In farther illustration of Mr. Clinton’s opinion that the first recorded Olympiad is the earliest date which can be fixed upon authentic evidence, we have, in p. 138, the following just remarks in reference to the dissentient views of Eratosthenês, Phanias, and Kallimachus, about the date of the Trojan war: “The chronology of Eratosthenês (he says), founded on a careful comparison of circumstances, and approved by those to whom the same stores of information were open, is entitled to our respect. But we must remember that a conjectural date can never rise to the authority of evidence; that what is accepted as a substitute for testimony is not an equivalent: witnesses only can prove a date, and in the want of these, the knowledge of it is plainly beyond our reach. If in the absence of a better light we seek for what is probable, we are not to forget the distinction between conjecture and proof; between what is probable and what is certain. The computation, then, of Eratosthenês for the war of Troy is open to inquiry; and if we find it adverse to the opinions of many preceding writers, who fixed a lower date, and adverse to the acknowledged length of generation in the most authentic dynasties, we are allowed to follow other guides, who give us a lower epoch.” Here Mr. Clinton again plainly acknowledges the want of evidence, and the irremediable uncertainty of Grecian chronology before the Olympiads; and the reasonable conclusion from his argument is, not simply, that “the computation of Eratosthenês was open to inquiry,” (which few would be found to deny,) but that both Eratosthenês and Phanias had delivered positive opinions upon a point on which no sufficient evidence was accessible, and therefore that neither the one nor the other was a guide to be followed.[73] Mr. Clinton does, indeed, speak of authentic dynasties prior to the first recorded Olympiad, but if there be any such, reaching up from that period to a supposed point coeval with or anterior to the war of Troy,—I see no good reason for the marked distinction which he draws between chronology before and chronology after the Olympiad of Korœbus, or for the necessity which he feels of suspending his upward reckoning at the last-mentioned epoch, and beginning a different process, called “a downward reckoning,” from the higher epoch (supposed to be somehow ascertained without any upward reckoning) of the first patriarch from whom such authentic dynasty emanates.[74] Herodotus and Thucydidês might well, upon this supposition, ask of Mr. Clinton, why he called upon them to alter their method of proceeding at the year 776 B. C., and why they might not be allowed to pursue their “upward chronological reckoning,” without interruption, from Leonidas up to Danaus, or from Peisistratus up to Hellên and Deukalion, without any alteration in the point of view. Authentic dynasties from the Olympiads, up to an epoch above the Trojan war,