was the same Ceres that was worshipped in Greece. All the distinguished Roman authors speak of these rites, and in terms of profound respect. Horace denounces the wretch who should attempt to reveal the secrets of these rites; Virgil mentions these mysteries with great respect; and Cicero alludes to them with a greater reverence than either of the poets we have named. Both the Greeks and Romans punished any insult offered to these mysteries with the most persevering vindictiveness. Alcibiades was charged with insulting these religious rights; and although the proof of his offence was quite doubtful, yet he suffered for it for years in exile and misery; and it must be allowed that he was the most popular man of his age.

These mysteries were continued until some time after the days of Constantine, when they were prohibited. Sad stories have been conjured up to give importance to the Egyptian mysteries, but no one has attempted to throw any dark shade over those of Greece or Rome. The philosopher will readily believe that there was nothing supernatural in any of their mysteries; and all may set it down as a fact, that among nemselves,-I speak of those initiated,-they never pretended to any thing like a commerce with the inhabitants of the invisible world. They unquestionably often assumed to possess wondrous powers and great secrets; but this was only a means of keeping knowledge from becoming too common; and this was an error which lasted for ages, even down to our times.

Viewed by the light of a clear understanding, I believe all the marvellous deeds of the magicians, the astrologers, the soothsayers, the Pithia, and the whole tribe of these mystery-dealing beings, vanish into

things, if not easily explained, yet certainly to be traced out. Incantations, charms, and talismans, which thicken on every page of early history, are dissolved before the torch of reason, and a clear conscience.

)

The Sibylline Oracles of Rome had once great influence among the people, and many honest men have now a belief that these oracles foretold the coming of our Saviour; but the wise part of our theologians have long since given up this fancy, for it can hardly be called a belief. The pastoral from Virgil, which we have selected, contains the supposed prophecy. The following is as fair an account of it as we have seen.

"The Sibylline Oracles having received information from the Jews, that a child was to be born, who should be the Saviour of the world, and to whom nations and empires should bow with submission, pretended to foretell that this event would occur in the year of Rome 714, after the peace concluded between Augustus and Antony. Virgil viewing this prophecy with the vivid imagination of a poet, and willing to flatter the ambition of his patron, composed his celebrated Eclogue, entitled Pollio, in which he supposes the child, who was thus to unite mankind and restore the golden age, to be the infant with which Octavia, wife to Antony, and half-sister to Augustus, was then pregnant by her former husband Marcellus. In this production the consul Pollio, Octavia, and even the unborn infant, are flattered with his usual delicacy; and the rival Triumviri, though a short time before, in open hostility, have the honor of equally sharing the poet's applause.

While Pollio, who seems to have been the most accomplished man of his age, and is celebrated as a poet, soldier, orator, and historian, was engaged in an expe

dition against the Parthini, whom he subdued, Virgil addressed to him his Pharmaceutria, one of the most beautiful of all his Eclogues, and in imitation of a poem of the same name by his favourite author Theocritus. This production is the more valuable, as it has handed down to posterity the superstitious rites of the Romans, and the heathen notions of enchantment. Virgil himself seems to have been conscious of the beauty of his subject, and the dignity of the person whom he was addressing, and accordingly has given us, by the fertility of his genius and the brilliancy of his imagination, some of the most sublime images that are to be found in any of the writings of antiquity."

Some of the Christian forefathers have stated, that on the eve of the birth of our Saviour, all the oracles of the heathen world ceased. It is certain that the Delphic oracles grew into disrepute about this time; but the Eleusinian mysteries, and those of the Bona Dea, were kept up much longer. Milton adopted the belief of the early fathers of the church, and has expressed his poetical opinion, in an ode upon the subject of the silence of the oracles, which is full of deep interest and exquisite beauties. There is a solemn reverence due to his opinions when they are given on great points of faith; for if ever there was a mind God had filled with light and inspiration without the gift of prophecy, it was that of John Milton. But there is no more reason to think that he was convinced of this as a fact, than that he believed all the incidents in his Paradise Lost.

"The oracles are dumb,

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.

Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathed spell,

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

The lonely mountains o'er
And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale,

Edged with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent:

With flower-inwoven tresses torn,

The Nymphs, in twilight shade of tangled thickets,

mourn.

In consecrated earth

And on the holy hearth,

The Lares and Lemures moan with midnight plaint; In urns and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.

Peor and Baalim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-battered god of Palestine ;
And mooned Ashtaroth,

Heaven's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers holy shrine;

The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn,

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz

mourn.

And sullen Moloch, fled,

Hath left in shadows dread

His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbals' ring

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue:
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis haste.

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove or green,

Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud:

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest,

Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud In vain with timbrelled anthems dark

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark.

The

He feels from Judah's land

The dreaded Infant's hand,

rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside,

Longer dare abide,

Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: Our babe, to show his Godhead true,

Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew. }

So when the sun in bed,
Curtained with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale

Troop to th' infernal jail,

Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave;