Thus, while the mute creation downward bend Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend, Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes Beholds his own hereditary skies. --DRYDEN. Hesiod, and other writers who lived so long before, would have been very far from expressing themselves with this elegant sublimity. But, from the interesting moment of man's formation down to the era of the Olympiads, everything is plunged in profound obscurity. Herodotus is present at the Olympic games, and, like an old woman to children, recites his narratives, or rather tales, to the assembled Greeks. He begins by saying that the Phœnicians sailed from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean; which, if true, must necessarily imply that they had doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and made the circuit of Africa. Then comes the rape of Io; then the fable of Gyges and Candaules; then the wondrous stories of banditti, and that of the daughter of Cheops, king of Egypt, having required a hewn stone from each of her many lovers, and obtained, in consequence, a number large enough to build one of the pyramids. To this, add the oracles, prodigies, and frauds of priests, and you have the history of the human race. The first periods of the Roman history appear to have been written by Herodotus; our conquerors and legislators knew no other way of counting their years as they passed away, than by driving nails into a wall by the hand of the sacred pontiff. The great Romulus, the king of a village, is the son of the god Mars, and a recluse, who was proceeding to a well to draw water in a pitcher. He has a god for his father, a woman of loose manners for his mother, and a she-wolf for his nurse. A buckler falls from heaven expressly for Numa. The invaluable books of the Sibyls are found by accident. An augur, by divine permission, divides a large flint-stone with a razor. A vestal, with her mere girdle, draws into the water a large vessel that has been stranded. Castor and Pollux come down to fight for the Romans, and the marks of their horses' feet are imprinted on the stones. The transalpine Gauls advanced to pillage Rome; some relate that they were driven away by geese, others that they carried away with them much gold and silver; but it is probable that, at that time in Italy, geese were far more abundant than silver. We have imitated the first Roman historians, at least in their taste for fables. We have our oriflamme, our great standard, brought from heaven by an angel, and the holy phial by a pigeon; and, when to these we add the mantle of St. Martin, we feel not a little formidable. What would constitute useful history? That which should teach us our duties and our rights, without appearing to teach them.