443 
CLAIMS OF NATIONS TO ANTIQUITY. 
almost, infinite, wherein gods and demi-gods had worn the crown. 
From Isis and Osiris to Alexander they reckon a space of twenty-three 
thousand years ; the time before that, while the gods reigned, made 
forty-two thousand nine hundred and eighty-four years more ; the 
whole duration, from the beginning of the monarchy, amounting to 
sixty-five thousand nine hundred and eighty-four. The computation 
of their dynasties, as given by Manetho, extends to five thousand five 
hundred and fifty years before Alexander’s time ; and the Egyptian 
chronicle, cited by Syncellus, goes farther, reckoning 3G,525 years ! 
Diogenes Laertius makes no less than 48,863 years from the reign of 
Vulcan! Yet the Scythians, the Phrygians, Ethiopians, and 
some others, still insisted on their priority to the Egyptians. It is 
no w'onder their catalogues should be ridiculously incredible, when 
the Egyptians made their first kings reign 1200 years apiece, and 
the Assyrians theirs about 4000. 
But the Chinese pretend to the most ancient monarchy in the uni- 
verse, having cultivated the sciences from the earliest ages, and sub- 
sisted at least these four thousand years, with the same laws, manners, 
and usages. Some indeed have called in question the authenticity of 
the Chinese annals ; yet we find them confirmed, at least as high as 
660 years before Christ, by the annals of Japan. Dr. Chambers 
argues, that, “ at worst, the Chinese antiquities stand on as good a foot- 
ing as those of either Greece or Rome. Their annalists, he adds, both 
for order and chronology, are not inferior to any of those ancients so 
much admired among us, but far surpass them in point of antiquity, 
and have a better title to be credited, as having been written by public 
authority, which can be said of few Greek or Roman pieces, except 
perhaps the Capitoline marbles, which are not properly a history.’' 
But here we cannot help differing from the Doctor : for public 
authority is by no means the best of guardians for historical truth, 
especially in a country where this authority is placed in the hands of 
an absolute monarch, and where learning in monopolized by the 
priests. But the whole of the Chinese chronology has been success- 
fully attacked by Mr. Costar. 
The British have also laid claim to very high antiquity; but before 
Caesar’s invasion their history is utterly dubious, not to say fabulous. 
Old chronicles speak of Samothes, the son of Japhet, as the founder 
of the British monarchy. Albion, a descendant of Cham, invaded it 
three hundred years after ; and about six hundred years after this. 
Brute, the son of ^Eneas, came and took possession of the island in 
the year of the world 2880, giving it the name which it still retains, 
and w'hich it had when Caesar made his first attempt. This is Geoffrey 
of Monmouth’s system of the antiquity of the British nation. It has 
been defended by A. Thomson of Queen’s college, in the preface to 
his English translation of that writer. 
It must not be forgotten that the. Irish also pretend to be the most 
ancient of all nations ; they trace their origin without interruption up 
to Japhet I And our ancient Scots historians have not been much 
behind-hand with them, as they trace their origin from an elder branch 
of the Scythians, the first of men, and from a mixture of Scythians, 
Greeks, Jews, and Egyptians, who emigrated under the command of 
