travagant dates of fuch reigns are either reduced to their juft value, or vanish before fober criticism. On a subject so intricate you will pardon me, Sir, if I attend more to plain difcuffion than to elegance of style.

In seeking to penetrate into the chaos of antient history innumerable difficulties occur, which have at all times fufficiently exercifed the critics. To say the truth, almost impenetrable darkness furrounds it, and we must frequently feek our way to truth by the fainteft glimmerings of light. Such however appear from time to time, and, if kept steadily in view, may at length bring us to some degree of probability. Wherever these happen to concentrate, they will form stations which may guide us through furrounding darkness. The allegorical genius and the exalted imaginations of the orientals, but above all the interefts of mythology, have enveloped a few real facts in myfterious fables, abfurd if literally understood, but frequently concealing natural or moral truths. In their hands, the rude elements of which this world is compofed were clothed with the characters of parent divinities. The fucceffive order in which they appeared or acted at the firft creation conftitutes the fucceffive generations of these ideal beings. With the confummation of the work finishes the very exiftence of these fymbolical gods. Old Chaos and Erebus totally disappear, and are no more heard of, to give place to a new fet of deities. Nature completed furnishes them abundantly. In every region paganism

C

ganism had deified the fun, moon, earth, and other known planets: with these were joined fire, water, and air, the god of the inferior regions, and the goddess of wisdom, to make up the circle of the twelve greater gods. Thefe, the most obvious objects of veneration, were fucceffively, as truth wore out, adopted by every nation, and their pretended hiftories incorporated with its annals (e). According to the qualities under which they were confidered, or their influence particularly wanted, they were adored in divers countries under different names, and even fometimes in the fame country under different appellations. The fun, as the most beautiful, the most grand and most exalted of beings, was called Bel, Baal, and Adonis in Chaldea: with reference to his ftrength and power, he took the name of Hercules, at Tyre: as the fovereign fecundating virtue, Ofiris represented him in Egypt: as ripening the vintage, he was fometimes confounded with Bacchus as leader of the celeftial harmony, he took the name of Apollo, in Greece. The moon, as queen of the heavens, was ftyled Aftaste, and under her different afpects or attri butes took the names of Ifis, of Diana, or Latona. Each of thefe gods had his genealogy and his hiftory, and his attributes became at length fo many fecondary divinities. Mountains, woods, and rivers peopled the whole earth with demigods. The genii of the seasons, and their various labours allegorized, increased the celeftial court; and their effects and proceffes, transformed into facts and actions, foon furnished the detailed hiftory of these imaginary beings. Mr. Court de Gebelin has most ingeniously fhewn to a degree

of evidence, that the whole hiftory of Saturn, given us by Sanconiatho, is no other than an allegory of husbandry and its labours, repeated under other points of view in the labours of Hercules (ƒ).

Unfortunately for true history, many nations prodigally bestowed on their founders and benefactors, or on the inventors of the arts, the titles of their deities. The fun and moon, from the benefits derived from them, became gods; and for the fame reasons the first progenitors and fettlers of nations were at first honoured as their representatives on earth, and through lapfe of time became identified in persons as well as names with their prototypes. In confequence of this, allegorical actions relative to the furnames they had acquired, intermixed with such as were really proper to these deified mortals, were attributed not to one only, but to several true personages, who lived in ages and countries very remote. When the genealogies and hiftories of these deities came to be made out and collected, all those scattered anecdotes were attributed to one and the fame god. Thus a multiplicity of Herculefes of various ages and regions were confounded into one. Herodotus hefitates not to fay, that the Greeks, in adopting the Egyptian deities, had invefted with their titles mere mortals of very recent date. This ftands confirmed by other pagan authors; and it is well known that the fepulchre of the Cretan Jupiter was fhewn long after this historian.

Chronology fuffered ftill more from this ftrange mixture and con

fusion of fictive and real perfonages and actions. The dates of true events have become indeterminable; and the vanity of nations, all contending for pre-eminence in antiquity, has rendered them still more embarrassed and uncertain. In addition to the mischief, other difficulties of another kind alfo occur. In very early antiquity the measure of the year varied extremely in different countries, and has often changed amongst the fame people at different times. We find established years of one and of fifteen days; of one, of three, of four, and of fix months; years of 360 days, lunar and folar years (g). Here, chronology feems to determine precife dates to events which prove entirely fictive; and there, when the facts appear real, we are reduced to guess to what kind of year belong the dates which are. affigned to them. One thing only moft generally appears, that the higher we rife in antiquity, fo much shorter we must reckon the duration of the years that are spoken of in its annals. Unequal to cal-culate the folar year with precifion, men had first recourse to the diurnal revolutions of light and darkness, and afterwards to the most remarkable phases of the moon: from thefe, lunar and at laft folar years were inexactly computed. Thoroughly to. difcufs these intricate points would both be above my ftrength and beyond my purpofes. I fhall confine myself to the extracting from this confused mafs thofe remarkable events, which appearing every where prominent in the traditions of every nation, thence acquire a real authenticity as fundamental points of universal hiftory; and to the offering a few dates, too high removed perhaps, but which become fo much the

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less objectionable as they will be furnished by a hand not to be suspected of partiality to my opinion.

A notion of the existence of certain beings fuperior and anterior to the human race feems to have been common to all people. The Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Phoenicians speak of the reigns of the gods and demigods, of the children of the fun and of the moon. The Chinese pretend that men were preceded by the families of the heavens and of the earth. The Perfians say that, before the creation of Adam, God had created the Dives and the Peris. The Indians occupy their two firft ages by a fucceffion of gods and of Pidar devata. Their last kings and their ftill exifting rajahs call themselves of the race of the fun, or of the moon. The creation of these fuperior beings, as well as that of men and of the whole universe, seems to have been very generally at first attributed to one fupreme God. As emracing all visible nature, the names of Coelum, of Uranus, of Tien, were frequently given to him. From thence the transition was easy, and one cannot be furprifed that nations plunged in corruption and ignorance should at length identify him with nature. The idea of a:

spiritual invisible divinity was gradually loft. The first philofophers of Greece endeavoured to account for all things without the interference of an intelligent architect, and the opinion of the existence of fuch was revived with diffidence by its latter and more fublime fages (b). The primary exiftence of a chaos, or of the confused elements of this world-its gradual reduction into order-original

darkness,