a place of merchandise; and the merchants there became the factors for the oriental trade. They probably bought of the caravans from India, and sold to the Romans, and under this trade it rose to be one of the most beautiful cities of the world. It is not needful to attempt further to specify its commerce. Producing nothing itself, its commerce partook wholly of that which has been already described, and, it was enriched by that alone.—It is remarkable that it is so seldom referred to in the Scriptures. There are no denunciations of its pride and splendor, as of Petra, and Babylon and Tyre; no prediction of its certain and final overthrow, as there was of theirs.*

Damascus, too, rose in part by that same commerce, and though distinguished by its own manufactures above most of the cities of the East, no small part of its ancient opulence was derived from its situation, and from the fact that it shared in that vast merchandise that was borne across the deserts and plains of Western Asia to contribute to the luxury and splendor of Europe.

Another important city that has perhaps interested the reader of modern travels more than any other is Petra, or Sela. A general description of the site and present appearance of this celebrated city may be seen, by referring to the Biblical Repository, Vol. III. pp. 278–287, 422–431, and Vol. IX. 431-457. All that my purpose requires is, that I should consider its advantages as a place of commerce, and show that it owed its splendor and power to the fact that the commerce of the East at one time centered there. Petra was situated advantageously between Gazaat one time the mart of commerce, after the destruction of Tyre-on the west, the Persian Gulf on the east, and Palmyra on the north. Thus Pliny (vi. 28) says, Nabatæi oppidum incolunt Petram nomine in convalle, paulo minus II Mill. pass. amplitudinis circumdatum montibus inaccessis, amne interfluente; abest a Gaza oppido litoris nostri DC Mill. a sinu Persico CXXXV Mill. Huc convenit utrumque bivium, eorum qui Syria Palmyram petiere et eorum qui ab Gaza venerunt.t The situation of Petra as advantageous for

*For a description of Palmyra, see the Pictorial Bible on 2 Chron. 8.

† See Reland's Palest. on the word Petra.

commerce, is thus described by Dr. Vincent. "Petra is the capital of Edom or Seir, the Idumea or Arabia Petræa of the Greeks, the Nabatea, considered by geographers, historians and poets, as the source of all the precious commodities of the East. The caravans, in all ages, from Minca in the interior of Arabia and from Gerrha on the Gulf of Persia, from Hadramant on the ocean, and some even from Sabea or Yemen, appear to have pointed to Petra as a common centre; and from Petra the trade seems to have again branched out in every direction to Egypt, Palestine and Syria, through Arsinoe, Gaza, Tyre, Jerusalem, Damascus and a variety of subordinate routes that all terminated on the Mediterranean. There is every proof that is requi site to show that the Tyrians and Sidonians were the first merchants who introduced the produce of India to all the nations which encircled the Mediterranean, so is there the strongest evidence to prove that the Tyrians obtained all their commodities from Arabia. But if Arabia was the centre of this commerce, Petra was the point to which all the Arabians traded from the three sides of their vast peninsula."*

In itself, Petra had no commercial advantages. It was remote from any seaport; it had no large river near; it had no internal resources. It was merely from its being a carrying-place, or a thoroughfare, that it derived all its importance. "When caravans came across Arabia from the Persian Gulf, it was at Edom or Idumea that they first touched on the civilized world. A depôt was thus naturally formed there of the commodities in which they traded. This traffic raised Idumea, and its capital, Petra, to a high pitch of wealth and importance." As the commerce which centered in Petra, however, was substantially the same with that which was conveyed through Babylon and Palmyra, and which I have already described, it is not necessary to go farther into detail. It was India that made Petra what it was, and like Palmyra and Tyre it rose to splendor because the commerce of the East at one time centered there, and, like them, when that commerce received a new direction, it lost its importance and fell to rise no more.

[To be continued.]

* Commerce of the Ancients, Vol. XI. p. 263, as quoted by Keith, p. 140. Encyc. Geog. I, p. 16.

ARTICLE V.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

By the Rev. N. Porter, Jr., New Milford, Con.

IT is no mean heritage, to which we have been born, that we have the English language for our mother tongue. It may well be questioned, whether it is surpassed by any ancient or modern language, either in the measure of its ca. pacities, or the readiness with which it adapts itself to uses the most varied. We freely acknowledge the almost endless copiousness of the wonderful Greek, and are entranced with the surprising perfection of its structure. We are excited by that vivifying energy which causes a German sentence to beat as with the pulsations of life, and are startled by those meaning whispers which it sends to our ears, as from the spirit-land. But when we turn and read with the eye, or chant with the voice, the poetry of our own Shakspeare and Milton, or mark the graceful ease and the majestic strength which run along the prose of Bacon, of Dryden, and of Burke, we are satisfied more than ever with our own language, and pause, before we yield to any other a higher place.

True, the English is our mother tongue-and we should not forget, as we judge of its sweetness and its power, that our infant lispings first labored to utter its words, and that by its measures, as warbled from a mother's voice, we were lulled to our childhood slumbers. Its familiar household words have become so identified with the realities which they describe, and the emotions which they awaken, that when clothed in a new language, we hardly know them as our own. On the other hand we may not forget, that its words have become so common to our ears by early and constant use, that we are insensible to much of the sweetness which is borne upon their sounds and the power which their combinations enfold;-that he who in his maturer years, acquires a new language, sees in it a freshness

which has been worn off from his own, by the soil of frequent handling.

As is the English language such is the literature, of which it is at once the armor of strength and the glittering robe of beauty. I have spoken of the perfection of the language, because language and literature ought never to be consid ered apart from each other. The one is the body, the other the spirit. By a mutual influence, they act on each other, and, advancing with an equal pace, they carry each other forward, to a common point of splendid attainment.

Το

But what is literature? It is not what it is thought to be by those who abuse and dishonor its name, by applying it exclusively to certain elegant productions of the intellect, which it is well for the idlers among the educated to furnish, and for the rich to be amused with, and to pay for. prosecute literature as a business or a profession, is, in the judgment of such, to be studious of the niceties of language, to be able to construct grammatical and well-rounded prose, or, perchance, to attain to the mysteries of rhyming, without doing outrage to the laws of versification. It is the fit occupation of those who dwell in the mansions of ease and of elegance, or those who are content to lodge in garrets, that they may purchase a dinner at the tables of their patrons, by framing to their praise the prettiness of some sonnet, or extolling their stupidity in a well-sounding dedication.

It has contributed in no small measure to this abuse of the name, and the low estimate of literature, that educated men have too commonly regarded it as a pursuit which it is well that masters and misses in their teens should be amused with, but which, though it includes the triumphs of language as uttered in eloquence or sung in verse, is yet unworthy the studious regard of the man who is engaged in the sterner conflicts of real life.

Strange as it may seem, even those, the chief weapon of whose power over man is thought made visible in language, have deemed an acquaintance with language, as Milton and Burke have made it the fit garb for their glowing and sublime conceptions, to be a merely elegant accomplishment. Yes, statesmen, and lawyers, and the messengers of God to man, though by language as the vehicle of thought do they attain the ends of their calling, have thought the study

of their own noble literature to be the fit amusement of a leisure hour, rather than, as it is in fact, the storing together of weapons of terrific brightness and of ethereal temper.

Critics, also, and professed rhetoricians, have furthered this low esteem of literature and its study, and have done much to keep alive this mistaken and dishonorable opinion of its true dignity. Too often, have the very high priests* in this department of study quite mistaken its true elevation themselves, and rendered it a trivial and contemptible thing in the eyes of men at large. And this is not all. The moral and religious teacher has, not rarely, frowned upon the pursuit, the character of which he has so entirely misunderstood, and has reproved it, as a waste of time and a perversion of capacity given for higher and nobler ends. How wonderful! With that book in his hands, on whose pages the prophets, with lips touched with a coal from the altar of God, have recorded their words of hallowed fire and of glowing energy,-on which stand the wondrous letters of the argumentative but fiery apostle, and from which we devoutly listen to the sayings of him who spake as never man spake ;-sayings so calm, so thrilling and so

true.

What then is literature? I answer, it is the product of the mind of man, as made manifest and made permanent by language. It comprehends whatsoever is thrilling and powerful in eloquence; whatsoever is profound and wise in philosophy; whatsoever is acute in argument; whatsoever is grave and instructive in history.-It embraces also all that is delightful in fiction, and that is enchanting in the strains which poets sing, and, in addition, all that is wild in romance and stirring with mirth or sorrow, in the drama. Whatsoever has been conceived in thought, and has received the adornment of varied and beauteous imagery and the strength of powerful expression, and then passed upon the lasting records of time-that is literature. The literature of an age, is a collected representation of the philosophers, the civilians, the divines, the moralists, the orators and the poets of that age-who have been distinguished by uncommon genius, and honored to leave upon the age token of their presence and the impress of their influence.

*French critics.

the