of drowning these lepers in the sea, while those who escaped fled into the wilderness, has plainly been taken from the destruction of Pharaoh and his army in the Arabian gulph, the punishment being ingeniously transferred, as Mr. Faber properly observes, from the oppressors to the oppressed.

The next historian who speaks of the Exodus of the Israelites, is Diodorus, in his Bibliotheca, and the account he gives of it is shortly this:

Formerly a pestilential disorder prevailed in Egypt, which most were willing to ascribe to the wrath of heaven. Hence the aboriginal inhabitants began to suspect that they should never be free from the malady until they expelled the aliens. Upon this the most noble and warlike of these foreigners, being compelled to leave the country, emigrated into Greece, under the command of several illustrious leaders, amongst whom Cadmus and Danaus are particularly celebrated. But another numerous division marched by land into Judæa. Of this colony one Moses was the leader, a man of great wisdom and fortitude."

So far Diodorus, who however, goes on much in the same way as Lysimachus, to tell us something more of the manner in which the Jews treated the various people they met with in their route, &c. &c. &c. which certainly agrees with the account that Moses has left us.

In this passage of Diodorus, no king is mentioned, nor Shepherds; the pestilential disorder is

common to the Egyptians as well as the strangers; the Jews are represented setting off under the command of Moses: and the only striking circumstance is, that they leave Egypt at the same time in which Cadmus emigrates into Greece. Much of the same sort is the story related by Tacitus. The Jews, as usual, have a leprosy, and as a race hateful to the gods, are driven out of Egypt by Bocchoris. Moses persuades them to submit to him, as a leader sent from heaven, and they march into Judæa, drive out its former occupants, and build a city and a temple.

So far Tacitus, in every respect, agrees with Lysimachus; and the reason why I have quoted him is, that in the progress of his history he says, "That it was variously reported, that the Jews had come from Mount Ida, in Crete; that they emigrated from Egypt during the reign of Isis, under the command of Hierosolymus and Judas, and that they were generally esteemed descendants of the Ethiopians, whom fear and hatred had compelled to change their habitations."

From this last account, it is evident, that Tacitus mistakes or confounds what Diodorus has said of the other foreigners, who under Danaus emigrated into Greece, at the time that the Jews, under Moses, went into Syria; and very little reflection will shew us that Diodorus considers Ethiopia as the country of the Shepherds, as he evidently speaks of them when he mentions the other foreigners who went off with Danaus; for he

says that, " they had emigrated from Egypt, during the reign of Isis, under the command of Judas;" and "that they were considered descendants of the Ethiopians." If then they came from Ethiopia, and left Egypt, they must have come into the country, and this coming is precisely the invasion of the Shepherds, mentioned by Manetho, during the reign of Timaus.

Such, with a few more additions, scarcely worth noting, is the account which the ancients have left us of the invasion and departure of the Hykshos, or Shepherds, from Egypt, as well as of the Exodus of the Israelites; and before I venture to state my own opinion on the subject, I think it necessary to explain to you, in as short a way as I can, what are the most remarkable systems which have been framed upon the foregoing authorities, concerning the country of the Hyk-shos, and the time in which they left Egypt. These systems may be reduced principally to three; the first, imagined by Josephus, Eusebius, and many of the primitive Christian writers; the second, by Sir John Marsham and Mr. Bryant; the third, by the venerable historian of "The Origin and Progress of Pagan Idolatry."

As to Jews and Christian writers, such as Josephus, Eusebius, Africanus, and others, their opinion is not worth confuting, though it may be proper to mention it; because they all, wishing to enhance the antiquity of the Jewish nation, for the sake of answering the heathen writers, who attacked them

on all sides, have asserted that the Shepherds were the Israelites; and, to defend this untenable opinion, they have distorted facts, imagined events, added something of their own to the quotations of ancient writers, and passed over many circumstances, however important and well attested, that made against their system; they must, therefore, be dispatched all together with this general reflection : and if now and then I shall have occasion to quote from them, it will be only in those cases in which no facts, no authorities, no history militate against their assertions.

But it is not in this summary way that I can mention the theory imagined by Sir John Marsham and Mr. Bryant; for although the system of these learned writers may be considered in some points as liable to strong objections, it nevertheless contains much that is valuable, and capable of assisting us in the present inquiry.

Both these learned writers agree in confuting the absurd notion of Josephus, as evidently advanced to promote the honour of his country, that the invading Shepherds were the Israelites, and that what Manetho afterwards says of the real Israelites, has been by the historian of the Jewish antiquities, studiously thrown out of place, and disfigured. In no one particular, says Mr. Faber, do these two races of Shepherds agree, except in the single point of their pastoral character. The royal Shepherds invaded Egypt by force of arms, and amounted to the number of 240,000 persons ;

the Israelites came peaceably into Egypt, to avoid the horrors of famine, and, at the time of their descent, were but a single family of seventy souls. The royal Shepherds reduced the whole land to servitude, and acted the part of relentless tyrants; the Israelites were themselves slaves, and were grievously oppressed by the governing power. The royal Shepherds were unwilling to leave the country, and retired not until they were fairly driven out by main force; the Israelites wished to depart, and were long prevented from withdrawing. The royal Shepherds founded Jerusalem; the Israelites occupied it long after it had been built. The royal Shepherds marched straight into Palestine ; the Israelites wandered forty years in the wilderness. The royal Shepherds returned into Egypt, and were a second time expelled; the Israelites left the country but once, and never returned. In short, Manetho, and most of the ancient writers, specify two distinct races of Shepherds, one of which succeeded the other. The first conquered Egypt by force of arms, and occupied and fortified the district of Avaris, for their own protection; the second had a grant of Avaris, from a native Egyptian king after the first had left it.

Having thus disposed of the opinion of Josephus, and other writers who, like him, suppose the Israelites to have been the only shepherds that are mentioned by Manetho, Mr. Bryant proceeds to consider them separately. He very properly remarks, that the second race, who succeeded the first Shep

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