CHAPTER II.

How many are the enjoyments, which the progress of the seasons affords us !-What can be more delightful, than that season of the year, when Nature, weary and exhausted by her own efforts, clothes every object in renovated gladness; when the snows are melted away, and the trees are bursting with leaves; when the flowers are painting themselves with every vária. tion of colour; the rivers rolling with temperance; and when every hill and every thicket ring with the modulation of various notes. At this season, the mind, enraptured, seems as if it were capable of building castles in the ocean, and pyramids in the skies.

If SPRING is the most delightful season to the poet, because it affords him a greater multitude of images, SUMMER is no less so to the contemplatist, than the season of AUTUMN is to the enthusiast. What can be more transporting, than the splendour of the rising sun at this season of the year, with all the scene of rural industry it unfolds; when subjects for the poet and the painter are as infinite as they are. transcendent?

1

An evening and a morning sun, when skirted with bold masses, is said to have fired Barry with ungovernable rapture.-Virgil, in his picture of Elysium, says that the sun has a purple light at all times. And it is from this beautiful appearance of the sky, before and after sunset, that we associate the idea of

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beauty and grandeur with purple :-hence purple has, in most ages, been esteemed a royal and imperial colour. Sensible of these glories of early day, the disciples of Pythagoras, after the manner of their master, prostrated themselves, as soon as the disk of the sun was seen above the horizon. Whenever they saw it,1 they recognized the splendour of the Deity. Actuated by the same awful admiration, Aristippus, when at the point of death, directed his friends to carry him to the city gates, and to place his couch immediately opposite the lattice, that he might, even to the last of life, enjoy the verdure of the fields and the splendour of the setting sun. While Caniz, one of the German poets, upon the bed of death, requested to be raised from his couch, in order to take a last look of that glorious luminary.-" Oh," said he, with sublimity of enthusiam, "if a small part of the Eternal's creation can be so exquisitely beautiful as this ; how much more beautiful must be the Eternal himself!"

II.

So enthusiastic an admiration had Eudoxus2 for this luminary, that he would willingly have suffered the fate of Phaeton, for the delight of approaching it. He prayed, therefore, to the gods, that he might once be permitted to see it so closely, as to be able to comprehend its form, its magnitude and beauty, and then to die by the heat of its beams.

It is curious yet melancholy to observe, with what atheistical horror some theologians listen to argu1 Max. Tyrius, Dissert. xxv.

• Plutarch.

ments, derived from Nature. An instance of this kind occurred, some little time since, in Spain :where a prisoner, we are told,' was gagged at an auto de fé, merely because, after being confined many years in prison without seeing the light of the sun, he was struck with such rapture, at again beholding it, that he exclaimed, in the ardour of his enthusiasm, “How is it possible, that men, who see that glorious orb, can worship any other Being, than the one, who created it!"

Rousseau in his last illness was heard to ejaculate, "Oh! how beautiful is the sun! I feel as if he calls my soul towards him?!"-Indeed the sun is so glorious a body, that it can excite no wonder, that, in the more early ages, it should have received the honours of deification.-Josephus informs us, that the people of Judah issued out of the eastern gate of the city to salute the sun on its first rising. The sun, as well as the moon, was worshipped by the ancient Egyptians,* Germans,5 and British Druids.→ The Persians worshipped it also; but they did not

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1 Southey's Letters from Spain and Portugal, p. 317.

2 This naturally calls to our recollection the passage in Tasso, where Olindus and Sophronia are represented, as being tied to the same stake. -Sophronia enquires of her friend, "why dost thou lament ?-Behold yon sky!-How beautiful it is!-Look, too, at the sun-oh! how he consoles my heart!-Helooks, as if he summoned us to his glory." 3 Vide also 2d Kings, c. xxiii.

4 The Egyptians of ancient times, says Diodorus, the Sicilian, contemplating the arch of the Heavens, and admiring the harmony which prevails in the universe, esteemed the sun and moon deities. The one they called Osiris, the other Isis.

5 Cæsar de Bell. Gall., lib. vi. c. 21.

for many ages permit any symbol to be made of it.' Such was the creed of the first Zoroaster2 (Zerdusht); the second, however, decreed the erection of temples, and the institution of the sacred fire. The fire-worshippers of Persia and India do not, however, believe the sun to be the Deity; but that his throne is centred there.

III.

In Egypt the sun was hieroglyphical of the fructifying power; in Greece it was an emblem of human life; and in Rome of the sovereign majesty of the empire. In the finest of all soliloquies,-that of Satan on beholding the splendour of the sun,-thé hatred of the fiend does not debar him from acknowledging how worthy that luminary is of being worshipped as a deity.

O thou, that with surpassing glory crown'd,
Looks from thy soles dominion, like the GOD
Of this NEW WORLD: at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams;
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell;-how glorious once above thy sphere.

Xenoph. Cyrop. viii.

2 There appear to have been five Zoroasters: 1st. Chaldean; 2d. Bactrian; 3d. Persian; 4th. Pamphylian; and 5th, Armenian,

This word is obscure. Perhaps we may render it less so by referring to a passage in Boethius :

Quem quia respicat omnia solus,

Verum possis dicere solem.

Lib. v. Metr. 2.

The Persians worshipped the sun under the name of Mithras a deity, who, in the respective times of Statius and Claudian, was venerated at Rome. On his altar was inscribed Soli Deo invicto Mithra. But there existed in Persia a sect, which thought higher and more nobly. When they looked at the sun, therefore, they frequently ejaculated, "Oh, thou master of yon glorious orb! enlighten my mind; and keep me this day from evil.”

The Massagetæ also worshipped the sun. This people dwelt in tents; had their wives in common; and were accustomed, not only to kill their parents at a certain age, but to eat them. They are mentioned by Herodotus, Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Justin, and Maximus Tyrius. In fact, the sun seems almost universally to have been venerated in ancient times as a God. The Chaldeans worshipped him under the name of Baal: the Egyptians called him Osiris; the Syrians Adonis; the Greeks and Romans Apollo. The Massagetæ, the Scythians, and the Romans, sacrificed white horses to him; the Greeks, wolves, lambs, bullocks, and hawks; and with him Alexander1 offered up the elephant, which had fought so bravely in his war with Porus.

The Peruvians were accustomed to dip the tip of their fingers in cups, then lift their eyes to heaven, and give the sun thanks for the liquor they were about to drink. The sun was their principal deity.

Philostrat. in Vit, Appollon. 1. i. c. xii.