idently accepts as truly historical what he
tells us about the successive generations of kings. But when he brings
us down at last, after sundry migrations, wars, and rebellions, to the
arrival of the Castilians, we find that between the first four
ancestors of the human or of the Quiche race and the last of their
royal dynasties, there intervene only fourteen generations, and the
author, whoever he was, ends with the confession:

'This is all that remains of the existence of Quiche; for it is
impossible to see the book in which formerly the kings could read
everything, as it has disappeared. It is over with all those of
Quiche! It is now called Santa-Cruz!'

_March, 1862._

XV.

SEMITIC MONOTHEISM.[100]

A work such as M. Renan's 'Histoire Generale et Systeme Compare des
Langues Semitiques' can only be reviewed chapter by chapter. It
contains a survey not only, as its title would lead us to suppose, of
the Semitic languages, but of the Semitic languages and nations; and,
considering that the whole history of the civilised world has hitherto
been acted by two races only, the Semitic and the Aryan, with
occasional interruptions produced by the inroads of the Turanian race,
M. Renan's work comprehends in reality half of the history of the
ancient world. We have received as yet the first volume only of this
important work, and before the author had time to finish the second,
he was called upon to publish a second edition of the first, which
appeared in 1858, with important additions and alterations.

[Footnote 100: 'Histoire Generale et Systeme Compare des Langues
Semitiques.' Par Ernest Renan, Membre de l'Institut. Seconde edition,
Paris, 1858.

'Nouvelles Considerations sur le Caractere General des Peuples
Semitiques, et en particulier sur leur Tendance au Monotheisme,' Par
Ernest Renan. Paris, 1859.]

In writing the history of the Semitic race it is necessary to lay down
certain general characteristics common to all the members of that
race, before we can speak of nations so widely separated from each
other as the Jews, the Babylonians, Phenicians, Carthaginians, and
Arabs, as one race or family. The most important bond which binds
these scattered tribes together into one ideal whole is to be found in
their language. There can be as little doubt that the dialects of all
the Semitic nations are derived from one common type as there is about
the derivation of French, Spanish, and Italian from Latin, or