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The arrangement then becomes geographical and chronological. My next five chapters are devoted to the Sword in its topical distribution and connection. The first (No. VIII.) begins with the various blade-forms in ancient Egypt, which extended throughout the then civilised world; it ends with showing that the Nile valley gave their present shapes to the ‘white arm’ of the Dark Continent even in its modern day, and applied to the Sword the name which it still bears in Europe. The second (No. IX.) passes to Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor, lands which manifestly borrowed the weapon from the Egyptians, and handed it on to Assyria, Persia, and India. The arms and armour of the ‘great Interamnian Plain’ afford material for a third (Chapter X.). Thence, retracing our steps and passing further westwards, we find manifest derivation and immense improvement of the Egyptian weapon in Greece (Chapter XI.), from which Mycenæ has lately supplied bronze rapiers perfectly formed as the steels of Bilboa and Toledo. The fifth Chapter (No. XII.) continues the ancient history of the Sword by describing the various blades of progressive Rome, whose wise choice and change of arms enabled her to gain the greatest battles with the least amount of loss. To this I have appended, for geographical and chronological symmetry, in a sixth and last chapter (No. XIII.), a sketch of the Sword among the contemporary Barbarians of the Roman Empire, Dacians, Italians, Iberians, Gauls, Germans, and the British Islands. This portion of the Sword history, however, especially the Scandinavian and the Irish, will be treated at full length in Part II.