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forms us, that this ceremony consisted in stretching forth a person's hand, and taking that of him that they acknowledged for khalif. This was a sort of performing homage, and swearing fealty to him. Harmer, vol. iii. p. 330.

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This was also sometimes done as a token of friendship and fidelity. Gal. ii. 9. With this view it was also practised by the Romans, as appears from Virgil:

Ipse pater dextram Anchises, haud multa moratus,
Dat juveni; atque animum præsenti pignore firmat.

En. iii. 610.

My father Anchises frankly gives the youth his right hand, and fortifies his mind by that kindly pledge." See Oriental Customs, No. 195.

No. 911.-xi. 12. And they clapped their hands.] This practice was not only an expression of joy, as in the present instance, but was also the ordinary method in the East of calling the attendants in waiting. Thus in the history of the Caliph Vathek (p. 127.) we are told, that Nourouishar clapped her hands, and immediately came together Gulcheurouz and her women. See also Psalm xlvii. 1. xcviii. 8.

No. 912.-xi. 14. And when she looked, behold, the king stood by a pillar, as the manner was.] From various testimonies it appears, that a seat erected near a pillar or column was particularly honourable and distinguishing. Homer furnishes an instance of this kind. Speaking of Ulysses, he says,

The monarch by a column high enthron'd

His eye withdrew, and fix'd it on the ground.

Odyss. xxiii. 93. POPE.

The same custom is also twice mentioned in Odyss. b. viii. See also 2 Kings xxiii, 3.

No. 913. xix. 7. Behold, I will send a blast upon him.] The destruction of Sennacherib and his army appears to have been effected by that pestilential wind called the simoom. Mr. Bruce thus speaks of it: "We had no sooner got into the plains than we felt great symptoms of the symoom; and about a quarter before twelve our prisoner first, and then Idris, called out, The șimoom! the simoom! My curiosity would not suffer me to fall down without looking behind me; about due south, a little to the east, I saw the coloured haze as Before. It seemed now to be rather less compressed, and to have with it a shade of blue: the edges of it were not defined as those of the former, but like a very thin smoke, with about a yard in the middle tinged with those colours. We all fell upon our faces, and the simoom passed with a gentle ruffling wind. It continued to blow in this manner till near three o'clock, so we were all taken ill that night, and scarcely strength was left us to load the camels, and arrange the baggage." Travels, vol. iv. p. 581. In another place Mr. Bruce describes it as producing a desperate kind of indifference about lifethat it brought upon him a degree of cowardice and languor, which he struggled with in vain; and that it completely exhausted his strength. From the accounts of various travellers it appears to have been almost instantaneously fatal and putrefying. It was consequently a fit agent to be employed in desolating the army of Sennacherib.

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No. 914.-xx. 11. The dial of Ahaz.] At the beginning of the world it is certain there was no distinction of time, but by the light and darkness, and the whole day was included in the general terms of the evening and morning. The Chaldæans, many ages after the flood, were the first who divided the day into hours; they being the first who applied themselves with any

success to astrology. Sun-dials are of ancient use:: but as they were of no service in cloudy weather and in the night, there was another invention of measuring the parts of time by water; but that not proving sufficiently exact, they laid it aside for another by sand. The use of dials was earlier among the Greeks than the Romans. It was above three hundred years after the building of Rome before they knew any thing of them: but yet they had divided the day and night into twentyfour hours: though they did not count the hours numerically, but from midnight to midnight, distinguishing them by particular names, as by the cock-crowing, the dawn, the mid-day, &c. The first sun-dial we read of among the Romans, which divided the day into hours, is mentioned by Pliny, (Nat. Hist. lib. i. cap. 20.) as fixed upon the temple of Quirinus by L. Papyrius the censor, about the twelfth year of the wars with Pyrrhus. Scipio Nasica some years after measured the day and night into hours from the dropping of

water.

No. 915.-xx. 13. And Hezekiah hearkened unto them, and shewed them all the house of his precious things, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious ointment, and all the house of his armour.] Vertomannus, in his voyage to the East, describing the treasure of the king of Calicut, says, that it is esteemed so immense that it cannot be contained in two remarkable large cellars or warehouses. It consists of precious stones, plates of gold, and as much coined gold as may suffice to lade a hundred mules. They say that it was collected together by twelve kings who were before him, and that in his treasury is a coffer three spans long and two broad, full of precious stones of incalculable value. This custom for the eastern princes to amass enormous loads of treasure, merely for show

and ostentation, appears to have been practised by the kings of Judea. One instance of it at least is found in the case of Hezekiah, in the passage now referred to.

No. 916.-xxi. 11. Manasseh king of Judah hath done these abominations, and hath done wickedly above all that the Amorites did.] Bodin informs us from Maimonides, that it was customary among the Amorites to draw their new-born children through a flame; believing that by this means they would escape many calamities; and that Maimonides himself had been an eye-witness of this superstition in some of the nurses of Egypt.

No. 917. xxiii. 7. The women wove hangings for the grove.] In the history of Schemselouhar and the Prince of Persia (Arabian Night's Entertainment), when the former was told that the caliph was coming to visit her, she ordered the paintings on silk, which were in the garden, to be taken down. In the same manner are paintings or hangings said to be used in the passage referred to.

The authority given for this custom must be allowed to be sufficient to vouch for the existence of the practice in question, to whatever animadversions the work itself may be liable in any other point of view.

No. 918.-1 CHRONICLES ii. 35.

And Sheshan gave his daughter to Farha his servant to wife.

WHEN the people of the East have no sons, they frequently marry their daughters to their slaves, and that even when they have much property to bestow upon Hassan had been the slave of Kamel his predecessor. But Kamel, "according to the custom of the country, gave him one of his daughters in marriage, and left him at his death one part of the great riches he had amassed together in the course of a long and prosperous life." Maillet, Lett. xi. p. 118.

HARMER, vol. ii. p. 370.

No. 919.-xii. 40. And an oxen.] Dandini seems to have been surprised to see oxen employed to carry burthens upon their backs, like camels, mules, and asses, when he was making his observations on the customs of the East at Tripoli in Syria; contrary to the old saying,

Optat ephippia bos piger, optat arare caballus.

It appears, however, to have been a very ancient prac

tice.

HARMER, vol. ii. p. 465.

No. 920.-xvi. 36. And all the people said Amen.] This practice is of very great antiquity, and was in general use with the Jews in early times. (Vitringa de Synag. Vet. part ii. lib. 3. cap. 18.] It was also retained by them after the captivity. Neh. viii. 6. The Jewish doctors give three rules for pronouncing the word.

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