events by tracing them through the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons
of the several actors concerned. The great question which will then
remain to be settled is, how many years to allow for a generation; and,
secondly, in monarchies, how much to allow for a reign, since often two
successive reigns will not be two successive generations, because whilst
the two reigns are distinct quantities, the two lives are coincident
through a great part of their duration. Now, of course, Sir Isaac is
very often open to serious criticism, or to overpowering doubts. That is
inevitable. But on the whole he treads upon something like a firm
footing. Others, as regards that era, tread upon mere clouds, and their
authority goes for nothing at all.

Such being the state of the case, let the pupil never trouble her memory
for one moment with so idle an effort as that of minutely fixing or
retaining dates that, after all, are more doubtful, and for us
irrecoverable, than the path of some obscure trading ship in some past
generation through the Atlantic Ocean. Generally, it will be quite near
enough to the truth if she places upon the meridian of 1000 years B.C.
the three Romances--Argonautic, Theban, Trojan; and she will then have
the satisfaction of finding that, as at the opening of authentic
history, she found the Roman, the Greek, and the Asiatic inaugural
events coinciding in the same exact focus, so in these semi-fabulous or
ante-Olympian events, she finds that one and the same effort of memory
serves to register _them_, and also the most splendid of the Jewish
eras--that of David and Solomon. The round sum of 1000 years B.C., so
easily remembered, without distinction, without modification, '_sans
phrase_' (to quote a brutal regicide), serves alike for the Seven-gated
Thebes,[39] for Troy, and for Jerusalem in its most palmy days.

V. _A Perplexity Cleared Up._--Before passing onward here, it is highly
important to notice a sort of episode in history, which fills up the
interval between 777 and 555, but which is constantly confounded and
perplexed with what took place before 777.

The word _Assyria_ is that by which the perplexity is maintained. The
Assyrian empire, as the pupil is told, was destroyed in the person of
Sardanapalus. Yet, in her Bible, she reads of Sennacherib, King of
Assyria. 'Was Sennacherib, then, before Sardanapalus?' she will ask; and
her teacher will inform her that he was not.

Such things puzzle her. They