with that of the foundation of Alba Longa by the son of Aeneas, then it stands to reason that the whole of the statements made must be likewise a modern invention built upon the utterly worthless fables of the “legendary mythical age.”  For those who now give these statements, however, there is more of actual truth in such fables than there is in the alleged historical Regal period of the earliest Romans.  It is to be deplored that the present statement should clash with the authoritative conclusion of Mommsen and others.  Yet, stating but that which to the “Adepts” is fact, it must be understood at once that all (but the fanciful chronological date for the foundation of Rome-April, 753 “B.C.”) that is given in old traditions in relation to the Paemerium, and the triple alliance of the Ramnians, Luceres and Tities, of the so-called Romuleian legend, is indeed far nearer truth than what external history accepts as facts during the Punic and Macedonian wars up to, through, and down the Roman Empire to its fall.  The founders of Rome were decidedly a mongrel people, made up of various scraps and remnants of the many primitive tribes; only a few really Latin families, the descendants of the distinct sub-race that came along with the Umbro-Sabellians from the East remaining.  And, while the latter preserved their distinct colour down to the Middle Ages through the Sabine element, left unmixed in its mountainous regions, the blood of the true Roman was Hellenic blood from its beginning.  The famous Latin league is no fable, but history.  The succession of kings descended from the Trojan Aeneas is a fact; and the idea that Romulus is to be regarded as simply the symbolical representative of a people, as Aeolus, Dorius, and Ion were once, instead of a living man, is as unwarranted as it is arbitrary.  It could only have been entertained by a class of historiographers bent upon condoning their sin in supporting the dogma that Shem, Ham and Japhet were the historical once living ancestors of mankind, by making a burnt-offering of every really historical but non-Jewish tradition, legend, or record which might presume to a place on the same level with these three privileged archaic mariners, instead of humbly groveling at their feet as “absurd myths” and old wives’ tales and superstitions.

It will thus appear that the objectionable statements on pp. 56 and 62 of “Esoteric Buddhism,” which are alleged to create an “historical difficulty,” were not made by Mr. Sinnett’s correspondent to bolster a western theory, but in loyalty to historical facts.  Whether they can or cannot be accepted in those particular localities where criticism seems based upon mere conjecture (though honoured with the name of scientific hypothesis), is something which concerns the present writers as little as any casual traveler’s unfavourable comments upon the time-scarred visage of the Sphinx can affect the designer of that sublime symbol.  The sentences, “the Greeks