should have been accounted by the Scottish Celts an emblem of purification on Beltane-morning is not extraordinary; for it was so accounted all over the earth. Euripides says,

Θάλασσα κλύζει πάντατ ̓ ἀνθρώπων κάκα

which was by no means a notion confined to the Greeks:Jews, Mohammedans, and all, whatever might have been their religion, attached to water a purificatory efficacy: every where it was an 'ayvioμos: but, in the Christian religion it is the emblem of a Sacrament. If we transport ourselves in idea to a torrid region, one of the causes will be apparent. The ceremonies also of the first of May, which the author notices, were those of the Huli-festival still observed in India; and Ovid, in his Fasti, has cited a correspondent practice. The irregularities in different places, as to the time of keeping these owcóueva of more antient days, present no difficulty:-for the coincidence in ceremony is a full proof of the common origin.

These remarks are intended as introductions to the general proof. The next process is an endeavour to show, that the Patriarchs were deified in India, beginning with Noah and his sons. We grant, that deified ancestors were one of the most fruitful sources from which the idolatrous regions of Polytheism were supplied; but we are often in want of historic guides to enable us accurately to separate them from those which the original Sabæism equally provided. Every hypothesis in explanation of the vast extent of idolatry merits unbiassed attention; yet few will be found, from defect of evidence, to rise above the rank of probable conjecture. Mr. Harcourt has adduced opinions, that the Menus, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva were mythological personages, who were in real history Noah and his sons; but the point is not demonstrated with sufficient perspicuity to enforce a general assent. We here again wish that this writer had confined himself to one system of orthography or the other in the Asiatic names; for in one place seeing them according to Gilchrist's system, at another according to no system at all, at another according to that of Sir William Jones, we become continually perplexed. Many of his conjectures also should have been spared, such as the probable identity of Sraddha and Vratta, of Yamalaya and Himalaya, which cannot be admitted, and are impossible. He further declares, that the Mahabharata, which he calls Mahaberit, states Hind to have been one of the sons of Ham: this very astonishing statement, which we beg leave to doubt, should have been supported by a quotation of the passage. As to his proposed origin of Hindustan, he seems not to be aware, that the Sanscrit writers call Hindustan by a

totally different name. This conjectural son of Ham, viz. Hind, he as oddly identifies with Phut,* in whom he again discerns Budd'ha, supporting his notion by the vulgar and barbarous pronunciations and hypotheses which Upham and Moor have detailed. These etymological speculations are as trifling as the derivation of vaûs and váos from Noah, " because he was master of the ship, and that ship was long considered the most sacred place of worship." This sort of frivolity corrupts all the good matter in the work. The errors are, in this respect, often exceedingly gross treating, for instance, of the impression of Budd'ha's foot, though he had just noticed the Shri Padam in Ceylon, Mr. Harcourt says, "in the Indian Archipelago, one of the gods...... is called Seri Pada, which seems to be a connecting link between Pater and Budd'ha." The most simple observation, it might have been thought, would have convinced him, that the name was either the same as that in Ceylon, or that, if there was this link between Pater and Buddha, there was a typographical error, and Pitri should have been the word. But even then, the connection with Shri Padam would be required to dovetail the conjecture. The metamorphoses recorded by Ovid are far less surprising than those which Oriental words have undergone in this work.

Hitherto we have not discerned any thing which affects the speculations of Geologians: not any thing but a continuation of the reveries of Bryant, Faber, and Davies, has met our eyes. Hypothesis is so plentifully mixed with every part, and things between which there never was a connection are so strangely unitedlanguages are so bent to particular purposes in defiance of their grammatical capabilities and the aid of the Hebrew is so queerly sought, where it could never have had an influence, that we can perceive but little use to which this part can be applied, beyond that of a collection of mythological traditions. But even here the pruning process must be fearlessly administered, and the Etymologies must be rejected. As a refutation of Geologians, there never was a book more misnamed; for, beyond the traditionary evidence of the Deluge, it does not affect the theory, and even then can scarcely be said to affect it. Throughout reason has run wild, and required the critic's chain.

Throwing aside these most obscure attempts to impart light, we shall in other parts find a great deal calculated to interest us, such as the disquisition on Dardanus: but in that on Danaus we are again entangled in the old web of absurdity. In the flood of Deucalion the agreement between parts of the Mosaic and Ovidian accounts is exhibited, just as preceding writers had

* Rosienmüller has retraced the Mauritanians to Phut.

noticed them; and here the evidence is too distinct to be mistaken. The subject is the same; consequently, a similarity of particulars might be expected: but when that similarity is not only sought in totally different subjects, and actually, as it were by the rack, forced from them in defiance of all probability and internal proof, the reviewer must be sadly wanting in his duty to the public, who will approve the torturing process. When we read, that the Pelasgi in an improvement on a quotation from Gillies, were the family of Inachus, the son of lo or Isis, "the Moon or Ark ;" and that the Hellenes were the descendants of Hellen, the son Deucalion, "the Man of the Ark," we have the Man of the Moon, of whom we heard much in our nurseries, joined to the Man of the Ark. We cannot resist proposing a vulgar question: is not this moonshine?

Though Mr. Harcourt affirms (whence informed, we know not) that Nycteus was the name given from the darkness of the Ark, which nevertheless the Scriptural account has furnished with capabilities for the admission of light, he is remarkably sparing of his information about the Palasgi. Seeing the flood in every thing, whether on the earth, in the heavens above the earth, or in the regions below the earth, he accounts Pelasgus to have been merely Pelagus, and the Sigma to have been only inserted to lengthen the syllable. What a singular Etymological Dictionary might be contrived on Mr. Harcourt's principles ! It is, however, very clear, either that the Pelasgi could not be twisted to his purpose, or that he knew nothing about them; for he says, "it is evident, that Pelasgic was no distinction of country, but of religion; and accordingly Homer numbers Pelasgi among the Trojan forces as well as among the Greeks :"-if the term were merely indicative of religion, could Homer have made this bipartite enumeration, when he was speaking not of religion, but of warriors? And has it not occurred to Mr. Harcourt, that if we have no remaining evidence, that the Pelasgi were a nation properly so called, they yet might have been roving tribes? Their religion and their language seem to have been allied to those of India.

Mr. Harcourt continually appeals to the Hebrew; and it is self-evident that he accepts it as the original language to which all others should be referred; yet he does not sufficiently compare its words with their various occurrences and alliance to words in the cognate dialects. Our readers will not wish us to imitate the labour of Hercules in the stables of Augeas; otherwise we could fill the whole of this and of our next number in commenting on the Etymologies. We shall therefore omit almost the whole of this department.

It is with great sorrow that we are forced to make these observations, from the conviction which they afford to us, that if Mr. Harcourt would purify his mind from inordinate fancifulness, and only see Noah and the ark in their genuine counterparts, and not strain languages beyond their power, he might do an important service to Literature.. As it is, the task of reviewing a book, where philological errors meet the eye in almost every page, where conjecture runs wild, and the judgment is muzzled, is really almost insupportable; more especially as a coincidence, or a fancied coincidence of sound, or a forced combination of discordant legends, is elevated to the place of argument. It is a most useless display of the gauntlet to the confessedly clever men, whose geological speculations every sound Christian must controvert. In the exact proportion that we hate the possibility of attaching ridicule to a serious, subject, do we wish that these two volumes had been more discreetly written; and we are much surprised to read in Vol. I. p. 238, that Sir William Drummond had no theory to support. If Mr. Harcourt had read Sir William Drummond's Edipus Judaïcus, and some of his papers in the Classical Journal, he could not have failed to detect the theory of the Deist in Sir William Drummond.

There is confessedly much learning, and there are evidences of an indefatigable research in the discussion of the stars in Job; but the violent manner in which everything is forced into a commemoration of the Deluge, is like leaven leavening the whole lump. In the chapter on Hercules, we approach a geological question. Noticing the geological and chronological inconsistency of the conjecture, that a volcanic eruption from the Cyanian isles opened the passage through the Bosphorus, which is fifteen miles in length, and that the earthquakes accompanying it separated Olympus from Ossa, at the distance of more than 300 miles, and so gave a passage to the Peneus, and Mr. Olivier's assertion that the banks of the Bosphorus, on both sides, through an extent of several leagues, are of volcanic structure, Mr. Harcourt says:

"No Geologist will admit the agency of recent volcanoes in their formation; for the rocks are porphyry and trap, containing jasper, cornelians, chalcedonies, and agates. This is exactly the description of the rocks near the source of the Coquet, in Northumberland, belonging to the Cheviot range; and yet no one ever dreamed that they were symptoms of post-diluvian volcanic action. In the next place, even granting what it would be ridiculous to suppose, that these rocks were the production of a recent volcano, still it is not very obvious, how so long a passage could be opened through them merely by a fresh eruption. They might, indeed, be closed by a stream of lava, more pro

digious than any on record; but in that case, a vast temporary inundation must have been occasioned behind, in addition to that which would result afterwards from the removal of the mass, if such a thing were possible; for the level of the water would be raised till they found a vent somewhere. But this is in direct opposition to another part of his hypothesis, which assumes, that till it broke loose, in the time of Deucalion, the Euxine had always occupied an extent nearly equal to that of the Mediterranean; but, in consequence of the vast weight of water which they had to sustain, the banks of the Isthmus gave way, and the coasts of Asia and the plains of Samothrace were inundated."

Against this theory of de la Malle it is urged, that

1. "The mass of waters continually added to the Euxine by the many rivers that feed it, must, from the very first, have found their passage through the lowest of the vallies intersecting the hills that surround it, and worked themselves channels, which would gradually lower its level and it is evident that other causes are quite sufficient to account for any diminution of its extent, since, by his own acknowledgement, the sea of Azoph has, since the time of Herodotus, diminished five-sixths, the Caspian one-third, and the Euxine itself was at that period thirty leagues less than in the days of Xerxes; and yet nothing of this has been effected by any violent disruption of its banks. -2. That' there was a double barrier to be surmounted; for why was the Hellespont to be open more than the Bosphorus ?-3. That' fifteen miles of rocks would not easily give way all at once in one narrow line. 4. That' the rock is in its own nature one of the hardest and strongest. But the chronological objection to his hypothesis is the most fatal of all. He fixes the event in the year 1529 B.C. Now the unanimous evidence of antiquity declares, that some centuries before that time, the Argonauts had sailed through the Bosphorus into the Euxine."

Short as is this geological excursus, it is the first and only one, that we have noticed. The vindication of the Scriptures, which the author has proposed to himself, appears chiefly to be a reference of Mythology to the Noetic period, which, assuredly, is no vindication of them from the statements of Geologists. Some of the remarks on the Egyptian paintings and Greek mysteries are very good; and if Mr. Harcourt had written a work on Mythology in general, without attempting to accommodate it to any pre-conceived system, he would have deserved well of Literature. His idea that No or No-amon (Nahum iii. 8-9) was Thebes, not Diospolis, disencumbered from the extravagances connected with the inquiry, is also very probable; for the situation was "in exact conformity with the description: Upper Egypt was

* Geographie Physique de la mer Noire, par A. Dureau de la Malle. Paris. 1807. p. 197-211.