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down the declivity of the mountain, and Boon escaped from the pursuit of the hunters, who would not venture on the dan. gers which that unsteady, and almost perpendicular, route presented to their sight. The news of this wonderful discovery was carried to the hamlet of Suc. On the morrow, in the morning, a great number of shepherds advanced to the mountain, and concealing themselves behind the rocks, waited for the woman, and coming upon her by surprise, they seized her person. Clothes were immediately presented to her, which she rejected, and even tore with the greatest violence; it was not until they had suc ceeded in tying her hands that they could accomplish the clothing of her. She was conducted to the hamlet. This female seeing herself clothed with garments hateful to her, and forced from that dark recess, the gloomy melancholy of which seemed to give her pleasure, was seized with the most outrageous madness; her eyes, sparkling with fire, appeared to start from their orbits; her struggles became strong and convulsive; finally, she broke silence for the purpose of discharging, against those who surrounded ber, threats pronounced with a strong voice, and in the supernatural tone of inspiration and enthusiasm.

When she arrived at the parsonage of Sucher fury still continued. The Curé, who is a clergyman much beloved, sweet, and persuasive, presented himself to her, offering her the words of peace and consolation. At once, by one of those quick transitions so common in disorders of the mind, the sinking of melancholy succeeded the explosion of frensy.

Her countenance became sad and silent; she spoke no longer, nor did she appear to see or hear any thing; one thought alone, which absorbed all her attention, made her indifferent to every surrounding object. That thought must of course be of a most sorrowful nature; involuntary tears and sighs, escaping from her oppressed heart, betrayed her anguish. At length she stopped, and fix ed her looks, which for some time had been wandering, steadily on her garments; her limbs quiver, she falls on her knees, and in a voice interrupted with sighs, exclaims, "Good God! what will my unfortunate husband say?"

These words were followed by secret prayers, and by a long reverie. The tears, which she shed in abundance, gave her some relief; she became more calm, but remained indifferent to every thing, Victuals were offered to no purpose;

questions repeated without receiving any answer; it might be said that she was seized with an absolute insensibility.

She spoke in the French language alone; her accent was pure; the manner in which she expressed herself during the access of her frensy announced that her mind had been cultivated; her figure, though lank and livid, appeared to have been once handsome, and still bore the impression of a noble rank, and of dignity.

It was by no means difficult to the good pastor to perceive that this woman was a stranger, that she did not belong to the class of common people, and that the melancholy in which she was sunk originated from no other cause than the weight of misfortunes. He conceived for the unfortunate woman the most lively interest, and lavished on her the most affectionate cares, which he had the misfortune to see that she rejected. Having placed her in the chamber where she was to repose for the night, he took the necessary precautions to prevent her escape. Those precautions were insufficient; on the mor row she had disappeared; the clothes which she wore were found not far from the place, torn to tatters.

She re-appeared some days afterwards on the summit of a rock, hitherto supposed inaccessible, except to eagles and to the chamois. Attempts to take her once more were multiplied, but were constantly unsuccesful; it was useless also to endeavour to discover her name and her country.

It was however generally believed, and some expressions which had escaped from the unfortunate woman strengthened that opinion, that she had married a Frenchman, whom revolutionary events had driven into Spain; she followed him into his exile; that this couple having determined to return to their native country, arrived at the foot of the Pyrenees, where they met with those dau gers which they were endeavouring to shun. Robbers attacked them-plun dered them of every thing, to their very garments, and even raised their murderous hands against the husband's life. He perished; the unfortunate wife being obliged to witness the horror of that bloody scene, lost her reason, which sank under the weight of her affliction; she penetrated beyond Port Aurat, wandered along the savage summit of the Pyrenees, and with a heart broken, and a brain disordered, arrived at that formidable enclosure, whose imposing aspect stopt the wanderer's course, Entertained in these

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high Mountains of Viedessos.

1814.] places with the most sorrowful images, she was stopped there by that conformity she discovered between the disorder of nature in that spot, and that of her own soul; there she resolved to consign herself without reserve to inconsolable affliction, to suffer and to die alone and unknown in the bosom of nature, in the midst of that gloom, the awful furniture of which nature displays in those places.

She was sometimes observed to tear up the wild plants, to plunge into the lake, or descend into the torrent to seize the fish; but for the most part, she was seen in the attitude of reflection and of grief, and resembling a statue as immoveable as the rock upon which she stood.

The winter, nevertheless, was approaching; the snow which occupied the summits of the mountains was progres sively advancing, and forcing into shelter the flocks and the shepherds; the heights were abandoned. The inhabitants and the pastor deplore the lot of the unfortunate unknown-"Ah! without doubt," say they, "she will be torn in pieces and devoured by beasts of prey; or if she could escape their murderous teeth, her frozen body, after yielding to the horrors of hunger, or the keen arrows of pinching cold, is buried under heaps of snow."

What was their astonishment when they saw her again on the return of the fine season, still naked, running along the accustomed heights! They looked upon this species of resurrection as a prodigy, the mystery of which they could not explain, and which they were eager to publish to the neighbouring districts.

M. Vorgnies, justice of the peace at Viedessos, was informed of it: this magistrate proceeded to the place. Through his care the unfortunate woman was again caught. He caused her to be clothed; he endeavoured to gain her confidence; made her take some crude undressed victuals; and endeavoured to draw from her the secret of her misfor tunes. For a long time she opposed the most obstinate silence to those questions he put to her in the softest but most earnest manner; at length, when he asked her how it happened that the bears did not devour her, "The bears?" she replied; "they are my best friends-they kept me warm."

The bear of the Pyrenees is of a gentle nature-he spares the weak, and is terrible only to those who dare to provoke him. He retires at the approach of winter into a cavern, and passes some

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months buried in a kind of lethargic slumber.

Might it not be possible that this woman, impelled by cold to enter into that frightful habitation, kept herself warm during the rigour of winter by participating in the beds of the bears, which she, to all appearance, never quitted, but for the purpose of catching fish in the torrents, or gathering the fruit of the pine tree in the neighbouring forest?

Nevertheless, torments still more piercing than any she had yet endured were reserved for this unfortunate female. She was conducted to Foix, that she might enjoy in that place such assistance as the public compassion might supply. It is very possible that, if she had been placed in a situation suitably chosen, and entrusted to the care of a person of feeling and good sense, the gloomy vapours of melancholy which obscured her reason might have been dissipated.

But this unfortunate creature was pursued by her sad destiny. At first she was disposed of in the hospital, from which she was after a few days withdrawn, on the pretence that she disturbed the order of the place, and was conducted to an old strong castle, which at present is used as a prison. This ha bitation, built on an enormous rock, detached from the other mountains, and which, rising rapidly from the bottom of a valley, elevated three large Gothic towers to an immense height, is well adapted to excite ideas of fright and terror. As soon as the wretched creature saw herself shut up in this place, dark despair took possession of her; the access of her madness returned again, and she never ceased to make the walls of her prison re-echo her miserable lamentations.

A hard-hearted jailor, upon whom the unfortunate had no stronger claim of right than the criminal, for the purpose of getting rid of the uneasiness which her cries excited, conceived and executed the project of causing her to descend into another prison, humid and dark, formed. by an excavation in the rock directly under one of the towers before-mentioned. He placed some water and coarse food before her, and no longer concerned himself about paying her any attention.

Returning, after some days, to her prison, or (to speak more correctly) to that fosse where he had the barbarity to bury her alive-her, whose misfortunes the bears, more compassionate perhaps than he, had respected-he found her life less.

Such

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SOME degree of interest has been exe Edipus Judaicus of Sir William Drummond; that interest has been increased, if not wholly caused, by the circumstance of its being printed for private distribution only: like the concealed science of the ancients, of which Sir W. is so fond, his work has derived importance from its obscurity; seen in the open day, the latter would, I believe, prove as harm less as the former was probably vague and unimportant.

I shall not enter into a controversy upon the principles of this work, but merely, as a literary curiosity, submit to your readers a brief epitome and abstract of a volume which will probably fall into but few of their hands.

It is a handsomely printed octavo voJume, of nearly five hundred pages. In a preface of twenty-two pages, the author unfolds the plan and intention of the work; that intention is, as he professes, to explain the Jewish Scriptures, and restore them to their original meaning; this meaning, he contends, must be figurative, because the literal sense is frequently absurd. The fact is, that the work is an attack upon the Jewish revelation, intending to prove, not merely that such a revelation never took place, but that it was never intended by the writers of the Pentateuch, &c. to be believed as having taken place. Those writings are, it seems, merely allegorical records of science, principally relative to astronomy, which, under the guise and outward form of historical narration, were perfectly understood by the learned, but mistook for that which they merely professed to be by the uninitiated of antiquity, and the whole of the Jewish and Christian world of modern times. To solve these difficulties, and explain the riddle which has so long been concealed from the ignorant multitude, Sir W. Drummond now comes forward, the Edipus Judaicus! the resolver of the Jewish enigma! the answerer and expounder of the Hebrew Sphinx!

"I pretend (says Sir W. D. preface,

page ii,) that the ancient Jews, like other nations of antiquity, had their esoteric (inward), and their exoteric (outward) doctrines; they concealed the former under innumerable types and symbols, the meaning of which is generally unknown among their descendants. It is the object of my book to explain the hidden sense of many passages in the Hebrew Scriptures.'

In another place he says "I recollearned in all the

leist that Moses was ana, and I expect to find traces of that wisdom in his works. The learned among the ancient Egyptians were pure theists, as Cudworth has proved. They were deeply skilled in the sciences; but they carefully concealed their mysterious learning under innumerable symbols and allegories. May we not look then for the same thing in the writings which are ascribed to the Jewish law-giver? It is what I have done, and I submit to the judgment of a few individuals, the result of my researches."- -xxii.

The body of the work consists of six dissertations, the subject of each of which is a certain portion of the Jewish Scriptures, adduced by the author in confirmation of his hypothesis, that those writings are not, as on the face of them they appear to be, the historical and other records of the Jewish people, incidentally referring to and describing a series of revelations from God to man, but that they contain in fact the scien tific and astronomical knowledge; the esoteric learning of that people. This mode of undermining the credit of the Jewish and Christian writings, is by no means a novel one; the idea would ap-. pear originally borrowed from the Edipus Egyptiacus, of the learned and laborious Kircher. Volney, in his "Ruins," regards Jesus as an emblem of the sun, and considers the writings of the New Testament as containing concealed records of the worship of that luminary; an equally celebrated French writer, Dupuis, in his Origine de tous les Cultes, considers the writings of both the Old and New Testament as merely allegorical, that the characters of neither of

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*The actual degree of publicity which the thing has attained, together with the affected privacy of which only encreases, nature of the attack on revelation, the instead of lessening the danger, by exciting a curiosity about the thing, which its intrinsic value would never produce, fully justifies the publicity here given.

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Sir W. Drummond's

them had a real existence, and that at once the twelve tribes, and the twelve apostles, existed only in the twelve signs of the zodiac. This, if I may so express myself, is the religious system of Sir W. Drummond, as promulgated in the Edipus Judaicus; and you will observe, that he adopts it in order to avoid what he considers the absurdities of the common system of belief; he disdains, like the vulgar, to be credulous; he only believes upon evidence, and has freed himself from the trammels of superstition.

The first dissertation professes to explain the 49th chapter of Genesis, containing Jacob's blessing of his twelve sons; this is deemed by the author to be wholly astronomical, even at this day; (he says) the three great stars in Orion, are called Jacob's staff; and the milky way is familiarly termed, Jacob's ladder. Jacob, in short, is an astrologer; and as "he lived in times when mankind were almost universally addicted to astrology, it was extremely natural that he should typify the future fortunes of his family, by allusions to the celestial bodies." The twelve sons of Jacob, we have seen, are the signs of the zodiac: the author goes on from the supposed allegorical words of Jacob, to discover the individual sign represented by each of the brethren; a few instances will suffice as a specimen of the book, and of the system.

"Reuben, thou art my first-born, &c. According to Aben Ezra, (says Sir W. Drummond,) the figure of a man was painted on the ensign of Reuben, and this man is supposed by Kircher to have been Aquarius. In fact, we find that Jacob calls Reuben his first-born, the beginning of his strength, &c. and these epithets apply very well to the sun in the commencement of his course, after he has passed the winter solstice. The sign of Aquarius is typified by a man with a pitcher, whence he pours forth water. Reuben is said to be unstable as water. It is then remarked, that he shall not excel, because he went up to his father's bed, and we are thus reminded that he had lain with Bilhah. The oriental astronomers, and, among others, Ulug Beig, still designate a remarkable asterism in the sign of Aquarius, by the name of Bula, or Bulha."

This may be taken not only as a fair, but a favourable specimen of the system and the mode of argument of the author; the sign Cancer is attributed to Issacher, because he is called a strong ass; and "in Cancer, (says Dupuis) we find some MONTHLY MAG. No. 254.

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stars called les ánes." Zebulon is Sagittarius, because it is said, his border shall be upon Zidon; and the Hebrew tsidon may be rendered the great hunter. Dan is the Scorpion, for it is declared, he shall be a serpent by the way; and the head of the scorpion's ascending with the heels of the constellation Centaur is supposed typified by the words, he biteth the horses heels.

Sir W. Drummond appears to have collected together, with considerable industry, all the ancient planispheres and zodiacs which have come down to us; he has also obtained vocabularies of the Hebrew, the Chaldaic, the Syriac, and other ancient languages. With these materials in the one hand, he takes the 49th chapter of Genesis in the other, and seeks, in some one of the languages, for an astronomical sense to the words of the Jewish historian; in some instances he has been successful, or rather, I should say, ingenious; content, however, with believing these things himself, he very properly does not wish to force them upon others, candidly observing, "the reader will consider these things, and then judge for himself."

Briefly as to the subjects of the remaining dissertations. The second discusses the relation in the 14th chapter of Genesis, of the wars of the nations of Canaan, previous to the occupation by the Jews. This Sir W. regards as referring to the errors and consequent re formation of the calendar. The Egyp tians calculated only 360 days to the solar year; the five days omitted are the five rebel kings of the Jewish allegory; the four kings who oppose them are the four seasons, or compleat year. The troubles and the combats which are related, typify the confusion, and the encounters among the heavenly bodies arising from this miscalculation. is the moon; Abraham the sun; and Chedorlaomer, King of Elam, is the ecliptic, because his name has been rendered by Jonathan, in his Targum, "This is the ligament revolving itself round the sheaves;" and Sir W. Drummond "thinks it highly probable, that the signs of the zodiac were compared with corn bound with sheaves."

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The third dissertation examines the Tabernacle and the Temple, in the “lintels, curtains, fringes, rings, tongs, tables, dishes, bowls, spoons, and candlesticks," of which Sir W. Drummond discovers scientific knowledge and astronomical allusion. 2 U

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The fourth dissertation is taken up with the supposed entrance of the Isra. elites into the land of Canaan, as related in the book of Joshua. Sir W. D. discovers in this book a confutation of the doctrine of Isabaism, or the worship of the stars, and other errors common among the Egyptians.

The fifth is a sketch of a commentary on the book of Judges." Samson is the sun; "he had (it appears) seven locks, and these answer, in number at least, to the seven planets;" towards the end, Sir W. adds, "As I write for scholars, hints are sufficient; and therefore I leave them to fill up the canvass, where my sketches are unfinished."

The sixth is "a short dissertation concerning the Paschal Lamb," which is to be "considered as a memorial of the transit, (or passover,) of the equinoxial sun, from the sign of the bull to that of the ram, or lamb."

You have here, Sir, a brief abstract, or rather perhaps detached specimens of a very learned and elaborate performance; whether yourself or your readers are likely to be convinced by it, and to become converts to the faith, I cannot of course determine; for my own part, like Sir W. Drummond, I am an avowed and strong enemy to a blind credulity in inatters of religious faith. The question between him and his opponents, the believers in the literal acceptation of the Scriptures, simply is, which system is the most probable? On which side does the evidence rest; for the literal acceptation, as generally received; or the figurative rendering, as maintained in the Edipus Judaicus? To aid in solving this question, it might be well to remember, that bigotry, fanaticism, and superstition, are by no means necessarily confined to the believer in revelation,

There are few things more interesting to the observing mind, than the various modes of acceptation in which the Scrip

tures have been regarded: the fanatic will tell you, they are holy and infallible, the revealed word of God; the sceptic, that they are mere imposture, fabricated by designing individuals; and both will join sometimes, though from different motives, in conferring on them a figu rative meaning. It would be unbecoming in me to fill your Magazine with the ological discussion; as a mere matter, however, of philosophical speculation, permit me to suggest an idea with regard to the nature of the Scriptures, which, although consistent with plain common sense, and lying on the very surface of the matter, appears either known to few, or at least very generally disregarded. The Scriptures then, I would say, are not a revelation, written by the finger of God, but the history of a revelation composed by fallible men. That the Deity empowered Moses to deliver the children of Israel from their captivity, I firmly believe; but that the historical records of the Jewish people, in which that fact among others is mentioned, should be. the work of inspiration, by no means necessarily follows. Paul was called to teach the sublime and enlightened religion of Jesus to the gentile world; but when certain errors in the church of Corinth called for those valuable letters, (epistles) which have come down to us, plain common sense, without the aid of in. spiration, was sufficient for their correction. Not one of the many histories, poems, and other books, which form our "bible," (with exception to the book of Revelations,) lays any claim to inspira tion; why then should we gratuitously confer it on them?

Should this abstract of the Edipus Judaicus, with the few remarks affixed to it, prove interesting to your readers, I shall be amply repaid the trouble of making them.. March 14, 1814,

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MEMOIRS AND REMAINS OF EMINENT PERSONS.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ORIGINAL LETTERS between DR. EDWARD YOUNG, Author of Night Thoughts, and MR. SAMUEL RICHARDSON, Author of Clarissa, Grandison, &c.

(Continued from Page 142 of the present Volume.)

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One part of the time I could have made the excursion, then I must needs wait for other people. I have a very great fault in being will-less. But I will begin, however late, to be will-full, and to snatch

my

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