"I muse meanwhile on Time, who sees in a citadel of the ancient Phoenicians, after many thousand years, that same propensity for gold, that same instinct for trade. The Phoenicians worked gold mines in Thrace, and the Syrians, their descendants, are working gold mines in America. But are we as daring, as independent, as honest? I am not certain, however, if those Phoenicians had anything to do with bubbles. My friend Sanchuniathon writes nothing on the subject. History records not a single instance of a gold-mine bubble in Thrace, or a silver ditto in Africa. Apart from this, have we, the descendants of those honest Phoenicians, any of their inventive skill and bold initiative? They taught other nations the art of ship-building; we can not as much as learn from other nations the art of building a gig. They transmitted to the people of the West a knowledge of mathematics, weights, and measures; we can not as much as weigh or measure the little good Europe is transmitting to us. They always fought bravely against their conquerors, always gave evidence of their love of independence; and we dare not raise a finger or whisper a word against the red Tyrant by whom we are degraded and enslaved. We are content in paying tribute to a criminal Government for pressing upon our necks the yoke and fettering hopelessly our minds and souls--and my brave Phoenicians, ah, how bravely they thought and fought. What daring deeds they accomplished! what mysteries of art and science they unveiled! "On these shores they hammered at the door of invention, and, entering, showed the world how glass is made; how colours are extracted from pigments; how to measure, and count, and communicate human thought. The swarthy sons of the eternal billows, how shy they were of the mountains, how enamoured of the sea! For the mountains, it was truly said, divide nations, and the seas connect them. And my Phoenicians, mind you, were for connection always. Everywhere, they lived on the shores, and ever were they ready to set sail. "In this mammoth loophole, measuring about ten yards in length,--this the thickness of the wall--I muse of another people skilled in the art of building. But between the helots who built the pyramids and the freemen who built this massive citadel, what a contrast! The Egyptian mind could only invent fables; the Phoenician was the vehicle of commerce and the useful arts. The Egyptians would protect their dead from the tyranny of Time; the Phoenicians would protect themselves, the living, from the invading enemy: those based their lives on the vagaries of the future; these built it on the solid rock of the present...." * * * * *