Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/175

Rh by a temple of ^Esculapius, standing at the head of sixty steps. The name Byrsa was probably also given to the whole quarter of the city as well as to the citadel itself. The city was enclosed on the land side by a triple wall, with towers at short intervals and casemates, which afforded stabling for 300 elephants and 4000 horses. The harbours of Carthage were artificial, and consisted of two basins, one rectangular, for the merchant ships, opening into the lagoon of Tunis, and ending in a narrow passage, capable of being closed by a chain ; the other circular, for ships of war, containing an island in the centre on which the admiral lived. Their site can be easily identified, although their size is now considerably reduced. Between the lagoon of Tunis and the sea ran out a tongue of land, the Tasnia of Appian, still recognizable although altered in size and shape ; on it stands the fort of the Goletta. Outside the walls lay the suburb of Megara or Magalia, now the districts of Mara, covered then as now with villas and gardens ; and still beyond this, towards the north of the peninsula, lay the vast necropolis marked by the modern village of Camart. The Carthaginians, like the Jews and other Semitic nations, combined a feeling of reverence for ancestors with a fear of contamination from the dead ; therefore, while their sepulchres were carefully and strongly built, they were situated far away from the habitations of the living, and in this case were not even visible either from Byrsa or Megara. We shall not be surprised that so little remains of this mighty city if we remember that for centuries it has been used as a quarry not only by its African neighbours but by the rapacious merchants of the West, The Cathedral of Pisa is said to have been built out of the ruins of Carthage ; and Genoese vessels, trading with Tunis in the Middle Ages, seldom returned without a ballast of Tunis marble. The most impressive remains which strike the modern traveller are the arches of the aqueduct, once fifty miles long, which cannot be referred with certainty to Carthaginian or Roman origin. Much more lies hidden under drifted sand and the silt of the Bagradas. Even lately th.3 marble blocks of the ancient walls have been in pare destroyed by the works of the Tunis railway. The antiquarian may regret the want of evidence to assist him in reconstructing the ancient city. The historian and philosopher will feel still more deeply that the hostility of the Romans has left him so few traces of this vigorous scion of the Semitic stock. Phrenician culture still remains a tantalizing riddle to those who would unravel the course of human progress. The world has lost as well as gained by the cruel and arrogant self-assertion which culminated in the supremacy of Rome. In the history of civilization the survival of the fittest has frequently been nothing else but the survival of those who by force, obstinacy, and cunning were fittest to survive. In modern days we can give their full value to enterprize in commerce, activity in geographical discovery, and the taste which decorated the metropolis with noble buildings and works of art, and collected a library which the ignorance of the conquerors dispersed amongst the barbaric princes of the desert. Virgil, standing in the light o/ a wiser and more tolerant age, did his best to soften the hatred of his countrymen against their hereditary foe, and to show that generous hospitality and refinement were not foreign to the court of Dido, and that the perfidy of Hannibal was a fitting retribution for the heartless treachery of vEneas.

1em  CARTHUSIANS, a religious order founded by St Bruno in the year 1084. (See .) This saint, disgusted with the world, and especially with the conduct of Manasses, archbishop of Rheims, determined to live, in some remote and retired spot, a life dedicated to contemplation and religion. With six companions he went to consult Hugh, bishop of Grenoble, who led them to a spot among the mountains, about ten or twelve miles from the town, called Chartreuse ; and Bruno at once fixed upon this as the site of the establishment which he was minded to found. Very many mediaeval writers have exhausted the resources of language in describing the awful and terrible nature and aspect of this spot, shut in among naked and precipitous rocks, surrounded by sterile mountains, and for a largo portion of the year buried in the snow ; and many modern writers have celebrated the romantic and picturesque fea tures of the place. The obscure name was destined to become familiar in every country and language of Europe, and the monastery which Bruno founded there, soon after mankind had begun to recover from the alarm caused by the belief that the world would come to an end in the 1000th year after Christ, has been the parent of all the numerous &quot; Chartreux,&quot; &quot; Certose,&quot; and &quot; Charterhouses,&quot; and &quot; Carthusian &quot; establishments throughout Europe. Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, writing about fifty years later, speaks thus of the mode of life of the earliest Carthusians:—

1em

As might be supposed, the rigour of this rule has been much modified. The Carthusian dress of very thick white cloth is no longer by any means the poorest or dirtiest of 