Germany yet lay scarcely known, Gela, in the Greek colony at Syracuse, maintained the splendor of a Grecian name, and by a single defeat in Sicily the pride of Carthage was subdued. Nations, like individuals, have each a special mission on earth. Many are either co-operative only or secondary, and but a few are manifestly primordial. Thus the mission of Greece was beauty, that of Rome, force. In those special spheres they manifested the natural attributes of humanity in a fashion and to a degree never before reached by any nation. But as all secondary nations co-operated to execute the mission given to each great primordial power, so these two predominant branches of the Japhetic race co-operated, in subordination to the one leading purpose of Providence, to perpetuate progress and improve mankind. The rude elements of the Indo-European stock were early scattered from Caucasus to the Alpine North. The Hellenic family were the first raised to a high degree of refinement, and they planted their offspring even to the extremity of the Italian peninsula. When other kindred branches, like the Oscans and Sabines, superseded these, they gave a composite character to the new language thus formed, an amalgamation of Attic flexibility with Latin strength. But the body was more ponderous than the soul; the plastic property so prominent in the Greek tongue was lost in the harder and stiffer enunciation of unpolished Rome. The former, like a lucid substance, seemed to crystallize spontaneously into the most beautiful forms; but the latter, like granite, could be rendered attractive only by artificial polish, and that of the most laborious kind. It was the language of solidity, gravity, and energy; the fit medium for expressing the dictum of imperial might, but was not adapted to convey either the sentiments of love or the products of meditation. The great orator, in his defense of the poet Archias, informs us that Greek literature was read by almost all nations of the world, while Latin was still confined within very narrow boundaries. Such was the wonderful vitality of Greek in its ancient form, and yet it lived only with such as spoke it as their vernacular in the fatherland or its provinces. Like all true and original creations of genius, it never survived the fostering care of devotees, but sank back with their decay, and again became limited within the boundaries of its first home. In the end, as in the beginning, Athens was the University of the whole classic world. On the contrary, Latin was propagated chiefly by conquest, absorbing all barbarous dialects into itself, and, like the dominion of its masters, becoming the stronger the further west it was spread. Under the auspices of the Republic, it became united with the Celtic and Iberian in Spain, and was planted by Julius Cæsar in Britain, as well as Gaul. Greek is still spoken at Athens; but Latin, when it had been engrafted on the rest of Europe, and gave birth