Widely dissimilar as were the Greek tribes and nations in their original seats and settlements, their occupations and modes of living, their manners and political institutions, they differed not less in the primitive elements of their civilization. The Phœnician Cadmus, according to tradition, brought the alphabet, and with it, undoubtedly, many other elements of knowledge to the city of Thebes--the Egyptian Cecrops laid the ground-work of the old Athenian manners and government--the Thracian Orpheus, though his doctrines had much analogy to those of Egypt, founded the widely diffused Mysteries that bore his name, while he sought by song to mitigate the terrors of the lower world, and to overcome the powers of darkness. To these many other names might be added; and among them many which did not deduce their descent, like most indeed, from Phœnicia and Egypt, but are clearly to be traced, as well as the doctrines and sacred customs they introduced, to the North; and, though they sprang more immediately from Asiatics on the northern side of the Caucasus, they were nearly allied to the nations dwelling further towards the North and West. The profound and concurrent researches of many modern scholars have adduced such numerous and repeated proofs from antiquity, of the existence of this Northern stratum in Greek antiquities, that this branch of Grecian history, formerly neglected, must no longer pass unobserved. The Greeks were of very various extraction; and in the different countries of Greece we may distinguish, along with the Hellenes, two if not more, principal nations, clearly distinct from the former. These were the Thracians in the Northern provinces, or at least in those immediately contiguous--a race for the most part of Northern descent, and, together with the Indian, the most numerous on the earth according to Herodotus--perhaps of the same origin with the nations on the banks of the Danube, or even those further northward. There were, next, the Pelasgi, the real aborigines of Greece, the authors of those gigantic walls and constructions, which are known in Italy by the name of Cyclopean, and in Greece by that of Pelasgic, and some of which still exist, besides several others that existed in the Peloponnesus, and which are mentioned by the ancients. These Aborigines, or this primitive race of people, occur in many countries under the same, or at least very similar, traits--to them we must ascribe those monuments of architecture we have just spoken of, a certain knowledge of metals, some rude religious rites, without any mythology, which was only of later origin, nay without any names of specific divinities;--human sacrifices--manners and customs, if not absolutely savage, still very rude and barbarous, and a constant restlessness and a disposition to roam. Deucalion alone is to be considered as the ancestor of the Hellenes, as all the noble families of kings and heroes derived their descent from him, and the later tribes