I shall not tax the patience of the reader by asking him to pass in review the more striking periods of the history of these famous nations, but shall content myself with giving the views of a celebrated writer on a part, at least, of the question. Speaking of the opinions held by the Greek philosophers regarding the future state of the soul, Dr. Dollinger says, "The old and universal tradition admitted, in general, that man continued to exist after death; but the Greeks of the Homeric age did not dream of a retribution appointed to all after death, or of purifying and penitential punishments. It is only some conspicuous offenders against the gods who, in Homer, are tormented in distant Erebus. In Hesiod, the earlier races of man continue to live on, sometimes as good demons, sometimes as souls of men in bliss, or as heroes; yet, though inculcating moral obligations, he does not point to a reward to be looked for beyond the grave, but only to the justice that dominates in this economy.... Plato expressly ascribes to the Orphic writers the dogma of the soul's finding herself in the body as in a sepulchre or prison, on the score of previously contracted guilt; a dogma indubitably ascending to a very high antiquity. "... It is from this source that Pindar drew, who, of the old Greeks, generally has expressed notions the most precise and minutely distinct of trial and tribulation after death, and the circuits and lustrations of the soul. He assigns the island of the blest as for the everlasting enjoyment of those who, in a triple existence in the upper and lower world, have been able to keep their souls perfectly pure from all sin. On the other hand, the souls of sinners appear after death before the judgment seat of a judge of the nether world, by whom they are sentenced to a heavy doom, and are ceaselessly dragged the world over, suffering bloody torments. But as for those whom Persephone has released from the old guilt of sin, their souls she sends in the ninth year back again to the upper sun; of them are born mighty kings, and men of power and wisdom, who come to be styled saintly heroes by their posterity." And, again: "Plato was the first of the Greeks to throw himself, in all sincerity, and with the whole depth of his intellect, upon the solution of the great question of immortality.... He was, in truth, the prophet of the doctrine of immortality for his time, and for the Greek nation.... The metempsychosis which he taught under Orphic and Pythagorean inspiration is an essential ingredient of his theory of the world, and is, therefore, perpetually recurring in his more important works. He connects it with an idea sifted and taken from popular belief of a state of penance in Hades, though it can hardly be ascertained how large a portion of mystical ornament or poetical conjecture he throws into the particular delineation of 'the last things,' and of transmigration. He adopts ten grades of migration, each