Sir W. then goes on to say, it will in vain be pretended that such things as these

off Can be reconciled to a true system of theology, unless it be frankly acknowledged that the Hebrew scriptures are allegorical writings, in which the literal meaning is rarely the real one." (xix) to To account for, and render probable, the actual interpretation which he is inclined to put upon these writings, he adds

I recollect that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and I expect to find traces of that wisdom in his works. The learned among the ancient Egyptians were pure theists, as Cudworth has proved. They were deeply skilled in the sciences :* but they carefully concealed their mysterious learning under innumerable symbols and allegories. May we not look then for the same things in the writings which are ascribed to the Jewish lawgiver ? It is what I have done, and I submit to the judgment of a few individuals the result of my researches." (xxi.).

The body of the work is divided into six dissertations, intended, we presume, as specimens of the general plan of the author; each of these dissertations, taking up a certain portion of the Jewish historical records, professes to discover therein the scientific and astronomical knowledge of an early eastern nation, which (according to the manners of the times) had been thus concealed beneath the mask of allegory and hieroglyphic, from the eye of the vulgar and the uninitiated. Now this short statement alone will have convinced the reader, that, whatever may be Sir W. D's claim upon his attention, on the grounds of reason, common sense, and sound philosophy, he can pretend to none whatever on that of novelty, or originality; the honourable course indeed would appear to have been frequently run before him. Kircher, in his "Edipus Egyptiacus,” appears to have laid the first foundation of the system; Volney, in his "Ruins," acts upon the idea, by resolving the whole of the Christian religion into a symbolical worship of the sun; and a yet more recent writer, Dupuis, in his "Origin of all religious worships," (Origine de tous les Cultes) crowns the whole, by associating the writings of both the Old and the New Testamant under this predicament, contending that the characters of neither had a real

two ways interesting to us; first, as showing the extreme futility of the best directed attacks against revelation; secondly, as tending to support one of our most favourite theses, that ridicule is harmless when directed against

what is really valuable, and consequently that it may be safely, and without danger, employed as a detector of absurdity and the test of truthJeonilst

Particularly, as it is elsewhere stated, in astronomy.cle

existence, and that, at once the twelve tribes, and the twelve apostles, had merely an astronomical reference to the twelve signs of the zodiac. This is the wise and enlightened sect, of which Sir William has come forward the learned and the ardent votary. With our readers' leave, we will now proceed to give some specimens of his doctrines, and adduce the most prominent from among the numerous' articles of his credenda.

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The subject of the first dissertation is the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis, which contains what has been commonly called Jacob's blessing of his twelve sons. This patriarch, however, Sir William asserts to be an astrologer, contending that, in the chapter under consideration, his words must not be taken in their literal sense, as he is merely "typifying the future fortunes of his family, by allusions to the celestial bodies." That the sons of Israel represent generally the twelve signs of the zodiac, we have already seen; and our author here professes, by the aid of etymological and circumstantial analogies, exactly to discover the peculiar sign intended or represented by each individual tribe. Thus, for instance (page 7), when Reuben is called "the first-born;" this is supposed to identify him with Aquarius (the waterbearer), that being the sign in which the sun commences his course, after passing the winter solstice. Issachar is called a strong ass;" which coincides with the fact, that near the sign of Cancer (the crab), attributed to Issachar, there actually are certain stars now called the asses. (p.21) Dan is supposed to represent the Scorpion; not far from which appears the constellation of the Serpent, whose head ascends with the feet of the Centaur, an imaginary monster: but the idea of which was evidently originally taken from the figure of a man on horseback. Now this intelligence, it is argued, is communicated in the scripture language, “Dan shall be a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horses' heels." But what the author calls "the most surprising thing" of all, is this," the Danites took possession of a city, called Laish, or Laisham (see Jos. i. 19); and it seems very remarkable that there are stars in the Scorpion still called Leshat, Lesos, &c." The author very sagely adds, "the reader may consider these things, and then judge for himself!"

The above extracts, we would remark, are favourable specimens of the mass of conjectures which compose the bulk of the work before us. In perusing it, we have indeed (almost imperceptibly to ourselves) selected such passages alone as were remarkable for a glimpse of meaning, or of

ingenuity; we had not the courage to copy from among the many dull, as well as absurd, things with which these pages abound; those, therefore, which we have adduced, are, in fact, the cream, the very essence, of the forty-three pages comprised in the first dissertation; and the remainder consists principally of conjectures, equally well founded with these, but without, generally, the point, the pun, the double meaning, which may certainly be discovered in the instances given. Having adduced specimens of the conjectural and argumentative powers of our author, we shall now proceed to give one of his proposed "improved translation” from the Hebrew text, that is, as rendered by him into what may be called astronomical language, and divested of the allegory under which be supposes it to have been hitherto disguised." Joseph (says the finely figurative language of our common version), Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over a well." But (observes Sir William) we may translate the passage literally

"A son of a cow (meaning the celestial bull, or sign of Taurus) is Joseph, a son of a cow beside Ain (meaning Ain-al-Tor, the great star, commonly called Aldebaran,) the Benoth (meaning Succoth Benoth, or the Pleiades, whose station is on the back of Taurus) walk upon the bull." (p. 38.)

Here also, to this sentence, so pregnant with meaning, as to an innumerable quantity of others which are equally so, the author might, with considerable stage-effect, have added,

the reader will consider these things, and then judge for himself." The only doubt is, whether the man who should set about to consider such things might not well be deemed incapable of judgment ever after.

The reader perhaps may be curious to be informed of Sir William's mode of astronomical translation; it would appear to be simply as follows: taking each word separately in the original, he seeks out the name of some sign or constellation in the heavens, with which, either in sound, or in external character, it would appear to agree; if there be none such in the Hebrew language, he goes to the Arabic; defeated there, he flies to the Chaldaic; still unsuccessful, he calls in the assistance of the Syriac; and, as a last resort, takes refuge in what he believes to have been the Egyptian, If, in the course of this research, an astronomical phrase, or word, exactly agreeing with the expression under consideration, can be found, the author, we must cou fess, would appear, in most cases, to prefer it. He is not,

Such is the system of Sir Willian &

however, particular. If the likeness be small, he is contented with it; if none at all, he alters and amends, and states what the word ought to be, till it fully answers the desired purpose. mond, as exemplified in the pages of his first dissertation, and those which follow the pages of his first dissertation, drag on in the same endless round of false assumption, and absurd conjecture, and are indeed, in every way, equal

and similar thereunto.

The subject of the second dissertation is the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, which is, and for some time has been, vulgarly supposed to contain an account of certain wars among the aboriginal inhabitants of Canaan; during which, the patriarch Lot was taken prisoner. We do not propose entertaining our readers with a detailed account of this dissertation; suffice it to say, that Lot is as clearly proved to be the moon, as Abraham is demonstrated to be the sun; and that the whole relation of these wars comes out to be, in fact,

an hieroglyphic narration of the reformation of the calendar';' the four kings, on the one side, representing the four sea sons, or the complete year; and the five rebel princes who oppose them, implying the five days ignorantly omitted in their calculations by the Egyptians, who, consequently, reckoned only 360 days to their solar year, thereby causing all the jostlings, and all the "encounters" between the sun, moon, and stars, recorded in the chapter in question, but which have hitherto been absurdly attributed to kings, and to soldiers, and to armies of mere flesh and blood. We confess we were, at first, somewhat surprised to find that what had hitherto, in all ages, been considered as a relation of the wars of the earlier inhabitants of Canaan, should, in fact, be only meant to tell us, that the Egyptians did not know the day of the month; but we, at length, felt inclined to submit to superior authority, and shall, from this time henceforth, and for ever, be willing to confess the grossness of our error-convinced, as we now are, that neither Egyptians nor Israelites knew either the extent of their own knowledge, or the nature of their own languages, so well as the writer before us; that they were evidently mistaken in their chronological calculations, and that the day which they would have been inclined to call the sixth of April has been indisputably proved, according to the new style of Sir Wil liam Drummond, to be, in fact, the first.

The third dissertation relates to the tabernacle and the temple, the proportions and the ornaments of which, toge ther with the ark, and the cherubim, and the molten sea,

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and the golden candlesticks, at once afford admirable scope for the exercise of our author's ingenuity, and call forth a striking display of the enormous and almost incredible capacity of his believing powers; so excessive, indeed, in those cases, where his own system, or hypothesis, are concerned, would the latter appear, that we have been frequently at a loss which most we should admire: his truly philosophic spirit of scepticism towards all the arguments which could, or which have been, adduced in favour of a revelation, or the boundless extent of his faith, and the honest unsuspecting credulity of his nature, when employed on the side of Deism, and when most apparently he wishes to be thought free from prejudice, and under the sole dominion of reason and of truth. One consolation, however, it is in our power to afford, by assuring him, that his is far from being the only instance in which credulity and scepticism have gone hand in hand.

The fourth dissertation takes up the book of Joshua, which is assumed-we beg pardon-proved, we believe, is the word-which is proved not to contain, as is generally supposed, an account of the passage of the Israelites, and their settlement in the land of Canaan, but to be an esoteric confutation of the doctrines of Tsabaism, or the worship of the stars, together with other similar errors which had been current among the Egyptians, and into which the Israelites were extremely liable to fall. All this is supported by arguments similar to those already adduced; the river Jordan, from its similarity to a Chaldaic word, is turned into a serpent, which serpent is then twisted into an hieroglyphic representation of the sun's annual orbit: the Red Sea is found to be a symbol of "the concave vault of the heavens;" and the town of Jericho (placed of course in the 66 concave vault," or bottom of the sea) represents "the moon in all her different quarters."-But, in the words of Hamlet, "somewhat too much of this!"

The fifth dissertation includes such passages in the book of Judges as "seem (in the judgment, of course, of the author) to bear an immediate and distinct reference to astronomy. The subject of the sixth and last is the paschal lamb, which is to be "considered as a memorial of the transit (or passover) of the equinoxial sun, from the sign of the bull to that of the ram, or lamb.” These two last possess

May not this have given rise to the vulgar, or, as it must now be termed, enlightened superstition of laying ghosts in the Red Sea? an excellent subject for a new dissertation!" We say no more a word to the wile we know to be sufficient.