Page images
PDF
EPUB

carried on very extensively in the East, in the Isles of France and Bourbon.

By the English laws, any British subject, guilty of this trade in any part of the globe, may be brought to trial as a felon before any competent court.

re

All these regulations originate various plans for ameliorating the condition of slaves already in the Colonies; and one very important part of these measures, has been the introduction of the Bill by Mr. Wilberforce for the Registry of Slaves, which would effectually check their being smuggled. It has been much misrepresented, and therefore misconceived in the Islands, and some insurrections have been falsely ascribed to the reports of the effect of this Bill. The capacity of native Africans for all the comforts and civilizations of life, and all the manual improvements of art, are fully proved by by those who have been lieved from their chains on board slave-ships captured and carried into Sierra Leone, where, from the lowest extremity of wretchedness and misery, they have, in a few months, become conversant with the means of tillage, masonry, shingle making, sawing, building, and the cultivation of laud; and to these have been happily subjoined the sale of vegetables at the market of Freetown, and regular marriage for life. They appear to be as happy, and areas comfortably situated, and are as likely to rise in the Colony, as any class of persons in it. This colony, in 1814, consisted of nearly 6000 souls, amongst whom education on the general system, and vaccination, have happily diffused their mutual blessings; and to these a coin of copper has been added from England, Yours, &c.

T

(To be continued.)

A. H.

Observations relating to the
TOWER OF BABEL, &c.
Princes Street,

Mr. URBAN, Cavendish Square. HE separation of the first families of the world, and their division into the different nations, which, by a gradual increase in population, have, in the course of years, overspread the surface of the earth, if it be not universally acknowledged, is generally attributed to the confusion of tongues at the building of the Tower of Babel; an event, for the singular cause that

occasioned it, and the immediate consequences thereby induced to afterages, has hardly its parallel in the modern or ancient history of mankind.

The accounts given by Moses are now the only documents of known authenticity, or from which any certain inferences can be drawn. From these we have traditions that a city and tower of extraordinary dimensions were contrived, and partly completed by the sons of Noah after the flood, who, at the death of that second Adam, had abandoned the mountain Ararat*, and the adjoining country, in quest of regions more novel, or countries more fertile. Having arrived at the plain of Shinaar, they determined upon the erection of a city and tower, whose top, while it approached the heavens, might serve as a land-mark or signal to their families, -as a preservative against their dispersion, and not as a monument that was to perpetuate their name to posterity. But to throw a proper light upon this subject, or indeed upon any not easily demonstrated, facts must be quoted and opinions recited. The introduction, therefore, in this place, of portious of the scriptural writings cannot be avoided, especially as they form the most sublime specimens of historical composition. Here we read "that one man said to another, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower," &c. &c. "lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth." This passage has been variously but ambiguously translated into different languages. The Greek and Latin make it "let us acquire a name before we be scattered," &c.; so that, had this translation been literally true, mankind must have known and calculated upon their fature dispersion over the globe. Now the Hebrew, in conjunction with the Arabic, have made it simply "lest we be scattered, &c." with a total omission of the word "before." Jackson, on Chronological Antiquities, (to whose book I am partly indebted for the above,) maintains that the word 'name' has been misinterpreted-that

* Ararat, a mountain in the province of Armenia, where the ark first rested after the deluge. A learned writer, Bryant, on Ancient Mythology, has asserted "that Armenia was thus designated from Armen or Har men; and that Ararat is a compound of Ar-arat, signifying the mountain of descent."

it probably expressed nothing more than "signal." The analogy, too, between the meaning of each word becomes obvious to our senses from the utility of a lofty tower to men, who were necessitated by their avocations to journey far from the city in the extensive flat that bounded all its sides. Whatever was their intention in building it, or for what purposes it was used, is immaterial, since God, who plainly saw that the population of the earth must have been much retarded by the undertaking, cut short their labours, which they endeavoured to facilitate by employing bricks and bitumen*, instead of mortar and stone, by confounding the common language of the builders, and rendering them unintelligible to each other. Though the natural tie that had hitherto united mankind into one body, was thus dissolved, and their general dispersion shortly ensued, yet it is not unlikely that the city and tower now called Babel + still survived the shock of God's displeasure, and became peopled by one particular family from the aggregate number of those who were its builders or projectors. For it is related that Nimrod, the most famous hunter of his day, and the first king of the sons of Noah after the flood, united under his sway the four kingdoms of Babel, Erech, Acced, and Calneh. Both from the similarity which the name of Babel bears to that of Babylon, and other coincidences in favour of this hypothesis, it is not perhaps erroneously imagined that Babylon, changed only in name, in magnitude, and opulence, wasno other than the identical city of Babel, that gave rise to that wonderful event, the dispersion, by which the whole aspect of human nature became in a measure perverted, and even at this distant period is presented to our notice as one of the most great and awful phenomena of ancient times. In this city, once so celebrated for the magni

ficence of its buildings, and the wealth of its kings, yet justly censured by God and man for the iniquitous state of its inhabitants, formerly stood the temple of Belus, " a solid tower built of brick and bitumen, and considered as the same with that of Babel. It consisted of eight square towers with winding stairs on the outside, that gave it the appearance of a square pyramid." In this temple the idolatrous sons of men offered up daily adoration to their favourite god Belus, better known in Scripture by the appellation of Baal. Here also a pure virgin, selected from among the most modest of Babylonian women, was sacrificed every night to the lascivious desires of abominable priests, under a pretext, on their part, and a belief on that of the victim, that the god himself honoured her with his embraces. The name of Belus seems to have been derived from the sun, which, in the Assyrian language, signifies Bel. By some he is accounted the son of the Osiris of the Egyptians. But the most probable supposition is, that he was the son of Nimrod, and succeeded that monarch on the throne of Babylon. Astronomy is said to have been invented by this personage; but the Chaldees have long been esteemed as the most early cultivators of that art. The ignorance of the present age with respect to the identical site or situation of Babylon, is the more remarkable, if we reflect upon its former greatness and extent. All vestiges of this vast metropolis of the ancient world are now involved in as great obscurity as the gloom pervading the desert, which is said to bave sustained both the weight of its vices and its walls. "The greatness of this place," says Lempriere, "was so reduced in succeeding ages, that in the time of Pliny, it was almost a desolate wilderness, and at present the place where it stood is unknown to travellers. The following prophecy

* Bitumen is a pitchy substance exuding from the earth in the country round Babylon; and, according to Herodotus, was procured in vast quantities from the river Is, a branch of the Euphrates. The Hindoos possessed a salt extracted from it-an important article in their Pharmacopeia. It was sold in every village, and used by this class of people as an infallible specific. Henderson on Hindoo Physick.

↑ The most probable signification of Babel implies confusion, which is indeed the literal meaning; but a modern writer (Jones on Language) has given the following singular etymology of the word. Its derivation, he says, is Ba-bi-el, beings calling baa, or sheep; baa expresses an earthly animal.

Dr. Adams's Summary of Geography and History.

[ocr errors]

of

1

of Isaiah has therefore been wonderfully fulfilled; Isaiah xiii. v. 19.

1. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaidees excel. lency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

2. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their folds there.

3. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.

4. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant places, and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged."

Thus was Babylon, the most renowned and opulent city of ancient times, destroyed at once "from off the face of the Earth," so that not one glimpse of its former greatness remains, but what history has recorded; nor one ruin to point out that it ever held a place in the vocabulary of cities. Together with it, no doubt, have been lost to futurity, documents which might possibly have illustrated the complex accounts relating to the tower of Babel and coucomitant city. There is, however, a general concurrence of opinion among men, that the languages of the earth, as now spoken, were derived from one matrix; and the narrative of Moses, Genesis xi. v. 4. where every region is said to have been " of one lip or mode of speech," is an obvious confirmation that supposes it. This, in addition to the present wellknown fact, that various languages, bearing an affinity to each other, either in pronunciation, derivation, or expression, are spoken among many races of mankind; and that new languages, evidently, modelled out of the old ones, are continually arising, and superseding the most ancient, is another coincidence plainly evincing that all languages must have sprung from some source primitive in itselt, and common at one period to all the world. Yet bishop Newton has expressed himself of a contrary opinion, by asserting "that if every language was derived from one and the same source, the old names, or something like them, would certainly have been retained, whereas the total difference, even of the most common things,

shews that different languages must have sprung from different sources. "Bread," he continues, "is lechem in Hebrew, artos in Greek, panis in Latin, and bara in Welsh." But Mr. Kett, author of a well-written book intituled "Elements of General Knowledge, &c." has demonstrated, by numerous examples, that in all languages something exists delineating their ancient alliance, and depicting their present similarity to each other. I deduce one example from many, and as the opinions of both writers may be thought equally plausible, the decision of the reader himself may possibly furnish the most satisfactory conclusion. According to the latter of these two authors, the word sack has undergone little variation in speech. It is st in Hebrew, saccos Greek, saccus Latin, sack Teutonic, Gaelic, and Welsh, sacco Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, and sac French.

t

To the confusion at the Tower of Babel we are certainly indebted for those languages now subsisting among mankind; and though the opinion of divines may be accounted futile, who have imagined that a great number of languages, radically different, owed a miracutous origin to that event, yet it is more than probable that, as one mode of speech was common to all in the earliest epochs, the same language has been gradually converted, by the lapse of years, the vicissitudes of ages, together with the varying customs of succeeding generations, into those extensive varieties every where apparent.

What was the primitive language, is neither communicated to posterity by the sacred historians, nor satisfactorily ascertained by those of afterages. But * "from treaties of war and peace between the Hebrews and other nations, all conducted in language nearly the same," it may be inferred, that the language of that people predominated among mankind for many yearsafter the confusion, aud might have been the original one of the new world.

As man is a social animal, fond as he is capable of joining the society of his fellow creatures with the arts and comforts of a domestic life, God of his infinite wisdom soon discovered an

* Bryant's Analysis of Ancient Mythology.

effective

effective expedient to ensure their dispersion over the earth, and repair the damages it had lately sustained from the world of waters that overwhelmed it. This expedient by many, and perhaps by the majority of mankind, is supposed to have been no other than the confounding of tougues at the building of Babel. Proofs, however, we have none, which positively affirm either with satisfaction to our own judgments, or in concurrence with scriptural narrative, that the confined term expressing only the builders of Babel, included also the whole of mankind. From this circumstance, whether real or accidental, various theories have arisen: the most worthy, as well as the most correct, is that of Mr. Bryant, who has made the dispersion here alluded to, a partial one, affecting only the great family of the Cuthites, who were the builders of Babel. In the observations of this writer there is generally, and now particularly, much ingenuity of invention. His language is clear, and his theory, with without departing from the accounts given by the patriarch Moses, possesses much originality of invention; it is equally interesting and explicit; who though he differs from yulgar opinion by making the dispersion partial, has too much good sense to vouch that none at all has occurred. For it is a natural supposition that where men are deprived of the means of talking so as to be understood by their own fraternity, or where the language of one family is incommunicable to the whole tribe, it will be found that the first step they will adopt will be that of voluntary separation from each other. Reasoning like this, furnishes, I think, the following satisfactory conclusion, without the assistance of history or antiguity, "that a dispersion subsequent to, and induced by, the erection of Babel, did actually take place; and as Moses denominates it, "one not confined to any particular part of the earth, but extended even to its remotest parts, Here, however, a difficulty arises, which, if it was not insurmountable in those times, was scarcely practicable. In what manner were the early migrations of our forefathers performed ormed? Most parts in a continent, it is true, are accessible by_land, and mankind could have easily spread themselves over the whole of Asia. But when,

instead of places, continents are to be reached, reason will assure us, and experience confirm it, that seas must becrossed, and the management of ships understood; for "the ocean," to use the elegantlanguage of Dr. Robertson, "though destined to facilitate the communication between distant countries, seems at first view to be formed to check the progress of man, and it was long, we may believe, before they became skilful enough to commit themselves to the mercy of winds and waves, or to quit their native regions in quest of remote and unknown countries." As time has progressively advanced, there is every reason to suppose that the wisdom of one age has been added to that of another, so that arts and sciences have proportionably improved in all their departments; and navigation, perhaps, of all arts, the least esteemed by the ancients, because least understood, has, by the invention of the compass, assumed a far different figure in the annals of modern history. The great and ob

vious utility of this instrument in the hands of the sailor clearly, and, I think, satisfactorily, demonstrates, that this art, before an invention so important, must have been no less difficult than dangerous. The regulation of a ship's course by the planets, according to ancient custom, must always have been precarious, and subjected to the variations which these bodies continually lly experience from different causes. But as soon as the singular properties which the magnet possesses, of invariably pointing to the North pole, became known, the application also of this substance to useful purposes was understood, and cannot be better delineated than in the invention of the mariner's compass, his infallible reference and unerring guide in any part of the wide and unfathomable ocean, whether its surface be smooth as the inland lake, or agitated by the storms that are occasionally exhibited in a manner the most terrific, awful, and destructive. Thus we perceive that two events, equally wonderful, originated in the buiding of a tower, which some say was constructed with the evil intent of prying into the secrets of heaven; others, that it was for the more probable as well as rational purpose of directing the builders home to their habitations. A few writers have cursorily and scantily treated this subjeet; they are chiefly those who have written upon mythology, language, or chronology. The facts, however, which are known to the present age, independent of their being much mutilated in their long journeys from one century to another, are few, and mysteriously expressed. The observations I have here made, though they will furnish but little elucidation to an abstruse subject, may be considered as a compilation of facts the most authentic, and of opinions either drawn from the facts themselves, or as they have been given to the world by men of esteemed learning and penetration.

Mr. URBAN,

A

JOHN TOKE.

July 16.

S you are particularly conversant with the curiosities of literature, you will not dislike to register in your pages a very slight notice of three little volumes of re-printed Poetry, which have just appeared.

The first is limited to 100 copies in small 8vo. it is entitled GEORGE WITHER'S Hymns and Songs of the Church. The first part contains the canonical hymns, and such parcels of holy scripture as may properly be sung, with some other ancient songs and creeds. The second part consists of spiritual songs, appropriated to the several times and occasions observable in the Church of England, reprinted from the edition without date; but published about 1623.

The second is limited to 61 copies in small 4to. It is entitled POEMS BY WILLIAM HAMMOND, ESQ. of St. Alban's Court, in East Kent, re-printed from the very scarce and only edition of 1655.

The third is a very elegant little volume in 12mo, of which only forty copies are printed, entitled NYMPHA LIBETHRIS, or the Catswold Muse, by Clement Barksdale, A.M. of Sudeley, in Gloucestershire, Chaplain to the Lord Chandos. Re-printed from the extra-rare little volume of 1651, which sold for 20 guineas among Longman's collection of old poetry.

This new edition of Wither's Hymns contains a curious preface, illustrative as well of the state of bookselling in those days, as of Wither's life. There is also a great deal of intrinsic merit in the poetry of the volume, as well as

most instructive prose introductions to every poem. They will prove the state of the language in those days days to have arrived much nearer to modern polish than is generally suspected.

The volume of Hammond had only been distinguished in its old title by the author's initials. The name is the discovery of the present Editor.

The Cotswold Muse of Barksdale is a singularly attractive little volume. It is full of interesting notices of families, manners, and habits of that eventful period, more especially of Gloucestershire géntry.. A limitation to 40 copies will make it a treasure to any collector who shall attain it.

The dedication to each of these reprints has the signature of S. E. B., one not unknown by his enthusiasm for old literature, which has led him to incur the toil, and hazard the expence, of the present volumes.

The shop of Mr. Triphook will, with the intelligence of its owner in this department, probably aid the inquisitive in the procurement of these rarities.

Your Printer has performed a similar service to Topographers, by the re-publication of elegant limited Editions of " Cullum's Hawsted," and "Warton's Kiddington." Will he also add "Gough's Pleshy?"

Mr. URBAN,

TH

0.

Arundel, June 20.

HE following inscription is epgraven on the corner-stone of the superb room in Arundel castle, called the "Barons' Halt," in which the late Duke of Norfolk gave his magnificent fête last summer, and which is not generally known. Yours, &c.

LIBERTATI

SIDNEY.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »