The conversation was started by one of the company reading Deut. xviii. 10, 11: There shall not be found among you any one 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. His wish was to have these names in his Arabic Bible explained, many of which were unintelligible to him. Our first ef fort, you remember, was to affix definite ideas to the words themselves, and, with the aid of the doctor and our Syrian friend, we made quite a critical coterie in appearance with our English, Arabic, Syriac, Vulgate, Septuagint, and Hebrew. The results, however, were not very striking or important.

The first of these names we concluded was applied to any person who prophesied or uttered oracles, the means by which he obtained them being immaterial. The Septuagint translators seem thus to have understood it.

The second seems to look toward the clouds, and probably the professors of this art dealt in lucky and unlucky days, expounded omens, and prognosticated future occur rences mainly by observing the clouds. We have this sort of witchcraft in abundance.

The third is rendered by the Seventy, and those who followed them, by a word signifying to augur, from the flight of birds; but the Hebrew seems to connect it with serpents. Our translation is near the truth in calling these enchanters. Probably they employed serpents in their enchantments.

The fourth is obviously from a Hebrew root, which signifies to uncover, reveal, and may refer to fortune-tellers, revealers of stolen goods, hid treasure, and the like. The Seventy have Pharmakos, a compounder of drugs and magic charms, but by what authority I know not.

The fifth is Hobair Huber. In Arabic this would mean a repeater of news, and may refer to giving forth auricular responses, or to a repetition of invocations and incantations.

The sixth name in our list the Seventy seem to have thought meant ventriloquism; and 'aobe may mean belly; but our English translation is probably correct, a consulter

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with familiar spirits. It is not unlikely, however, that these diviners, by means of ventriloquism, pretended to converse with their "familiars," and to receive audible responses from them. Even the wise Socrates laid claim to the aid of some such spirit.

The seventh were those esteemed supernaturally wise, magicians perhaps, and such as performed wonderful tricks by sleight of hand, superior cunning, or profounder insight into the mysteries of nature. And the eighth was a necromancer, a consulter of the dead, like the witch of Endor, and our modern dealers in "spiritual rappings."

Besides these, there are other kinds of divination, and other names employed in the Bible, whose signification is doubtful. The magicians mentioned in Gen. xli. 8, and Ex. vii. 11, and 22, do not appear to have belonged to any of these classes. Probably they were originally Egyptian priests, who alone understood the art of writing and interpreting their sacred hieroglyphics. It is plain, however, that they professed to work wonders by their occult sciences, of whatever sort they were. Joseph pretended to divine by the aid of his cup,' and Isaiah mentions astrologers, star-gazers, and monthly prognosticators. Daniel several times speaks of the Assoppim, which the Seventy have rightly called magi or wise men. Our translators render it astrologers.

Well, have you been able to identify these ancient kinds of divination with practices still found in these countries? It occurs to me, however, that several of them are closely related, and that it is not necessary to suppose that the professors of these occult sciences were restricted to any one kind. On the contrary, they would resort to all, or to as many as they were masters of. Thus an astrologer would not only draw his astrolabic figures and diagrams, but observe times, compound magical drugs, recite incantations, write charms, and so on, through all the labyrinths of the black art.

Doubtless; for we find this true at the present day among the clumsy imitators of those ancient adepts. Perhaps the

1 Gen. xliv. 5, 15.

superstition most common at present is that of charms. People of every rank and station in society, and of every creed and sect, employ them for themselves, their children, their houses, their horses and cattle, and even for their fruit-trees. Amulets and charms are hung around the neck, or hid away in the bosom; they are suspended from the arch of a newly-built house; they dangle from the throat of horses and cattle; and fig and other trees have cabalistic signs drawn upon them to guard against the evil eye.

AMULETS.

The charms most in repute among all sects are brief sentences from their religious books, written with certain formalities, and frequently accompanied with cabalistic diagrams, drawn by those skilled in these magic mysteries. I have examined many of them. They are sewed up in small sacks, generally heart-shaped, and suspended from the tarbush of infants, round the necks of larger children, and about grown-up people according to their particular fancy.

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CHARMS.

Like nostrums in medicine, these amulets are believed to defend the wearer from sickness and accidents, from the malice of enemies, from balls in a battle, from robbers by the way, from the evil eye, evil spirits, and, in short, from every species of calamity. There are some so potent that the possessor is rendered invisible to robbers, is perfectly safe in the hottest battle, and need fear neither jan, ghoul, nor devil by night or day. While I was wandering about with the Egyptian army during the revolt of Palestine against Ibrahim Pasha in 1834, I was assured by officers of respectability that Ibrahim would come in after a skirmish with the rebels, loose his girdle, and shake out the balls which had been aimed at him, beaten quite flat, but none of them had injured him. This was ascribed to the potency of the charms about his person. The Moslems generally wear portions of the Korân, which they call hejabs, or they write an endless string of the names and attributes of the deity, or the equally numerous titles of Mohammed. These curious and absurd combinations are deposited in tin or leather cases by the poor, and in silver and gold by the wealthy. The Moslems, Druses, Metāwelies, Nusaireans, Ismailîyehs, Yezidies, Bedawîn, Nowr, Jews, and Christians, all have not only their peculiar charms, but also their separate counter-charms, to defeat and neutralize those of their enemies. Any one who has read the Arabian Nights, with Lane's notes, will have obtained a tolerably complete acquaintance with this whole VOL. I.-K

subject, and the customs are identical down to the present hour.

Another kind of charm, very common, seems designed not so much to ward off the approach of evil as to relieve from its actual presence and pressure. Thus, when a person is sick, the relatives place at his head a copy of their most sacred books, Koran, Bible, Church book, or whatever they most reverence, a picture, image, or relic, or some treasure brought from Mecca or Jerusalem, or from the tomb of some dead saint, or the body of some living one. In the absence of Doctor V, I was lately called to see the sick son of one of the most respectable Moslems of Sidon. At his head was an old rotten rag, as filthy as the vilest hermit could make it. This could on no account be removed. It was part of the sheet of a very holy man now living in Joppa. It had cost several thousand piastres, and was possessed of most potent efficacy. The child, however, died, greatly to the dismay of the father. About the same time, a Christian father called me to visit his son, dangerously ill. I found a peculiarly-formed gold button placed under the lad's cap, in order to charm away the disease. He recovered, and I suppose the button will be famous a long time to come. I was once dragged in the utmost haste to see an Arab friend, said to be bleeding to death at the nose. The friends had stuck various Arabic seals about his tarbush, and the blood stopped, as they said, through their potency.

This sort of superstition is not confined to the East. Scott's fair lady of Branksome's Tower, when she drew the splinter from the breast of bold Deloraine, performed her magical rites: "And with a charm she stanched the blood." Indeed, Scott himself seems to be more than half a believer in his own prodigies; and Scotland and Ireland boast of as many, as potent, and as complicated charms as any country in the world. They are equally rich in medicinal and magical compounds. Most of them, it may be, are made and used without any definite reference to invisible beings, good or bad, but others are done with their avowed assistance. And so it is even among the Christians of this country.