laid aside. Such personages as Danaus and Aeolus are still referred
to on emergency; and Dr Thirlwall still speaks of the Centaurs as "a
fabulous race, which, however, may be supposed to represent the earlier
and ruder inhabitants of the land." If we must call in the Centaurs to
our assistance, we may safely conclude with Mr Grote that the ancient
Pelasgians are "not knowable."

"Whoever," writes our author, when the course of his narrative brings
him to speak of the anti-Hellenic tribes--"Whoever has examined the many
conflicting systems respecting the Pelasgi--from the literal belief of
Clavier, Larcher, and Raoul Rochette, (which appears to me at least the
most consistent way of proceeding,) to the interpretative and
half-incredulous processes applied by abler men--such as Niebuhr, or O.
Mueller, or Dr Thirlwall--will not be displeased with my resolution to
decline so insoluble a problem. No attested facts are now present to
us--none were present to Herodotus and Thucydides even in their age, on
which to build trustworthy affirmations respecting the anti-Hellenic
Pelasgians; and where such is the case we may without impropriety apply
the remark of Herodotus respecting one of the theories which he had
heard for explaining the inundation of the Nile by a supposed connexion
with the ocean--that the man who carries up his story into the invisible
world, passes out of the range of criticism."[2] And he adds the
following pithy note:--"Niebuhr puts together all the mythical and
genealogical traces, many of them in the highest degree vague and
equivocal, of the existence of Pelasgi in various localities; and then,
summing up their cumulative effect, asserts, 'not as an hypothesis, but
with full historical conviction, that there was a time when the
Pelasgians, perhaps the most extended people in all Europe, were spread
from the Po and the Arno to the Rhyndakus,' (near Cyzicus,) with only an
interruption in Thrace. What is perhaps the most remarkable of all, is
the contrast between his feeling of disgust, despair, and aversion to
the subject when he begins the inquiry:--'the name Pelasgi,' he says,
'is odious to the historian, who hates the spurious philology out of
which the pretences to knowledge on the subject of such extinct people
arise;' and the full confidence and satisfaction with which he concludes
it."

Amongst these legends which Mr Grote thus relates for the simple purpose
of showing what filled the minds of the