Not, therefore, in Asia can the first footsteps of chronology be sought; not in Africa, because, _first_, the records of Egypt, so far as any have survived, are intensely Asiatic; liable to the same charge of hieroglyphic ambiguity combined with the exaggerations of outrageous nationality; because, _secondly_, the separate records of the adjacent State of Cyrene have perished; because, _thirdly_, the separate records of the next State, Carthage, have perished; because, _fourthly_, the learned labours of Mauritania[27] have also perished. Thus the pupil is satisfied that of mere necessity the chronologer must resort to Europe for his earliest monuments and his earliest authentications--for the facts to be attested, and for the evidences which are to attest them. But if to Europe, next, to what part of Europe? Two great nations--great in a different sense, the one by dazzling brilliancy of intellect, the other by weight and dignity of moral grandeur--divide between them the honours of history through the centuries immediately preceding the birth of Christ. To which of these, the pupil asks, am I to address myself? On the one hand, the greater refinement and earlier civilization of Greece would naturally converge all eyes upon her; but then, on the other hand, we cannot forget the '_levitas levissimae gentis_'--the want of stability, the want of all that we call moral dignity, and by direct consequence, the puerile credulity of that clever, sparkling, but very foolish people, the Greeks. That quality which, beyond all others, the Romans imputed to the Grecian character; that quality which, in the very blaze of admiration, challenged by the Grecian intellect, still overhung with deep shadows their rational pretensions and degraded them to a Roman eye, was the essential _levitas_--the defect of any principle that could have given steadiness and gravity--which constituted the original sin of the Greek character. By _levitas_ was meant the passive obedience to casual, random, or contradictory impulses, the absence of all determining principle. Now this _levitas_ was the precise anti-pole of the Roman character; which was as massy, self-supported, and filled with resistance to chance impulses, as the Greek character was windy, vain, and servile to such impulses. Both nations, it is true, were superstitious, because all nations, in those ages were intensely superstitious; and each, after a fashion of its own, intensely credulous. But the Roman superstition was coloured by something of a noble pride; the Grecian by vanity. The Greek superstition was fickle and self-contradicting, and liable to sudden changes; the Roman, together with the gloom, had the unity and the perseverance of bigotry. No Christian, even, purified and enlightened by his sublime faith, could more utterly despise the base crawling adorations of Egypt, than did the Roman polytheist, out of mere dignity of mind, while to the frivolous Athenian they were simply objects of curiosity.