dia nearer to the rest of the world. Hippalus, the commander of a ship engaged in the Indian trade, about eighty years after Egypt was annexed to the Roman empire, stretched boldly from the mouth of the Arabian gulf across the ocean, and was wafted by the western monsoon to Musius on the Malabar coast, somewhere between Goa and Tellicherry. From this time the Indian trade rapidly increased, and the merchants of Alexandria supplied Europe with spices, and aromatics, precious stones, pearls, silk, and cotton cloths. Taprobáne or the island of Ceylon, was not known by name to Europeans before the age of Alexander the Great. The Egyptians seem not to have visited it or the Coromandel coast, until after the discovery of the periodicity of the monsoons, but so early as the reign of the emperor Claudius an ambassador was sent from the island to Rome. It subsequently became a great mart of trade for the commodities produced in the countries beyond the Ganges, and probably even for the productions of China. Little change was made in the commercial routes of communication with India from the time of the Romans, until the discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco de Gama. The ancients were contented with traffic, and after the time of Alexander made no efforts to establish colonies in Hindoostan; hence their accounts of the country and its inhabitants are very loose and indefinite. But even from these vague accounts we find that the social institutions of the Hindoos have scarcely been altered by the many changes of realm and chances of time which have since occurred; and hence we may conclude, that its system of civilization, so original and so stereotype in its character, belongs to an age of very remote antiquity, and that there is no improbability in its having been connected with that of ancient Egypt. THE STUDENT'S MANUAL OF MODERN HISTORY. CHAPTER I. CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE. SECTION I.-The Gothic Kingdom of Italy. THERE is no period in the annals of the human race which presents to the historical student a greater scene of confusion than the century succeeding the overthrow of the Western Empire. The different hordes of barbarians, following no definite plan, established separate monarchies in the dismembered provinces, engaged in sanguinary wars that had no object but plunder, and were too ignorant to form anything like a political system. There is consequently a want of unity in the narrative of a time when nations ceased to have any fixed relations toward each other, and history must appear desultory and digressive until some one state, rising into command, assume such importance, that the fate of all the rest may be connected with its destinies. It is necessary, before entering on the various incidents of this calamitous time, to take a geographical survey of the places occupied by the principal nations who succeeded the Romans in the sovereignty of Europe. The Visigoths, after their establishment in Spain, began gradually to adopt the refinement of their new subjects; that peninsula had advanced rapidly in civilization under the Roman dominion, and had escaped from much of the corruption which had degraded Italy; the conquerors, more advanced than any other of the barbarians, soon learned to appreciate the advantages of social order, and began to cultivate the higher arts of life. In Pannonia, the Ostrogoths derived great improvement from their vicinity to Italy on the one side, and the court of Constantinople on the other; they were thus gradually trained to civilization, and their early adoption of Christianity secured them the benefits of literature, which was sedulously cultivated by the clergy. Tribes of a very different character pressed into the empire from the |