has further, within the last few years, stolen into the
deserts of the Hauran, through the old vigilant guard formed around that
region by the Bedouin Arabs, and there--(as if in startling
contradiction to the dead and buried cities of Syria, etc.)--it has--as
was equally predicted--discovered the numerous cyclopic cities of
Bashan standing perfect and entire, yet "desolate and without any to
dwell therein,"--cities wrapped, as it were, in a state of mortal
trance, and patiently awaiting the prophesied period of their future
revival and rehabitation; some of them of great size, as Um-el-Jemal
(probably the Beth-gamul of Scripture), a city covering as large a space
as Jerusalem, with its high and massive basaltic town walls, its
squares, its public buildings, its paved streets, and its houses with
their rooms, stairs, revolving and frequently sculptured stone-doors,
all nearly as complete and unbroken, as if its old inhabitants had only
deserted it yesterday. Again, from another and more distant part of the
East,--from the plains of India,--Archaeology has recently brought to
Europe, and at an English press printed for the first time, upwards of
1000 of the sacred hymns of the Rig-Veda, the most ancient literary work
of the Aryan or Indo-European race of mankind; for, according to the
calm judgment of our ripest Sanskrit scholars, these hymns were composed
before Homer sung of the wrath of Achilles; and they are further
remarkable, on this account, that they seem to have been transmitted
down for upwards of 3000 years by oral tradition alone--the Brahmin
priests up to the present day still spending--as Caesar tells us the old
Druidical priests of Gaul spent--twelve, twenty, or more years of their
lives, in learning by heart these sacred lays and themes, and then
teaching them in turn to their pupils and successors.

The notices of antiquarian progress in modern times, that I have
hitherto alluded to, refer to other continents than our own. But since
the commencement of the present century Archaeology has been equally
active in Europe. It has, by its recent devoted study of the whole
works of art belonging to Greece, shown that in many respects a livelier
and more familiar knowledge of the ancient inhabitants of that classic
land is to be derived from the contemplation of their remaining statues,
sculptures, gems, medals, coins, etc., than by any amount of mere
school-grinding at Greek words and Greek quantities. It has re