other nations, and of appropriating them to their own use, often with
improvements upon the original idea. But they were not possessed of any
great genius or originality. They were, on the whole, adapters rather
than inventors. They owed their idea of alphabetic writing to the
Accadians,[332] their weights and measures to Babylon,[333] their
shipbuilding probably to Egypt,[334] their early architecture to the
same country,[335] their mimetic art to Assyria, to Egypt, and to
Greece. They were not poets, or painters, or sculptors, or great
architects, much less philosophers or scientists; but in the practical
arts, and even in the practical sciences, they held a high place,
in almost all of them equalling, and in some exceeding, all their
neighbours.

We should be inclined also to assign to the Phoenicians, as a special
characteristic, a peculiar capacity for business. This may be said,
indeed, to be nothing more than acuteness of intellect applied in a
particular way. To ourselves, however, it appears to be, in some sort,
a special gift. As, beyond all question, there are many persons of
extremely acute intellect who have not the slightest turn for business,
or ability for dealing with it, so we think there are nations, to whom
no one would deny high intellectual power, without the capacity in
question. In its most perfect form it has belonged but to a small number
of nations--to the Phoenicians, the Venetians, the Genoese, the English,
and the Dutch. It implies, not so much high intellectual power, as a
combination of valuable, yet not very admirable, qualities of a lower
order. Industry, perseverance, shrewdness, quickness of perception,
power of forecasting the future, power of organisation, boldness,
promptness, are among the qualities needed, and there may be others
discoverable by the skilful analyst. All these met in the Phoenicians,
and met in the proportions that were needed for the combination to take