Something has already been said about the difficulty of classifying or grouping the different peoples of pre-classical antiquity, of whom little or nothing is known except that their historical relationships are with the elder nations, whose civilization it has been attempted to sketch above. But whatever the obstacles may be to exact and circumstantial knowledge respecting the affinities and migrations of the founders of civilization in Asia Minor, Greece, and the islands and shores of the Mediterranean, it is now certain that settlers of some degree of culture were established in those regions at the remote periods which, half a century ago, were abandoned by despairing historians to the mythologist. Some scholars, like the late eminent historian of Sicily, may resent, not quite unreasonably, the pretensions of Orientalists, whose most certain data are half hypothesis, to control or supplement the evidence of classical writers as to the times before their own; and the maxim, that one should proceed from the better to the worse known, has a scientific sound, which tempts us to forget that, in history as in logic, it is desirable to argue from premisses to a conclusion rather than conversely.