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296 too incomplete, and the results drawn from it too fragmentary and uncertain, to allow of our taking any detailed notice of them here; the questions which they affect are still under judgment, and only the very few who have made profound and original studies among the monuments can venture to speak respecting them with authority. It is enough for us to note that the Semitic race was prominent, and during a long period preëminent, in Mesopotamia, and that a highly important part of its history, and of the history of Semitic language, is coming to light as the fruit of cuneiform studies.

During all this time there was enacting—behind a screen, as it were—a part of Semitic history which was to prove of incomparably greater importance to the world than Phenician commerce or Babylonian empire. The little people of the Hebrews was politically a most insignificant item in the sum of human affairs; but its religion, made universal by Christ, has become the mightiest element in human history; its wonderful ancient literature is the work which all enlightened nations of the present day unite in calling Bible, that is, ' the book;' its language is even now more studied than any other outside the pale of Indo-European speech.

And yet once more, in comparatively modern times, long after Mesopotamian empire, and Phenician commerce, and Carthaginian lust of conquest, and Jewish temple-worship, had passed away for ever, extinguished in the extinction of those several nationalities, a new branch of the Semitic race, which till then had slumbered in inaction and insignificance in the deserts of Arabia, awoke all at once to the call of a great religious teacher, Mohammed, burst its limits, overwhelmed Asia, Africa, and no small part of Europe, and flowered out suddenly and brilliantly in science, art, and philosophy, attaining a combined political and literary eminence to which no Semitic people had made before any approach, and threatening to wrench the leadership of human destiny from the keeping of the enfeebled races of Europe. Finally, corrupted within, and foiled and broken without, it sank again into comparative obscurity; and with it went down, probably for ever, the star of Semitic glory and importance in the external history of the world;