an opinion on the truth of this most ingenious | head, which phrenology is or may well beand fruitful speculation.* But suppose it come. From the measurements of a more to be proved (and the extra-judicial mind will experienced and accurate craniometer than perhaps find it difficult to resist) then it follows that the Saviour arose, not on the first day of any but the Jewish, temporary, and purposely misdated week, but on the old, new, and sempiternal Sabbath of the world, as our divine observes.

To come down from those more solemn altitudes, and take up the numerical thread again: It might be charming, especially to such as are never afraid to inquire too curiously, to find out why Five follows Three with so much pertinacity everywhere; why it lays hold on us every time we shake hands; why it answers our eye from so many high places; what its ideal significance is; what it means; -in one word, what its rational ground can be; but Terminus forbids. It was both desirable and in keeping to bring out the secret of the tri-unity of all things and all thoughts, at the beginning of this criticism, and that because of its symbolical relation to the Divine Trinity; but these notes and queries about the natural and ideal Pentad or quincunx (to steal an illustration from the landscape-gardener) are intended partly to deepen the sense of numerical periodicity in the affairs of the constitution of man, and partly to serve as a bridge from the cosmical Triad to that peculiarly human cipher, number Seven, which is the proper object of Christian and civilized solicitude in this the nineteenth century.

any predecessor, Mr. Straton, it comes out
that, while the general figure and bulk of the
brain is finished within the first seven years
of life, yet, in a large porportion of men, the
thing swells and fills up in a measurable
enough degree, and in the few it actually
grows and alters its shape, till the end of the
forty-ninth annual revolution, a period of
seven sevens, and the real completion of a
man." * It is not only allowed, however, but
strongly affirmed by this observer, that the
expansion taking place (even in a Napoleon
or, let it be supposed, a Shakspeare or a
Newton) betwixt seven and forty-nine is
small, in comparison with not only the growth
from zero to seven, but even with what occurs
between one end and the other of any of the
first seven years. To continue;
- the boy or
girl ceases, and the man or woman begins to
appear, upon the close of the fourteenth or
second seventh year. Adolescence is done by
the end of twenty-one, the third seventh;
manhood and womanhood are brought to per-
fection (as such) by the twenty-eighth or
fourth seventh year; and so forth: - but it is
always to be understood that these periods and
figures are deduced from a generalization
taken, not only from all climates, but also
from both sexes; for if woman is earlier, man
is later, and the balance must be struck
between them for undivided humanity.
the hand is analyzed, you have seven pieces

If

According to the popular thought, finding five fingers, metacarpus, and carpus; the its voice in poetry, the life of Man has seven foot-five toes, tarsus, and metatarsus: and ages. It is certain that his average on, or when the arm is examined more curiously, proper period, is now threescore years and than in that first glance which divides it into ten, being ten times seven years; and the five, it yields you seven parts-the shoulderclimacteric periods of his length of days in blade and collar-bone (composing the shoulany case, according to broad and general der), the humerus, the ulna or ell-long bone observation, are so many multiples of the of the forearm, the fibula or brooch-pin bone same number. In the language of science, of the same (and the reason these are counted though not that of the nursery, the time of two is obvious the latter is planetary to the infancy lasts seven years. Then the first former, it revolves round it, it has a purpose teeth have come laboriously out, during the of its own, it and its muscular system turn six years; and had their little day of rest, in the wrist on the ell-bone, which alone is the the seventh. Then the volume of the brain true forearm), the carpal system or wrist, the (not the head) is completed; at least, by the metacarpal or palm, and, seventhly, the consent of the overwhelming majority of phys-digital one or bunch of fingers. In short, iologists; and the fact, as it stands, has been just as the first look at man divides him into heaved as a conclusive battering-ram against threes, and the second into fives, he falls into phrenology, by no less great a philosopher than Sir William Hamilton. Yet the proposition appears to be true only in a manner; and that a manner not incompatible with some actual or possible physiognomy of the

* Having thus eliminated the Ego from the Nos, the distinction shall occasionally be kept in view during the progress of the present discussion, in order to save Our Majesty from the consequences of any opinion which may be deemed too personal and limited.

sevens at the third analysis; and pages might be filled with its results, but it is betterto refrain from anatomical detail. It has to be observed, however, that the pious mediaval transcendalists were so pungently impressed by the sevensomeness of the microdescried seven planets, they thought there cosm, as they denominated man, that, having

*Researches in Cerebral Development, &c. By James Straton. London, 1851.

could not possibly be any more, and therefore to give it echo, nor yet the fingers without they made no more discoveries in that direc- skill to fetch its antitype out of reeds and tion. They did the very same by their seven pipes and strings. Music, that catholic and poor metals and they associated these bright published tongue, that speech of cherubim and bodies, both in name and in the idea of mys-seraphim, that poetry taken wing, that science tical correspondence, with the days of the passed into ecstasy, that transfiguration of the week and the planets, gold with Sunday and common state of man (whether in the body, the Sun (for Sol was dethroned in the days of or out of the body, one cannot tell) is also a the Ptolemaic Astronomy, and degraded to system of sevens. Enough, in short, might the planetary estate), silver with Monday be advanced to show that anatomy, physand the moon; and so forth throughout the iology, optics, astronomy, and the science of triple series. One can only say that the new music (which are surely not superstitious, nor Astronomy and Chemistry have exploded all mystical, nor transcendental, nor credulous of this cunningly devised superstructure; but ancient authority) are all familiar with “the the number of the planets is not yet deter- peculiarly human number Seven," as we have mined, far less that of the metals, and therefore ventured to define it ;-and that not only be there is no saying what multiples of seven cause the body of man (that organization and may come out in the long run. It is just summary of the known powers of nature) is possible, then, that the antique planetary and figured all over, without and within, with metallic Seven may turn out to be something Seven, but also because his thought has more than fantastical jargon :- although it is (sometimes instinctively, sometimes rationcertainly impossible not to laugh at the con- ally, sometimes in superstition) embraced and ceit of one of the latest ornaments of those sanctified it in all ages and lands, and likeold schools, who argued, against the earlier wise because it is the astronomical ratio of Copernicans, that it is beyond Omnipotence the sub-system to which his world belongs, there should be more than seven planets, namely, that of the earth-and-moon. It is a because there are only seven metals, and only number which his spirit knows, which his seven holes in the headtwo eyes, two ears, soul loves, which his body like an illuminated two nostrils, and one mouth! missal shows forth; and it is the very number of his house in the heavens; an irresisti ble fact, which carries the mind right into the heart of the proper topic of this various, but not unproportioned, dissertation.

The majority of our readers, and all our eritics (since even critics and critics' critics have critics, like the dogs' man's man's man of my Lord Harkaway's kennel) will think this all moonshine; yet your positive, scepti- It is certain that the division of man's time cal, and contemptuous Modern Science is not, into octaves, that is, into weeks of seven days dares not, and cannot be ashamed of Seven; each (the octave of one, being the first of the for moonshine itself is a web of seven-twisted next week) is coëxtensive with history and thread, and the moon (that Penelope, who tradition, and also coëxtensive with the weaves the ever-vanishing fabric) goes on her world, except in those places where feeble way, and does all her stints of work, to the races have gone prematurely down into music of the same homely number, whereby dotage; and such division has always been the very sea," and the dead that are in it, associated with the more or less serious conare rocked in their great cradle to the self-secration of one day, in the seven, as peculiar same tune. No sooner is a pencil of light and supreme. Secular historians have never made to pass through a prism, than it blabs been slow to admit the fact; the fathers of its secret, and shows itself seven-twined and beautiful. It is to no purpose that the more refining optician avers, that there are only three primary colors. Possibly, nay certainly, there are; but there are seven colors of the rainbow, for all that. It is here as elsewhere, in fact; for the first analysis gives three, the second five, and the third seven; the first, third, and fifth constituting the natural chord of this painted scale. Ever since God did set his bow in the cloud, that rested on the mountains of Ararat, over against Noah and his household, on the occasion of that first family-worship after the flood, the children of Light have been saying, We too are Seven, with speechful look, if not with still small voice. But if the eye is silent, the ear is not deaf to the seven-toned rhythm of the universe, nor the mouth dumb

the church were forward to proclaim it; and modern divines have not neglected to keep it forward. The day distinguished as festival, holiday, or high day of some sort, has invariably been that of the sun, the symbol of the creative energy of the invisible Godhead; or at least the same day, with a corresponding name and significance. In truth, Dupuis, in his famous Origine de tous les Cultes (which presents an infamously shallow theory of human worship, however) insisted that the system of chronology, the mythologies of Egypt, India, old Greece, and even the mythology (as he considered it) of Christendom have all sprung out of an elaborate scheme of Sun-worship and its Sundays; and the book is so full of curious and important things, that the student of these matters might well study it with advantage, appropriate its

standing in the midst of his planets and their
satellites, but no ray of light had yet reached
the face of our deep, either because the sun
had not yet grown luminous, or more likely be-
cause the vaporous darkness, that brooded over
our waters, was still too thick. But at last
it came, though not in sudden and full enough
blaze to show the figures of either sun or
moon; and a sunless gray morning arose
upon the earth, to be followed by a moonless
evening; for "God divided the light from the
darkness;" and "the morning and the even-
ing," namely, the day and the night,
the first day;" the day of the coming of
light, therefore of necessity the first; the day
of the first glad tidings of the sun; the Sun-
day of the awakening week of time.

were

treasures, and then laugh at its presumption in trying to explain a deeper phenomenon by means of one lying nearer the surface-as if a great brass handle could unlock the gates of St. Paul's in London city without a key! When the sevensome analysis of Time began, history cannot tell, inductive science cannot find out, and no conjectural Dupuis or Volney of them all can divine. Not only as a writer in a Christian Review; nor yet as one who makes bold to "claim the honorable style of a Christian,” after the manner of Sir Thomas Browne in his preamble to his account of the Religion of a Physician; but also as the humblest of the disciples of an older philosophy, drawn from profounder sources than that of Helvetius and the Encyclopedia, I have not a doubt upon the point. I believe II. Under the impulse of this new-come that man knew this, and many a far deeper accession of muffled solar radiance, the waters secret, in Paradise, during the true pre-his-divided; part arose, namely, the horrid mist, toric epoch of human story; and that, after and fashioned itself into a spheral and un the fall from the intuitive and holy life of broken cloud; part remained below, as it Eden, these things could not be forgotten in a was, namely, the liquid element; and the day. Such is the idea set forth in the open-atmospheric or skyey firmament stood being of the Book of Genesis; and since it is tween them. The day and night of this impossible to argue so great a proposition world-wide sublimation" were the second within these limits, it is better just to alight day." One might well conjecture that the at once on the plain fact, be its interpretation what it may, that the oldest written record in the world not only claims a pre-historic and all-conceiving epoch or angelic infancy for the life of humanity, but at once announces the measure of earthly time by Seven, and that from the divine side of the thing. Before going a step further then, let us look into this iniraculous account of the creation. It is a strange story, and every well-bred child in Christendom knows it by heart; but few bearded men can agree about it, although no one is willing to give it up, it is so strange and true.

IN THE BEGINNING (how high and awful an archway into the scene!)-IN THE BEGINNING GOD (not found out by arguments of design, nor deduced from first principles, but known without a doubt, as the father is known to his children) CREATED THE HEAVEN AND THE KARTH. In the beginning (wherein was the Word) the city of God had been founded; the solar system and our world had been set in motion; but "the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep," which covered it round. But "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" once more; and then began that preparation of the world for the inhabitation of man, which is commonly called the Creation; but, in reality, the earth had been made unknown æons before, even "in the beginning.' I. For unknown sons the sun had been

."

Truly pre-historic, because not progressive, being full. History wants struggle, development, rise, advancement, as its objects. A narrative of innocent days among the perfect is not History.

air was so far cleared in the course of the day-time of this day, that even the reflected light of the moon might penetrate, though still too faintly to reveal her form; and in that most impossible case, it has been appropriately invested with the name of Monday.

III. The next process was the standing out of the dry land or earth, and the gathering of the water into seas; followed by the springing of tender grass," or those seedless plants called acotyledons; of "the herb yielding seed," or the monocotyledons; and of the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth," the crowning class or dicotyledons, capable of propagation by grafts and cuts, their seed being in themselves upon the earth. This was the third epoch; that of the coming forth of continents and islands, and their getting covered with the three kinds of plant, in their right order of succession; first, with stony lichens, muddy funguses, tender mosses, ferns, and the like; then, with reeds, grasses, palms, and all manner of herbs yielding seed, but whose seed is not in themselves; and, thirdly, with the completed vegetable, whose British type is the oak with its acorns. This is the Tuesday of our week; the day of the manifestation of vegetable organization and irritability, call it Life who will; sacred in that Scandinavian form of the old Pagan mythology, which cannot but be dear to the imagination of men who use the English tongue, to Tyr or Tuesco, the god of battle or conflict, the divine symbol of effort yet in process.