fidently affume, that the Goths and the Hindus had originally the fame language, gave the same appellations to the stars and planets, adored the fame falfe deities, performed the fame bloody facrifices, and profeffed the fame notions of rewards and punishments after death. I would not infift with M. BAILLY, that the people of Finland were Goths, merely because they have the word ship in their language; while the rest of it appears wholly diftinct from any of the Gothick idioms: the publishers of the Lord's Prayer in many languages represent the Finnish and Lapponian as nearly alike, and the Hungarian as totally different from them; but this must be an errour, if it be true, that a Ruffian author has lately traced the Hungarian from its primitive feat between the Cafpian and the Euxine, as far as Lapland itself; and, fince the Huns were confeffedly Tartars, we may conclude, that all the northern languages, except the Gothick, had a Tartarian origin, like that univerfally afcribed to the various branches of Sclavonian.

On the Armenian, which I never ftudied, becaufe I could not hear of any original compofitions in it, I can offer nothing decifive; but am convinced, from the best information procurable in Bengal, that its basis was ancient Perfian of the fame Indian stock with the Zend, and that

it has been gradually changed fince the time, when Armenia ceased to be a province of Irán: the letters, in which it now appears, are allowed to be comparatively modern; and, though the learned editor of the tract by CARPANIUS on the literature of Ava, compares them with the Páli characters, yet, if they be not, as I should rather imagine, derived from the Pablavi, they are probably an invention of fome learned Armenian in the middle of the fifth century. MoSES of Khoren, than whom no man was more able to elucidate the subject, has inferted in his historical work a difquifition on the language of Armenia, from which we might collect fome curious information, if the present occafion required it; but to all the races of men, who inhabit the branches of Caucafus and the northern limits of Irán, I apply the remark, before announced generally, that ferocious and hardy tribes, who retire for the fake of liberty to mountainous regions, and form by degrees a separate nation, muft alfo form in the end a feparate language by agreeing on new words to express new ideas; provided that the language, which they carried with them, was not fixed by writing and fufficiently copious. The Armenian damfels are faid by STRABO to have facrificed in the temple of the goddefs ANAITIS, whom we know, from other authorities, to be the NA'HI'D,

or VENUS, of the old Perfians; and it is for many reasons highly probable, that one and the fame religion prevailed through the whole empire of CYRUS.

Having travelled round the continent, and among the islands, of Afia, we come again to the coaft of the Mediterranean; and the principal nations of antiquity, who first demand our attention, are the Greeks and Phrygians, who, though differing somewhat in manners, and perhaps in dialect, had an apparent affinity in religion as well as in language: the Dorian, Ionian, and Eolian families having emigrated from Europe, to which it is univerfally agreed that they firft paffed from Egypt, I can add nothing to what has been advanced concerning them in former difcourfes; and, no written monuments of old Phrygia being extant, I fhall only observe, on the authority of the Greeks, that the grand object of myfterious worship in that country was the Mother of the Gods, or Nature perfonified, as we see her among the Indians in a thousand forms and under a thousand names. She was called in the Phrygian dialect MA', and represented in a car drawn by lions, with a drum in her hand, and a towered coronet on her head: her myfteries (which feem to be alluded to in the Mofaick law) are folemnized at the autumnal equinox in these provinces,

where fhe is named, in one of her characters, MA', is adored, in all of them, as the great Mother, is figured fitting on a lion, and appears in fome of her temples with a diadem or mitre of turrets: a drum is called dindima both in Sanfcrit and Phrygian; and the title of Dindymene seems rather derived from that word, than from the name of a mountain. The DIANA of Ephesus was manifeftly the fame goddess in the character of productive Nature; and the AsTARTE of the Syrians and Phenicians (to whom we now return) was, I doubt not, the fame in another form: I may on the whole affure you, that the learned works of SELDEN and JABLONSKI, on the Gods of Syria and Egypt, would receive more illuftration from the little Sanferit book, entitled Chandi, than from all the fragments of oriental mythology, that are dispersed in the whole compass of Grecian, Roman, and Hebrew literature. We are told, that the Phenicians, like the Hindus, adored the Sun, and afferted water to be the first of created things; nor can we doubt, that Syria, Samaria, and Phenice, or the long ftrip of land on the fhore of the Mediterranean, were anciently peopled by a branch of the Indian stock, but were afterwards inhabited by that race, which for the present we call Arabian: in all three the oldeft religion was the Affyrian, as it is called by SELDEN, and the

Samaritan letters appear to have been the same at first with thofe of Phenice; but the Syriack language, of which ample remains are preserved, and the Punick, of which we have a clear fpecimen in PLAUTUS and on monuments lately brought to light, were indifputably of a Chaldaick, or Arabick, origin.

The feat of the first Phenicians having extended to Idume, with which we began, we have now completed the circuit of Afia; but we must not pafs over in filence a most extraordinary people, who escaped the attention, as BARROW obferves more than once, of the diligent and inquifitive HERODOTUS: I mean the people of Judea, whose language demonftrates their affinity with the Arabs, but whofe manners, literature, and history are wonderfully distinguished from the reft of mankind. BARROW loads them with the severe, but just, epithets of malignant, unsocial, obftinate, diftruftful, fordid, changeable, turbulent; and describes them as furiously zealous in fuccouring their own countrymen, but implacably hoftile to other nations; yet, with all the fottish perversenefs, the ftupid arrogance, and the brutal atrocity of their character, they had the peculiar merit, among all races of men under heaven, of preserving a rational and pure system of devotion in the midft of wild polytheism, inhuman or obfcene rites, and a dark labyrinth