se garderont de porter sur ce tableau un jugement définitif avant de connaitre plus parfaitement toute l'ensemble de la théologie Egyptienne."

To this opinion I fully subscribe. For however ignorant and superstitious we may consider the Egyptian priests who lived after Cambyses, I have no doubt in my own mind, that the predecessors of this degenerated race were highly civilized, and extremely well informed; for cherishing and teaching doctrines which still secretly inculcated the purity of religion, the first founders of the Egyptian priesthood were obliged to employ symbols, and these symbols in process of time, through the ignorance of their successors, were the cause of all the abominable superstitions which disgraced the creed and the morals of the degenerated Egyptians even before Alexander. The very account of the tricks which their priests performed before Pharaoh, in opposition to the miracles wrought by Moses, rests on an authority which is too venerable to be denied, but which evinces the great progress the Egyptian priests must have made in mathematics, optics, and chemistry, as well as natural philosophy. The same apparitions, but of a nature more frightful and imposing, we know to have been displayed before the eyes of the aspirants in the mysteries of Isis; and from the scattered account which the most dauntless classical writers have dared to give of these terrible apparitions, we are compelled to admit, that in the pursuit of many of the natural sciences, they were

our equals, and in some even our superiors. We are in fact informed by Manetho, that the Pharaoh Nechepsos, king of Saïs, and grandfather to Psammeticus, and the philosopher Petosiris, who was his contemporary, had written valuable treatises on astronomy, astrology, natural philosophy, and medicine. This last treatise is mentioned even by Galenus, and Aëtius, and that on astronomy by Eusebius and Pliny, though no doubt, very much altered and interpolated by the philosophers of Alexandria, who began to flourish under the Ptolemies, but whose ignorance and superstition were a disgrace to their school and their age. It is asserted that in this treatise Nechepsos and Petosiris accounted for the creation of the world, and the climacteric changes, or influence, of the heavenly bodies upon the human frame; for such is the account which Julius Firmicus gives of these books, which he says he had read. According to Zoëga, Nechepsos and Petosiris lived seven centuries before Christ. But this is a mistake their age precedes the period marked by Zoëga by many centuries.

Be this as it may, to the Pharaoh Nechepsos is attributed the invention of placing each limb of our body under the immediate influence of a particular sign of the zodiac, in order that a proper remedy may be applied to each disease. "Locum de signorum per membra divisione divinus ille Necepso, ut remedia valetudinum inveniret, diligentissime quidem, ut tanti viri potuit ingenium, mani

festis tractatibus explicavit." So says Firmicus, as he is quoted by Zoëga.

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From Saïs this prejudice passed to the school of Alexandria; was adopted by the Greeks and Romans; was further taught by the Saracens, and by them transmitted to the School of Salerno, and strongly defended and acted upon by all the medical men of every nation of Europe. It is still preserved in some of our most reputed almanacks; in those indeed, that boast of preserving the memory of many of our old notions, institutions, and customs, which, however ridiculous and absurd they may appear to us now, are nevertheless very valuable, inasmuch as they enable us to trace at least the antiquity of some of our prejudices, and the progress of our improvement, a very different thing, however, from what is enthusiastically called the march of intellect. You have but to turn to the almanack, which is perhaps, in the hands of most people, entitled Vox Stellarum, or Moore's Almanack, and there you will find that the different planets or signs of the Zodiac are said to exercise a direct influence, not only on the several limbs which constitute the human frame, but also on the political events, which often turn the destinies of mankind.

In its origin however, this dazzling prejudice might have rested on the received ground of the power which both the sun and the moon exercise on the flux and reflux of the sea, and on the atmosphere in general, a power which, in process of time, was extended to the other planets, and

with a more apparent reason, to the signs of the Zodiac. For if the two great luminaries have any influence on our globe, it is evident that this influence must vary according to their distances, and consequently may be supposed to exist also in the different signs of the zodiac, by which alone these distances were commonly calculated; and as, generally speaking, some diseases affecting the various parts of the human frame seemed, particularly in hot climates, to be the effect of the different seasons, and perfectly endemic, it was natural to suppose that they were produced by the influence of the several constellations in which the sun was at the time, or of the different planets that happened to be above the horizon.

That this, or something like this, must have been the reason of the first notions of mankind, in regard to the influence of the celestial bodies upon every thing that moves in this world, is evident from the general dread which at all times has prevailed amongst all nations, in respect to the appearance of comets. This sentiment has been found to exist amongst the most savage as well as the most civilized communities, and even at the present moment is so strongly rooted in the mind of some people, as to prevent the possibility of convincing them to the contrary. Can we then condemn the Egyptians for having entertained those very opinions, some of which we have scarcely abandoned, while others are still cherished, and pertinaciously defended, by men otherwise well inform

ed and highly talented? Knowing by the united consent of antiquity, that Egypt had been the cradle of all arts and all sciences, and the very emporium of civilization, and its priests the first, almost the only instructors of mankind, with what grace do we venture to look contemptuously upon them for the sake of a few absurd prejudices, of which we cannot take upon ourselves to say that we have not a garbled and perhaps a distorted account? Knowing so little as we do of the extent of their knowledge, which, from the stupendous relics of their gigantic works, we have every reason to suppose to have been very great, and astonishingly extensive, we laugh at the Egyptians for some absurd speculative tenets, while we are not capable of accomplishing one tenth part of what they actually did. The tunnel, for instance under the Thames, which seems to present difficulties sufficiently great to tire the patience of the English, if not to baffle the skill of some of our engineers, is a performance which the Egyptians had executed from time immemorial under the Nile, as you will see hereafter, when we shall turn our attention to the mysteries of Isis. But such is the unfortunate propensity of our nature; we cannot bear a superior, we are scarcely induced to confess an equal; and this failing of individuals may, with equal propriety, and stronger reason, be applied to nations also.

In regard to the Egyptians, however, this feeling is unjust, and at all events, ill-timed. We have nothing to fear from their power, nothing to appre