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VIII.] though half mankind still own the sway of Semitic religious ideas and institutions.

The Semitic dialects are divided into three principal branches: the northern, comprehending the idioms of Syria and Assyria, and usually called the Aramaic; the central, or Canaanitic, composed of the Hebrew and Phenician, with the Punic; and the southern, or Arabic, including, besides the proper or literary Arabic and the dialects most closely akin with it, the Himyaritic in the south-western region of the peninsula, and the outliers of the latter in Africa, the literary Ethiopic or Geëz, the Amharic, and other Abyssinian dialects. Passing over the Mesopotamian records, as of an age and character not yet fully established, the Hebrew literature is by far the oldest which the family has to show, and, as is known to every one, ranks among the oldest in the world. From a time anterior, doubtless, to that of Moses, the works of the Hebrew annalists, poets, and prophets cover the whole period of Jewish history until some four centuries before Christ, when the Hebrew had ceased to exist as a vernacular language, and was replaced by the Chaldee or Aramaic, the dialect of Syria. But it has never ceased to be read, written, and even to some extent spoken, by the learned, from that time until now—especially since the revival of its use, and the purification of its style, among the scattered Jewish populations of Europe, following upon the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in the twelfth century. Of the degraded and mixed Hebrew used as the learned dialect of the Rabbins, not far from the beginning of our era, the Mishna is the most important monument. The Samaritan is another impure dialect of the Hebrew, so permeated with Aramaic elements as to be a kind of medium between Hebrew and Aramaic. Its oldest monument, a version of the Pentateuch, is referred to the first century of our era. It seems at present to be on the point of extinction.

Phenicia has left us no literature. The coffin of one of the kings of Sidon, found but a few years since, presents in its detailed inscription a fuller view of the Phenician tongue than is derivable from all its other known records, taken together. A few inscriptions, and a mutilated and obscure