upon ourselves. It is pleasant enough to sketch the form, and to trace the vegetation of a plant; but the tedious detail of leaves without flowers, and of branches without fruit, would exhaust the most determined perseverance. Antiquity is a vast country, and is only separated from our own by what we carelessly term an interval of time. Some travellers, indeed, have discovered its coasts, but they have found them almost waste; others more hazardous, have dared hypothetically to push to a more intimate acquaintance; but they have encountered with nothing better than the dismal rubbish of former magnificence, or with phantoms and illusions of no definite description. To explore here, is to walk among ruins. The eye can scarcely discern any thing but marks of desolation. The curtain has dropped, and the splendour has passed away. But the patient investigator, like the diver, may, by plunging into the depth of things, bring into light some little proofs of the existence of what may long have been buried from general observation. Antiquity is to us, what the whole volume of nature was to antiquity. Mighty revolutions have happened in the universe. How awfully astonished are we at contemplating the vi cissitudes cissitudes of this globe: fishes, on the tops of the highest mountains; the Alps formed of aquatic crystallizations; the Pyrenees of enormous masses of granite, argillaceous and calcareous substances; here tremendous eminences, such as Etna, Heckla, and Teneriffe, formed by sub-marine eruptions; there the petrified bodies of men and other animals, consolidated into component parts of the solid rock, as at Gibraltar, and in Dalmatia; in the bowels of the earth entire forests turned into coal; here a stratum of shells; there a stratum of lava. Before we leave this scene, therefore, let us try if we cannot distinguish some of its parts, through the medium of probability. We may, in fancy, elevate our minds, and from a high station take such a view of the world, as the second Scipio did in his dream, when the whole. earth appeared so little to him, that he could barely discover that speck of dirt, the Roman empire. We derive our knowledge from a people lost. The great epochs of nature are, indeed, unknown to us, and we are utterly unable to penetrate the obscurity under which they are concealed. But an anterior people most evidently lived in a flourishing state; cultivated the arts, and invented those sciences, of which, in fragM ments, VOL. IV. ments, we are only the inheritors. How many institutions do we not find, of which it is impossible to trace the commencement! The art of fusing metals, an art so difficult as to require many different processes, and much preliminary knowledge, has had an immemorial existence in the east. Letters too are so ancient, that Pliny thought himself warranted in denominating them eternal. The invention of the signs of the Zodiac must have been of the most profound antiquity. And what shall we say of the astronomy of the ancients, which they clearly did not invent; but which they often practised, without understanding its principles ? We already have had occasion to mention the Atlantic island of Plato; and to observe the twilight which still hangs over some remote parts of the history of this globe. I do not wish to trespass upon you with the eagerness of systematic conjecture, nor to say that things actually were as I shall venture to suppose them. The conjectures I shall lay before you, will, I hope, bear themselves out, without much trespassing either upon good sense, or upon religious opinion. 1 advance them as matter, more of curious speculation than of authority, or of what is still further from my idea, of unimpeachable cre dibility dibility. The æra given to the deluge may not be strictly accurate. We place it generally 2329 years before the birth of Christ. On the contrary, the Orientals, upon the strength of a series of astronomical observations, go considerably beyond this period. But do we not see that Abraham lived two thousand one hundred and forty years before the vulgar æra, and that in his days the world was peopled; and that kingdoms and governments were established? Even commerce, according to Moses, was carried on through the medium of money. Abraham himself was rich in cattle, in gold, and in silver.* The court of Egypt was brilliant; and the laws so undeviatingly and so rigorously enforced, that Joseph found them, two hundred years after, in the exact state in which Abraham had left them. Is it easily to be conceived, that in so inconsiderable a number of years, the earth could have had from the descendants of Noah, so prodigious a population? Or that different languages, religions, political regulations, and arts and sciences, could have so generally flourished, or have had so miraculous a growth? Le Pere Riccioli, however, proves, that according to the text of the Septuagint, we, should fix the epoch of the deluge at three thousand five hundred and forty M 2 Genesis, chap. 7. forty-three years before our æra. St. Augus tin was decidedly of opinion, that the Septuagint calculation is more correct than that of the Hebrew. And, in fact, the Israclites do not ap❤ pear, either in the books of Moses, or in their historical narrations, to have had any very correct mode of chronological computation. Many of their expressions must be looked upon as figurative, or symbolical; and hence anacronisms may be allowed, without any injury to the general text of the sacred writings. I know it is said significantly, that philosophers will admit, in general, that the world had a beginning for reason supports the belief, and the universal tradition of mankind confirms it; but that they will not admit of the universal tradition of its late commencement; and why? because it would comport with the account of Moses; and all he says must be delusion. This is a harsh, and, in my mind, too unqualified an accusation. And, it would, perhaps, be more to the advantage of truth and sound principles, if such unmerited opprobrium were less abundantly poured forth, than it has been by otherwise a learned and respectable body of writers. I have, in some former letters, explicitly given my |