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piety of all lands, all times, and all faiths be reduced to the dull uniformity of stupid homage to a supposed ball of fire in the heavens, or

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mass of incandescent vapour. To say the least of it, the upholders of the theory are not to be praised for their exalted idea of human intelligence, and are not to be envied for their coarse and repulsive realism, nor for the view they must, in consistency, maintain of the spirituality of human affection."

As we have now got safe and upright, in the midst of our mightiest city, the obelisk which evidences alike the skill of the English engineer and the unknown power of the Egyptian mechanicians -it will be interesting to quote Mr. Bonwick's gathered speculations upon the origin and meaning of the obelisk itself. The present writer sees the taper stone every day from his windows, and a fragment of its pink granite,chipped off when the base was squared, is upon his table, but, nevertheless, the symbol has not given up its secret to him. Mr. Bonwick writes:

"The story of Cleopatra's Needle has popularized the obelisk. But some may wonder what it has to to with religion. The fact is, that there is little that has not been pressed into the service of the gods by the venerating Egyptians, those lovers of ritualism and symbolism.

"The presence of the obelisk in pairs at the entrance of temples might mark the sacred character. This is not confined to Egypt, since the object is found in India, Assyria, and Persia, while one discovered at Xanthus has recently furnished a discourse to Dr. Birch. The Rev. A. H. Sayce speaks of one Nimroud, of black basalt, erected to record the victories of Shalmaneser; saying, 'Cities to a countless number I captured.' As the image set up by this king, it

suggests the image of Nebuchadnezzar. This, as described in Daniel, gives the exact relation of height and breadth marking all obelisks.

"If Nebuchadnezzar's image were an obelisk, the reasonableness of the opposition made by Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego becomes the more apparent. An obelisk was not only representative of the divinity of the sovereign himself, but bore idolatrous emblems. To bow to it, was an acknowledgment of the false gods, and a recognition of Nebuchadnezzar as a god. It was to sustain Babylonian idolatry, and Babylonian king-worship. Captain Selby found near Babylon, on the 'Waste of Dura,' the remains of a pyramidal column, which some identify with the image once covered with gold. As Mr. Bonomi points out, the proportions, sixty cubits long by six broad, are not those of a man; but they are those of an obelisk.

"These several purposes were served by obelisks in Egypt. They were erected by kings. They are placed before the temples they erected, or honoured. They bore the sculptured signs of idolatry. They told of the kings' victories, rehearsed their divine qualities, and made monumental prayers to these early deities. All who bowed to them supplicated the gods, and supplicated the king. The reader is referred to the chapter on King worship for further explanation.

"The obelisk, by having a parallelogram base, and coming to a point, may seem to be related to the pyramid. Father Kircher, the ingenious but mystical Jesuit, derived both from a common word, meaning columns of fire. It has been the custom,' says he, 'of nations to raise to their divinities altars of stone and marble. Such were the altars of the Egyptians, which we know under the name of pyramids and obelisks, and which

were raised in honour of their gods.' Abenesi, the Arab, centuries before had the same thoughts: observing, "The priests of Egypt erected these elongated stones in the form of needles, and of a round figure; they engraved there in mysterious characters the secrets of their philosophy, and called them the altars of their gods.'

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"Their tapering form led some to esteem the obelisk a symbol of fire; and, therefore, a dedication to the sun. Jahn, the commentator, writes: We learn from 2 Chron. xxxiv. 4-7, that these obelisks were erected on the altars of Baal; they were, of course, dedicated to the sun.' The common references they have engraved upon them to Ra and Toum, the sun gods, help to confirm the argument. Pierret

says: "The erection of obelisks was in relation to the worship of the sun.' Rougé notes some pictured sacred monuments on an inscription of the fifth dynasty; 'of which,' says he, the figure proves that the pyramid and the obelisk had primitively a relation to the worship of the sun.'

"Other writers held them to be of phallic origin. An article in the Builder of 1877 has this sentence: 'Many well-meaning and spotless people who will, probably, inquire of better informed friends about the origin and early use of the obelisk, will be sadly shocked when, from some outspoken reply, they learn the truth.' It was said that the lingam was to the Hindoo, what the obelisk was to the Egyptian; it typified generative force.

But,

if so, indirectly, its very complicated and geometrical figure forbids the supposition of a direct meaning of that nature. There are, at any rate, other interpretations.

"Rougé, indicating the worship of the obelisk, connects the phallic idea with that of Osiris. The

obelisk,' observes he, 'has been venerated as a divine symbol. Thus, at Karnac, the foundations were instituted in honour of four obelisks, and they are offered bread, libations, &c. Upon certain scarabei one sees, in fact, the following representation,-a man adoring an obelisk; that circumstance has not been sufficiently remarked. The comparative study of these little monuments proves that the obelisk has been venerated because it was the symbol of Ammon generator. If one compares the series of scarabei bearing this scene, and which have been with so much care reunited in the glass case R, of the Salle des Dieux at the Museum of the Louvre, one would see that the obelisk passes insensibly from the ordinary forms to that of the phallus; it is then, truly as the symbol of the ithyphallic god that the obelisk received homage.'

"Another notion was that the obelisk, as the pyramid, symbolized the law of gravitation. The author of the 'Solar System of the Ancients Discovered,' is an advocate for this opinion; saying, 'The Sabeans worshipped these symbols of the laws of gravitation, which govern the glorious orb of day, the planetary and astral systems.' Made of granite, they exhibited the durability of those laws.

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Some of the Fathers, Tertullian, charged the Egyptians with worshipping them as emblems of the sun. As a sunbeam,' says Dr. Yates,' was an emanation from that resplendent orb which was regarded as the representative of the deity, so a pointed obelisk would allegorically denote such an emanation.' None being on the western or pyramid side of the Nile, but only on the sunrising side, would seem to aid the solar theory. The gilt top, spoken of as having once been seen, would thus symbolize the yellow ray. Obelisks are seen,

like rays, placed round heads, to express deification.

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'Bonomi, who makes mention of forty-two obelisks, when describing the pretty tekhen, mem, or obelisk of Amenoph III. of the eighteenth dynasty, now in Alnwick Castle, is not ignorant of the astronomical learning it represented, and thus traces astronomy to its source: 6 The instruction in that science which was given to Adam by the Creator Himself, and of which these most ancient and interesting monuments of human genius exhibit, perhaps, but a feeble manifestation.' So the Egyptians thought when they ascribed their knowledge of the stars to the god Thoth.

"The religious teaching of the obelisk about the gods of the land is given in the hieroglyphics. Citations, under the head of King Worship,' confirm one branch of idolatry. Thothmes III. erected his obelisk to Ra and Toum, deities of the rising and setting sun. Dr. Erasmus Wilson, the patriotic and generous remover of the English obelisk, or Cleopatra's Needle, from Alexandria, has an account of the one central column bearing that monarch's record. The engraved square,' he says, on the pyramidion represents the Pharoah, Thothmes III., kneeling before the deity of the sun, offering gifts, and supplicating the blessing of a strong and pure life.

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The hieroglyphics expressive of his prayer are displayed by the figures of the beseeching potentate and the enthroned deity.' On the top of the shaft is the hawk of Horus.'

"The fine one at Paris was dedicated by Ramses II. to the god Horus; calling him 'the sun Horus, with the strength of the Bull.' This is an allusion to his creative, demiurgic powers.

"The one still standing at Heliopolis, 60 feet high, and 6 feet

broad, was dedicated, says Gliddon, to the mother of the king, beloved, exalted to the upper regions of eternity.' Though now 'inheriting the eternal region,' we are told she was a chief bard of the sun.'

Rosellini thus transcribes one side of that at Heliopolis: The Horus (living of men) Pharaoh, sun offered to the world, Lord of Upper and Lower Egypt, the living of men, Osirtasen, beloved of the spirits in the region of Pone, ever living, life of mankind, resplendent Horus, beneficent deity, sun offered to the world.' This is a singular jumble of man exaltation and god honouring. Osirtasen was once judged a contemporary of Joseph, but is now recognised as above a thousand years before.

"The Flaminian, at Rome, further described in the author's 'Pyramid Facts and Fancies,' represents the king kneeling to Toum, the setting sun, offering pyramidal cakes. He asks 'Give me a life strong and pure.' The god replies, "We, Atom, Lord of Heliopolis, the great god, give thee the throne,' etc.

"As to the obelisk being a religious symbol, a good explanation is given by Mr. Wilson in his 'Solar System.' He accepts it as the emblem of eternity.

"He perceives a number of sacred objects, in Egypt and elsewhere, having the figure of conic sections; especially, the parabola

and hyperbola. There are eight gods seated on hyperbolic steps, decreasing in the order of 1,1, 3, &c. Some Round Towers of Ireland expand towards the base as section of a hyperbolic solid. Buddha, as he sits cross-legged, is a hyperbolic solid. The obelisk presents the same curve, having the property of the sides ever approaching the parallel. This ever marching to a non-realizing

end is a fitting emblem of Eternity. His explanation is as follows:

"The opposite sides of the single obelisk (taking the ordinary one as double) will continually approach to parallelism, but which they will never attain; for how great soever the sectional axes, or the sum of two ordinates, may be, still this difference will equal unity; so the sides of the sectional obeliscal area can never become parallel to the axis.'

"But he sees the symbol in the whip of Osiris; saying, "The planets are urged onwards in their orbits by laws indicated by the obelisk.' Again: When the axis bisects the obeliscal area, and another straight line drawn from the apex represents the axis of the pylonic area, we have what is commonly called the flail or whip of Osiris.' The cap of Osiris is the hyperbolic and parabolic conoid, representing eternity. He calls the pschent of Osiris, the hyperbolic reciprocal curve.' The beards of the Assyrian monuments, so evidently conventional, are of the obeliscal form, typifying the same dogma. The wings of Mercury, the prongs of the trident, the shape of the serpent and crocodile, and the horn of Isis tell them the same tale. The horn of Jupiter Ammon, giving the name to the shell fish Ammonite, is nothing but a spiral obelisk.'

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tends the firmament in the form of the goddess Neith, and on either side of the mortal who is changing his state, or shedding his earthly skin, are the conventionalised representations

of attendant deities. This drawing has already appeared in Mr. Samuel Sharpe's "Egyptian Mythology," but there it was very small, while in Mr. Bonwick's page it is not only of considerable size, but coloured after the original.

Two Centuries of Bhartrihari. Translated into English verse by C. H. Tawney, M.A. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, and Co., Publishers to the University.

The title of Professor Tawney's valuable little volume requires some explanation for the English reader who is not an Anglo-Indian. Bhartrihari is not a state of rule or governance, but a man, a king, and a poet; and 'two centuries' of him signifies two collections, of one hundred stanzas each, of his compositions.

The legend of Bhartrihari is one with which we are more or less familiar under other names. He discovers the faithlessness of his wife, becomes disgusted with the world, abdicates the throne, and retires to the forest. Respecting the stanzas which bear his name there is the same question as concerning the authorship of the Homeric poems, some considering them a collection of current gnomic verses, others the harmonious offspring of a single mind, and that of the self-exiled prince. The date of the poems is placed within a hundred years of the end of the third century of our era.

Professor Tawney gives us an interesting insight into the typical mode of native government in the East, which might prove useful to those who are puzzled by Turks, baffled by Affghans, or studying Hindoos:

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Though the word Nîti' is usually translated policy, most of the stanzas arranged under this head are rather of an ethical and social character. They inculcate maxims of worldly prudence, and seem designed to teach knowledge of men as individuals, rather than as members of political communities. The truth seems to me that, under the personal governments of the East, Achitophel and Chanakya have always been the types of a successful politician. The art of the model Indian statesman, if we may trust the testimony of the Niti S'âstras, consists in the power of managing the king's wives and astrologers, of conciliating the feudal chiefs, and above all of humouring the caprices of the sovereign himself, and using them for the advantage of his subjects and the prosperity of his rule."

The tone of Bhartrihari's thought is referred to as being in very close sympathy with the modern pessimism as manifested by Schopenhauer, and as not unlike the mental habit of Diogenes the cynic.

There are occasional parallelisms to be found between these stanzas and Western thought, no doubt evidencing the fact that even before the days of steam and printing the thoughts of one man somehow managed to reach another. Professor Tawney's versions show ease and epigrammatic power; and the stanzas themselves are worth translation. We quote a few specimens:

When but a little I had learned, in my own partial eyes

I seemed a perfect Solon and immeasurably wise;

But when a little higher I had climbed in wisdom's school,

The fever-fit was over and I knew myself a fool.

Not to swerve from truth or mercy, not for life to stoop to shame ;

From the poor no gifts accepting, nor from men of evil fame;

Lofty faith and proud submission-who on Fortune's giddy ledge

Firm can tread this path of duty, narrow as the sabre's edge ?

With mind and senses unimpaired,

In act and voice the same, He moves among us like a ghost, Wealth's warmth has left his frame. The man of means is eloquent,

Brave, handsome, noble, wise; All qualities with gold are sent, And vanish when it flies.

The kindness of the bad at first

Is great, and then doth wane ;
The good man's love, at th'outset small,
Slowly doth bulk attain;

Such difference between these two
In nature doth abide,

As 'twixt the shadow of the morn
And that of eventide.

A snake lay helpless in the box pining for lack of meat,

A rat by night gnaws through the side, and yields his foe a treat,

With strength recruited then the snake by that same hole escapes

Behold how vain our efforts are! Fate all

our fortune shapes.

This earth is but a lump of clay girt with a briny ditch,

Where hosts of squabbling kings contend,

all striving to be rich,

One cannot blame these grovelling slaves for clinging to their store,

But out on those who stoop to beg at any royal door!

We presume that Messrs. Trübner and Co. are the English agents for this little volume, though it bears only the name of the Calcutta publisher.

General Sketch of the History of Pantheism. In two volumes. Vol. I., from the earliest times to the age of Spinoza. London: S. Deacon and Co. 1878.

The anonymous author of the work before us very modestly says: "The following brief sketch does not aspire to the dignity of a history; it is merely an outline or epitome of a history. In its details there is but little novelty, being chiefly a compilation, taken more

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