out the secret of polishing the paper, and giving it a lustre." (Duhalde, 2d vol. p. 416.) It may therefore be safely affirmed that a thousand years B. c. no other writings existed but such as were engraven on stone, metal, and brick. The characters on slips or plates of wood of the Chinese, correspond perfectly to the Buchstäben, or slips of wood of the Teutonic tribes, but even in the time of Tacitus, which corresponds almost to the time of the invention of paper in China, such plates of wood were matters of religion and in the hands of the priests.

The investigation of mythology is by no means to be considered as a child's play; nor is it sufficient in that study to follow taste and feeling in preference to dry reasoning. Taste and feeling have peopled earth, sea, and heaven with fantastic beings, and have turned away the human mind from Faith or trust in the Almighty, because to such conceptions metaphysical existence was conceded. These fables are in themselves a kind of science of the day; they are expressions of that anticipation which the mind constantly puts forth on all subjects, and still more readily on those which are difficult. The antiquarian who passes his time in deciphering ancient inscriptions is not to be considered in the light of a man devoid of religion, as too often is the case. Indeed, such men may be esteemed as forwarding our Trust in the Almighty, when they teach their fellow-creatures how little confidence can be placed in the assertions of Man. In denying the voice of history to be the voice of God, we do not deny the positive value of that great science. It is History, carefully investigated, that puts us into the possession of the past, that tells us of the present, and that points to the future. Erudition is the basis of History, and the facts she relates have passed through the ordeal of Time.

But traditional erudition grows dim and obscure. There the Rune or the name is of great importance. History allows us to judge of general facts respecting the human race, and to frame some faint conception of the future destiny of the human race. The part she performs is then no mean one, without attributing to her decisions the prescience of God. History may help us to form an adequate notion of the three views which have been taken of the development of man, that is likened by some to a parabolic curve sweeping out into endless infinity, and ever pursuing an uninterrupted course; whilst others, acknowledging that there exist limits beyond which the human mind cannot stray, deny this boundless flight, and maintain that the march of Intellect follows an intermittent course: that sometimes rising higher and sometimes lowering its course, it may be rather likened to a series of semi-circles. of various heights and breadths, but which only attain an acme to be followed by a descent. Others again compare it to a winding circuit ever rising, but by degrees almost imperceptible. The voice of history may decide on such matters, for they are the consequences of human action, which neither the Pantheism of Theology nor that of Philosophy can succeed in extirpating.

Guided by History, some judgment may be pronounced on the nature of the sacred writings of the Jews respecting the part that Esdras performed on the return from the Assyrian captivity, before which no written document can be admitted to have existed otherwise than on stone, metal and brick, or tiles, and which were usually committed to memory. All such circumstances are matters of Science and of History; but not of Divine Faith. The attempt to invest History with an authority higher than that of Science, will

meet, we trust, the same fate as that of considering the "voice of Nature as the voice of God." This voice of Nature is the interpretation which man bestows thereon, and the decision of one century may be completely different from that of another, and thus Nature may be gifted by man with many voices, but it is the silent display of Existence which tells of the truth revealed, that of God by whom all exists.

Whatever mysteries may be revealed in times to come by historical investigation, which, in performing the part allotted to that great Science, is performing a duty to God, and tends to free Divine Faith from the trammels of ignorance, however high those investigations may be carried, they unfortunately can never be expected to reach the birthday of the human race. The revelation of God appears to be coeval with man; and history, or rather tradition, points out that great event by transmitting as the names of the first created things which man worshipped, the identical name of God, of the Almighty. A high interest is then attached to those investigations, and we have seen, admitting the Sun to have been the first great object which took the place of the Creator, that the point to be investigated is the relative value of AHURA or Ahula, and ARYAMAN: the Creator and the Creature. The fact of God being known from the beginning of all tradition as the Almighty corroborates, in our opinion, the view which considers Divine Faith as Trust in the Almighty, not because man began by conceiving such a being to exist by dint of reflection, but because His Existence was at once revealed; i. e., made known or communicated to the first man, and is unknown to any of the descendants of that primitive human being, if he be not informed thereof.

The Airyanian, the Aryan or Brahmin, the Assy

rian, and the Egyptian tenets, are then those which must be discussed; and in each there may be pointed out an evident deviation from the bright original.

ARYANISM OR BRAHMANISM.

The Airyanian religion, or the Zind (Holy), is then that which History has to investigate fully; not so much on account of God being clearly designated as Ahura-mazdaô (almighty), in that religion, but because the remnants of that religion offer a clear resemblance with many dogmas of Christianity, which were evidently introduced at a later period. Now, even admitting that religion, arts, and sciences flourished, if they did not take their rise, on the borders of the Oxus, such an event must have been anterior to the highest records of man. Therefore if Bactria was that country, and was conquered and reduced two thousand years B. c. by some great conqueror, the remnants of their religion can surely be supposed to be found in what is called the Zend Avesta. According to Mohsan, quoted by Sir W. Jones, Mahabad, the first monarch of Airya (Iran), which would be lower down than Bactria, was also sovereign of the whole Earth, and divided the people into four orders, the religious, the military, the commercial, and the servile, the names of which are, says our author, unquestionably the same in their origin with those now applied to the four primary classes of the Hindus. Sir W. Jones considers Mahabad to be the same as Menu, and adds, "we can hardly doubt, that the first corruption of the purest and oldest religion was the system of Indian Theology, invented by the Brahmins, and prevalent in these countries, where the book of Menu or Mahabad is at this hour the standard of all religious and moral

duties." Now we have seen that Eugène Burnouf fifty years after Jones adopts the very same opinion, grounding that opinion on considerations of great weight, as well ethnographical as rational (mythology, geography, history, tradition). This separation must have occurred at a very early period, but which cannot be stated. If then 2500 years before Christ be adopted as the period, we then all of a sudden come upon Cayumer or Kai-Amour, no longer of the Pischdadian or first sovereigns, but the chief of the Kaunian dynasty in the 8th or 9th century before Christ. The accession of Kai-Amyr, or Cay-umer, seems to have been accompanied by a considerable revolution both in religion and government. The race differed from that of the Mahebadians. Then came Hushang, who completed the national faith, which then resembles the first Hindu superstitions, for the sun, the planets, and fire are highly venerated, if not worshipped. Zoroaster again reformed this faith which was rooted out of Iran or Persia in the 7th century (652) by the Arabians. Now, besides the reform of Zoroaster, we find a continual change in the dogmas occurring during the Parthian and the Persian dynasties, or the Arsacides, and the Sassanides. The first lasted 500 years, but the continual warfare rendered necessary by the Greek, the Roman, and the Scythian incursions, appears to have suspended religious quarrels. These seem to have been very violent under the Persian Sassanides, who reigned 425 years. The Mages, who formed, besides the sacerdotal functions, a rich, powerful and warlike tribe, proved most useful auxiliaries to Ardechyr or Art-axerce, whose rapid conquests appear to have been greatly favored by the fanatical partisans of the Magians. It is well known that these latter constituted the ruling religion, but it is also a