The haïk was the dress, not of the Jews only, but of the Canaanites, including among these the Phœnicians; it was wholly different from the costume of the Egyptians, and--as we have now the opportunity of minutely knowing--from that of the great Assyrian empire, which lay to the east, and had spread over the north and west of Asia. Neither does it appear to belong to the Arabs. They wear it indeed now in Barbary, but not in their own country, and it is not likely that the change was there.[285] The Greek robe was white.[286] It was put on as a clothing, and was at the same time a covering such as might be used to sleep in at night.[287] It was not put on to fit as a dress.[288] It was ample in its folds, and fell to the feet.[289] It covered them all over. But citation of authorities is superfluous. Look at the statue of Demosthenes. But the Greeks may have invented it. The Greeks were copiers or copies; they improved what they received, but in the beginning they were wild and rude. This dress belongs to early simplicity, and to the people who from the first were pre-eminent in poetry. But, taking it as if it were no more than letters or science, then if we find it both in Greece and Judæa, must we not hold it to be derivative in that country which in other respects has been the pupil, and primitive in that country which in other respects has been the mistress? Greece, when visited by the adventurers from the Holy Land, was in the rudest condition in which man could have existed, in regard to everything except the bright spirit of that race, the first light of which shone in aptitude for such teaching. Bloodshed was not the vehicle of “civilization,” nor lances the heralds of a faith. The fugitives and strangers who taught them how to sow and to weave, they made, while living, princes and chiefs, and worshipped when dead, as heroes. The Phœnicians introduced the costume of Greece, as they did her letters and her religion. The resemblance is so evident between the toga and haïk, that the only question is, “Was it original or borrowed?” and if borrowed, “whence did it come?” As the Greeks stood to the Phœnicians, so did the Romans to the Etruscans. Critical inquiries had already traced that people to Canaan: recent discoveries have made us familiar with them. Their tombs, into which a lady has conducted us, transport us to the life and manners of the Old Testament. A traveller in Barbary might take them for the ancient sepulchres of this country. In the tombs you have over and over again the haïk.