here." And this, not perhaps distinctly formulated, but everywhere implied, is the belief in which nearly all men are brought up. Let us glance at the genesis of it.
Round their camp-fire assembled savages tell the events of the day's chase; and he among them who has done some feat of skill or agility is duly lauded. On a return from the war-path, the sagacity of the chief, and the strength or courage of this or that warrior, are the all-absorbing themes. When the day, or the immediate past, affords no remarkable deed, the topic is the achievement of some noted leader lately dead, or some traditional founder of the tribe: accompanied, it may be, with a dance dramatically representing those victories which the chant recites. Such narratives, concerning as they do the prosperity and indeed the very existence of the tribe, are of the intensest interest; and in them we have the common root of music, of the drama, of poetry, of biography, of history, and of literature in general. Savage life furnishes little else worthy of note; and the chronicles of tribes contain scarcely any thing more to be remembered. Early historic races show us the same thing. The Egyptian frescoes and the wall-sculptures of the Assyrians represent the deeds of their chief men; and inscriptions such as that on the Moabite stone tell of nothing more than royal achievements: only by implication do these records, pictorial, hieroglyphic, or written, convey any thing else. And similarly from the Greek epic: though we gather incidentally that there were towns, and war-vessels, and war-chariots, and sailors, and soldiers to be led and slain, yet the direct intention is to set forth the triumphs of Achilles, the prowess of Ajax, the wisdom of Ulysses, and the like. The lessons given to every civilized child tacitly imply, like the traditions of the uncivilized and semi-civilized, that throughout the past of the human race the doings of the leading persons have been the only things worthy to be chronicled. How Abraham girded up his loins and gat him to this place or that; how Samuel conveyed divine injunctions which Saul disobeyed; how David recounted his adventures as a shepherd, and was reproached for his misdeeds as a king—these, and personalities akin to these, are the facts about which the juvenile reader of the Bible is interested and respecting which he is catechised: such indications of Jewish institutions as have unavoidably got into the narrative being regarded neither by him nor by his teacher as of moment. So too, when, with hands behind him, he stands to say his lesson out of "Pinnock," we see that the things set down for him to learn are—when and by whom England was invaded; what rulers opposed the invasions and how they were killed; what Alfred did and what Canute said; who fought at Agincourt and who conquered at Flodden; which king abdicated and which usurped, etc.; and if by some chance it comes out that there were serfs in those days, that barons were local rulers, some vassals of others, that subordination of them to a central rule took place gradually, these are facts
