they hid themselves, generally under the leaves of a cucumber vine, sleeping or chewing the cud, until the evening."

Admitting, then, that "the hare" is the animal which the Jews were forbidden to eat, because it consumes much time at its dinner, just as the Germans do, even though it cannot be properly classed among the ruminants, and understanding the term "coney," which was equally, and for the same reason, forbidden to the Israelites, to refer to a species of "diminutive rhinoceros," as some palæontologists have considered, we are in a position to offer an allegorical explanation of the prohibition, which deserves the attentive consideration of Bishop Colenso, and all other "critical examiners of the Pentateuch." The rhinoceros is the undoubted original of the unicorn, which for centuries has been one of the two supporters of the coat of arms belonging to the sovereigns of England. The lion, as is well known, is the other. Sir Lytton Bulwer, in one of his "sensation novels" which we

recollect reading between thirty and forty years ago, instructs us on this wise:-Before the sale of game was licensed by the legisla ture, it was customary for the hotels of the higher class to offer to their visitors the forbidden produce of the field under the nom de guerre of wild animals. Thus, the "hare" appeared on the carte under the tasteful hieroglyphic of a lion. Hence, by the terms "hare and "coney" we may lawfully understand the "lion" and "unicorn," which Moses, or the author of the Pentateuch, under the form of an allegory, forbade the Jews to eat, as he clearly foresaw that in the course of ages they would be admitted to all the privileges of the British Constitution, and it would have been unbecoming and disloyal for them to eat the chief supporters, and possibly the original ancestors, of the English sovereigns and people.

We have now done with Dr. John Colenso, of Natal; and should time prove that he is not a mere myth, but a real live bishop, and that his work, which has been, by a stretch of

courtesy, called "A Critical Examination of the Pentateuch," is neither a bait for sceptics at home, nor a trap for puzzled Zuluanders abroad, but a genuine attempt to combine Christianity and infidelity in one heterogeneous mass, we may not unfairly apply to him what was once said of another critic, that "he stole away from his diocese intending to perpetrate murder, but that he has committed suicide instead."

However, we may confidently assert that all these and many other similar eccentricities of our theological critics, whether Necromancers or Pyrrhonists, Stoics or Epicureans, may be easily explained; not, as some have attempted to do, upon the theory of "non-natural interpretation," but by simply regarding them, like Origen and the medieval preachers,

* We quote the following opinion of the work in question by the author of a "Vindication of Bishop Colenso," without attempting to explain its hidden meaning:-"It is impossible to account for either the ignorance, the levity, or the irreverence displayed in this grotesque parody, without supposing that somebody very different from a Bishop penned it."

as much given to tropes and figures; in short, as proving that man is essentially, as we have now shown him to be, a devoted lover of ALLEGORY.

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CHAPTER V.

Man as an Orator.

It is recorded of Mr. Pitt, that being once pressed at a convivial party to say what lost literary treasure he most desired, he gave his vote in favour of a speech of Lord Bolingbroke, who is best known to the present generation as the author of that famous saying, "History is philosophy teaching us by example;" by which we have probably profited more than any other nation in the world.

How finely has the greatest master of ora