this latter application of the emblem originated is not certainly known; the most probable conjecture is, that it was derived from the annual shedding of the outer skin: as the serpent appears to renew itself, so did the earth recover its former beauty after the waters of the deluge had subsided. The wing was a hieroglyphic of the Spirit which created the World; and the egg or globe, was alike typical both of the ark, and of the world in its state of desolation. The whole emblem therefore may have been originally intended to represent, either the preservation of mankind; or the character of the Deity, in the triple form of Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, the favorite and sublime description of God universal among the early pagans, and consistent both with scripture, and reason. The wing was the emblem of the creating, the serpent of the preserving, and the globe of the destroying, power.

I shall conclude this catalogue of primitive commemorative emblems, with that most intricate and difficult subject, the first introduction of human images: much of the confusion arising from our united ignorance of their real pristine meaning, and the conjectures of various authors, may be prevented by considering the circumstances under which they first attract our attention in sacred and profane history. In the former we first read of them in the story of Laban; in the latter, we find then in the Penates of Æneas, the contemporary of Priam.

Laban was a Syrian Patriarchal Prince of the family of Abraham. He was well acquainted with the worship of the true God; and professed it publicly before the idolaters of the surrounding country. On this account, Isaac charged his son to select a wife from the daughters of Laban. After a residence in his family of many years, Jacob prepared to return home, and the daughter of Laban concealed on that occasion among the baggage certain images which Laban called his Gods. Her Father reclaimed them with much eagerness, but in vain. They are called in the original, Teraphim, and various conjectures have been entertained by the best commentators on the meaning of the word; and the uses to which the images were applied.

I omit the discussion between Witsius and Spencer, whether the use of images was. permitted before the Mosaic Law, as well as the enquiry into the controverted reasons why Rachel stole the images; whether it was, to reprove her father, by convincing him that his Gods could not defend themselves; or, that she herself was affected with the neighbouring superstitions; or, that she stole them to compensate herself and sister for the loss of their dower. The only question is, whether we can ascertain

and

what the Teraphim were. The Rabbis declare that they were human heads, prepared by magical rites, and enabled by this means to utter oracular responses. In subsequent ages some magical rites may have been celebrated, in which human heads were used by imposing pretenders, as the rabbis describe: but we have no shadow of evidence to prove the absurd position, that Rachel stole several human heads, and sat upon them; or that Michal, when she placed the Teraphim in the bed, in place of her husband David, placed there a string of human heads magically prepared. These absurdities confute themselves. Faber (after Bp. Patrick) imagines that they were the same as the Seraphim, which were the same as the Cherubim; were graven images of the cherubinical forms, which were well known to the primitive generations. Witsius is of opinion they were not the same as the Seraphim; but that they were used for idolatrous and superstitious purposes only, and were condemned by the Patriarchs from the beginning. Witsius and Mede suppose that the Teraphim were perversions of the Urim; which were images, by means of which answers were given to the Priest in the Patriarchal dispensation, when the Deity was consulted. Lightfoot affirms that the Urim were not images that the Urim and Thummim were the same, one signifying light, the other perfection; and the terms were used to describe the Breastplate of the High Priest; which was attached to the Ephod, from which Oracular responses were undoubtedly given by means with which after all research Christian divines confess themselves to be unacquainted. Mede confirms his hypothesis, from the account of Micah who set up Teraphim in the house of his Gods, instead of Urim and Thummim. The whole 35th discourse of Mede on this subject is truly curious, and well worthy of comparison with those chapters of Witsius' Egyptiaca, in which the whole matter is discussed. This slight sketch of the diversity of opinion which has prevailed on the subject will give the reader some notion of the difficulty which prevents our forming a decisive conclusion.

After a careful examination of the subject it seems most probable, that the Teraphim were not only the Cherubinical figures, but graven memorials, of their earlier ancestors. The images among the Hindoos, which they preserve in their houses, seem to partake of the forms of both men and animals. The Penates corresponded with the Teraphim, so far as they were memorials of their ancestors, (for we have no evidence to induce us to suppose they resembled either the eagle, the ox, or the lion, which were all cherubic emblems). These Teraphim, and of

course the perversions of the Teraphim, were in use from the first.

Not only had every patriarchal chief his emblems of the deluge, and of the ark; not only did they continue in their several districts the custom of sacrifice, of planting trees, and groves, and of venerating mountains, and lakes, and islands;-they were equally anxious to preserve some memorials of their earliest postdiluvian fathers: and to this may be attributed perhaps the origin of image-worship. As in the christian Church, images which were at first used as memorials of the Apostles, the Virgin, and the Martyrs, were afterwards invoked with prayers and incense; so, it is likely that the images which were originally memorials were at last metamorphosed into gods in these early ages. The Patriarchs, we have seen, not only planted groves; they were accustomed to plant one tree in the centre of the court of the mansions, appropriated to the head of the family; this part of the mansion too was devoted to religious uses; there the sacred emblems, and among them the Penates were placed It was called the adyta, the penetralia, or shrine. In after ages it followed, that every house was provided with its Penates: every town placed them in its citadel; even the Germans, if we may credit Tacitus, were provided with them. The Hindoos still venerate small images in every house, and their universal use proves their undoubted antiquity. Now it is probable that these Teraphim or Penates were in process of time considered as tutelar, domestic, and hereditary guardians of families: the superstition began about the time of Laban, and was well known in the reputed age of Æneas, who was himself a patriarchal chieftain. The Penates were venerated among the Romans to the last, and their original number, and service retained: the Teraphim were perverted to the purposes of divination; and the word itself seems to have been used in after times to express images of different kinds.

SOMNIA THUCYDIDEA.

No. I.

Kaì. ó wódeμos, &c. THUC. 1, 21, to end of chapter; and Kal is μèv åxpóaσiv, 22, to end of chapter.

To attach a superior degree of importance to the events of our own, when compared with those of preceding, times,

is, as the historian justly observes, a common propensity of human nature. It is, indeed, only an individual variety of that mherent principle of self-love, by which we are led as it were instinctively to associate ideas of superiority and consequence with whatever relates to ourselves. Yet as the instinct (by whatever name it is to be called) from which this self-love originates, may possibly in itself, and when unperverted to purposes of vanity or selfishness, be innocent and beneficial, and even to a certain extent rational; so it may likewise be doubted whether, in the developement of it now under consideration, it has not some warrant in the reality of things. In the history of the world's transactions, there is, as appears to us, a progressive magnitude, as well as a progressive interest. As society advances, men begin to act in larger masses, in closer combinations, and upon wider theatres; new powers, physical and intellectual, are introduced on the field of action; fresh interests become involved; higher and more influential motives begin to actuate the minds of men; the concerns of individual states become more implicated with one another; and the general good and evil of mankind is more and more visibly affected by the rise, downfall, and character of single communities. To those, indeed, who believe that the immense machine of human society, under the guidance of an invisible hand, is moving on steadily, though with a tardiness proportioned to its bulk, to the goal of perfection and happiness, each successive series of events must appear pregnant with deeper interest, as being an additional link in the mysterious chain-one more step towards the grand consummation. But the temper and complexion of the times has also its influence even upon the speculative observer. He can frequently understand the feelings and principles which actuate his contemporaries, where those of former times are beyond his comprehension and beyond his sympathy. Thus to a republican Greek, the predatory wars of the heroic ages would sink in comparison with contests planned by statesmen, conducted by men of military science, and waged under the imposing titles of liberty or supremacy, of democratical or oligarchal ascendancy. And a Froissart or a Joinville, to whom a republic, though less strange, would be almost as unintelligible a sound as to Cyrus in Herodotus and the Sultan in Marco Polo, would probably set light by the squabbles of two petty Grecian States of old time, when matched with the mighty designs and vast preparations, the chivalrous daring and romantic exploits, of his own "bright and busy" age. Setting aside, however, all incidental considerations, we think our readers

will agree with us, that, whether with a view to his own peculiar capacity, or to the magnitude of the transactions themselves, and the importance of the lessons to be drawn from them, Thucydides was justified in selecting the great national contest of his own time as the subject on which to employ those extraordinary powers which he had received from nature, and those various acquirements, with which education, and the experience of public life, had enriched him.

It will be proper, in this point of view, to advert to the circumstances of the contest, and the state of Greece at the time of its commencement. The events of the pre ceding half century had operated a great change in the Grecian political system, and developed more fully the Grecian character. The storm and torrent of Persian invasion had long since rolled away; the impulse and excitation produced by it had also subsided, and had left behind it great and permanent effects. Greece, as a collective body, and each republic individually, had been taught to feel its own power. Athens, by the events of that contest, had risen to a height of power and renown, unknown in former times, and seeming in some degree to realize the fables of her ancient glory preserved by Plato. With the extension of dominion and influence, the theatre of political and military action had extended; extraordinary abilities were unfolded, as the occasion called them forth; and the refinements, which constant practice in war and negotiation, under a succession of able leaders, introduced into the Athenian system, by creating a necessity for similar improvements in that of their opponents, had begun to influence and modify the formerly simple policy of the Greeks. The association, in which the defence of their common liberty had compelled the Greeks to engage, had likewise set an example of more extensive confederacies than were formerly in use; it had strengthened the national feeling of unity for which the Grecian people had been long distinguished, and had given to each separate community an interest in the proceedings of the rest. This effect was not

I

! Thus our historian (I. 71.) : ἀρχαιότροπα ὑμῶν (τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων) τὰ ἐπιτη. δεύματα πρὸς αὐτούς ἐστιν. ἀνάγκη δ' ὥσπερ τέχνης ἀεὶ τὰ ἐπιγιγνόμενα κρατεῖν· καὶ ἡσυχαζούσῃ μὲν πόλει τὰ ἀκίνητα νόμιμα ἄριστα, πρὸς πολλὰ δὲ ἀναγκαζομένοις ἰέναι, πολλῆς καὶ τῆς ἐπιτεχνήσεως δεῖ. διόπερ καὶ τὰ τῶν ̓Αθηναίων ἀπὸ τῆς πολυπειρίας ἐπιπλέον ὑμῶν κεκαίνωται.

2 Thucydides, speaking of the early times of republican Greece, says (I. 15.) Κατὰ γῆν δὲ πόλεμος, ὅθεν τὶς καὶ δύναμις παρεγένετο, οὐδεὶς ξυνέστη· πάντες δὲ ἦσαν, ὅσοι καὶ ἐγένοντο, πρὸς ὁμόρους τοὺς σφετέρους ἑκάστοις· καὶ ἐκδήμους στρατείας πολὺ ἀπὸ τῆς ἑαυτῶν ἐπ ̓ ἄλλων καταστροφῇ οὐκ ἐξῄεσαν οἱ Ἕλληνες· οὐ γὰρ ξυνειστήκεσαν πρὸς τὰς μεγίστας πόλεις αἱ ὑπήκοοι, οὐδ ̓ αὐτοὶ ἀπὸ τῆς ἴσης κοινὰς στρατείας ἐποιοῦντο, κατ ̓ ἀλλήλους δὲ μᾶλλον ὡς ἕκαστοι οἱ ἀστυγείτονες ἐπολέμουν, So c. 1.