Many doubtless are the swarms that have hived here through the busy centuries which preceded the Egyptian Pharaohs, the comparatively modern empires of Assyria, Persia, and China, and the still later kingdoms of Agamemnon and Priam; empires and kingdoms that stand on the dim frontis-pages of our ordinary histories. These hives, overflowing their quarters, have sent out superfluous swarms across the ice bridge over our northern strait into the plains of Asia, and thence into Africa and Europe. Laughable indeed is the exhibition which erudite European historians, ethnologists, and others have made of themselves in deducing from Asia, as the mother-swarm, the colonies that have peopled the world; when in truth Asia was only the half-way house, the luncheon-place of our trampers, on their march into their foggy countries and chronicles. Thus it is now ascertained by late researches that there is a great resemblance between the languages of the Mongols and Japanese, and those of Equador and New Granada. Hopes are entertained that antiquarians may discover some ancient precedents for our Yankee tongues and words derived from sources whose authoritative beginnings now puzzle us. So, too, no doubt, migrations homeward have taken place from the faded and colorless scenes of these exploring raids. Hitherward trickled, probably, the ten Israelitish tribes, hitherto supposed to be lost, diffusing themselves wanderingly for the past two thousand five hundred and eighty-nine years, and now collecting in pools in our towns and cities, and around our stock-exchanges. Here, too, have reappeared, after going in on the other side, the broken pieces of the empire of Nineveh, mixed up with fragments of its gates of brass, which fused in the transmission, have veneered the faces of those who pulled through, forming in their descendants the race of brazen-faced itinerant pedlers, auctioneers, and plumbers among us. So the ancient empire of Egypt, shivered up by Cæsar, percolating through, at last dripped into that stalagmite, the Tombs of New York, with its newly formed but not reformed Cæsars and Pompeys inside. In a word, most of the old kingdoms, and even cities, such as Troy, Rome, Syracuse, Alexandria, Macedon, Athens, Sparta, and others, disappearing from sight on the other and newer hemisphere, and straining through into ours, have come out on our side condensed by the pressure in small spots, but with similar names,—spots smaller but just as smart and big-feeling as their larger selves. This, too, accounts for our sudden expansions, whether in crinoline or credit; the compressed and squeezed germ reasserting often its chance for pristine greatness in sudden and unexpected ways. Now that we have started the train of thought, each of our readers can easily turn engineer and stoker, and by applying a little fuel of his own, can drive it over all the various tracks which run from his metropolitan, central brain.