produced. It is but stepping back three or four thousand years, and entertaining ourselves with, let us suppose, even a vision of things no where else to be found, and which we may venture to believe to be the resemblance, at least, if not the only true portrait, of the ancient world.

Herodotus tells us, the Scythians having pos sessed themselves of all Asia, prosecuted their march towards Egypt; and that the Egyptian king Psammeticus, in great consternation, presented himself before them, and by bribes, prayers, and entreaties, prevailed upon them to return to their own country. This was in the wane of their empire. In Darius's time, five hundred and eight years before Christ, they possessed, besides others, those tracts between the Danube and the Don, and along the borders of the Black Sea. Darius marched against them with an army computed at seven hundred thousand men.

The conflict was dreadful, but the Scythians were victorious. It is said, indeed, that Mythridates, some centuries afterwards, subdued the Scythians, who had been invincible until then. Yet we know, that Julius Caesar, immediately previous to his assassination, had planned a series of wars, which were not likely to have terminated

• Justin.

but

but with his life. He was to have begun with revenging the death of Crassus, and reducing the Parthians. Next, he was to have passed by Hyrcania, and the coasts of the Caspian Sea, and ultimately with his whole force to have fallen upon Scythia,

LET

LETTER LXIX.

VOLTAIRE says, tigers, and not astronomers, have found their way down to us from Scythia. "Did the Asiatic or European Scythia," says he, "ever pour any thing upon us, but barbarous, ferocious hordes, who always delighted in drenching their hands in the blood of their fellow-creatures? Can we seriously suppose these terrible devastators to have descended their mountains with quadrants, astrolabes, and other instruments of science? Many Greeks, we know, travelled into the east, to pick up the knowledge and wisdom of the Brahmans; but who ever saw a Greek in the land of Gog and Magog on the same errand ?" This, however, with this lively writer's good leave, is begging the question. We are not speaking of the Tartars of to-day; we are speaking of the Scythians, immediately subsequent to the deluge. Would it not be as just to conclude, that Greece never had an Euclid, a Sophocles, or a Solon, because the present Tartars, or Turks, in that country, have neither law-givers, poets, nor mathematicians?

The

The Scythian is undoubtedly the first empire, of which any memory hath reached us. Nor has the opinion been without plausibility, which has been adopted by late mythologists, that Saturn, Jupiter, Bacchus, &c. might have been monarchs of this first empire, but deified, after their death, by the grateful people over whom they had reigned. But, as I have said before, we are always to recollect, that there were stationary, as well as wandering Scythians. The many millions, with which their dominions must have swarmed, could never have been in the state in which the Nomades were, when they were first made known to the Greeks, ignorant how to sow or reap, and only capable of deriving subsistence from the fruits which the earth naturally produced, from the chace, and the milk and flesh of their flocks and herds. The truth is, there were Nomades in India, Arabia, and Africa, as well as in Scythia, but still there were settled communities. Those of Africa were afterwards called Numidians, by a small change of the letters which composed their name. The Bedouins of Arabia are Nomades at this hour.

Astronomy, and other sciences, were understood upwards of three thousand years ago. Bailly

Bailly has shewn, that astronomy must have been cultivated anterior to the deluge.* For how long must it not have been before man could have conceived, that this firm earth we tread upon, without either support or prop, revolves on its own axis in the unbounded regions of space! Yet from this, to the calculation of the phænomena of the heavens, perhaps to the daring calculation of the rapidity of light, what ages must have passed, what efforts of the genius. of man must have been concentrated! Before the science of the planetary system can be reduced to demonstration, almost every other science must be fundamentally understood. If precedency is to be given to any, it certainly cannot be to astronomy. The distant wonders of the heavenly sphere require not only metaphysical abstraction, but all the aid of mathematical calculation. Nor does Sacred Writ itself op pose this opinion. Cain built a town to the east of Eden. Tubal-cain, six hundred years before the deluge, was versed in the fabrication of copper and iron. Jubal was instructed in the nature of sounds, and in all the complicated harmonies of music. Enoch, together with a regular form of worship, established sacrifices and feasts to the honour of the God of nature. Noah, himself,

built

* L'Astronom. Ancienne.