No. 35.-1. 10. They mourned with a great and very sore lamentation.] This is exactly the genius of the people of Asia, especially of the women. Their sentiments of joy or grief are properly transports, and their transports are ungoverned, excessive, and outrageous. When any one returns from a long journey, or dies, his family burst into cries that may be heard twenty doors off; and this is renewed at different times, and continues many days, according to the vigour of the passion. Especially are these cries long in the case of death, and frightful, for their mourning is right down despair, and an image of hell. I was lodged, in the year 1676, at Ispahan, near the royal square; the mistress of the next house to mine died at that time; the moment she expired, all the family, to the number of twenty-five or thirty people, set up such a furious cry, that I was quite startled, and was above two hours before I could recover myself. These cries continue a long time, then cease all at once; they begin again as suddenly, at day break, and in concert. It is this suddenness which is so terrifying, together with a greater shriliness and loudness than one would easily imagine. This enraged kind of mourning continued forty days, not equally violent, but with diminution from day to day. The longest and most violent acts were when they washed the body, when they perfumed it, when they carried it out to be interred, at making the inventory, and when they divided the effects. You are not to suppose that those, who were ready to split their throats with crying out, wept as much; the greatest part of them did not shed a single tear through the whole tragedy.

CHARDIN in Harmer, vol. ii. p. 136.

No. 36.-1.26. So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.] When Joseph died he was not only

embalmed, but put into a coffin. This was an honour appropriated to persons of distinction, coffins not being universally used in Egypt. Maillet, speaking of the Egyptian repositories of the dead, having given an account of several niches that are found there, says, "it must not be imagined, that the bodies deposited in these gloomy apartments were all enclosed in chests, and placed in niches; the greatest part were simply embalmed and swathed after that manner that every one hath some notion of; after which they laid them one by the side of another without any ceremony: some were even put into these tombs without any embalming at all, or such a slight one, that there remains nothing of them in the linen in which they were wrapped but the bones, and those half rotten." (Letter vii. p. 281.) Antique coffins of stone, and sycamore wood, are still to be seen in Egypt. It is said that some were formerly made of a kind of pasteboard, formed by folding and glewing cloth together a great number of times; these were curiously plaistered and painted with hierogly'phics. THEVENOT, part i. p. 137.

No. 37.-EXODUS vii. 19.

Vessels of stone.

THE water of the Nile is very thick and muddy, and it is purified either by a paste made of almonds, or by filtrating it through pots of white earth; the possession of one of these pots is thought a great happiness. Thevenot, (part i. p. 245.) May not the meaning of this passage be, that the water of the Nile should not only look red and nauseous like blood in the river, but in their vessels too when taken up in small quantities, and that no method whatever of purifying it should be effectual? HARMER, vol. ii. p. 298.

No. 38.-ix. 8. And the Lord said unto Moses and unto Aaron, take to you handfuls of ashes of the furnace, and let Moses sprinkle them towards the heaven in the sight of Pharaoh.] "It is said, that when this evil was to be brought upon the Egyptians, Aaron and Moses were ordered to take ashes of the furnace, and Moses was to scatter them up towards heaven, that they might be wafted over the face of the country. This mandate was very determinate, and to the last degree significant. The ashes were to be taken from that fiery furnace, which in the scriptures was used as a type of the Israelites slavery, and of all the cruelty which they experienced in Egypt. The process has still a farther allusion to an idolatrous and cruel rite, which was common among the Egyptians, and to which it is opposed as a contrast. They had several cities styled Typhonian, such as Heliopolis, Idithyia, Abarei, and Busiris; in these, at particular seasons, they sacrificed men. The objects thus destined were persons of bright hair and a particular complexion, such as were seldom to be found

amongst the native Egyptians. Hence we may infer that they were foreigners; and it is probable, that while the Israelites resided in Egypt, they were chosen from their body. They were burnt alive upon an high altar, and thus sacrificed for the good of the people. At the close of the sacrifice the priests gathered together the ashes of these victims, and scattered them upwards in the air; I presume with this view, that where any atom of this 'dust was wafted, a blessing might be entailed. The like was done by Moses with the ashes of the fiery furnace,but with a different intention; they were scattered abroad, that where any the smallest portion alighted, it might prove a plague and a curse to this ungrateful, cruel, and infatuated people. Thus there was a designed contrast in these workings of providence, an apparent opposition to the superstition of the times.”

BRYANT on the Plagues of Egypt, p. 116.

No. 39. xiv. 29. The waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left.] Diodorus Siculus relates that the Ichthyophagi, who lived near the Red Sea, had a tradition handed down to them through a long line of ancestors, that the whole bay was once laid bare to the very bottom, the waters retiring to the opposite shore, and that they afterwards returned to their accustomed channel with a most tremendous revulsion. (Bib. Hist. lib. iii. p. 174.) Even to this day the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of Corondel preserve the remembrance of a mighty army having been once drowned in the bay, which Ptolemy calls Clysma. (SHAW's Travels, p. 349.) The very country where the event is said to have happened in some degree bears testimony to the accuracy of the Mosaical narrative. The scriptural Etham is still called Etti; the wilderness of Shur, the mountain of Sinai, and the country of Paran, are still known by the same names. (NIEBUHR's Travels, vol. i. p. 189, 191.)

Marah, Elath, and Midian are still familiar to the ears of the Arabs. The grove of Elim yet remains, and its twelve fountains have neither increased nor diminished in number since the days of Moses.

BRYANT on the Plagues of Egypt, p. 404, 410.

No. 40.-xv. 20. And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.] Lady M. W. Montague, speaking of the eastern dances, says, “Their manner is certainly the same that Diana is said to have danced on the banks of Eurotas. The great lady still leads the dance, and is followed by a troop of young girls, who imitate her steps, and, if she sings, make up the chorus. The tunes are extremely gay and lively, yet with something in them wonderfully soft. Their steps are varied according to the pleasure of her that leads the dance, but always in exact time, and infinitely more agreeable than any of our dances." (Letters, vol. ii. p. 45.) This gives us a different apprehension of the meaning of these words than we should otherwise form. Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her, with timbrels and dances. She led the dance, and they imitated her steps, which were not conducted by a set well known form, but extemporaneous. Probably David did not dance alone before the Lord when the ark was removed, but led the dance in the same authoritative kind of way. (2 Sam. vi. 14. Judges xi. 24. 1 Sam. xviii. 6.)

HARMER, vol. ii. p. 114.

No. 41.-xvii. 1. Rephidim.] "After we had descended, with no small difficulty, the western side of Mount Sinai, we come into the other plain that is formed by it, which is Rephidim. Here we still see that extra