Tyrians, who, under Dido, settled on the coast of Africa, in a warm and fertile country, the productions of which had all the characteristics of sensuality.

The principal industry of the Carthaginians was commercial, yet the other branches were not neglected. Agriculture was familiar to them, and the useful arts had made great proficiency. Their exports consisted in the raw produce of their own soil, and in some manufactured goods, as utensils of various kinds, toys, cables, naval stores, and the Punic dye. The buildings with which the city was ornamented evinced no small skill in architecture, and in the arts on which it depends.

But this people excelled still more in naval architecture, so necessary to their prosperity. Their navigation extended itself to every port of the Mediterranean, and stretched through the Straits of Gades to the Canaries, to Spain, to Gaul, to Britain, and along the western coast of Africa, where they planted many colonies. They even penetrated, by land, into the interior of their continent, and subjected some parts of it to their power. They carried on an extensive trade with the Libyans, in which the most extraordinary good faith was evinced on both sides. Between Spain, Egypt, Ethiopia, Phoenicia, Tyre, they were the instruments of a considerable interchange of valuable commodities; and constituting themselves mediators between the wants of some and the superfluities of others, they became the carriers for every nation that knew either the one or the other.

The commerce of the Carthaginians was a mixture of luxurious and of necessary traffic; neither can it be otherwise in a nation which barters at once with the North and with the South. In as far, however, as that city alone is concerned, commerce was not a superfluity. The territory was small, but the situation for trade was admirable. Little could be done by the former alone, but the latter might accomplish the greatest ends; and Carthage soon embarked her hopes upon the waves. The return which these brought home was the fulfilment of her expectations-long national

VOL. II.

C

the Syrian people ever enter the palace of Heliopolis but as slaves? and what traces of their comfort are to be found among the marble columns of Palmyra? Amid the ruins which attest the antique wealth of India, is there a vestige that any but the rich were happy; or, in Persia, any civilised ratio between their enjoyments and the consolations of the poor? If it be said that palaces and temples are of hardy materials, which oppose a longer resistance to destruction than the cottage; surely it may be answered, if any solid habitation did exist for the dependant classes, every memento of it could not have perished in every town and country of the ancient world. Or has magnificence alone the privilege of being so durable? Were a modern city to be abandoned to time, it would appear, even at the end of ages, that the palace did not stand alone; and that luxury was not the exclusive pursuit of the age to which it belonged.

The shores of the Mediterranean were the seats of early improvement; and it ought to excite little surprise if, around that sea which in Scripture is frequently called the great, human industry expanded beyond its former bounds. Even where no absolute necessity impels men to agriculture and manufactures, a communication with other nations, whose produce and whose wants are different, may invite them to exertions; and of all the modes of communication the sea affords the most extensive.

Accordingly, the nations that one after another rose up, even before the republics of Greece and Rome had contributed to civilise the world, were most numerous on the borders of this sea, and in the islands which lie scattered in it. The Cretans rose to early celebrity, and, in about three centuries, were succeeded by the Lydians, whose trade and navigation, as well as that of all the Western coast, were most extensive. The Pelasgi, in their various settlements; the Thracians, the Rhodians, the Phrygians, the Cyprians, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and some others, followed each other in the great and varied career of industry. But the people who rose to the most remarkable prosperity were the Carthaginians, the descendants of the

Tyrians, who, under Dido, settled on the coast of Africa, in a warm and fertile country, the productions of which had all the characteristics of sensuality.

The principal industry of the Carthaginians was commercial, yet the other branches were not neglected. Agriculture was familiar to them, and the useful arts had made great proficiency. Their exports consisted in the raw produce of their own soil, and in some manufactured goods, as utensils of various kinds, toys, cables, naval stores, and the Punic dye. The buildings with which the city was ornamented evinced no small skill in architecture, and in the arts on which it depends.

But this people excelled still more in naval architecture, so necessary to their prosperity. Their navigation extended itself to every port of the Mediterranean, and stretched through the Straits of Gades to the Canaries, to Spain, to Gaul, to Britain, and along the western coast of Africa, where they planted many colonies. They even penetrated, by land, into the interior of their continent, and subjected some parts of it to their power. They carried on an extensive trade with the Libyans, in which the most extraordinary good faith was evinced on both sides. Between Spain, Egypt, Ethiopia, Phoenicia, Tyre, they were the instruments of a considerable interchange of valuable commodities; and constituting themselves mediators between the wants of some and the superfluities of others, they became the carriers for every nation that knew either the one or the other.

The commerce of the Carthaginians was a mixture of luxurious and of necessary traffic; neither can it be otherwise in a nation which barters at once with the North and with the South. In as far, however, as that city alone is concerned, commerce was not a superfluity. The territory was small, but the situation for trade was admirable. Little could be done by the former alone, but the latter might accomplish the greatest ends; and Carthage soon embarked her hopes upon the waves. The return which these brought home was the fulfilment of her expectations-long national

VOL. II.

C

superiority, and the empire of the sea during six hundred years.

The arts and industry of the Chinese are so remarkable, that, although sufficient proofs of the theory of national character may be derived from other nations, it may not be uninteresting to say something of them on the present occasion.

China produces not only all the plants which are known in other parts of the world, but many which seem peculiar to itself. The entire face of the country, however, is far from being equally productive, but is diversified by many variations both of soil and climate, as may be expected in a tract of land whose extremities lie under such remote degrees of latitude, and which, placed at once in the vicinity of frozen mountains and of the tropics, is intersected by many marshes.

This endless variety of natural circumstances would have given an endless variety of character to the Chinese, had not events united them into one body. How those events themselves were brought about is now unknown; but they must have been most powerful, since they triumphed over obstacles which appear almost insuperable, and have given to a people spread over twenty degrees of latitude, a character and disposition as uniform as are usually to be observed among the natives of any single province of another kingdom.

That the force of institutions may have warped so small a population as that of Sparta from original disposition, and almost from every feeling proper to human nature, may be credited by what is sometimes seen in modern communities. But that an empire so extensive as China should have been turned aside from natural propensities, and should have made even its conquerors the slaves of its habits, imposing its character upon its invaders, is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the moral history of nations.

In many respects the Chinese are a vain people—in others they are proud; and the mixture of these two qualities is perceptible in their religion, their morality, their

ence;

government, their intellect, and in their whole social existbut in none of them is it more striking, than in the subject now under consideration. Their soil is often so productive, yet often so difficult to cultivate, their industry is often so trifling and so luxurious, yet often so useful and so well combined, that it is impossible not to recognise in it various influences acting upon distant districts united into one mass, of which the component elements, like those of very fine granite, are distinguishable only upon minute inspection.

From the earliest ages agriculture has been held in the greatest honor in this empire; and the sovereign himself is the chief promoter of the art. One of his duties is to open the agricultural year, by guiding the plough with his own hand. The composition of manures is much attended to; and as much care is taken of everything relating to the cultivation of the soil as if the country were naturally poor.

But the most remarkable feature of Chinese agriculture, as, indeed, of general industry, is the mode of draining, and of irrigation by canals, of which a prodigious number intersect the country, and serve as means of internal communication. A large canal runs through every province, sending out numerous ramifications and subramifications, to the principal towns and villages, and composing a mass of hydraulic architecture not to be equalled in the world. The great canal running between the two cities Canton and Pekin, joins the extremities of the empire, and is near one thousand miles in length. Quays of granite generally add to the beauty and to the solidity of these artificial rivers, which contribute so much to the wealth and prosperity of the kingdom.

The extent of China, and the easy intercourse carried on by internal navigation, are, perhaps, among the causes why this people are so little skilled upon the ocean, and have so little knowledge of astronomy or geography. Although they have so long possessed the mariner's compass, they do not yet know how to use it; and when a Chinese vessel puts to sea, they look upon the chances of her perishing as equal to those in favor of her returning safe. The commerce of this