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its situation and condition at present, we could certainly never suppose that it had been the residence and native country of the polished Greeks.

One question naturally occurs from the consideration of the above arguments for the local situation of this great people. Does the country in those regions of Asia, which lie in the fortyninth and fiftieth degrees of north latitude, exhibit, at this day, any traces of having been once inhabited by a polished people? Does it show any vestiges of their works? It is fortunate for the hypothesis of M. Bailly, that there are, though not a great many, yet some, vestiges of such works. M. Pallas, who, at the command of the Empress Catharine of Russia, surveyed most minutely the extensive regions of Siberia, gives information of some discoveries in the neighbourhood of the town of Krasnojarsk, upon the banks of the great river Jeniseia, which indicate that that country had been once inhabited by a people who had made very considerable progress in the Krasnojarsk is situated about the fifty-sixth degree of north latitude. There have been ancient mines discovered in that neighbourhood, which have been wrought in some former period of which there is no account or tradition. They find the instruments which have been used in mining, and which are of forms and materials which indicate great antiquity; huge hammers made of stone, and instruments like pickaxes, and wedges made of copper. In the plains and in the mountains near the river Irtish, in the same latitude, but farther to the west, there are many

arts.

ancient burying-places, in which they find knives, daggers, and points of arrows made of copper. In other burying-places, near Krasnojarsk, they have found ornaments of copper and of gold; some of them adorned with embossed figures of various animals, elks, reindeers, stags, &c., all of exquisite workmanship. There is a curious circumstance which evidences the prodigious antiquity of those mines we have mentioned. The props which support the earth in those mines are now petrified, and this petrifaction contains sometimes copper and gold. So much time, therefore, has elapsed since those props were erected, that nature has gone through the tedious process of forming those metals; and the same course of time has entirely annihilated every vestige of the stones with which the same men who dug those mines must have built their houses: for in a period of society when men are arrived at the art of forming curious works in gold and copper, we must suppose they dwelt in towns, and could rear regular edifices; but of such towns and edifices not a trace remains.

Such is the ingenious hypothesis of M. Bailly, and thus far his theory has no small share of plausibility but when he goes on afterwards to find the history of this great nation in the Atalantis of the ancients, described by Plato, and supposes the first population of the earth to have been at the north pole, he is plainly launching into the region of imagination. It is altogether a very amusing specimen of philosophic ingenuity, but is more valuable as specifying many curious

facts relative to the manners and attainments of the ancient nations, and as furnishing strong evidence of the common origin of mankind, than as affording any plausible grounds for fixing the locality of this primæval people.

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CHAPTER XXVI.

REIGN OF PHILIP II. OF SPAIN-REVOLUTION OF THE NETHERLANDS, AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF HOLLAND: -William of Nassau declared Stadtholder of the United Provinces-Philip acquires the Sovereignty of PortugalSchemes against England-Defeat of the Armada-Death and Character of Philip II.

FROM our rapid review of the state of the Asiatic kingdoms, we now return to consider the situation of Europe towards the middle of the sixteenth century.

In the time of Philip II. of Spain, the successor of Charles V., the balance of power in Europe was maintained by four great monarchies. Spain sustained its part by the talents of its monarch and his vast resources in point of wealth, derived from the treasures of the new world; France, by its internal strength and situation; Germany, by the power and abilities of many of its princes, who, though jealous of each other, were united for the defence of their country; and England, by the great political genius and wisdom of Queen Elizabeth and her ministers. Of these, perhaps, Philip of Spain acted the principal character, though not the most amiable or respectable. He was, in his temper, selfish, gloomy, overbearing, and tyrannical. Yet he possessed great political activity, indefatigable assiduity in the management of public

affairs, and a consummate ability in securing his own kingdom from danger by fomenting divisions among all his neighbours. He was at this time sovereign of Spain, of the Milanese, of the two Sicilies, and of all the Netherlands; and his father, Charles V., had left him an army of the best-disciplined troops in Europe. He had likewise, in the beginning of his reign, the whole force of England under his command, from his marriage with Queen Mary.

Pope Paul IV., jealous of this exorbitant power, took advantage of the hereditary passion of the French monarchs to establish themselves in Italy, and formed an alliance with Henry II. of France to deprive the Spaniards of some important branches of their huge empire. A war was therefore declared between France and Spain, of which the object and the prize was the sovereignty of Milan and the Sicilies. The Spaniards began their attack on the French on the quarter of Flanders. Philip, with the assistance of 8000 English, engaged the French at St. Quintin, in Picardy, and gained a most complete and glorious victory. The French lost almost the whole of their general officers and the flower of their nobility. This victory was followed by the taking of the town of St. Quintin; but Philip, who had greater abilities in negociating than in fighting, gave his enemy time to recover strength while he was meditating to secure these important advantages by a peace. The duke of Guise, whom Henry II. had appointed generalissimo of all the forces of his kingdom, recovered for a while the spirits of the French, by the taking of Calais and the total

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