istory, we see the Grecian
annals but imperfectly sustained; legends treated with a legendary
variety; romances embroidered with romantic embellishments; poems,
which, if Greek narrative poetry allowed of but little fiction and
sternly rejected all pure invention, yet originally rested upon
semi-fabulous and mythological marvels, and were thus far poetic in the
basis, that when they durst not invent they could still garble by
poetical selection where they chose; and thus far lying--that if they
were compelled to conform themselves to the popular traditions which
must naturally rest upon a pedestal of fact, it was fact as seen through
an atmosphere of superstition, and imperceptibly modified by priestly
arts.

The sum, therefore, of our review is, that one thousand [1,000] years
B.C. did the earliest Grecian record appear, being also the earliest
Greek poem, and this poem being the earliest Greek book; secondly, that
for the five-hundred-and-fifty-five [555] years subsequent to the
earliest record, did the same legendary form of historic composition
continue to subsist. On the other hand, as a striking antithesis to this
Grecian condition of history, we find amongst the Hebrews a
circumstantial deduction of their annals from the very nativity of their
nation--that is, from the birth of the Patriarch Isaac, or, more
strictly, of his son the Patriarch Jacob--down to the captivity of the
two tribes, their restoration by Cyrus, and the dedication of the Second
Temple. This Second Temple brings us abreast of Herodotus, the first
Greek historian. Fable with the Greeks is not yet distinguished from
fact, but a sense of the distinction is becoming clearer.

The privileged use of the word Crusade, which we have ventured to make
with reference to the first great outburst of Greek enthusiasm, suggests
a grand distinction, which may not unreasonably claim some illustration,
so deep does it reach in exhibiting the contrast between the character
of the early annals of the Hebrews and those of every other early
nation.

Galilee and Joppa, and Nazareth, Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives--what
a host of phantoms, what a resurrection from the graves of twelve and
thirteen centuries for the least reflecting of the army, had his mission
connected him no further with these objects than as a traveller passing
amongst them. But when the nature of his service was considered, the
purposes with which he allied himself, and the vindicating whic