ANECDOTES.

THE ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS OF THE LION AND THE APE.-A society, called the “Order of the Knights of the Lion and the Ape, and of Discretion," appeared in Germany about 1780, which became extinct almost as soon as it came into existence. The knights had adopted as a symbol of vigilance, a lion dormant with its eyes open, and an ape, as a symbol of those people who imitate the conduct of others without examination. Two emblems which appear to contradict each other. They pretended that they alone possessed the secrets of the ancient Templars, and for this reason they exposed themselves to the hatred of the modern Templars.

THE ORDER OF ABELITES.-There existed in Germany, about the middle of the last century, a secret society, who took the name of "Order of Abelites." The public were acquainted with their existence by a book published at Leipzig in 1746, and which the author (a member of the Order) had dedicated to Prince Gustavus, of Sweden; "that the Abelites opened a Lodge at Griefswald in the commencement of the year 1745; that they borrowed their name from Abel, second son of Adam, whom Jesus himself has called "the Just;" and that their works tend constantly to preserve to their actions the character of justice and that of right. The Abelites were not Freemasons, but they had signs, ceremonies, and symbols and devices, which they kept secret. It is not known how long this Order existed. There was anciently an Order in Africa called Abelites, the members of which would not marry, because Abel had no wife.

AN ABSURD NOTION.-There was an article in a Paris Journal, of February, 1816, as follows:-"The little bonnets of black silk which the French armies in Spain had adopted, and the use of which has been preserved by the Spanish troops, were prohibited by King Ferdinand, who was persuaded that these bonnets were an emblem of Freemasonry !!"

ever,

MASONIC ANECDOTE.-The French Gazette of the 24th September, 1814, relates the following strange anecdote:–“The subject most spoken of at this moment is what a stonemason says has happened to him; it only remains to be discovered whether the adventure he relates be the result of his folly, or if his folly be the result of the story; we leave the reader to judge by his own recital. He pretends to have been accosted by two men, unknown to him, who placed a bandage on his eyes, forced him into a carriage, and conducted him he knew not whither. Howhe thought, by the muffled noise of the wheels, that he had got under an arch or great gate. Arrived at his destination, he saw in the apartment into which he had entered, a man decorated with three Orders, and who had a gag on his mouth. Eight individuals, four of whom were masked, ordered him to drive long and pointed nails into a niche, in which they placed their victim up to the chin; after which they employed the stonemason, before mentioned, to wall up this tomb of the living. The walling up of the place lasted two days, during which time he was supplied with good food. When they had no further need of him, they placed him in a carriage, and conveyed him to the middle of the Champs Elysées. On quitting him, they forbad him, on

pain of death, to withdraw (before five moments) the bandage which he had on his eyes. The history adds, that after this event, he lost his reason. As for us, we believe that he lost it before; and we are so much the more sorry for him, as, apparently, he would have been received as a Mason, at the end of this trial, by those who played this trick upon him. The poor man imagines that he has made a niche; and it is probable, on the contrary, that it was a niche which had been made for him; and that the subterranean place which has caused him so much fear, was nothing more than a Lodge of Masons, where his friends amused themselves by rendering him a fool."

RECONCILIATION BY FREEMASONRY.-The anecdote which follows is related in a manuscript of 1740, entitled “The Freemason." The two last candidates were churchmen, of contrary parties, both valiant champions in the field of controversy; more than once they had written against each other without coming to an agreement. In their works the brilliancy of their wit had shone at the expense of the sentiments of the heart; in a word, their different ways of thinking and writing on religion had made them irreconcilable enemies. But, by (if we may so say) a miracle unheard of except in the temples of friendship, when the subject at issue between these two new Brothers was to pass the signs, touches, and the words, every member of the Lodge (attentive to the event) was affected and delighted when they beheld them mutually begging a thousand pardons, embracing each other, and drowning in a torrent of tears even the least causes of division, after they had sworn eternal friendship. A Brother present declared a similar circumstance had occurred in another Lodge at which he had assisted.

TRAIT OF MASONIC GENEROSITY.-Smith states, in his book entitled "Use and Abuse of Masonry," published in 1785, "there are several Lodges at Prague under the direction of Scotland, or at least they call themselves Scotch. The first which I became acquainted with is that of 1749. A Scotch officer, in the service of Prussia, was made prisoner at the battle of Lutzen; as this officer was recognized as a Mason, he had permission to go out of the prison, and dine every day with the best society of Prague. Three months after, an exchange of prisoners was made, the Scotch officer was included in the list, and as the Brothers of Prague knew he was deprived, from want of money, of the means of travelling comfortably, they begged him to accept a purse from them which contained sixty ducats. This circumstance," adds Smith, was communicated to me by the officer himself, in a letter dated Glasgow, the 13th May, 1760."

A MASONIC ORIGIN.-If at the table of the Lodge a Brother commits a fault, he is condemned by the Venerable to drink a glass of water mixed with weak powder, and the instrument of punishment is presented to him by the Master of the Ceremonies. This usage is traced to the farthest antiquity. "The fable informs us," says Bailly, in his Essay on Fables, "that in the celestial legion they followed the same rule. The gods who perjured themselves, after having sworn by the Styx, were condemned to drink a cup of this poisoned water; the cup was presented to them by Isis."

UPON THE ANTIQUITY OF THE ARABIANS, THEIR LANGUAGE AND LETTERS, AND THE ORIGIN OF THE CHINESE AND THEIR EMPIRE.

BY MRS. COLONEL HARTLEY.

IN TWO PARTS.-PART I.

WHY the most ancient records are lost is a question often demanded by modern inquirers. Time is said to be the devourer of his children. This observation should be also extended to the arts, sciences, and even languages of antiquity. Thus it is very difficult for modern investigators to arrive at the shrine of ancient truth. The Sabians produced a book which they pretend was written by Adam. Origen reports that certain books, written by Enoch, were found in Arabia Felix, in the dominions of the Queen of Saba. Tertullian roundly affirms that he saw and read several of them. In his treatise, de Habitui Mulierum, he places these books among the canonical; but St. Jerome and St. Austin look upon them as apocryphal. William Postellus pretended to compile his work, De Originibus, from the book of Enoch. Thomas Bagnius published at Copenhagen, in 1657, a work which contains many singular relations concerning the manner of writing among the antediluvians, wherein are contained several pleasant tales concerning the book of Enoch. Moses is silent upon the subject.

After the deluge, we perceive at a very early period, that the second son of Amyn, or Ham, named Mizraim, seated himself near the entrance of Egypt, at Zoar. Taaut, his son, had then invented letters, in Phonicia; and if this invention took place ten years before the migration of his father into Egypt, we can trace letters as far back as the year 2178 before Christ, which would be one hundred and fifty years after the deluge, according to ordinarily received chronological computation. Though the written annals of mankind hitherto transmitted to us fail to trace the origin of letters through the want of materials, there is no proof that they were not known until a century and a half after the deluge.

That the modern Arabians were not the inventors of letters hath appeared by the confession of their own authors. We know that the Arabs have inhabited the country they at present possess for upwards of three thousand seven hundred years, without having been intermixed with other nations, or being subjugated by any foreign power. Their language must be very ancient. The two principal dialects of it, were those spoken by the Hamyarites and other genuine Arabs, and that of the Koreish, in which Mahomet wrote the Koran. The first is styled, by the oriental writers, the Arabic of Hamyra; and the other, the pure or defecated. Mr. Richardson, in his Arabic grammar, observes as a proof of the richness of this language, that it consists of two thousand radical words.

The old Arabic characters are said to be of high antiquity, for Ebn Hashem relates, that an inscription in it was found in Yaman as old as the time of Joseph. Sir Isaac Newton supposes that Moses learnt the alphabet from the Midianites, who were Arabians. The Arabian alphabet consists of twenty-eight letters, which are somewhat similar to the ancient Kufic, in which characters the first copies of the Alcoran were

written. The present Arabic characters were formed by Ebn Moklah, a learned Arabian, who lived three hundred years after Mahomet. We learn from the Arabian writers themselves that their alphabet is not ancient. Al Asmahi says, that the Koreish were asked, " From whom did you learn writing?" and that they answered," From Hirah.” That the people of Hirah were asked, " From whom did you learn writing?" and they said, "From the Amberites." Ebn al Habli, and Al Heisham, Ebn Admi, relate that Abi Sofian, Mahomet's great opposer, was asked from whom did your father receive this form of writing? and that he said, from Ashlam, Eben Sidrah. And that Ashlam being asked, from whence did you receive the writing? his answer was, from the person that invented it, Moramer Ebn Morrah; and that they received this form of writing but a little before Islamism.

The opinion of Mr. Wise, that the ancient Egyptians did not possess the knowledge of letters, seems to be altogether erroneous; that wonderful people had commercial intercourse with their neighbours, the Phoenicians, and unquestionably possessed that knowledge, though their policy, like that of the Chinese at this day, might prohibit their general use and knowledge. Cicero distinguished five Mercuries, two of whom were Egyptian. Authors are much divided as to the ages in which these personages lived, but the most ancient is generally allowed to be the Phoenician Taaut, who passed from thence into Egypt. It is probable that he might personify some individual who taught the Egyptians the use of letters, and that the second Taaut, Mercury or Hermes Trismagistus, improved both the alphabet and language, as Diodorus and others have asserted. The Phoenician and Egyptian languages are very similar, but the latter is said to be larger and fuller, which is an indication of its being of later date.

Mizraim, or Mezer, the son of Ham, was the father of Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (from which last sprung the Philistines) and Caphtorim. These descendants of his, and the tribes called from their names, had no doubt their original residence in Egypt. But some of them moved towards the west, and as Casluhim seems to have dwelt in the east of Egypt, his posterity partly settled in the south-west of Canaan. Some learned men have imagined that these names ending in im, a plural termination in the Hebrew, must signify tribes, and not particular persons, in the same manner as it is said, (Genesis x. 15), "And Canaan begat Sidon his first-born, and Seth, and the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgasite." The Arabs still call Egypt "Mesr;" and they called Memphis, and now call Grand Cairo, "Mesa," from Mizraim.

Mercurius, worshipped by the Latins under that name, and called Hermes by the Greeks, derived his adoration and origin from the Egyptians. He is often designated a son of the Nile, by others the Egyptian Thaut. Being denominated the god of merchandize among the Latins, accounts for the worldly craft and cunning peculiarly attributed to this heathen deity; and no wonder that he is styled a messenger of Jove, when the knowledge which he imparted to mankind, of being enabled to transcribe their thoughts, caused ideas to assume an invisible shape and traverse through every region. He was also the supposed inventor of a musical instrument called the lyre, and its seven strings; he also received from King Admetus the celebrated caduceus, with which the then god of poetry used to drive the flocks of that monarch. He is frequently seen drawn upon monuments, with a large cloak under his

chin or round his arm, and is sometimes represented as sitting upon a cray-fish, holding his caduceus in one hand, and in the other the claws of the fish; sometimes he rests his foot upon a tortoise. In Egypt, his statues represented him with the head of a dog, whence he was often confounded with Anubis, and received the sacrifice of a stork. Offerings of milk and honey were made, because he was the god of eloquence, whose powers were sweet and persuasive. The Greeks and Romans offered tongues to him, by throwing them into the fire, as he was the patron of speaking, of which the tongue is the organ. Sometimes his statues represent him without arms, because, according to some, the power of speech can prevail over everything, even without the assistance of arms. Trismegistus, a priest and philosopher of Egypt, who taught his countrymen how to cultivate the olive, to measure their lands, and to understand hieroglyphics, is said to have lived in the age of Osiris, and to have written forty books on theology, medicine, and geography, from which Sanchoniatho, the Phoenician historian, has taken his Theogonia.

There are many contradictions amongst the most experienced writers of antiquity. Sanconiatho began his history with the creation, and ended it with placing Taautus upon the throne of Egypt. He doth not mention the deluge, but he makes two more generations in Cain's line, from Protogonus to Agroverus, or from Adam to Noah, than Moses. Taaut and his posterity, for fifteen generations, were seated in Upper Egypt, at Thebes, which was built by the Mezrites.

That letters were invented in Phoenicia, doth not depend solely upon the testimony of Sanconiatho; for several Roman authors attribute their invention to the Phoenicians. Pliny says, that that nation was famed for the invention of letters, as well as for astronomical observations and naval and martial arts. Curtius says, that the Tyrian nation are related to be the first who either taught or learned letters; and Lucan says, the Phoenicians were the first who attempted to express sounds or words by letters. To these authorities may be added that of Eusebius, who tells us, from Porphyry, that Sanconiatho studied with great application the writings of Taaut, knowing that he was the first who invented letters, and on these he laid the foundations of his history.

It is observable that the Greek writers seem to have known no older Hermes than the second Hermes, or Mercury, who is recorded to have lived about four hundred years after the Mezrite Taaut. Plato calls the second Hermes" Pheuth," and represents him as counsellor and sacred scribe to King Thamus. But it is not said that he ever reigned in Egypt, whereas the Mezrite Taaut, or Athôthis, as Manetho calls him, was the immediate successor of Menes, the first king of Egypt.

The Phoenician language has been generally allowed to be, at least, a dialect of the Hebrew, and though their alphabet doth not entirely agree with that of the Samaritan, yet it will hereafter appear that there is a great similarity between them. Arithmetic and astronomy were much cultivated by the Phoenicians in the earliest ages, for it is affirmed that they were from the beginning addicted to philosophical exercises of the mind, insomuch that a Sidonian, by name Moschus, is said to have taught the doctrine of Atoms before the Trojan war, and Aldomenus of Tyre challenged Solomon, though the wisest king upon the earth, by the subtle questions he proposed to him. Phoenicia continued to be one of the seats of learning, and both Tyre and Sidon produced their philosophers; of later ages, Boethus and Dionatus, of Sidon-and Antipater, of

VOL. V.

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