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4355. [ -15] At the Hermitage adjoining the palace in Petersburgh the metropolis of Russia, a winter and summer garden, comprised within the site of the building, are singular curiosities, and such as do not perhaps occur in The summer garden, in the any other palace in Europe. true Asiatic style, occupics the whole level roof of the edifice. The winter garden is roofed and surrounded with glass frames; it is a high and spacious hot-house, laid out in gravel walks, ornamented with parterres of flowers, orange trees, and other shrubs, and peopled with several birds of sundry sorts and various climates, which flit from tree to

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4357. [Amos v. 8.] A contest between Cyaxares king of Media, and Alyattes king of Lydia, had continued during five years, with alternate advantages to each party in the sixth there was a sort of nocturnal combat. For, after an equal fortune ou both sides, and whilst the two armies were Thales, the engaging, the day suddenly became night. Milesian, had predicted this phenomenon to the Ionians and had ascertained the time of the year in which it would happen. The Lydians and the Medes, seeing that the night had thus taken the place of the day, desisted from the combat; and both parties became desirous of making peace.

HERODOTUS, lib. i. § 74. The eclipse here alluded to, happened September 30th,

610 B. C.

Phil Trans. for 1811, part ii. pp. 234, 241.

4358. The various situations of the sun, as he passes through the different constellations, have induced ignorant people to ascribe to those stars all such excessive heats, rains, or winds, as have happened under their various aspects. This vulgar error has swelled the works of the Antients, especially the Georgics of Virgil, with maxims and observations respecting the aspect of the Dog-star, the setting of the Pleiades, and the rising of Orion, as perfectly erroneous in his time as we see them to be at present.

4359.

Nature Delineated, vol. i. p. 291

It is not improbable, that the names of the planets and Zodiacal stars, which the Arabs borrowed from the Greeks, but which we find in the oldest Indian records, were originally devised by the same ingenious and enterprizing race, from whom both Greece and India were peopled; the race, who, as DIONYSIUS describes them, - first assayed the deep

And wafted merchandise to coasts unknown,
Those, who digested first the starry choir,
Their motions mark'd, and call'd them by their names.'
Works of Sir W. JONES, vol. i. p. 33.

4360. In the succedaneous revolutions which the sun makes from one tropic to another, he would intolerably scorch the inhabitants of the torrid zone, had not the Almighty, by a peculiar indulgence, thrown over them an immense body of rarified vapors, as a veil to screen them from the burning heat; causing their winter, or at least the coolest and most agreeable part of the year, at the very season when one would be apprehensive of their inevitable destruction. From the torrid zone such a gemal warmth is diffused over the two temperate ones, as renders them both extremely fertile : and from the latter, there are such refreshing vapors diffused over the former, as moderate its excessive heats, and enable the inhabitants to live there with some degree of satisfaction.

All nature is thus linked together in one chain, for mutual benefit. The whole universe is indeed conspicuously, the handywork of one all-wise and omnipotent Being, who has unerringly made the welfare of mankind the ultimate end of his creating power.

Nat. Delin. vol. iii. pp. 96, 119.

4361. [Amos v. 26.] The sun, moon, and stars, were the first objects of false worship; afterwards the deification of dead men took place; and from very early antiquity was formed a mixed kind of idolatry, in which were worshipped the stars and dead men, a planet being assigned to each of their deified worthies. The highest and most remote of the planets then known was Saturn, whom the old Egyptians called Remphan, Raphan, Ramphan, Rephan, Rompha or Repha; but the Arabians, Civan or Ciwan (whence the Hebrew Chiun) as the Turks, Arabs, and Persians, do at this day. The Ammonites, Idumeans, and Canaanites, though they had a knowledge of this planet, and considered it as conjoined with a deified prince, yet they adored this prince (Moloch) under a bodily representation: whereas the Arabians and Egyptians paid divine honors to the star, with which they imagined him conjoined. Now as the Israelites had learnt the Egyptian idolatry during their abode in Egypt, and that of the Arabians whilst they were in Arabia Petrea, or at least in its neighbourhood, where they worshipped the false god of the Moabites, Num. xxv. 2; and as at the same time they were on the borders of the Canaanites, with whom doubt less they had some kind of intercourse, it is natural to suppose, that they were likewise initiated in their form of superstition. This will account for their having with them the Canaanitish image of Moloch, in a small portable temple, or tabernacle, carried either on men's shoulders, or by oxen: and a star painted on the inside of this tabernacle, or on the idol itself, in compliance with the Egyptian and Arabian custom. Original runs literally thus: "But ye have born the tabernacle of your Moloch, and Chiun your likenesses, the star of your god, which you made for yourselves."

4362.

- The

See Univer. Hist. vol. xxi. p. 460, note (P).

Cohen is a prince, a priest; that is, a high-priest and Chiun, the Image in which such highpriest was enshrined after death.

:

Melech is a prince or King and Moloch, the Collossal Image in which such king was enshrined at death.

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4364. [Amos v. 26.] On my retorn from Gaukarna in the north part of Canara, I met with an itinerant Image in a palanquin, attended by a priest and many vairagis. He had in his retinue tents, flags, Thibet-tails, and all other insignia of honor. He was on an expedition to collect the money that individuals in distress had vowed to his Master, the Idol at Tripathi and from his style of travelling seemed to have been successful. Many such collectors are constantly travelling about the peninsula. Out of the contributions the priest defrays all the expenses of the party, and pays the balance into the treasury at Tripathi, which is one of the richest that the Hindoos now possess. Had the image been that of one of the great gods, it would have been carried in a rath, or chariot.

4365.

BUCHANAN, in Pinkerton's Coll. vol. viii. PP. 756,766.

The grand Hindoo festival of the Rutt Jattra takes place on the 18th of June annually. This being the great day of the feast, at 12 o'clock precisely the Moloch of Hindostan is brought out of his temple amidst the acclamations of hundreds of thousands of his worshippers. When the idol is placed on his throne, a shout is raised by the multitude, which, kept equable for a few minutes, gradually dies away. After a short interval, a body of men are seen at

a distance, advancing with green branches, or palms in their hands When come sufficiently near, they fall down before him that sits on the throne, and worship; while the multitude again send forth a voice like the sound of a great thunder.' The throne is now placed on a stupendous car or tower about 60 feet in height, resting on wheels which indent the ground deeply, as they turn slowly under the ponderous machine, Attached to it are six cables, each the size and length of a ship's cable, by which thousands of men, women and children draw it along. The idol is a block of wood, having a frightful visage painted black, with a distended mouth of a bloody color. His arms are of gold, and he is dressed in gorgeous apparel. See No. 861.

Christian Researches in Asia, pp. 23,-26.

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shearing; but it suits the connexion better to refer it to the mowing of the pastures. And if this be correct, then the king must at this time have arrogated the right of cutting the first and best grass of the public pastures, and have only left the after-growth to the Israelitish herdsmen.

Smith's MICHAELIS, vol. i. p. 304.

4368. [Amos vii. 7, 8.] The surface of a lake, or a calm sea, is always perpendicular to the direction of a plumb line, hence methods have been obtained for measuring the surface of the earth.

JOYCE's Introduc. to the Sciences, p. 78.

Amos prophesied, there were two great eclipses of the

sun.

4371. [Amos ix. 5.] He touches the land of their captivity, Babylon; and it shall melt or soften into a morass.— There shall rise up, in consequence of Cyrus's cutting the banks of the Euphrates, an overwhelming flood, and it, the land around Babylon, shall be drowned; or it, the flood at Babylon, shall drown as did the flood of Egypt. See No. 259, &c.

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4369. [14. A gatherer of sycamore fruit] We should read a dresser of that kind of fruit, by letting out its water, &c. The dumez of Egypt is called by the Europeans Pharaoh's fig; it is the sycamore of the Antients, and is properly a wild fig. The fruit is small, but like the common figs. At the end of it a sort of water gathers together; and unless it be cut, and the water let out, it will not ripen. -It is a large spreading tree with a round leaf, and has this particular quality, that short branches without leaves come out of the great limbs all about the wood, and these bear the fruit. It was of the timber of these trees the antient Egyptians made their coffins for their embalmed bodies, and the wood remains sound to this day. These trees are likewise in some parts of Syria. (PocoCKE, vol. i. p. 205.) — That they were common in Judea, see 1 Kings x. 27. Isai. ix. 10. Luke xix. 4.

4370. [Amos viii. 9.] Archbishop USHER has observed in his Annals, that about eleven years after the time that

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4373. [ 7.] The Casluhim and Caphtorim, from whom the Philistines had their origin, were certainly of Egypt; whence they had but just migrated, when they seized on the land, which was afterwards called Palestine. This country became in time of such cousequence as to communicate its name to the whole land of Promise.

Palestine, properly so called, was a slip of land, scarcely 40 English miles in length, stretching along the sea-side; bounded on the east, by the tribes of Judah and Simeon; on the south by Amalekitis, and partly by Edom; on the west by the Mediterranean, or Midland-sea; and towards the north it interfered with the tribe of Dan.

Univer. Hist. vol. ii. p. 190.

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See Dr. GREGORY's Assyrian Monarchy, p. 192.

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its infancy; there was as yet no king of Assyria, distin guished as such.

See 2 Kings xv. 19.

Univer. Hist. vol. iv. p. 327.

4378. [Jonah i. 3.] Yafa, the antient Joppa, is situated on a part of the coast the general level of which is very little above the sea. The city is built on an eminence, in the form of a sugar-loaf, in height above one hundred and thirty feet perpendicular. The houses, distributed on the declivity, appear rising above each other. like the steps of an amphitheatre. On the summit is a small citadel, which commands the town; the bottom of the hill is surrounded by a wall without a rampart, of twelve or fourteen feet high, and two or three in thickness The battlements at the top are the only difference by which it is distinguishable from a common garden wall. This wall, which has no ditch, is environed by gardens, where lemons, oranges, and citrons, in this light soil, grow to a most prodigious size.

VOLNEY.

4379. [Joaah i. 4.] While a fleet was in Malacca Strait, during a calmn day a squall of descending wind commenced suddenly from a dense cloud its centre of action seemed to be in the middle of the fleet, which was much scattered. The breeze spread in every direction from a centre, and produced a singular appearance in the fleet; for every ship hauled close to the wind as the breeze reached her, and when it became general, exhibited to view the different ships sailing completely round a circle, although all hauled close to the wind. Retrospect, vol. ii. p. 300.

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4381. Sea-plants, finding in the water a sufficient quantity of saline particles, oils, and all such spirits as are requisite for their vegetations; stand in no need of roots in the earth to feed them with proper juices.

Nat. Dein. vol. iii. p. 168. The fleshy coralline is very frequently cast up on the shores of the American islands, particularly Jamaica. Mr. ELLIS, on opening the joints of a coraline, observed the internal parts to be full of a clear gelatinous substance.Some corallines are of a flat kidney-shaped form, of about an inch in height, though sometimes expanding to a large subdivided, lobed, and undulated mass, from one to five inches broad, and as many in height. (REES.) — Among corallines, the character of a sertularia is that of a branched animal, with the hard parts without, and the fleshy parts within; and the gorgonia, on the contrary, has its fleshy or soft parts without, and its bone or hard parts within. The gorgonia also is clothed with a kind of scales, placed like tiles, one over another, as in fish.

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ing their stated marks on the shore: at Brest, however, they have been known to rise nine, aud at St. Malo forty-five feet, beyond their usual bounds. Nat. Delin. vol. iii. p. 126.

4354. [Jonah ii. 5.] The Japanese are said to extract nourishment from the sea-weed of their coasts; and it was in the polar ocean that navigators succeeded in fishing up the fucus pyriferus, of more than 200 feet in length. The shores of Greenland, Spitzbergen, and Nova Zembla, are in a manner carpeted with sea-plants; on which the animals, known by the name of sea-horses and sea-lions, are in the habit of resting, as on a couch. St. PIERRE'S Harmonies of Nature, vol. i. p. 92.

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4387. [6.] Joppa is not naturally a haven, for it ends in a rough shore, where all the rest of it is straight, but the two ends bend towards each other, where there are deep When precipices, and great stones that jet out into the sea. the wind, called by those that sail there, the black north-wind, opposes and beats on the shore, it dashes mighty waves against the rocks which receive them, and renders the haven extremely dangerous.

See JOSEPH. Wars, b.iii. ch. ix. § 3.

4388. [10.] From Ch. i. 13, it appears that the tempest, which had endangered the ship, blew against them from the land. The swell then, which brought back Jonah on his float of gulf-weed, and cast him finally on the beach, must have come in an opposite direction. This frequently happens at sea in crecks near to promontories,

See on Acts xxvii. 41.

4383. [Jonah ii. 3.] The billows of the sea, in the most violent storms, seldom trespass more than seven feet, in pass

4389.

Beds of madrepores, or starry corals, seven or eight feet high, resembling ramparts, have been left

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