men who were depriving them of every consolation of their own religion, "for their good" assuredly! And these men have the insolence to talk of the "Catholic and convict party"! Truly it can require little of "Government favour" to induce the poor to fly from them to the refuge of the Catholic priest. The helpless poor, we take it, are better judges of the tendency of Church-of-Englandism than many a doctor of theology; and had it been only the disgraced and despairing convict they had lost, little enough should we have heard about the matter,-but, alas! they have lost "the ONE-SEVENTH of all the lands of New South Wales, which, monstrous to relate, had been conferred upon them by George the IVth, and resumed afterwards, not so much because it injured the colony (what, indeed, wOULD that have signified, compared with the welfare of the Church of England?), but because they made no use of this incredible grant, brought out no fresh clergymen, and never ceased to require the aid of colonial grants beside. But they have lost it; they are not now greatly predominant over the rest of mankind; they are not "raised above mere dependants [in some degree dependant it should have been said] on the good-will of those among whom they minister"; and for this is raised the cry of lamentation and wrath over a distressed Church,-help, all good Christians! help, help, oh, Israel! But we say, let every man who has a fancy to worship God his own way, read here (and not in story-books and tracts) the aim and tendency of the Church of England. Let every Catholic who would sympathise with the wrongs of his fellow-Christians, read here an account of them by one who has suffered and been tried with them, till even his charity, outraged and grieved, has found vent in words of fire.

Works of Josephus. By Whiston.

Fox's Book of Martyrs, various parts. Geo. Virtue.

These reprints are excellent specimens of typography: of the latter work it is needless for us to express any opinion on the present occasion; the value of the former requires no recommendation; its present most convenient and elegant form, added to its great cheapness, ought to ensure it a great circulation.

Dr. Cox's admirable translation of Döllinger's celebrated Ecclesiastical History, has reached a third volume. Our readers may rely on finding here a desideratum of the first order. We shall present them with a lengthened notice of the work in a later stage of its progress.

C. RICHARDS, PRINTER, 100, ST. MARTIN'S LANE, CHARING CROSS.

THE

DUBLIN REVIEW.

NOVEMBER 1841.

ART. I.-1. Antiquitates Americana, sive Scriptores Septentrionales rerum ante-Columbianarum in America. (American Antiquities, or Accounts from Northern writers respecting America before the time of Columbus.) Copenhagen:

1837.

2. Samling af de i Nordens Oldskrifter indeholdte Efterretninger an de gamle Nordboers Optagelsesreiser til America fra det 10 de til det 14 de Aarhundrede. (Collection of the Evidence contained in old writings respecting the voyages of discovery made to America by the ancient inhabitants of the North, from the 10th to the 14th century.) Published by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries. Copenhagen: 1837.

3. The Discovery of America by the Northmen, in the Tenth Century, with Notices of the early Settlements of the Irish in the Western Hemisphere. By North Ludlow Beamish.

London: 1841.

4. The Discovery of America by the Northmen, in the Tenth Century. By Joshua Toulmin Smith, with Maps and Plates. London: 1839.

T

HE subject we are about to discuss is one of strong, vivid, and universal interest. We have to treat of the successive discoveries which the ancient world has made of the new, and those connecting links which have bound their populations together from time immemorial.

It appears that this inquiry is susceptible of much new illustration. The philosophical truth-searcher may cast a fresh and fascinating light over its details, equally unexpected and satisfactory. This new light will principally arise from the concentration and accumulation of the scattered evidences of history that have never yet been fairly brought

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together and subjected to comparative analysis. We would seek to collect into a focus of irradiation those broken rays of intelligence that are dispersed through the chaos of literature, and which by their very dispersion lose their appropriate brightness. This is the very best method of arriving at sound conclusions in questions of this nature. For truth consists in the accumulation of evidences, as error consists in their partition.

But besides this concentration and harmonic arrangement of many ancient testimonies on the subject, that have hitherto been kept in separate and confused masses, the recent good fortune of antiquarian investigators has enabled us to confirm our argument, by a series of facts unknown to the historians of the last century.

In entering on this stirring examination, in which our cotemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic are implicated, let us solicit the reader's indulgent and patient attention. Let him not be displeased if we find ourselves obliged to lay the basis of our argument in the very remotest ages, and touch upon certain arcana of antiquarian lore that may seem at first sight remote from our leading topic. Nor let him be offended if throughout this disquisition we avail ourselves of large quotations and testimonials from foreign or British authors who have already caught glimpses of the truth. In these cases, so far from wishing to be purely original, we are rather anxious to emulate the pleadings of a lawyer, and to lay the great current of decisions of established authority open to the audience.

If it is proper in this disquisition to adopt that venerable maxim, "begin with the beginning," it is likewise proper to add that we know extremely little respecting the beginning of the discoveries we must elucidate. The Jews indeed have a tradition that even in antediluvian times the great quarters and distinctive features of the world were nearly the same as they are at present. They assert that the principal continents, seas, islands, mountains, rivers, &c. of the antediluvian world were nearly in the same relative position in which we find them in modern geography. Such a theory they attempt to prove from the words of Moses, who refers to mountains and rivers subsisting in his time, as subsisting under the same names before the flood. Building on such presumptions, the rabins go on to assure us that Britain, and even America, were peopled before the deluge. Some learned men have attempted to confirm this notion by the story of Plato's At

lantis; but we shall see by and by, that the history of Atlantis is referable to a subsequent era.- Vide Bochart, Grotius, &c.

Passing by this period of twilight fables, we come to the grand catastrophe of the deluge, of which we have assured biblical record. We shall take for granted the universality of the deluge, as it is confirmed by the gravest authorities, and as the geological phenomena of every land lend it confirmation.

After the deluge, the Noachidæ, or descendants of Noah, extended from the Armenian chain of mountains on which the ark rested, and began to repeople the continents of our planet.

We will not at present perplex the reader with the elaborate disquisitions of Bryant, Faber, and other authors, on the original distribution of the Noachida. Suffice it to say in general terms, that the descendants of Sem principally occupied Asia, the descendants of Cham, Africa, and the descendants of Japheth, Europe, and the Western Isles, of the Gentiles; the primitive language of mankind being diversified more and more, as men receded from the centre of union.

Some scholars have supposed that the Semitic tribes of Eastern Asia first peopled America; but they have little authority for the assertion. Some have given credence to the pretence of the Chinese, that they were the first discoverers of the American continent, because wrecks of Chinese vessels have been found on the coasts of the Pacific Ocean, and because the ancient Peruvians worshipped the sun, and wrote from the top to the bottom of the page like the Chinese. These statements have all been refuted by other writers. Their opinion is of little more value who think that the people of America came from Great Tartary; because they had no horses before the Spanish conquest, and it is almost impossible that the Scythians, who abounded in horses, should bring none with them; besides, the Tartars were never sea

men.

Others have imagined that descendants of Cham, the Ammenians, the Phoenicians or Ethiopians, were the first settlers in America. A learned author has maintained, as to the people of Jucatan and the neighbourhood, that they came from Ethiopia by way of the ocean. He grounds this opinion on the practice of circumcision among these nations of America, which was also used by the Ethiopians. These assertions,

however, have little evidence to support them, and they have generally been rejected by the learned.- Vide Burigni.

We must therefore agree with the maxim of those who assert that the main stream of human population has always flowed from east to west, and look among the descendants of Japheth for the earliest discoverers of America. The prophecy of Noah was, "God shall enlarge Japhet," and the name of Japhet signifies enlargement. The territory of Japhet's posterrity was very large; for to quote the words of Bochart, "besides all Europe, great and extensive as it is, they possessed the lesser Asia, Armenia, Media, Iberia, Albania, and those vast regions towards the north which anciently the Scythians inhabited, and now the Tartars inhabit, and it is not impossible that the New World was peopled by some of his northern descendants, passing thither by the Straits of Anien." Thus far Bochart.

Of the sons of Japhet it is necessary here to notice the name of Javan, the reputed ancestor of the Javanese, Iaones, Ionians or Greeks, because some have supposed the Javanians or Ionians the first discoverers of America. No doubt the great spirit of discovery, which the Greeks indicated under the names of Perseus and Hercules, early pervaded the regions of the west, apportioned to Gomer, whom we shall hereafter prove to have been identical with Atlas. No doubt the Iaones or Greeks had many struggles with the Gomerites or Atlantians for the supremacy; but we hasten to show that it is to the Gomerites or Atlantians themselves that the discovery of America is mainly to be attributed.

We proceed to support that opinion as the most consistent with historical records, which supposes Gomer, one of the sons of Japhet, to be the ancestor of those who first peopled America. The name of Gomer bears a sense not very dissimilar to that of Japhet. The etymologists inform us that Gomer means expatiation, immensity, fulfilment, &c., words which imply the greatest development and vastness.

The posterity of Gomer, under the name of Gomerians, Cimmerians or Cimbrians, appear to have peopled a part of Asia, and the whole of Western Europe. To illustrate this proposition, we need only cite a few passages from Dr. Well's Sacred Geography.

"The Jewish historian Josephus," says he, "expressly tells us that the Galatians were called Gomerites; and Herodotus tells us that a people called Cimmerii dwelt in those parts; and Pliny