they are generally right when they refuse, and should not be pressed to accept any one against their inclination. To proceed, however, on the subject of intimacies. feather flock together, and brought the coarse dross of his own ideas, and of those of his companions, so constantly in contact with the brighter and finer textured mind of the lady of whom I am speaking, that the nobler polish of the softest metal was soon worn away by the ruder substance, even as the brightness of the finest gold is sure to wear away when brought into contact with the meaner metals of the mine. The flirtation ended in nothing, as thousands do every day; nor would it deserve a word of notice, but for the singular effect it produced upon a very charming girl. Her heart was not even scratched, though her high and noble tone of feeling was so terribly defaced, that it actually ruined her beauty, which depended far more upon expression than upon feature; the main source of that lovely expression was gone, and her face was absolutely vulgarised by the change. She soon perceived the effect, and regret naturally augmented it; and though not yet twenty-five years of age, she now is only mentioned as the "remains of the beautiful Miss Plantagenet." "The harp of Rosa slumbers," and the most touching voice that ever made the heart thrill to its inmost core forgets the song, and is only heard in repetition of stale, flat, and unprofitable commonplaces of every-day conversation. In a minor degree, her fate is the fate of thousands; and if few fall so far, it is because few stood on so brilliant an elevation. Parents should always bear in recollection, and may rest assured of the fact, that the well-educated young ladies of whom we have been speaking are, in nine cases out of ten, vastly superior to their ordinary quadrille-dancing partners, superior, I mean, in mind, intellect, delicacy of feeling, and what may be called general information; and for the simple reason that women are formed of a finer texture, have more quickness of apprehension than we have, and that their minds come, therefore, much sooner to maturity. Attend occasionally to the conversation between young ladies and gentlemen at a party, and you will see how superior the young girls are. From all this, you will observe that little can be gained by a close intercourse with the every-day quadrilling dandy; whereas, a great deal may be lost by bringing the finer material in contact with the coarser, particularly so as ladies have, when very young, a sort of respect for the supposed superiority of us lords of the creation I am not sure, indeed, whether I ought to undeceive them. The truth is, that I speak feelingly on this point; for I once knew a charming, lively, accomplished, flaxen-haired thing, whose generous feeling, high and proud spirit, beamed through every glance of her large and beautiful blue eyes. She entered the world with all the sanguine hopes of youth ; And, now, as to the charming dears sung, danced, played, pleased and was of the "bedchamber," the victors of pleased, and flirted, in course. the victor of Waterloo," les vainhave been the slave of as many pretty queurs du vainqueur de la terre." A dears as any gentleman ought to be, great deal has been said respecting the though never more, I believe, than of late ministerial "change and no change this little beauty. But though she de- -both parties being perfectly conlighted me, I delighted not her, and scious that they were not speaking out she fell into a flirtation with another when gravely talking about preceperson, a very good sort of a man, dents,' "" usual custom in such cases," who ate his dinner according to the proofs of the sovereign's confidence," best-prescribed rules of the silver fork and 66 respect for the feelings of a school, danced his quadrille with dull young and helpless female." All this and perfect accuracy, and was what was addressed to the marines, as sailors the world would call perfectly unex- say; but to you and me, who underceptionable his assiduity gained upon stand such matters, it was "leather and my fair friend, as the assiduity of such prunella," and was never intended to men will often gain upon the most su- be any thing more. What Lord perior girls. With all these excel- Brougham said was excellent, as far as lences, however, he was a man of it went; but as he knows absolutely common mind, associated with com▪ nothing ghane tha nothing about the far and should -- I 66 scandalous clause in the new Poor-law Bill-be allowed to utter one sentence respecting them, I am reluctantly obliged to enlighten the public on this, as well as on so many other important points. What is the simple reason why Sir Robert Peel would not, and could not, accept office, so long as the female household remained unchanged? The very same which would prevent me, or any other officer of the Royal Grenadiers, from occupying a fortress which the enemy had undermined in his retreat, and the train to which he retained the means of lighting at pleasure. In such cases, all soldadoes, who have no fancy for being blown into the air at the convenience of an adversary, begin by a close inspection of the premises, and never take regular possession till they have made a complete clearance, and cut off all communication with the foe. Now, do not suppose that I intend to compare the "maids of honour" to fire-fagots and barrels of gunpowder,-far from it; they are all very charming and amiable women, and dangerous exactly in proportion to their amiability had they been an ugly, stupid set, they might have remained in the household till doomsday. Women, and particularly married women, are the greatest political intriguers that can possibly be found. As long as the pretty dears are single, and deeply occupied with balls, parties, partners, flirtations, passing attachments, and matrimonial speculations, they are not so dangerous in this respect; but the moment they are married, and have no longer any interesting affairs of the heart to engage their attention nearer home, they immediately turn their shrewd and active minds to the most important and exciting pursuit in which they can possibly contrive to meddle; and state affairs take, of course, the lead of all others. We need not refer to history for examples of female influence, as every one who has mixed in society knows, that women of a certain age and station take far more interest in politics than in any thing else, and that it forms their principal and favourite topic of conversation,-a little pleasant and harmless scandal hardly excepted. It is not merely that they exert themselves in favour of friends, lovers, and relatives, with a degree of zeal and perseverance which a minister is not able to resist; but it is notorious, that where they have access to the higher powers, they will interfere in the most important affairs of state: and then they do things in so graceful and winning a manner, they have so much tact and penetration, and read the most stupid ministerial countenance with such perfect ease, that there is, in truth, no resisting them. If her majesty will only give me the nomination of her maids of honour, she may retain the ministerial appointments as long as she likes. That these papers have entitled me to the privilege of writing maxims, none, I presume, will deny. I shall therefore begin with laying down two, which I trust will immediately be carried into law, by all who make any pretensions to ton, tact, and good taste. You must never, in general society, be very assiduous to any lady in particular; you are not to be always at her elbow, keeping others aloof, and preventing her from mixing in general conversation. In the boudoir, or in a tête-à-tête, you may be as tender and attentive as you can; but clever women dislike to see the same dangler, however favoured, always following them in company, as if tied to their apronstrings: éclat-seeking women only tolerate such conduct. My next is imperative, and commands that smoking and snuff-taking shall be abolished, without respite or reprieve, as filthy and disgusting practices, injurious alike to health, elegance, and cleanliness. Cigar smoking is an acquired habit, assumed from mere affectation, after the smoker has made himself sick for weeks together, merely for the honour of making a chimney of his throat. "Oh, but we are so used to it," say the fumers, "that we cannot now leave it off." Not leave off snuff and cigars! Why, I would back a full-grown turkey-cocka bubbley-jock, as they say in Scotland -against a whole divan of dandies, who should tell me that they could not command sufficient resolution to submit to the dictates of ordinary cleanliness. THE TRINITY OF THE GENTILES. EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY. AN ANALYTICAL ESSAY IN FOUR CHAPTERS. Και το φως ἐν τῇ σκοτία φαίνει, καὶ ἡ σκοτια αυτο οὐ κατελαβεν.—ΙΩΑΝ. Α. 4. CHAPTER 1.-THE ORIGINAL DOCTRINE-ITS CERTAINTY NECESSITY- MYTHOLOGICAL CORRUPTIONS. CHAPTER II.-EGYPTIAN ILLUSTRATIONS AND PROOFS. CHAPTER III. THE WORSHIP OF ANIMALS. EGYPTIAN DOCTRINES OF INCAR NATION, RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY. CHAPTER IV.—THE PYTHAGOREAN AND PLATONIC SPECULATIONS. CHAPTER II. Egyptian Illustrations and Proofs. WE shall, for several reasons, direct our particular attention to the Egyptian system. In Egypt, the Jewish people grew up from a single family to become a nation; and, during the first eighty years of this period, a Jewish minister directed the affairs of that country. In Egypt, the Jewish scriptures were translated into the popular language of the Gentile world, and thence universally disseminated. Egypt is throughout the inspired writings opposed to Israel, as the most prominent anti-type, or opposite, to the chosen people and the laws of inspiration; and is hence the most obvious source for deducing the immediate corruption of those laws. Egypt was, moreover, the parent of the systems of Phoenicia and Greece, the grand sources of speculation to the learned world for the last twenty-three centuries; and, in fine, the monuments of Egypt are, at the present moment, unfolding contemporaneous information from the days of the patriarchs to those of the Roman emperors. After a perspicuous developement of the material trinity of the Hindus Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, or the creating, preserving, and the destroying or reproducing power- and identifying these with their multifarious representatives in the Orphic fragments of Greece, our author proceeds to the Egyptian the parent of the Orphic system and there discovers the same personages under various names, which hieroglyphic research has condensed into those of Phtha, Kneph, and Khem (the Hephaestus, Zeus, and Pan of the Greeks),-names of the attributes, or, nouphis, or Amon Chnouphis,- to whom were joined the goddesses Neith, Sate, and Buto, or Minerva, Juno, and Latona, the system requiring all its forms to be hermaphroditic. Having ably discussed this original (we should say primary and physical, for reasons that will presently appear) trinity of the Egyptians, Mr. Cory proceeds, p. 48, to remark that," in the classic age, the persons of the Egyptian triad became strangely confounded. As described from Herodotus to Plutarch, they consist of Osiris, Horus, Typhon,' &c. Let it, however, be noted, that these last, as described by the father of history, were worshipped, together with their female correlatives, Isis, Bubastis, and Nephthys, in every part of Egypt; whereas, the worship of the personages respectively of the former triad, was principally celebrated in the three grand divisions of that country,- that of Kneph in the Thebais, of Phtha in Middle Egypt, and that of Khem, Mandou, or Mendes, in the Delta. We thus comment on Mr. Cory's 'observation, because, although the Egyptian calendar, or pantheon, be'came augmented by the introduction of minor divinities, we have reason to believe that the system itself never underwent any material change; and in our discussion we shall be enabled clearly to establish a second co-existing Egyptian triad of great antiquity, and uncontemplated by our author, in conmexion with the intellectual triad of the Greek philosophers, as well as with the cosmogonic record of Moses; and to elicit several particulars in connexion with it of the last importance to mythological and historical research. We believe, as indeed the hierowash demon and Typhon was no modern innovation, and was certainly as ancient as the hieroglyphic notation of the year, which has been proved in our disquisition on "the Pyramids," to belong to the eighteenth century before the Christian era, at the lowest; and which we here reprint, in elucidation of the present subject. The first line represents the notation of the four months of each Horus, or season, as found connected with the respective signs of the three seasons, which appear in the second line, followed by the group (4) representing the epagomena, or five days not included in the twelve months of thirty days each. It means the "celestial days," or "days of the heavens ;" and is raised from one to five, by the repetition of the vertical line to the right. * Nos. XCIV., XCV., and XCVI., for October, November, and December, 1837. This mythus is, on the contrary, verified in the most satisfactory manner by the evidence of the monuments, notwithstanding the partial difference in the statements of Diodorus and Plutarch, who respectively give the order of the epagomenæ, or birth-days of the gods, as follows, viz. :— Although this variation may seem of little moment, it becomes of importance, int connexion with the hieroglyphic records. On the lateral inscription accompanying the astronomical sculptures of the ceiling of the Memnonium at Thebes (see Mr. Burton's Excerpta Hieroglyphica, plate 59; and Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. iii., part ii., the birth of Isis-Sothis is there expressly referred to the fourth of the epagomenæ, or "the celestial days." The mythus of the birth-days of the gods is thus confirmed by evidence of the reign of Ramses II., the Osymandyas of the Greeks, who was the raiser of the Memnonium, according to both history and the hieroglyphic records, in the twelfth century before our era; while the elaborate statement in the express work of Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, is verified rather than the concise and incidental account of Diodorus (i. 13). With reference to the hieroglyphic name Isis-Sothis, it should be observed that Sothis, or the dog-star, was consecrated to Isis, according to Diodorus (i. 27), who in the same place acquaints us that she was educated by Hermes, or Thoth, the divinity more particularly represented by the dog-star, and who was, according to Plutarch, the father of the goddess Isis. Let it also be noted, that on the ceiling of the Memnonium, the lateral inscription above referred to replaces the figure of the goddess, Tpe, or the heavens (whose hiero glyphic symbol is the celestial arch of the epagomena, as represented above), which environs the astronomical sculptures on the ceilings of the temple of Denderah and the tombs, and is always accompanied by emblems of the birth of a divinity: at Denderah that of Isis is commemorated; so that these sculptures reciprocally illustrate and explain each other. Reference to Dr. Young's article on Egypt, Enc. Brit., Supplement, 1819, p. 51, will place this question in a very clear point of view, and determine that the Memnonian lateral inscription has reference to the birth-day of the goddess Isis Sothis, as conventionally fixed in the mythological calendar, and not to the heliacal rising of the star Sothis, on the fourth of the epagomene, which would give an astronomical date to the sculptures in which it is found, ascending to the year B. C. 1330, as inferred in a memoir by the Rev. G. Tomlinson, which accompanies the plate referred to in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature. doubtless, as old as the time when the calendar of the gods was completed in common with that of the year,*- the months of the year and the days of the month having been invariably consecrated to their divinities, or presiding powers, in seriem, by the Egyptians (Herodot. ii. 82), the Chaldeans (Dan. vi. 7, 12; Diod. i.), the Persians (Plutarch and Zend-avesta), and all the other Gentile nations of the East. This is a fact not the less certain because it has been hitherto almost wholly overlooked, as we shall have occasion to prove. It will be found greatly to elucidate the system of animal avatars, and of the transmigration of souls. It will likewise explain the mystery of the Triacontacterid of the pillar of Rosetta, -the grand period of the Panegyres, or festivals of the gods, which returned each thirty years, in the same order as in the thirty days of each month. This cycle is commemorated in the hieroglyphic tablets of every age, as the grand panegyris. The latter is identified by M. Champollion with the triacontaëterid, although that writer, in common with every other, has been unsuccessful in explaining the elements of this period, which are numerically expressed in the pillar of Rosetta alone. As this is a question of extreme importance to our inquiry, in connexion with the conventional systems of ancient mythology, we shall take some pains to clear up its difficulties. "The bilinguar monument of Rosetta," remarks Champollion (Précis., 2d ed., p. 211, et seq.), "makes known to us another royal title, on the precise sense of which there have only been hitherto formed conjectures more or less probable. It is comprised in the protocol of the decree which gives to King Ptolemy Epiphanes the title of 'Lord of the Period of Thirty Years, like Hephæstus the Great:' it is at least thus that we have translated the words of the Greek text,-Kugiou rgiaκονταετηρίδων καθαπερ ὁ Ηφαιστος ὁ μέγας. Some have considered the word Teiaκονταετηρίδων as expressive of astronomical periods, of which the duration was thirty years; but we have hitherto been unable to discover either the meaning or elements of these periods : the real sense of this word, then, remains still very doubtful, from our inability to assign any motive whatever for the institution of such a period.The part of the hieroglyphic text of Rosetta, answering to the words of the Greek text (as above), does not exist. It, however, probably consisted of signs similar to those which I translate by 'Lord of the Panegyries, like Phtha."" Champollion was aware that the thirty days of the month were consecrated to as many divinities (whose names he does not, however, appear to have ascertained); yet he overlooked this manifest key in his inquiries on the triacontaëterid. Mr. Wilkinson is likewise of opinion that the panegyry and triacontaëterid may have been connected; but proceeds no further. "I do not yet understand," he observes (Materia Hiero., p. 49, note)," what these years and assemblies (the panegyries) signify; but it is possible from these last the kings received the title given to Ptolemy in the Rosetta stone, Lord of the Triacontaëterids." Dr. Young had, however, approached the meaning very nearly, before the inquiries of either of these writers commenced. In his note on the hieroglyphic figure denoting panegyry, or assembly, he remarks (art. Egypt, Enc. Brit., Supplement, 1819; No. 145). "It is by no means easy to explain why the figure like a buckle (a litter?), should clearly mean an assembly; perhaps, however, the upper part may originally have been a crescent, implying monthly; and the scale, or basin, below is occasionally found supporting some offerings, which are set upright in it; so that the whole may mean a monthly exhibition." Dr. Young might have added, that the figure in question occurs twice in the eleventh line of the hieroglyphic inscription of Rosetta, and on other inscriptions, in connexion with the group denoting month, or monthly, the meaning of which he was the first to recognise (No. 179). This amounts to proof that monthly assemblies, or festivals, are there intended to be expressed. The following is one of the Rosetta These calendars belong to the conventional system of the Egyptians, of which their principles of mythology, science, and art, constituted inseparable and invariable ims of the Roman |