and however this truth may be suspected or denied, or explained away by modern sages, we find that those of antiquity were fully persuaded of its reality. We need only refer to their golden ages, in order to be convinced of this. The Chevalier Ramsay (Travels of Cyrus, p. 251,) says, that the mythology of the Persians, Egyptians, and Greeks is quite consonant with the scriptural history here; for Zoroaster spoke of the empire of Aromasdes before the rebellion of Arimanus, (the evil principle,) as of a state in which all spirits were happy and perfect. In Egypt, the religion of Hermes represents the reign of Osiris, before the monster Typhon broke through the mundane egg, as a state exempt from miseries and passions.' The golden age was also a state of simplicity and innocence. 'Each nation,' he adds, very acutely, has formed an idea of this primitive world according to its own genius: the astronomic magi placed it in the stars; the philosophic Egyptians fancied it a republic of sages; the Greeks, who delighted in rural scenes, have described it as a country of shepherds.'

The golden age of Greece was a glorious past period, when a part of the earth was governed by Saturn, and when nothing was seen but happiness and tranquillity, when all men were at peace with each other, when sickness and death were unknown, and when order, beneficence, and virtue pervaded the land.

That such a period can ever have passed since the fall of man, is totally impossible; the tradition must, therefore, have been derived from a previous era.

I do not mean to deny that some wise and excellent monarch may, at some time, have reigned in Italy or

elsewhere, whose good government may have brought the people to that orderly and outwardly decent state of morals, in which our land flourished in the time of our glorious Alfred, and which poor Ireland enjoyed, in the days of the pilgrim lady, with her white staff and her golden ring.

Be this as it may, the first idea of a golden age cannot have been thence derived; for it is represented as a time when the land was governed by a god, and he the most ancient of the gods, Aromasdes, Osiris, or Saturn. Surely this is a tradition of that perfect and happy time when the divine power was the only known authority, previous to the dominion of sin over man, or man's dominion over his fellows.

The attempts, then, of some among the learned, (wise in the wisdom of the world, but not possessing much divine knowledge,) to expunge altogether, or to allegorize away the fall of Satan, and the paradisaical state of man, are as gratuitous as they are futile; for if that dazzling catastrophe in heaven, and this only beauteous part of our world's history, were known facts of antiquity, preserved by tradition among the heathen nations, (which I fully believe them to have been,) it is somewhat too late in the day now to attempt their expungation from the Bible, on the plea of their being Judaical fictions or allegories of the rabbins. The ancient Asiatics and Egyptians had them in possession, and distorted them to suit their own taste, long ere a Jewish rabbin or his Talmud existed, or indeed before the Jews were a nation at all.

Let us never suspect the minutest particle of scripture history, as being an interpolation, until we have fully tried the foundation whereon it rests, and have

seen whether those who impugn it build indeed upon truth, or only upon modern sceptical ignorance, which calls itself the intellect of our enlightened days.'

X. Q.

QUIETLY AT HOME.

MINE be the tranquil days that glide,
Without a wish to roam,

Whilst sitting at our loved fireside,
So quietly at home!

And mine the converse calm and sweet,
The looks so fondly given,

As round our household board we meet,
In the long hours of even!

And mine from youth to age, among
The loved ones thus to hold

Our merry meetings whilst we're young,
And cheerful when we're old!

And mine the smiles whose gentle powers
Love's daily task repay

Of homely duties, whilst the hours

In gladness pass away!

And mine with kindred hearts to share,
As morn and evening come,

With joyful hope, our household prayer,
So quietly at home!

M. A. S. Barber.

VISIT TO A CONVENT.

MY DEAR MADAM,

'NULLA PAX cum Roma,' is your motto. Would that England, having once adopted it as her national protest, had not now become ashamed of it; for then, perhaps, Protestants might not have been led to speak and write so erroneously about the " mystery of iniquity." I have just read a paper in your Magazine, called, 'A Visit to a Convent in Languedoc, in 1830.' I there find a Protestant lady holding a conversation with a Popish priest, on the subject of their respective creeds. The priest states that his must be the true church, being the earliest, being that pure church which was derived from the apostles themselves, and founded on the word of God. Now, if the priest could establish those three points as to Popery, namely, that it is the earliest church, that it is a pure church, that it is founded on the word of God, I would call upon Protestants at once to lay down their protest, and embrace it; since I should need no further evidence that it is the church of Christ. But how does the lady meet the statement of this priest? 'Miss Hagreed to the truth of his religion being founded on the word of God, but, she added, your church has widely strayed from that source; as a flowing stream issues from a rock, pure and undefiled,

till it meets on its way with much extraneous matter, with which it becomes impregnated, all its original clearness is gone; and being impossible to decompose it, the whole must be rejected, and we must return to the source' (what source?) to draw from thence the unmingled stream.'

We have here the admission, that his religion, not hers-Popery, not Christianity, is founded on the word of God; that it was once pure and undefiled, till it met with extraneous matter in its wanderings from its original source-the word of God! Thus it appears that we have only to disencumber Popery of corruptions foreign and extraneous to itself, (which the writer seems to think impossible, but which cannot be impossible, if its original source be the word of God,) and then it comes forth again, as it originally presented itself, founded on his eternal truth.'

The metaphor in which the view of the writer is clothed is somewhat obscure, but the admission is pregnant with error. 'Christianity,' she might have said, ' is founded on the word of God, it issued from a rock, pure and undefiled, till it met with extraneous matter, with which it became clouded and encumbered, till its original clearness seemed lost; but, like the blue waters which flow into the Geneva lake, and seem so mingled with it, as to have lost their native hue, and yet issue forth in all their distinctness on the other side, the living water of God's eternal truth separating itself from the dead counterfeit the stagnant pool of papal superstition, flows on in its heavenly course.' Popery, on the other hand, is founded on the lie " of the father of lies; " she had her source in hell. Her master opened the stream of her antichristian blasphemies, and sent it forth upon