cannot treat them, according to his usual method in such cases, as fabrications of Spanish priests and lying chroniclers.  How, then, does he account for them?  He unfolds a theory on the subject, which he has stolen from the “monkish chroniclers” whom he treats with so much contempt, and which has long ago been exploded and set aside.  He tells us, that these relics have no connection with the history of the American Aborigines,—­that they have a different origin and a far greater antiquity,—­that they are proofs, not to be gainsaid, of the discovery of this continent, at a very early date, by Phoenician adventurers, and of the establishment, in the regions where they are found, of Phoenician colonies.  These ruins, he tells us, were Phoenician temples, these statues are the representations of Phoenician gods.  In the comparison of facts by which he endeavors to support this theory, we have been surprised to find him admitting the testimony of other explorers.  But they are, it seems, reluctant witnesses.  Their inferences from the facts which they have themselves collected are directly opposite to his.  “Proving our case,” he says, “by such testimony, we have admitted their statement of fact, only rejecting their conclusions.”  Their proper business, it would appear, was to amass the materials which our author alone was competent to use.  He encountered, indeed, a solitary difficulty; but this, in the most astonishing manner, has been removed.  “Thus far,” he writes, “had we carried the argument, but had here been compelled to stop, for want of further evidence; and the very stereotype plate that at first occupied this page, expressed our regrets that we were not able more completely to identify the Palenque statue as Hercules.  At our publishers’, however, the eyes of that distinguished Orientalist, the Rev. Mr. Osborn, chanced to fall upon a proof of the American goddess in the fourth note to this chapter, which he at once recognized as Astarte, represented according to an antique pattern.  Her head-dress, he insisted, was in the ancient form of the mural crown, without the crescent, the prototype of that worn by Diana of the Ephesians, and so too, he insisted, was her necklace of ‘two rows.’” Thus the chain of evidence was complete, and, for once, Mr. Wilson derived assistance from eyes not placed in his own head.

But, whatever distinguished Orientalists may say, undistinguished Occidentalists may be pardoned for inquiring when it was that this stream of Phoenician emigration flowed to the American shores, in what manner such an enormous body of colonists as the hypothesis necessarily supposes were conveyed hither, and what has become of their descendants.  With an uncommon indulgence to our weakness of faith, Mr. Wilson condescends to meet these obvious questions.  The time he cannot exactly fix; but it was “thousands of years ago,”—­“before the time of Moses.”  To the query in regard to the means of conveyance, he answers, that at that remote period sailing ships