INVENTION OF THE A. B. C. 109 



the cities, was the queen. It covered an island which 

 lay at anchor off the shore. The Greek poet Nonnus 

 has prettily described the mingling around it of the 

 sylvan and marine. " The sailor furrows the sea with 

 his oar," he says, " and the ploughman the soil ; the 

 lowing of oxen and the singing of birds answer the 

 deep roar of the main; the wood nymph under the 

 tall trees hears the voice of the sea-nymph calling to 

 her from the waves ; the breeze from the Lebanon, 

 while it cools the rustic at his mid-day labour, speeds 

 the mariner who is outward bound." 



These Canaanitish men are fairly entitled to our 

 gratitude and esteem, for they taught our intellectual 

 ancestors to read and write. Wherever a factory trade 

 is carried on it is found convenient to employ natives 

 as subordinate agents and clerks. And thus it was 

 that the Greeks received the rudiments of education. 

 That the alphabet was invented by the Phoenicians is 

 improbable in the extreme ; but it is certain that they 

 introduced it into Europe. They were intent only on 

 making money, it is true ; they were not a literary or 

 artistic people ; they spread knowledge by accident like 

 birds dropping seeds. But they were gallant, hardy, 

 enterprising men. Those were true heroes who first 

 sailed through the sea-valley of Gibraltar into the 

 vast ocean and breasted its enormous waves. Their 

 unceasing activity kept the world alive. They offered 

 to every .country something which it did not pos- 

 sess. They roused the savage Briton from his torpor 

 with a rag of scarlet cloth, and stirred him to sweat in 

 the dark bowels of the earth. They brought to the 

 satiated Indian prince the luscious wines of Syria and 

 the Grecian isles in goblets of exquisitely painted 

 glass. From the amber gatherers of the Baltic mud 



