, or of greater or more animated activity under the in- 

 fluence of mental guidance. This movement was transmitted far 

 and enduringly by the Greeks and Romans, especially after the 

 latter had destroyed the Phcenicio-Carthaginian power. That 

 which we term the beginning of history is, therefore, only the 

 period when later generations awoke to self-consciousness. It 

 is one of the advantages of the present age that, by the bril- 

 liant progress that has been made in general and comparative 

 philology, by the careful investigation of monuments and 

 their more certain interpretation, the views of the historical 

 inquirer are daily enlarged, and the strata of remote antiquity 

 gradually opened, as it were, before our eyes. Besides the 

 civilised nations of the Mediterranean which we have just 

 enumerated, there are many others who show traces of ancient 

 cultivation; among these we may mention the Phrygians and 

 Lycians in Western Asia, and the Turduli and Turdetani in 

 the_xtifime west.f Of the latter, Strabo observes, "they 



* Joh. Lydus de Ostcntis, ed. Hase, p. 18, in praefat. 



t Strabo, lib. iii. p. 139, Casaub. Compare Wilhelm von Humboldt, 



