easy to classify, but who appear to have been allied to the race from whence such peoples as the Mongols and Finns have sprung, had made their home in those fertile parts long before the Semites had separated, long before even Egypt had reached her prime; had founded kingdoms, built cities, among which was Ur, sacred to their moon-god, and reached no mean state of culture. They were the fathers of astronomy, for the clear air and unbroken expanse of their boundless plains invited to the study of the heavens; we owe to them both the signs of the Zodiac and the days of the week, which last were named after the sun, moon, and five planets; while, following the phases of the moon, whom they called the "lord of rest," every seventh and some intervening days were sabbaths, on which certain works were forbidden, mainly so as bringing illluck to the doer. "Every day of the year was under the protection of some deity or saint; the months were all named after the signs of the Zodiac,"1 in the first of which the god Bel, so runs

the legend, reminding us of that about Abraham and Isaac, offered up his only son. The wedgeshaped characters, called "cuneiform" (from Latin "cuneus," a wedge), stamped on clay tablets and cylinders, were their invention, and among the precious relics of their vast libraries, entombed for centuries, is a poem in twelve books, answering to the months of the year, the eleventh, or "rainy," having for its subject the legend of a deluge from which a like legend in the book of Genesis is derived.

Other fragments supply proof of their advance from lower to higher stages of belief. They point to a time when good and evil spirits were thought to dwell in everything around, and when the aid of sorcerers, with their charms and magic arts, was sought to secure the favour of the good spirits and avert the anger of the evil spirits. In the course of time these beings were arranged into classes, some being placed above the rest and worshipped, often with bloody sacrifices, as rulers over certain parts of nature, as sun-gods, moon-gods, storm and

lightning gods. Among the first-named we read of Merodach, helper of mankind and bringer of the dead to life, akin to the Egyptian Osiris and other mythical mediators between earth and heaven, to whom man in his deep need has stretched forth hands and prayed.

Such creation of gods out of the lesser spirits of the older worship, which is quite in keeping with the mode of man's advance everywhere towards belief in one almighty being, was quickened by the blending of the religion of the Accadians with that of the Semites. This gave rise to numberless hymns of penitence and praise which breathe a spirit akin to some of the Hebrew psalms, as well as to mythical poems about the gods, from which many later legends are derived. And long after the Accadian language was dead, these hymns, venerated as sacred writings, were recited by Babylonian priests in that old tongue, as the Roman Catholic priests, use Latin in the services of their church; while the ancient directions about spells and sorceries passed, through the Chaldæans, into

the common belief of the Semites, overran Europe, and became the parent of the grim beliefs which made life a terror for hundreds of years, and which lurk in by-ways among the unlearned yet.

Nor, happily, only these, for from Western Asia, of which the old legends, ever holding some truth worth the seeking, tell as the happy home of the parents of mankind and the birthland of culture, have come the germs of the arts, sciences, and higher as well as lower religions of both Jew and Gentile; while the customs and traditions of the Accadians, borrowed by the Semites, were carried by them westward, thus becoming the possession of Greeks and Romans and, through them, of the modern world.

Such is a brief outline of the rich knowledge which has within the last few years come to light about the foundation on which the civilization of both Semite and Aryan rests. The wedgeshaped characters on clay tablets, once mistaken for ornamental figures or charms, have yielded their secrets to the patience of man; the daily life

and manners of great empires of the East, of which classic historians speak only in vague hints, are before us in all their detail, and "we are brought face to face with men who have hitherto been but names on the pages of the Old Testament" and of Greek and Roman writers.

It would appear that at a very early date Semitic tribes from Arabia, to which present knowledge points as the common home of the race, crossed the Euphrates, and slowly forcing their way up the river valley, vexed the quiet of the Accadians. At last they gained the upper hand, and, mingling with the defeated race, founded the kingdom of Babylonia. Other Semites, pushing further northward, reached the banks of the Tigris, and, some centuries later, founded the kingdom of Assyria, while kindred tribes, forefathers of the Phoenicians and Canaanites, moving westward, settled among the hills and dales and along the coasts of Syria, subduing the more savage dwellers there. Whilst these earlier branches had thus secured for themselves rich districts, the regions around