twenty-one. This of Eleusis, in its reach from north to south, was three hundred and sixty, from east to west three hundred and one. We must compensate for their comparative diminutiveness by every beauty of design and decoration. The sweeping perystyle, the noble pillar, the exquisite intercolumniation! Nor must the treasures of gold be forgotten in the celebration of those of art. The Phocians plundered Delphi of two millions two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling. Shakspeare has well seized the spirit of the scene in his "Winter's Tale." "Cleomenes.-The temple much surpasses

The common praise it bears.

Dion. I shall report,

For most it caught me, the celestial habits,

(Methinks I so should term them) and the reverence

Of the grave wearers. O, the sacrifice!

How ceremonious, solemn, and unearthly
It was in the offering!

And the ear-deafening voice of the oracle,
Kin to Jove's thunder, so surprised my sense,
That I was nothing."*

In the selection of their scenes, the Greeks were most apt and judicious. Delos was one of these holy haunts. An annual expedition of offerings was fitted out for it. It reposed on those pure waters, the most beautiful of the Cyclades. The spot is now covered with ruins, but Cynthus still rises, and Inopus still flows, to recall the taste of the worshippers and pilgrims attracted to these lovely shores. Auldjo, in his Journal of a Visit to Constantinople, says of the ruins on this island, "those of the great temple of Apollo cover an immense extent of ground, whose capitals, columns, architraves, friezes, cornices, lie mingled in undistinguished confusion; and from their size and number they had more the appearance of the fragments of some fallen mountain, than the remains of man's handiwork.”

Still, if we trace the Mysteries to their source, we need offer no apology for the dimensions of the structures in which they were celebrated. Herodotus describes a labyrinth near

Act iii., Scene 1.

Philaæ,

Lake Mæris, consisting of twelve contiguous palaces, with three thousand chambers, half of which were under ground. And modern discovery has laid open temples in that land of wonders, so vast that miles must take the place of feet, and enumeration most cautious leaves untold the vista of colonnades. in the stream of the Nile, was an island built up into one temple. It was a principal sacrarium, a metropolitic shrine. Amasis is recorded to have built a stupendous one at Memphis. And indeed Rome constructed many large but still greatly inferior edifices. One was dedicated to Venus and Rome. Its columns were sixty feet high, eighteen feet in circumference, each fluting eight inches right across. It was built by Adrian. Perhaps the Isiac Rule was not the most favourable to architecture. It wanted much contrivance in its buildings for the purpose of effect. The temple of this divinity is the most perfect work in Pompeii: but it is not grand. Nor does it seem to have cared very anxiously for the more beautiful of the arts; for the frescoes taken from it, and which are now in the museum of Naples, are considered very inferior to the design and management of the mosaics of Herculaneum.—It shall now be my business to attempt a general harmony of the Eleusinian Mysteries with those which preceded this particular institute.

With the Egyptian they have a natural connection as well as strict identity. Some of these coincidences have been remarked. The ship, and the ark in which Osiris was enclosed, evidently are of one origin: the rose was a common emblem: the winnowing-fan was carried in the processions of each: the bull answers to the apis: the dog-headed Mercury appears in both and especially the mystic death of the initiated, their sight of the future world, their presentation to the Inferi, their return to life, invariably recur. If we have a just representation of the tomb of Psammis opened by Belzoni, by that we might justify the analogy. But without that, sufficient is known. The ferry-boat of the initiated,—his introduction to Osiris who ruled heaven, earth, and hell, he being the Dîs of Tartarus,— the lotos, the emblem of life and moral progression,—are familiar pictures. And the honour is put upon Isis that she perfects all

by touching the candidate with the Alatheia, the breastplate of truth! Much information, though not falling under my plan, may be obtained on the Egyptian character of this Order from the learned and adorned work of Laurentius Pignorius. That of Meursius I have not been able to consult.

Perhaps we may go even higher than Egyptian lore. The Cabiri were considered a sort of demigods. Esculapius was one of them. The name, if a synonym of later times, seems taken from Cabea, the original mode of spelling cavea, a cavern, a recess in the earth. Almost all divinities had such an origin. This worship evidently existed in the time of Cambyses, for he profaned its temple and statues. These founders were shipbuilders according to Sanchoniathon; I renounce, however, all connection with Ephraim Jenkinson, though I have pronounced that name before. They were early historians. They were universal fabricators and artisans. They were the fathers of all such" as apply science to practical utility. They were doubtless Phenicians. The ship always held a place in their mysteries; but what is most convincing is, that Cabiria is one of the names of Isis!

There can be no doubt that the tradition of a Deluge was preserved among these symbols. Though the Arkite allusion, and the exploits of the Noachida, are often resolved into astronomic phenomena,-the crescent boat of the moon with its double silver prows, the glories of the principal constellations,— yet this was the subsequent use of the legend. Thus were preserved some remains of truth, some archives of history. The mourning, with which the rites were begun, expressed the fate of the world submerged, and the danger of the family that was tossed upon the superincumbent waves. The wanderings which were depicted,-wanderings of incertitude, bereavement, and despair, denoted the erratic courses and drifts of the diluvian ship. The image, which was laid out as in death, represented the general extinction of the species, together with the probable destruction of all. Wailings and shrieks, as of a funeral, rung through each recess. The revivification was the subject of the most rapturous delight and praise. Man was restored. The

D

race was perpetuated. Sudden shouts of joy were raised. The trumpet pealed and the cymbal clashed. Darkness was turned into light, and the sacellum blazed with spontaneous illuminations. Processions wound into view, wreathed with vernal garlands and bursting into lyric songs.

A strong similitude prevails between all the mystic rites. The story varies, and sometimes the divine patrons are changed. The emblems are commonly the same. Whether the scene be in Eleusis or in Samothrace,-in the chambers of sculptured workmanship and around the altar of classical device, or amidst the Trophonian den, the Mithratic grotto, and the Hermaic cave, whether the dilaceration be of an Osiris, a Bacchus, or an Adonis,—the legends refer to a common origin, and the ceremonies adumbrate a common event.

It will be necessary for the student of the hidden doctrine to be very careful as to his system of hermaneutics. Etymology should be, almost, his last resource. But chiefly let him be on

his guard against the strange opinion of Faber and others, that there may be compound etymons of different languages. If one language will not serve, the adduction of a second can but be most arbitrary and perplexing. And let him beware how he yields to sound and scarcely less how, in reducing words from their accidents to their radicals, he seeks the simple retention of the letters which his theory wants. Criticism should be the highest court of truth,-alas, how often is it open to trick and special-pleading!

But the latitude to which the Mysteries prevailed may be proved by a reference to the Druids. Phenicia, at the time of their influence in Britain, often sent her ships to our shores. This country was the principal school of the superstition, and in its colleges educated the Belgian and the Gaul. The Scythians were of the same religion. Now Herodotus speaks of certain Hyperboreans who were peculiar favourites with the inhabitants of Delos. These, it is morally certain, were our ancestors. The barley-stalk was their mutual symbol. The priests of our country wore the same amulet with the Egyptian priests. The steer was the sacred animal. The mystic pall

contained nearly the same symbols as the Isiac cista. There was initiation. There was the common shirk that an ultimate power, called Esus, received the worship paid to subordinate gods. In Mona was the sacred retreat, and thither from all countries of the north pressed the rich and powerful, that they might become versed in these mysteries.

I have purposely avoided, hitherto, the ingenious speculation of Warburton, that the descent of Æneas, in the sixth book of the Æneid, is a description of the Eleusinian rites. He bends it to a particular argument to which all will not consent. It is this, that every epic must be conducted on the rule of teaching one great leading moral. To this we cannot subscribe. We do not discover it in Homer and Virgil. We believe that any such view suggested by this critic, might be met by another as sound invented by that.* Is not Æneas initiated in the lesser mysteries, those of Hercules, by Evander in the eighth book of the Æneid? Both these epics are certain kinds of history, and the poets have done their best to clothe them with the adornments of their art. That Virgil wrote for the inculcation of piety to the gods seems very questionable; for though he constantly gives his hero the epithet "pius," he as constantly exhibits him the sport of the principal deities, who persecute him with the lowest spite, and never for a moment pretend to chasten him for the purpose of eliciting and proving his virtue. May not this epithet design his filial piety rather than that which warms towards gods? The main design is apparent in every line, to flatter the Roman nation by the character of its presumed ancestor, and to justify the gross usurpations of its arms. And Virgil was not a probable party to such a moral. He was a Stoic. A thorough believer in the mysteries would scarcely have spoken, as he speaks, of the "illaudati Busiridis aras" in the opening of his third book of Georgics. Nor are his well-known lines in the second book quite a manual of devotion: "happy is he who dives into the reasons of things, who tramples upon every

To show what any ingenious scholiast may do, let the reader turn to the Paper (on the Prometheus of Æschylus,) in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature; Vol. I.