were, were moveable. The windows of the Oratory of Daniel' feem to have been quite open to view, when the fhutters were removed, fince Daniel chofe to make his teftimony to the exclusive worship of God, neglected by others, as public as might be, whereas the action would have been a good deal concealed by thick-worked lattices.

It may not be improper to add, that the word that expreffes thofe very small windows is used by Solomon in Ecclef. xii, where he compares the human body to an house, and, as it fhould feem, to a palace with guards, &c. Confequently the windows of the apartments of the women that opened outward, were in those days wont to be very small. The quality of Jezebel, and her circumstances, at that time, were very particular, and will not afford any proof of the contrary of what I have been now observing.

OBSERVATION XXXII.

The prophet Zephaniah gives us to underftand three things, by one fhort paffage in his book of facred predictions: the one, that the pillars of his time were wont to have capitals; that when the buildings to which they belonged were reduced to defolation, birds not unfrequently took poffeffion of thefe

capitals; and that thofe capitals he was acquainted with refembled a pomegranate.

The paffage I refer to is in the 2d ch. the 14th ver. "The flocks fhall lie down in "the midft of her, all the beafts of the "nations; both the cormorant and the bit"tern fhall lodge in the upper lintels of "it;" or, according to the marginal reading, the " knops or chapiters."

The word tranflated upper lintels, and knops or chapiters, fignifies pomegranates, and shows what the shape of the capitals of pillars were with which Zephaniah was acquainted. Some of the very ancient Egyptian and Persian capitals, that remain to this time, are of very odd and fantastic shapes; the Jewish style of architecture feems to have been of a chafter and more fimple nature in this point. The capitals of the two pillars in the porch of the Temple were, probably, of the fame shape of a pomegranate.

As to the other circumftance, birds lodg ing on the capitals of forfaken temples and palaces, I would fet down a remark of Sir John Chardin here, who, defcribing the magnificent pillars that he found at Perfe polis, tells us, "The ftorks (birds refpected by the Perfians) make their nefts on the top of these columns, with great boldnefs, and in no danger of being difpof"feffed'.

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What the two Hebrew words precifely fignify, which we tranflate the cormorant and the bittern, is not agreed upon among the learned; probably neither of them means the ftork, which was found at Perfepolis to have taken up it's abode in such places; other birds may have a like turn: but it muft make a reader fmile, that attends to the circumftance mentioned by Zephaniah', to find the venerable Bishops, of Queen Elizabeth's time, tranflating the fecond of these two words otters, in If. xiv. 23; which they render ftorkes in If. xxxiv. 11; and owles in Zephaniah ii. 14. How unhappy that a word that occurs but three times in the Hebrew Bibles, fhould be tranflated by three different words, and that one of them should be otters! This is, however, as plaufible a way of rendering this word, as their's who tranflate it bedge-bog.

Which is done by the learned Dr. Shaw', on the account of the refemblance between the Arabic word, which fignifies hedge-bog, and the fecond of these Hebrew words; which was what probably induced the Septuagint to tranflate it after this manner. Had the

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'Of taking up their abode on the tops of pillars.

"The near analogy alfo betwixt kunfood, the Arabic name of the hedge-hog, (which is here very common,) " and the Hebrew Top kephôde, (If. 34. 11, &c.) should "induce us to take it for that quadruped, according to the LXX xvos, rather than for the bittern, as we translate "it." P. 176.

Doctor

Doctor recollected that Zephaniah describes them as choosing their abode on the top of pillars, he might have been of a different opinion, as though a likeness in a modern name to one of ancient times deferves confideration, it is not equally decifive with cha racters of description derived from natural history.

But though it appears to mean a bird, it doth not follow that the prophet intended a bittern,

OBSERVATION XXXIII.

Most people that read the fucceeding claufe of that paffage of Zephaniah, which I cited under the last Obfervation, have been ready, I apprehend, to understand the next words as expreffive of the melancholy interruption of the filence that at other times reigns in defolated cities, by the doleful noises made by wild creatures that refort thither: "Their "voice" (or rather "a voice) fhall fing in "the windows;" but a paffage in le Bruyn's defcription of Perfepolis makes this doubtful.

"I found alfo," fays this traveller, in this place, "befides the birds I have already

"mentioned', four or five forts of small birds,

"Cranes, ftorks, ducks, and herons of various forts; "partridges, fnipes, quails, pigeons, fparrowhawks, and "above all crows, with which all Perfia is filled." Tome 4. p. 302.

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"who keep conftantly in these ruins and the (adjoining) mountain, and who make the "moft agreeable warbling in the world. The

finging of the largest approaches very near "to that of the nightingale, Some of them "are almost all black; others have the head " and body spotted, of the fize of a swallow; "others are smaller and of different colours, yellowish, grey, and quite white, shaped "like a chaffinch'."

Babylon and Nineveh were both to be mado defolate, but their circumstances might be, and, according to the predictions of the prophets, actually were to be very different. Babylon was to be never inhabited, no Arabian was to pitch his tent there, nor shepherds make their fold there, but wild beasts of the defert were to lie there, and their houfes to be filled with doleful creatures, If. xiii. 20, 21, But flocks were to lie down in Nineveh, and the beafts of the neighbouring people, and the voice of finging be beard from the windows, or boles of it's ruinated palaces. Zeph. ii. 14.

These are different, and, in fome refpects, oppofite descriptions; Eastern flocks fuppofe fongs and inftruments of mufic would be heard in Nineveh; while no fhepherd should ever appear in the ruins of Babylon. In like manner, instead of the doleful creatures of the laft, the warbling of birds might be intended, in Zephaniah's account of Nineveh, equally

• P. 360.

pleafing