researches, brought to light the fossil remains of early history, discovered the migrations of nations and the changes of empire, and regained the lost traces of portions of our species. This remarkable parallelism in the moral and physical inquiries of the age will be considered fortuitous by those only, who have not watched the luminous course of that loving Providence, whose hand is equally visible in the progress of science, as in every other department of human activity.

But on no branch of historical knowledge have the recent philological researches thrown more light than on mythology—a science which the present age may be said to have created. While illustrious defenders of the Christian religion—a Count Stolberg[5] in Germany, and still more, an abbé de la Mennais[6] in France, treading in the footsteps of the ancient fathers, and of the abler modern apologists, like Grotius, Huet and others, have victoriously proved the existence of a primeval revelation, the diffusion and perpetuity of its doctrines among all the nations of the world, civilized and barbarous—the compatibility of a belief in the unity of the God-head with the crime of idolatry, ranked by the apostle, "among the works of the flesh,"—the local nature and object of the Mosaic law, destined by the Almighty for the special use of a people charged with maintaining, in its purity, that worship of Jehovah mostly abandoned or neglected by the nations, who "though they knew God, did not glorify him as God"—and favoured also with the promises of "the good things to come," intrusted with the prophetic records of the life and ministry of that Messiah, of whose future coming the Gentiles had only a vague and obscure anticipation:—while these illustrious defenders of religion, I say, were proving the agreement of all the Heathen nations in the great dogmas of the primitive revelation; another class of inquirers (and among these was Schlegel) laboured to shew the points of divergence in the different systems of Heathenism, studied the peculiar genius of each, and traced the influence which climate, circumstance, and national character have exerted over all. The object of the former was to point out the general threads of primeval truth in the fabric of Paganism—that of the latter to trace the later and fanciful intertexture of superstition. For in that fantastic web, which we call mythology, truth and fiction, poetry and history, physics and philosophy, are all curiously interwoven. Hence the arduous nature of these researches—hence the difficulties and perils which await the investigator at almost every step.

Of the second part of this work on India, which treats of the religious and philosophical systems of the early Asiatic nations, it is the less necessary here to speak, as the reader will find the subject amply discussed in the course of the following sheets. It may be proper, however, to observe that the different philosophic errors mentioned by Schlegel, as prevalent in the ancient Asiatic world, may all be resolved to two systems—Dualism and Pantheism—the two earliest heresies in the history of religion—the two gulfs, into which dark, but presumptuous, reason fell, when, rejecting the light of revelation, she attempted to explain those unfathomable mysteries—the origin of evil on the one hand, and the co-existence of the finite and the infinite on the other.

On the whole, the "Wisdom of the Indians" is an admirable little book, whether we consider the profound and extensive philological knowledge it displays—the rich variety of historical perceptions it discloses—the clearness of its arrangement, and the elegant simplicity of the style. In the seven and twenty years which have elapsed since this production saw the light, the subjects discussed in it have undergone ample investigation—many of its observations have passed into the current coin of the learned world—truths which it vaguely surmised, have since been fully established—and the knowledge of Indian literature and philosophy has been vastly extended; yet this is one of those works which will be always read with a lively interest. It is thus that, in despite of the progress of classical philology, the writings of the great critical restorers of ancient literature have, after the lapse of three centuries, retained their place in public estimation. It is pleasing to watch the stream of learning in its various meanderings—to trace it as it winds through a broader, but not always a deeper, channel, sullied and disturbed not unfrequently by accidental pollutions—it is pleasing to trace it to its source, where, from underneath the rock, it wells out in all its limpid purity. Prior to the publication of this work, the Semitic languages of the East were alone, I believe, cultivated with much ardour in Germany; its appearance had the effect of directing the national energies towards an intellectual region, where they were destined to meet with the most brilliant success; and, if Germany may now boast with reason of her illustrious professors of Sanscrit; if France, under the Restoration made such rapid progress in oriental literature; if England, roused from her inglorious apathy, has at last founded an Asiatic society in London, and more recently, the Boden professorship at Oxford—these events are, in a great degree, attributable to the enthusiasm which this little book excited.

In the year 1810, Schlegel delivered, at Vienna, a course of lectures on "Modern History." This book, which was in two volumes, 8vo., has long been out of print; and the volumes destined to contain it in the general collection of the author's works, have not yet been published. Hence no account of it can be here given—a circumstance which I the more regret, as, in the opinion of some, it is Schlegel's masterpiece. It embodied in a systematic form the views and opinions contained in a variety of the author's earlier historical essays, which are also out of print, and have not yet been re-published. In it, I know, are to be found the detailed proofs and evidences of many positions advanced in the second volume of the work, to which this Memoir is prefixed.

We should, however, form a very inadequate estimate of the services this great writer has rendered to literature, and of the influence he has exerted on his age, were we to confine our attention solely to his larger works. Throughout his whole life, he was an assiduous contributor to periodical literature—a species of writing which, in the present age, has been cultivated with signal success in England, France and Germany. At the commencement of the present century, he edited in conjunction with Tieck, Novalis and his brother, a literary journal, entitled the Athenæum; and afterwards successively conducted political and philosophical journals, such as the "Europa,"—the "German Museum,"—and lastly the "Concordia;" giving latterly, also, his zealous support to the Vienna Quarterly Review. Some of his earlier critiques have already been noticed. Among the shorter literary essays, which appeared in the twelve years that elapsed from 1800 to 1812, I may notice the one entitled "the Epochs of Literature," 1800; and which may be considered the first rude outline of those immortal lectures on the "History of Literature," which he delivered in 1812. Often as he has occasion to treat the same subject, yet such is the inexhaustible wealth of his intellect, he seldom tires by repetition.