eigners"), founded Thebes
in Boeotia, and in the voyage of the ship Argo to Colchis, which was
probably the seat of a colony sprung from the Egyptian empire, and was
therefore regarded as hostile in memory of the antecedent aggressions
of that empire. The expedition against Troy was the beginning of the
long chain of conflicts between Europe and Asia, which end with the
Turkish conquests and with the reaction of the last three hundred
years, and especially of the nineteenth century, against them. It
represents an effort truly enormous toward attaining nationality in
idea and in practice. Clearing away obstructions, of which the cause
has been partially indicated, we must next observe that the text of
Homer was never studied by the moderns as a whole in a searching
manner until within the last two generations. From the time of Wolf
there was infinite controversy about the works and the authorship,
with little positive result, except the establishment of the fact that
they were not written but handed down by memory, an operation aided
and methodized by the high position of bards as such in Greece (more
properly Achaia, and afterward Hellas), by the formation of a separate
school to hand down these particular songs, and by the great
institution of the Games at a variety of points in the country. At
these centres there were public recitations even before the poems were
composed, and the uncertainties of individual memory were limited and
corrected by competition carried on in a presence of a people
eminently endowed with the literary faculty, and by the vast national
importance of handing down faithfully a record which was the chief
authority touching the religion, history, political divisions, and
manners of the country. Many diversities of text arose, but there was
thus a continual operation, a corrective as well as a disintegrating
process.

The Germans, who had long been occupied in framing careful monographs
which contracted the contents of the Homeric text on many particulars,
such as the Ship, the House, and so forth, have at length supplied, in
the work of Dr. E. Buchholz, a full and methodical account of the
contents of the text. This work would fill in English not less than
six octavo volumes.

The Greeks called the poet _poietes_, the "maker," and never was there
such a maker as Homer. The work, not exclusively, but yet
pre-eminently his, was the making of a language, a religion, and a
nation. The last named o