construction, did any suspicion lie against its authenticity, the case would be weakened. But just because there neither was nor could have been error in the mind of the writer, or deceit in his intention, just because what he wrote, he wrote deliberately and of set purpose, it is certain that his record is not, and was never meant to be, a measure of time; and that those who persist in measuring time by similar records, are the victims of a manifest delusion, ensnared, it may be feared in too many cases, with their eyes open. There is an old jest that, in the pride of antiquity, a Welshman generally traces back his lineage not only as far as Adam, but a great deal further. Nothing was easier, before the age of historical criticism, than for men or nations, whose real origin was lost in obscurity, to link their names to an illustrious past. Nothing was easier than to develope the obscurity itself into a long line of remote ancestors, whose names and virtues could be invented and multiplied at pleasure. What the poet was only too willing to imagine, the mathematician seemed able to confirm, by registering astronomical occurrences in far-distant long-past ages with as much precision as those which he predicted, and predicted truly, for his own and future times. The Hindoo chronology reckons the age of the world by millions of years. The Egyptians twenty centuries ago used to tell of 330 kings of whom they knew no more than the names. There were Greeks who claimed to be older than the moon; others who anticipated the theory of _abiogenesis_ by claiming to be sprung from the earth itself without the intervention of parents; and yet others, who with more modesty or more pride, as we please to regard it, derived their origin from gods and demigods. None were willing to be thought new people. The man of yesterday, the _novus homo_, the upstart, the parvenu, has ever been disliked and laughed at by society. And in like manner, among nations, a new rival excites the fears and encounters the ridicule of the established clique. Claims to antiquity, therefore, were as advantageous to possess as they were easy to forge. Those that have been mentioned, being unattested by any corroborative facts, and, where they are not obviously false, being unsusceptible of proof, are worthless in themselves. One thing they tend to show, namely, that all remembrance of the real origin of mankind, and of the date of that origin, had been absolutely lost to those ancient peoples. From over the sea, from beyond the mountains, from the bright east or the frozen north, they might know that their forefathers had made pilgrimage in distant ages--or they might know of no time, however far back, when the seat of their habitation had not been occupied by their own progenitors. In either case their ignorance of primeval history is as absolute as it is conspicuous. One prevailing tradition, it is true, is current alike in sacred and profane literature, of a far-off golden