was habitually done as the established religion of the country. They carried this custom with them into their colonies. We know that they made their Kronos and this terrible rite the public religion of Carthage, where it was practised, and at times with a dreadful amount of human victims. This idol was exactly the Moloch against which the Jewish lawgiver and the prophets so emphatically warned their nation; and the use of it, to a fearful extent, by the Druids of our ancient Britain, is one of the facts that induce me to think, that our island owed this celebrated priesthood of their Pagan antiquity to this colonizing nation. It was Kronos or Saturn, and assumed that name, when in great danger from war, sacrificed his only son in his princely state, on the altar he had built himself.--Euseb. Rep. 1. iv. c. 16.

* Porphyry mentions the same fact. "The Phenicians, when in great perils from war, famine, or pestilence, sacrificed to Saturn one of those who were most dear to them, chosen out by the public suffrage. The history of Sanchoniathon, written in the Phenician language, is full of such victims. Philo Byblius translated this into eight books."-Porph. περι αποχης. 1. ii. c. 56.

Sir John Marshall remarks this in his valuable Chronicle: "Cum Phenicum coloniis," this nefaria religio of human slaughter "in insulas, in Europam, in Africam, late propagata est."--Chron. Eg. p. 77. They had a temple to Kronos in their Spanish settlement.--Strabo, 257.

We have this account in Diodorus, when they were pressed by the successes of Agathocles: "They thought Kronos must have become hostile to them, because having sacrificed to this god in former times the most noble of their sons, they had afterward substituted children privately bought and bred up to be the victims; when, therefore, they saw the enemy's camps before their city, they immolated, by a public sacrifice, 200 of their noblest youths; and not fewer than 300 more, who were under accusations, willingly offered up themselves."-Diod. 1. xx. p. 756.

Diodorus thus describes the Moloch of Carthage: "They had a brazen statue of Kronos, who extended his hands, turned upward, yet so bending to the earth that the children thrown into them rolled down, through the hollowed image, into great furnaces of fire below it."-Ib.

Cæsar informs us, that the Druids made images of wickerwork, of an immense size, which they filled with living men, whom they burnt alive. They put in these thieves and robbers; but if there were not criminals enough they added others, till the required number was completed. They did this on the principle, that their endangered lives could only be redeemed from the peril by the lives of others being sacrificed, and that there was no other mode of making their gods propitious to them.-Cæsar Com. 1. vi. c. 15. Human sacrifices were in several nations, but to destroy the victims by fire announces a Phenician origin.

It indicates, also, a Phenician intercourse and colonization in some of the British Islands, that one of these was called the Island of Kronos, and was represented to be the place where Jupiter confined him. Demetrius said that there were several desert islands about the British Islands, some of which were islands of dæmons; others, of heroes. He found them to be all held sacred by the Britons, and preserved from all injury;

one of the great abominations which were prevailing in the Canaanitish nations, whom the Hebrews invaded,* and was such a favourite practice, and so inveterate in the country, that it was adopted even by Solomon in the deluded period of his life,† and after him was pertinaciously adhered to at Jerusalem, till the Babylonian sword destroyed their city and expatriated their population. It was one of the reasons for which several of the Phenician states of Canaan were so destroyed, in their defensive contests with Joshua and his assailing countrymen. The prohibitions of the Jewish legislator show us features of the dark side of the Phenician character, which evince that human nature would not have improved under their domination. On this account, when, and that one of these islands was that in which Briareus kept Kronos bound and in a deep sleep.- Plut. Defect. Orac. In another treatise, he mentions this "Island of Kronos" again, and that Kronos was said to be personally there, lying asleep in the deep cave of a hollow rock glittering like pure gold; and that birds fly down to him from the top of the rock, and keep him alive by feeding him with ambrosia.-Plut. Fac. Lun. These accounts imply that Kronos was known and revered in Britain.

Moses gave his people this law, in opposition to the practice of Canaan-"Thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech."-Lev. xviii. 21. "Whosoever giveth any of his seed unto Molech, he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones."--xx. 2. In his final exhortation he charged his nation -"Be not snared by following them-inquire not after their gods--say not, I will do so likewise; for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods."-Deut. xii. 30, 31. t1 Kings, xi. 5. 7.

Hence we find all the ancient prophets denouncing its imitation in Judea. Thus Jeremiah, "They built the high places of Baal which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech."-xxxii. 35. So Ezekiel was directed to utter, "Declare unto them their abominations: blood is in their hands-they have caused their sons, whom they bare unto me, to pass for them through the fire to devour them-they defiled my sauctuary in the same day; for when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came, the same day, into my sanctuary to profane it.--Ez. xxiii. 36-39.

Moses explicitly declared this:-"Thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination to the Lord; and BECAUSE of these abominations, the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee."-Deut. xviii. 9-12. In Leviticus, xviii. 23, 24, Moses pointed out other loathsome crimes, the most disgraceful to human nature, adding, "In all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: VOL. II.-K k

like the Mexicans in the central regions of America, they were beginning to spread their power over the contiguous countries; and when, if they had not been thus opposed, they would have done so, just as Carthage was prevailing in Africa, Spain, and Sicily, till the Romans ended their prog ress; the Hebrew people were led specially to subdue seven of their most prosperous inland communities. The Phenicians were upheld to do all the good which their useful discoveries and acquisitions could impart to Greece and to mankind; but being unfitted by their deteriorating customs and qualities to predominate farther, they were first weakened and checked by the invasion and settlements of the Jewish nation, and then debilitated by the Babylonian conqueror, and finally dispossessed of all power by the establishment over Asia of the Persian empire. Alexander struck at them again, in their last attempt at revival in their new Tyre; and they dwindled into a complete fulfilment of what the Jewish prophets had declared was to be their destiny.* * You will find it to be a law of national providence, repeatedly put into action, that every prosperous nation, as every inculcated system, however powerful, and successful, and improved during the time of its enlargement and influence, has been checked, as soon as it has deviated into the depravities and errors which deteriorate human nature, or obstruct its progress. Each has advanced in triumph, while it was benefiting mankind; each has fallen when it had accomplished all its usetherefore do I visit the iniquity upon it, and the land vomiteth out her inhabitants itself."-24, 25.

* Ezekiel's vaticination was, "Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus! and will cause many nations to come up against thee; and they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers. I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea, for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God."-xxvi. 3-5. Major Markworth, on landing there in 1822, thus describes its present state: "Tyre is become a small Arab fishing town. Her superb palaces are buried in the sea, or covered with accumulated sand. A few of their proud columns are still standing, and appear to rise out of the bosom of the ocean. Many, lying prostrate, are visible beneath its waves. The ruins of her superb moles, to N. W. and S. W., are still nearly level with the surface of the sea, and afford good protection to vessels of small burden. The Turks and Arabs call it Seur."-Diary, p. 276. When Captain Fitzmaurice visited Tyre and Sidon in 1833, he found that "where the Phenician galleys once rode at anchor, Arab huts now rest on the dry lands around."-Un. Serv. Journ. 1834, p. 240. Compare these accounts with the 26th and 27th chapters of Ezekiel.

ful purposes; and a more improving one has been raised up and led into predominance in its stead.

BABYLON was the other most important civilized state founded by the family of Ham. Nimrod is declared to have begun his kingdom there,* and as he was the son of Cush, who settled in Ethiopia, and nephew of the brother who began the Egyptian population, he must have gone from one of these countries to the Euphrates, and this corresponds with the Egyptian tradition on this subject.† Babylon became one of the most distinguished cities in the ancient world. Its territory was peculiarly rich and fertile from the irrigations of the Euphrates; but from the effect of the watery inundations, its name, like the Latin one of Paris, furnished a synonyme for mud.§ With the renown of Babylon you are familiar. It was proverbially declared to be one of the great wonders of the world, and this makes the circumstance more impressive to us, that when in the height of its grandeur, that total extirpation of it was predicted, which has been so completely fulfilled, that its exact site has been a subject of modern geographical debate. It was an important aid to the mental progress of the world, that it also had and used a symbolical writing in characters of its own, which bear the marks of an alphabetical kind, No books have been yet found in it, because its literature has long since utterly perished. But those numerous inscriptions called arrow-headed, from their prevailing form, appear on some of the remains of Persepolis, and on the

* Gen. x. 10. The Greek translators insert Babylon here as the meaning of the Hebrew Babel. Micah speaks of Nimrod's country as contignous to Assyria. "They shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof."-v. 6.

†This was, that "Belus, son of Neptune and Libya, led an Egyptian colony to Babylon, and, settling on the Euphrates, instituted a priesthood like that of Egypt, who in the same manner observed the stars."-Diod. 1. i. 17. Pausanias says of Belus, that he was an Egyptian, son of Libya, Messen. p. 261.

"Babylon, the head of the Chaldean nation, obtained the highest celebrity through the whole world."-Pliny, l. vi. c. 30.

Suidas has transmitted the expression "Babvλas, mud," vi. p. 524, like Lutetia.

Isaiah's prophecies on it were, "I will make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water. I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of Hosts."-xiv. 23. "It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there."-xiii, 20. 1.

bricks or tiles which are occasionally found in the heaps of rubbish that abound upon the station, which Babylon has been described to have occupied.* Her sages contributed to the advancement of astronomy by their observations of the planetary motions, and had most probably influential and interesting connexions with India by their celebrated river, and the Persian Gulf into which it flows. They were important instruments of Providence in their brief day of imperial power; but that they were utterly unfit to be a leading and lasting empire in the world, is sufficiently evident from one only of their popular customs; and this was, that every female should be degraded, in the beginning of her mature life, in the temple of their chief divinity.‡

It appears to me not unlikely that Hindostan, or some parts of its southern peninsula, derived a considerable portion of its population and attainments from these branches of the Ham family. The intercourse is certain; many similarities exist between them, and the ancestral kinship highly probable; though the subject is too remote and obscure to admit of any thing much beyond the conjectural possibility.

*The latest account that I have seen of these characters on the bricks is, that the arrow-head inscriptions of Babylon appear to be chiefly composed of symbols, and to consist of astronomical and genealogical records and monthly calendars. The tiles were thought to contain the maker's name; but the editor of the Morning Watch infers from his examinations, that the Babylonian bricks consist, for the most part, of monthly calendars or almanacs, each involving a series of either 30 or 35 numerical characters; the former having reference to common months of 30 days, and the latter to the twelfth or intercalary month, to which five days were added.

The characters consist of a series of seven characters answering to the planetary days of the week, which are found repeated in each calendar until the monthly number is completed.-Morning Watch, No. 15. We must leave it to the farther examination of others to decide whether these ingenious conjectures are well founded.

Of these bricks and inscriptions, Pliny says, "Epigenes, a very respectable authority, teaches that the Babylonians had observations on the stars for 720 years inscribed on baked tiles."-Pliny, 1. vii. c. 57.

†The Babylonians computed their day from sunrise; the Athenians from sunset; the Romans, like ourselves, from midnight.-Censorinus, p. 132, 4. They applied their starry observations to astrological predic tions.--Cicero. Div. 1. iii. When Alexander took Babylon, Callisthenes found observations on the stars there for the 1903 years preceding.Simpl. de Cœlo. 1. ii. They referred earthquakes to the action of the stars.-Pliny, ii. c. 81. Herod. 1. 1. c. 199.

"The Arabians divide the country of the Hindoos, which the Turks and Persians called Hindostan, into two parts, Hind and Sind. The word