hardly know what plea the author could find for appearing before the public. He has doubtless a high sense of morality, and has desired to tread in the steps of Cowper and other writers, whose stern feelings taught them to choose their subjects from the plain book of truth; but Cowper was a man of great genius, and to him there was a deep and glowing poetry in all that was morally good. We do not say that the writer of The Age' is without any spark of the feeling which, if he possessed a mechanical knowledge of his art, might not look well in verse; but he at present seems to have no mastery over the language or measure of poetry, and has therefore produced a sad medley of bad verses. But we shall leave much unsaid which is at the very tip of our tongue, till he publish such another little Poem,' as he terms the one before us. It would be unfair, however, not to show that we have sufficient reason for what we have already said. He thus speaks on that crying sin of the times a love of money: And some there are whose pride it is to raise A horde of gold in secret, while they boast, Yes, positively boast of loss, and tell A thousand falsehoods of the evil turn Of all their fortunes and their wretched life. One species more of universal pride. His dealings, more extensive than they are ; So, not contented with repute derived From its true riches, with the heart of man Strive that the world may think his purse more large, His deeds more mighty than in fact they are;— All to increase his little consequence, And give his sentiments the greater weight.'-pp. 56, 57. Thus again he speaks on the subject of education, his ideas on which would have been creditable to him, if they had been expressed in plain prose, but which, and we would have him consider this, look prodigiously simple in his verses: Chiefly to those who high profession make Then would it naturally be conceived, That thus convinced themselves of righteousness, The best, the future interests of those they love If we had not already spent too much space on this unprofitable subject, we could furnish some specimens of bathos from The Age,' which would serve as illustrations to many generations of critics. There is one, however, too good to be omitted: 'Like as a timid bird, that from the top Of some small monument, regards with care We now leave our authors to their fate; to not one of them have we been able to give the praise of good taste, in the choice of their subjects, or of that easy and delicate style of thought and expression, which is the first requisite, and must always be the principal charm of minor poetry. ART. X.-Hermes Britannicus. A Dissertation on the Celtic Deity Teutates, the Mercurius of Cæsar, in further proof and corroboration of the Origin and Designation of the Great Temple at Abury, in Wiltshire. By the Rev. W. L. Bowles, M.A., M.R.S.L., Canon Residentiary of Sarum. London: Nichols and Son. 1828. THERE are two classes of modern mythologists-those who follow what was formerly called the heresy of Euhemerus, who represented the gods of antiquity as deified mortals; and those who find in them personifications of the attributes of the Creator,—the powers of nature, and the phenomena of the universe. Both these classes, as it usually happens, push their doctrines to extremes. The writers of the former school, although they little suspect it, run as much risk as their master, Euhemerus, of being suspected of atheism; for to deny that God was altogether unknown for some thousands of years, is almost equivalent, we should think, to denying his existence; while those of the latter school--so unruly a Pegasus is imagination-run almost necessarily into extravagance and enthusiasm, and instead of a sober treatise on mythology, compose a poem. The truth, as it almost always does, lies between the two extremes. In the early ages of society, we find, by the testimony both of sacred and profane writers, the traces of a knowledge of the Almighty. The religion and rights of the Zabians, whose doctrines, both of religion and philosophy, were spread widely over the East, were precisely the same, according to the Arabian historian, Abul-Faragi, as those of the ancient Chaldeans.* The foundation of the Chaldean religion was, the belief in an eternal and omnipotent Being-the Supreme God, whose symbol was fire; and in this, the Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon informs us, was Abraham educated among his countrymen. The purity of this creed was long and firmly maintained; † nor was it confined to Chaldea, but spread over various countries of the East. In the book of Genesis, we find a Canaanitish prince, Melchisedec, King of Salem, "the Priest of the Most High God;" and Abimelech, King of Gerar, Laban the Syrian, Job the Arab, and, in later times, Jethro the Midianite, must all have professed the same belief. Whether the natural corruptness of the human heart, or the natural restlessness of the human imagination, produced the change, we know not; but we can trace, with sufficient distinctness, the steps by which religion degenerated into idolatry. The symbol gradually usurped the place of the Divinity it represented, and fire was worshipped as God; the stars, which were reverenced as the noblest of created things, became a part of the Creator himself; when men "beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness," their hearts were secretly enticed, and their mouths kissed their hands. The unity of the Godhead being thus broken, the whole fabric of religion was overthrown. The stars were not always present, even when the worshipper required most their assistance; and images, therefore, were created to represent them. These images, in turn, dethroned the objects of which they were originally only the locum tenens; and, in fine, the extraordinary spectacle presented itself of men grovelling in adoration at the feet of "stocks and stones," which they had themselves hewn from the quarry or the forest. A strain, however, still lingered in the ear of that solemn music, which had thrilled the hearts of the first wanderers of this mysterious world. Individuals rose among them who sung, from vague tradition, the portentous story of the birth of the universe; they described the rash, the raw, the fierce contention of the jarring principles of nature, when the awakened earth first arose out of the bosom of the waste of waters; they declared the word, the breath, the spirit which moved upon the face of the deep, reconciling or subduing all things, fixing, in their peculiar abodes, the earth, the water, the ether, and the air, and whirling into their proper spheres, the myriads of orbs which compose this glorious universe, and which we still see rolling in the same vast procession"And ever singing as they shine, The hand that moved us is divine." Those mysteries, however, were not to be disclosed to all. Procul este profanum, vulgus! became the motto of the sages. Their meaning was wrapped in studied obscurity; the whole story was allegorized; the principles of nature were personified; and types and symbols were invented, drawn from men and animals, and all things which come under the immediate observation of the senses. The consequence of this was, the establishment of two religions; one for the learned, and one for the ignorant. The latter class, so far from receiving any benefit from the researches of the formerif it had been possible to brutalize them more-would have been much injured; for we find idolatry becoming more disgusting and ridiculous whenever the learning of the sages is found to be more refined and abstruse. Thus the elements of the world, and the very properties of matter, came to be worshipped as divinities; beasts, birds, fishes, insects, were added to this populous heaven; the meanest reptile designed in the symbolical hieroglyphics of the initiated, crawled a god upon the altars of the vulgar. Their deceased ancestors and kings, it may be supposed, were not forgotten in this rage for god-making, particularly those who had been famous, or infamous, for any exploit or invention; and in Africa and India, in the very day in which we write, it is well known, that living men and women receive divine worship. Whether the Egyptians were really, as, according to Herodotus, they pretended, "the first of mankind who built temples, reared altars, and erected statues to the gods," we do not know; but they assuredly carried idolatry to a greater pitch of extravagance, than any people we are acquainted with. When we remark, also, that Egypt was the original fountain of knowledge for the rest of the world, our proposition of the connexion between the simultaneous progress of mystic learning and idolatry, will be illustrated. In the religion of this remarkable country, as Creuzer, one of the best of modern mythologists, remarks, there are two predominating ideasthese are Osiris and Hermes. Osiris presents the model of a perfect king, and Hermes that of a perfect priest. Osiris, moreover, is the Nile—the sun-and metaphysically, the Supreme Being. Hermes is a personification of intellectual life-of reflectionthought-even of the arts of teaching and writing. He is wisdom, intelligence, the preceptor par excellence, the sacred scribe. He is the spirit of spirits, the conductor of souls. He assists at the beginning and the end of the world, and of time. He is the law and the legislator identified with each other; he is acquainted with all the sciences of heaven and earth; he is a physician, judge, sacrificer, adorer, prophet, in one; he buries the dead, builds tombs and temples -in a word, he is in Hermes, and by Hermes; he comes from Hermes, and returns to Hermes; he is the Living Word. To understand this, it will be necessary to keep in view the doctrine of emanation, which runs through the whole of the Eastern mythologies; where the divinities radiate from a common centre, like the beams of light streaming from the sun; but still, however low they descend, connected with, and forming an integral part of, the parent body. Thus Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, was at once Egypt, the Dog-star, the whole world, all nature, the Supreme Being. M. Guigniaud, the able commentator on Creuzer, pursues the ideas of the latter with great felicity, like Brahma of India, who wrote the Vedas before the creation, the first Thoth (Hermes) was anterior to the human race, to spirits, to all things. He only among the immortals, comprised the essence of the Demiurge (the Creator); soul of soul, intelligence of intelligence, sacred principle of universal reason, he saw every thing, and comprehended every thing. What he had comprehended he was able to communicate and demonstrate; whatever he saw he wrote; and what he had written he concealed, exciting with a broken sentence the whole world to seek after the mysterious revelation. M. Champollion identifies this omniscient being with the god whom Jamblicus (De Myst. viii. 3) calls Eicton, superior intelligence emanated from the first intelligence, and who could only be worthily adored by silence, an idea which is probably correct, as Cicero tells us (De Nat. Deorum, iii. 22) that the Egyptians were forbidden to pronounce the name of Hermes. M. Champollion adds, that Hermes does not appear to have been the object of a direct worship, as on the monuments he is never seen receiving either offerings or prayers; another striking relation, as M. Guigniaud observes, between this god and the Hindoo Brahma, which it shall be our task on some future occasion to point out and illustrate. In a citation from the bistorian Mnaseas, there are preserved the names of four gods of the Lemnian mysteries, one of which is said by that ancient author to be Hermes. The first is Ceres, the second Pluto, the third Proserpine, and the fourth Hermes. We shall not trouble the reader either with the names, which it must be confessed are bar |