_Amb_.--You appear to me in your argument to have forgotten the influence that any civilised race must possess over savages; and many of the nations which you consider as in their original state, may have descended from nations formerly civilised; and, it is quite as easy to trace the retrograde steps of a people as their advances; the savage hordes who now inhabit the northern coast of Africa are probably descended from the opulent, commercial, and ingenious Carthaginians who once contended with Rome for the empire of the world; and even nearer home, we might find in Southern Italy and her islands, proofs of a degradation not much inferior. What I contend for is the civilisation of the first patriarchal races who peopled the East, and who passed into Europe from Armenia, in which paradise is supposed to have been placed. The early civilisation of this race could only have been in consequence of their powers and instincts having been of a higher character than those of savages. They appear to have been small families--a state not at all fitted for the discovery of arts by the exercise of the mind; and they professed the most sublime form of religion, the worship of one Supreme Intelligence--a truth which, after a thousand years of civilisation, was with difficulty attained by the most powerful efforts of reasoning by the Greek sages. It appears to me, that in the history of the Jews, nothing can be more in conformity to our ideas of just analogy than this series of events. Our first parents were created with everything necessary for their wants and their happiness; they had only one duty to perform, by their obedience to prove their love and devotion to their Creator. In this they failed, and death--or the fear of death--became a curse upon their race; but the father of mankind repented, and his instinctive or intellectual powers given by revelation were transmitted to his offspring more or less modified by their reason, which they had gained as the fruit of their disobedience. One branch of his offspring, however, in whom faith shone forth above reason, retained their peculiar powers and institutions and preserved the worship of Jehovah pure, whilst many of the races sprung from their brethren became idolatrous, and the clear light of heaven was lost through the mist of the senses; and that Being, worshipped by the Israelites only as a mysterious word, was forgotten by many of the nations who lived in the neighbouring countries, and men, beasts, the parts of the visible universe, and even stocks and stones, were set up as objects of adoration. The difficulty which the divine legislators of the Jewish people had to preserve the purity of their religion amongst the idolatrous nations by whom they were surrounded, proves the natural evil tendency of the human mind after the fall of man. And, whoever will consider the nature of the Mosaical or ceremonial law and the manner in which it was suspended before the end of the Roman