r, the Accadian star-name in
its perverted sense of 'rue' survived in Cappadocia. This structure of
argument is based on tablets which even Prof. Sayce cannot read, and on
possibilities about the alliances of tongues concerning which we 'know
next to nothing.' A method which leaves on one side the common, natural,
widely-diffused beliefs about the magic virtue of herbs (beliefs which we
have seen at work in Kensington and in Central Africa), to hunt for moly
among stars and undeciphered Kappadokian inscriptions, seems a dubious
method. We have examined it at full length because it is a specimen of
an erudite, but, as we think, a mistaken way in folklore. M. Halevy's
warnings against the shifting mythical theories based on sciences so new
as the lore of Assyria and 'Akkadia' are by no means superfluous.
'Akkadian' is rapidly become as ready a key to all locks as 'Aryan' was a
few years ago.

'KALEVALA'; OR, THE FINNISH NATIONAL EPIC.

It is difficult to account for the fact that the scientific curiosity
which is just now so busy in examining all the monuments of the primitive
condition of our race, should, in England at least, have almost totally
neglected to popularise the 'Kalevala,' or national poem of the Finns.
Besides its fresh and simple beauty of style, its worth as a storehouse
of every kind of primitive folklore, being as it is the production of an
Urvolk, a nation that has undergone no violent revolution in language or
institutions--the 'Kalevala' has the peculiar interest of occupying a
position between the two kinds of primitive poetry, the ballad and the
epic. So much difficulty has been introduced into the study of the first
developments of song, by confusing these distinct sorts of composition
under the name of popular poetry, that it may be well, in writing of a
poem which occupies a middle place between epic and ballad, to define
what we mean by each.

The author of our old English 'Art of Poesie' begins his work with a
statement which may serve as a text: 'Poesie,' says Puttenham, writing in
1589, 'is more ancient than the artificiall of the Greeks and Latines,
coming by instinct of nature, and used by the savage and uncivill, who
were before all science and civilitie. This is proved by certificate of
merchants and travellers, who by late navigations have surveyed the whole
world, and discovered large countries, and strange people, wild and
savage, affirming that the American, the Perus