despotism of a single man, which he had ability enough to maintain to the day of his death. At home he reduced his enemies; and the wealthy class, who were not banished or put to death, fled from Syracuse. He built and maintained a large fleet, triumphed over his greatest foes the Carthaginians, and lived within his citadel surrounded by menial soldiers, an absolute despot, amid the state and luxury of a kingly court. By fraud he gained supreme power, and kept it by force and violence, representing no party in the State but himself. Selfishness was the one principle on which he governed; his taxes were unequal and oppressive, levied not simply to enrich himself, but to weaken his subjects; and he debased the national coin. He was a great plunderer, and always sought to make money out of his wars, selling his prisoners, and robbing temples of their treasures, as if they had been lawful spoil. Diodorus states that he took the city of Lessus and made it a settlement, that he might plunder the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. In his colonies on the Adriatic he does not appear to have cultivated any commerce, beyond the importation there, from Venetia, of horses to run his chariots at the games of Greece and Sicily. All the ancient writers call him "the Tyrant," and he seems to have well earned that name. At Syracuse he constructed large docks, sufficient to accommodate at least 200 ships, and to protect himself he greatly extended the walls of Syracuse. On the island of Ortygia, where he resided, he built strong defensive works, suffering no one but himself, his friends, and his mercenary soldiers to live there. His rule, extending over the eastern portion of Sicily, was chiefly useful to the world in forming a barrier to the conquest of the whole island by the Carthaginians, who already held the western side, for the supremacy of Carthage in Sicily would probably have extinguished the glory of Rome for ever.

7. Ruthless tyrant as he was, Dionysius the Elder was ambitious of other fame than that of conquest. Proud enough of his dominion, which exceeded that of any state of ancient Greece, he felt that Greece was the very heart and soul of civilization, and that no glory could be lasting which had not been recognized and stamped by the genius of Athens. He therefore sent chariots, says Diodorus, to run for the prize at the Olympic games. Not satisfied with the fame of chariot racing, he boldly entered the lists with the brilliant geniuses of Greece, to contend for honours in literature. He wrote poems, and sent eminent reciters to rehearse them at Olympia, and he competed for the tragedy prize at Athens. Alex

ander the Great, in the next age, refused to contend at these spectacles with any man less than a king; but Dionysius was ready to win glory from sovereign or subject. It is said, indeed, that the crowd at Olympia, in contempt of his tyranny, hissed and clamoured at his reciters, but the Tyrant of Syracuse had written verses which were too strong for the derision of the Greeks, for his compositions were good enough to win the third, the second, and, at length, the highest prize at these celebrated exhibitions of learning and eloquence. His literary fame reached his contemporaries, the famous Isocrates and Plato. The former corresponded with the Syracusian ruler, but the great Plato, more warm-hearted, or, perhaps, less cautious, paid him a visit at Syracuse, which proved less agreeable even than the celebrated visit of Voltaire, twenty centuries later, to Frederick the Great. Geniuses in literature have always assumed, whether rightly or not, their competoncy to associate on equal terms with men of any rank, however exalted; but Plato found out his mistake with the courtly savan of Syracuse, who soon taught him that there was no kind of equality between a tyrant who held in his hands the power of life and death, and an unprotected philosopher, however transcendent his intellect. Having given Dionysius some offence, Plato was at once sent to the slave market and sold into slavery, whence he only escaped through the good nature of the philosophers, who generously subscribed their money, bought his liberty, and inplored him to make the best of his way home.

8. Like all great tyrants, Dionysius, notwithstanding his daring and genius, was in constant suspicion, and could trust no one. He lived as if he thought death in disguise was always behind or before him. Even his chamber was fenced with a wide trench, which was crossed by a drawbridge. When he addressed his subjects he mounted a high tower, out of the range of the dagger; and when he visited his wives, servants were sent to search the rooms for assassins. Only his daughters were allowed to shave his beard, and he dared not trust even them with a razor, but taught them to do the work by a singeing operation. All tyrants are, and ought to be, daily worried by this suspicion. No wonder that Dionysius suffered; for even the great Cromwell, whose tyranny was only such as necessity seemed to require, had his coach surrounded by guards, always returned from a journey by a different route, often changed his sleeping room, and inspected the night watch, carried pistols in his pocket, and wore armour under his clothes.

9. To the east of southern Italy lay Greece, the Republican States of which had run a prosperous course, and long been at the head of all nations in arts, literature, and civilization. At the invasion of the Gauls she had reached her highest glory, and the seeds of her subsequent decay were already sown. Athens, by the results of the twenty-seven years' Peloponnesian war, which had just closed, though retaining her intellectual vigour, had been humiliated, and the supremacy had fallen into the hands of Lacedæmon and the Spartans, previous to its transference to Thebes, Olynthus, and Macedon. From the Decemvirate to the burning of Rome by the Gauls was the "Golden Age of Greece" in literature. It was called the age of Pericles, who was the Grecian Julius Cæsar. The most notable public events were the Peloponnesian war, the celebrated retreat of the "ten thousand" troops, under the command of Xenophon, two dreadful visitations of plague, and the daring seizure of power and subsequent fall and banishment of the "thirty tyrants" of Athens. At this time Greece could boast of philosophers such as Socrates and Plato, of poets such as Pindar; of historians such as Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon; of orators such as Isocrates and Lycias, and of many other men eminent as dramatists, physicians, sculptors, architects, and painters. Demosthenes, the famous Athenian orator, was now a boy of a few years old. We may just state that the once mighty Asiatic-Persian empire still kept a visible hold of its large possessions, but it was trembling in the balance, and only waiting the right moment to fall to pieces.

10. A glance at a nation lying just beyond the limits of Europe, but whose deeds are soon to be mixed up with the history of Rome, will complete this sketch of the state of the civilized world in the fourth century before Christ. The great commercial State of Carthage lay on the African coast of the Mediterranean, and only separated from Italy by that sea. Its territory stretched from the Greater Syrtis to the Straits of Gibraltar, having a coast line, according to Polybius, of nearly 2,000 miles. The dominion of the Carthaginians, however, over the barbarous people of that coast was not like that of Rome over her provinces, but consisted in the possession of a series of commercial depôts, or "factories," such as England owned in India, with such an ascendancy over the various peoples as led them to acknowledge the supremacy of the Carthaginians. From the neighbourhood of Cape Bon westward to the

Lesser Syrtis, was a very fruitful district, where the Carthaginians built towns thickly. Inland were farms and large villas, all politically under the government of Carthage. In the neighbourhood were colonies founded by the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon, including Atica, Ardumentum, Leptis, and Hippo. These were independent States, but in alliance with the Carthaginians.

11. The city of Carthage is said to have been founded by a Phoenician queen, about a hundred years before the foundation of Rome. Her name was Dido, and the legend states that on the murder of her husband by her brother Pygmalion, she escaped from Tyre, set sail in a vessel with a large number of companions, and at length landed on the coast of Africa, near Atica. From the King of Numidia she bought a piece of land, built a citadel, and afterwards founded the city of Carthage. It is more probable, however, that Carthage was founded by Phoenician merchants, in the sense in which Calcutta was founded by Englishmen. The city grew till it became the largest of the ancient world, celebrated above all others for its great trade. Its merchants visited all the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean, and even reached the Azores, Britain, and the Baltic. Inland these men of commerce pushed their way through the Sahara to the banks of the Niger, and through the Lybian Desert to the lands of the Nile. The people of Carthage were governed, though despised, by the nobility. From the best families 300 of the latter were chosen as a senate, and these chose a select council of thirty, and sometimes of ten, as an executive. Like Rome, Carthage had two supreme magistrates. But in the great families constant factions and jealousies often produced internal disorder, and great corruption prevailed in the government. Yet Carthage was a powerful State; it could raise a vast army, probably hundreds of thousands of infantry, and thousands of cavalry and war chariots, besides a very large navy. The army was mainly supplied from slaves, and from the African Lybians and Numidians. Their religion taught the people t worship the stars and fire, as did the Phoenicians, and they sacrificed their children and captives to Moloch. No priesthood appears, but the offices of religion were probably in the hands of the chief officers of State. And now, as we further trace the course of Roman history, we should carefully keep our eye on the relative condition of the surrounding nations to the people and Republic of Rome.

The Editor's Desk.

QUERIES AND ANSWERS.

QUERY 1.-HOW LONG DID

THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL SOJOURN IN
EGYPT?

I read in Exod. xii. 40, 41, that the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was 430 years, yet when I look at the dates given in the margin of the Bible, and compare the time when the people entered into Egypt with the time they left, I find that their stay was only 215 years. Please to explain this.

A TEACHER. ANSWER.-Not only does the text say that the people sojourned in Egypt 430 years, but it adds with special emphasis, that " on the selfsame day," when the 430 years expired, "it came to pass that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt." There is something remarkable in this special statement of the year and the day; and we may be sure it is literally correct, or Moses would never have written it; for had it been incorrect the people themselves could have contradicted it. But you ask how can it be shown to be correct, when the dates of the people's entrance and their departure show only 215 instead of 430 years? We reply, The New Testament is an interpretation of the Old, and if you refer to Gal. iii. 16, 17, you have an inspired explanation; for you there find that the period of sojourning begins, not when Jacob and his numerous family went to Egypt, but when Abraham was called of God to become a pilgrim. Now, from the time that Abraham was called to the time when Jacob and his family entered Egypt was just 215; and from that time to the period when they left was just 215 years, and the two sums added together make a total of exactly 430 years: so literally true is the Word of God. And it is further remarkable that Abraham, in the selfsame year that he was called, had to sojourn in Egypt, being compelled, like Jacob and his family, on account of famine, to go to that country for subsistence. It is further worthy of notice that the ancient Samaritan version, now before me, includes the sojourn of the patriarchs as well as their descendants, and takes in the whole period of their sojourn both in Canaan and in Egypt; for it says: "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel and their fathers which they