"ventors* of arts, the original of nations, the founders " of kingdoms and empires, the institution of laws, the "fountain of religious rites, yea, of all the ancient my"thology, and, which is most considerable, the means of "propagating that sense of GoD and of religion which "mankind brought into the world with them, and how "it came to be corrupted."

Well then may that historian be called faithful, who, supplying a light where otherwise all the world had been in darkness, gives an explanation to allegory, a consistency to fiction, an epoch to every kingdom, and a genealogy to the whole earth. Whose testimony now remaining, detects the errors of chronology, repairs the ruins of time, and amidst the wanderings of man, the variety of his language, the corruptions of his belief, the obscurity of his origin, and the uncertainty of his destination, supplies a clue to lead him back to the source of his errors, and to the very place at which he abandoned the path of truth, and the guidance of his Almighty Creator.

We are not without abundance of evidence to corroborate these assertions; and how the customs, manners, laws, and religious ceremonies of every people may be traced to the Mosaic history and institutions, has employed the pens, and encouraged the investigation, of many great and learned men.†

* Preface to Bishop Patrick's Commentary.

† I would specifically mention Eusebii Præparatio Evangelica passim; Huetü Demonstratio Evangelica, propositio iv. from the 4th to the 12th chapter; Bocharti Geographia.

But to the wonder of our age, and to the honour of our country, may it now be said, that

Quicquid Græcia mendax

Audet in Historiâ,

has been brought before the tribunal of truth, stripped of every meretricious ornament, and her Pagan frippery been exposed to the view of her deluded admirers. It has been the distinguishing glory of a Bryant (and I now quote the words of one who once knew how to feel, and no one better to express his feelings, for the dignity of literature) to pave the way to a more liberal and expanded instruction in our public seminaries for letters and languages; to have opened the springs of the ancient anti-christ, to have displayed his two great and capital horns, his two fountain heads-Pomp and Will Worship, in the idolatrous veneration of fire and water, of the elements in their fallen and divided state; to have annihilated fable, and expunged it wholly from the early periods and epochs of the Grecian story, fixing the gates of that story there in a manner, where the great Greek historian has fixed them himself. His oracular mysteries, his deluge memorials, his arkite processions, rites and services; his ogdoad, his ages, his Egyptian dynasties; his line drawn accurately, and insurmountably, between the first general migration and settlement of the nations, and the dispersion and confusion which took place afterwards, in a single, separate, revolted, and rebellious tribe; in consequence

Р

thereof, his Cuthite colonies, his wonderful investigation of their travels and voyages; his most ingenious evolution and explication of the wanderings of Io in a chorus of Eschylus, by him prosecuted in the flights and expeditions of families; his unravelling the wide web of mythological fiction, and unfolding it even to the bare slender threads of simple antiquity; his innumerable illustrations of the most admired Greek authors, making them to become, what they never yet were, intelligible to themselves and to us;-these, and infinite other, his learned discoveries, in exact conformity with scripture, and in harmony at the time with the best sense and reason, without sophistication and without refinement, and strengthened, supported, and enriched in all parts with such pregnancy of proof, with so luxuriant a testimony; these, I say, in their aggregate and full comprehension, are so new, so strange, so vast, so instructive, that, for my part, I cannot but think there was a providence of GOD superintending his labours, and a light from GoD thrown on his meditations.*-To a testimony so full and explicit I should have only to add my unfeigned admiration and gratitude, for the many hours of delight and improvement passed over Mr. Bryant's instructive pages; but I would silence every captious objection to his stu

* Preface to an Essay on the Revelations, by the Rev. William Cooke, formerly fellow of King's College, and Greek Professor in he University of Cambridge.

pendous work, by the comment of another writer, no less celebrated than himself in the annals of science, and whose memory will be for ever cherished, like his, by all the friends of Christianity. With a no less inquisitive than candid mind, Sir William Jones stands upon the very ground that Mr. Bryant had discovered; and from the various forms of Indian idolatry, from the deities, rites, and tenets of the earliest settlers upon the earth, he brings the recital of facts to corroborate, in many instances, the deductions of etymology. He supports the fabric of Christianity upon the same pillars which Mr. Bryant had reared; he investigates the corruptions of original revelation; traces them through all their impure streams from the fountain head; has brought the antiquity of those very writings, which modern infidelity had opposed to the Mosaic history, to corroborate and substantiate all its assertions; has reduced their incomprehensible chronology to the scriptural periods of time, and confined their extended geography within the compass of the eastern hemisphere. In a word, he has enlightened our path through the mazes of the Pagan mythology, and shortened our way to those proofs which, however they might be deduced or illustrated from the fabulous records of Greece, might either be disputed from the scantiness of materials or the obscurity of the documents. If, therefore, we may think with the admirer of Mr. Bryant, whom we have just quoted, that there was a providence of GOD superintending his labours, surely we must also believe, that it

continued to be a guide in these researches; and when, after a course of the most laborious and minute investigation, we find it asserted by such a man, that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are true, or the whole fabric of our national religion is false, upon what ground will infidelity hold an argument? since what it might reject as matter of faith, is now submitted to rational determination; and they have no longer the easy task of ridiculing the revelations of Moses, but the difficult one of setting · aside the discoveries of Sir William Jones.*

* It is almost needless to refer the reader to the Analysis of Ancient Mythology, by Mr. Bryant, and to the Asiatic Researches, under the direction of Sir W. Jones. In the latter, I would particularly recommend to his perusal the Dissertation on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India; and the President's third Annual Discourse on the Hindus, vol. i. octavo edition, p. 221 and 415. The three discourses of the President, vol. ii. on the Arabs, the Tartars, and the Persians; on the Descent of the Afghans from the Jews, p. 67; on the Indian Zodiac, p. 289; on the Astronomy of the Hindus, p. 225. In vol. iii. the 8th and 9th Discourses of the President, more especially the latter, on the Origin and Families of Nations, p. 479; on the Indian Cycle of sixty years, p. 209; and the Lunar Year of the Hindus, p. 257. In vol. iv. (though we can no longer quote the records of the Society as under the inspection of their late illustrious head, yet we can quote them as animated by the same soul and spirit of enquiry) the Discourse on the Philosophy of the Asiatics, p. 165; Dissertation on Semiramis, p. 376; Account of the Cave in the Island of Elephanta-contain much curious matter. In the 5th volume (we think the preface to it, in form of advertisement, had better been omitted, as suggesting doubts without leading to any direct concluSion) the Dissertations on the Chronology of the Hindus, p. 241; on the Names of the Cabirian Deities, &c. p. 297; and on the religious