progress the New World and Australia may seem to be making, and whatever interest they may awaken in the minds of students, not even they can be looked at without regard to their relations to the ancient historical lands, the source of all the inherited culture which they are enjoying in their vigorous youth. India, Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and other countries still stand out as the formative lands of all modern history, and we cannot study the present without studying them. They are to the student what Plutarch’s Lives are to the biographer, the imperishable and unequaled models which gain new luster as time rolls on. It is therefore not without reason that ancient geography ought to be subjected to a more systematic treatment than the geography of the Middle Ages. The latter, though not unworthy of a large place, had no relations of special importance to the whole world, to the study of the physical conditions of the most imposing objects of nature, to the connection as cause and effect of events past, present, and to come. From these foundation principles, we advance to a more full study of the configuration of the surface of the globe, for which we are now in a measure prepared. PART II. A more extended Investigation regarding the Earth’s Surface. It is the province of Hydrography to deal with the oceanic world; Geography proper concerns itself simply with solid forms. The Hydrography of the globe we must pass over, however. Aside from the fact that it would lead us into studies of the most protracted nature, it forms strictly one department of nautical science. Besides, there is the less occasion to speak of it here at length, that works of great excellence have been published, relating to that branch. We turn therefore to the land, and shall study the world of waters only so far as it exerts influence on the land.