his wife, belongs to the second order of the Egyptian gods. They both are, no doubt, another representation of the attributes of the great Demiurgos; and their names are more familiar to you than any I have mentioned as yet: they are the goddess Isis, and her brother and husband, Osiris. It would occupy too much of our time to give the whole account of them both, of their exploits, of the benefits they conferred upon Egypt, of the persecution and murder of Osiris by Typhon, and the anxiety and labours undergone by Isis, to collect his scattered limbs, and to have them buried. This foolish story, which, in progress of time, became a legend, was, in the beginning, without the least doubt, a regular fable, recording one of the greatest truths transmitted and preserved by tradition amongst mankind, of the sad event of the fall of man, and of the destruction of the world by the deluge. It would not be difficult, if I could possibly enter into more minute detail, to point out the analogy which all the circumstances recorded in the lives of Isis and Osiris, and the ceremonies which accompanied the mysteries, or festivals of these and other deities, had to the events, the memory of which they were originally intended to perpetuate; the creation of the world, the fall of man, the destruction of mankind by the flood, the preservation of Noah and his family, the unity of God, and the promise he made to that patriarch; and, consequently, the necessity of abjuring the worship of idols, which properly constituted

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the end of the mysteries, and obtained for them the name of regeneration, and for the initiated themselves the proud appellation of regenerated.

Indeed, the elevation of a ship, which formed a prominent feature in the mysteries both of Isis and Ceres, though in progress of time it might have been applied to other purposes, could not originally have a significant reference to any thing else but Noah's preservation in the ark. The innumerable fables which, towards the end of the Theocratic government, and much more in the after times, had been invented and engrafted on that event, involved the subject in deeper and deeper mystery. But I have no doubt, that in their origin this ceremony had been introduced to commemorate the destruction of mankind by the deluge. The theories which we find existing among the several nations may indeed be varied, but the necessary consequence which must be drawn from seeing the same emblem among the different nations of the globe is evidently this, that not only the Egyptians, but the Chinese, the Japanese, the Persians, the Hindoos, and even the Indians of North and South America, have theories sufficiently circumstantial to evince that they possess a traditional account of the deluge of Noah. Their respective theories are too copious to be cited here; they will form the subject of one Lecture, or perhaps of two. I must therefore, for the present, refer those who wish to acquire a full idea on this most interesting subject, to Bryant's System of Mythology, Perron's Zendavesta, Nieu

hoff's Voyage to Brazil, Acosta's History of the Indies, Faber's Origin of Pagan Idolatry, and the several papers which have appeared on this subject in the Asiatic Researches, and in the works of Sir W. Jones.

In regard to Isis and Osiris, you find their names, like those of the other gods and goddesses, expressed phonetically, figuratively, and symbolically. Phonetically, the name of Isis was exhibited by four characters, [Table 4. fig. 24, and 25.] the cup, [fig. 24.] or its synonyme, the feather, [fig. 25.] either of which stood for an I; the egg, which was an S; the half circle, which denoted the feminine gender; and the throne, the emblem by which the goddess was perpetually designated. Figuratively, she was represented by the image of a woman sitting, holding on her head the circle surrounded by horns, and sometimes in her hand either the sign of divine life, [fig. 26.] or a flower of lotus, [fig. 27. And, lastly, symbolically, her representation was the throne, the half circle, and the egg, as specifying gender; and sometimes they added to these signs the image of a goddess, [fig. 28.]

The phonetic exhibition of Osiris, her brother and husband, consisted of four signs, or characters, [fig. 29.] a sceptre, with the head of a species of wolf, which denotes the vowel O; the crooked line S; the oval an R; the arm an E, or an I, which gives Osre, the abbreviation of Osire, or Osiri.

His symbolic name was represented by the eye

and the throne, to which sometimes the hatchet was added, [fig. 31.] as the symbolical sign of the deity, and at other times the abridged figure of the god, as a generic character, [fig. 32.]

Lastly, his figurative name was represented by the image of a god, mostly sitting, bearing on his head the royal pschent, and often in his hand the whip and the sceptre, as he was considered the king of the Amenti [fig. 30.] This place, to which the Greeks had given the appellation of Hades, and the Latins of Tartarus, was the place in which the Egyptians supposed the dead to be. It was governed by four genii, the first of whom was the god Amset; the second, the god Api. Osiris was the king who presided over them all; and we have seen the god Phtha as the ruler of the destinies of the souls of men after they had parted from the body, in order that they might be distributed, according to their merits, in the thirty-two superior regions.

It is for this reason we find the god Thoth a perpetual companion of Osiris, and, after him, the first personage in the Amenti, where he had fixed his residence and his tribunal, to regulate the destinies of the souls in each of their transmigrations from the body of one man into another. As the first, or, as he is called, celestial Thoth, he was considered an emanation of the first Demiurgos; and the Egyptians supposed, that, after having assisted him in the work of the creation, he took the human form to enlighten mankind, and

then retired into the moon to assist the god Pooh in the disposition of the souls of men. For this purpose, they had divided the whole world into three zones. The first was the earth, or the zone of trial; the second was the zone of the air, perpetually agitated by winds and storms, and was considered as the zone of temporal punishment; and the third was the zone of rest and tranquillity, which was above the other two. Again, they had subdivided the first zone, or the earth, into four regions or departments; the second, or the zone of the air, was divided into two only; the first of these was subdivided into four regions, and the second into eight, making twelve altogether; these being added to the four regions of the first zone, made sixteen: and, lastly, the third zone of the tranquil atmosphere contained sixteen more regions; so that the sum total of the regions in which the souls of the dead were to be distributed, was, in fact, thirty-two.

According to this principle, they supposed that the god Pooh was the perpetual director; a sort of king of the souls, who, after having parted from the body, were thrown into the second zone, to be whirled about by the winds through the regions of the air till they were called upon either to return to the first zone, to animate a new body, and to undergo fresh trials, in expiation of their former sins, or to be removed into the third, where the air was perpetually pure and tranquil. It was over these two zones, or divisions of the world, situated