To Phemius was consigned the chorded lyre, Whose hand reluctant touched the warbling wire; Phemius, whose voice divine could sweetest sing High strains, responsive to the vocal string. This, however, is a custom by no means peculiar to the Greeks. We know that each of the Highland clans retained a bard expressly for the purpose of celebrating the clan and its chief. We imagine we have seen something of the same kind mentioned relative to the American and Indian tribes. The subject of the “Iliad” of course calls forth long and spirited descriptions of the mode of warfare in use among the ancient Greeks. This appears to us to exhibit plainer marks of barbarism than any other part of their character. They had all the untutored ferocity, the dependence on personal strength or courage, which is characteristic of the earliest ages, without the studied manœuvres and the laboured machines which malicious invention afterwards introduced. The greatest quality inherent in a commander was not skill of head, but strength of limb; few seemed to lay claim to any nobler distinctions than those which were to be found in the space between their shoulders. We know not whether the rude struggling of these uncultivated warriors is not a more interesting spectacle than the cold-blooded massacres of modern days. In the hand-to-hand conflict of two princes there is passion, and fury, and enthusiasm, for which we look in vain to the cold and calculating tactics of _l’art militaire_. The war, indeed, of those times was naturally deficient in everything technical or scientific. It abounded in instances of individual devotion and of desperate enterprise, but had no means of supplying by art the defect of numbers, or of overcoming an obstinate enemy by a regular siege. It rather resembled the foray of a few pillaging tribes, than the contest between two powerful nations. We shall see nothing to wonder at in this their undisciplined warfare, when we remember that piracy, which it so nearly resembled, was a mode of life to which they were greatly addicted. They saw in it nothing dishonourable; but on the contrary esteemed it a brave and worthy employment: their greatest heroes exercised it without the smallest scruple. They rather gloried in their robberies, and recounted with a feeling of pride their achievements and their plunder. Here again there is a manifest similarity between their ideas and those of the Highland clans. We do not know indeed if a very close parallel might not be drawn between the greaved Greek and the plaided mountaineer. We shall throw out a hint or two upon the subject, and recommend the plan to Mr. Golightly, if he wishes to be witty in our next Number.