wife named HECATE, and often confounded with PROSERPINE; and there can be no doubt of her identity with CA'LI', or the wife of SIVA in his character of the Stygian Jove. To this black Goddess with a collar of golden skulls, as we see her exhibited in all her principal temples, human facrifices were anciently offered, as the Védas enjoined ; but, in the present age, they are absolutely prohibited, as are also the sacrifices of bulls and horfes: kids are ftill offered to her; and, to palliate the cruelty of the slaughter, which gave such offence to BUDDHA, the Brahmans inculcate a belief, that the poor victims rife in the heaven of INDRA, where they become the musicians of his band. Instead of the obsolete, and now illegal, facrifices of a man, a bull, and a horse, called Neramédha, Gómédha, and As'wamédha, the powers of nature are thought to be propitiated by the less bloody ceremonies at the end of autumn, when the festivals of CA'LI' and LACSHMI are folemnized nearly at the fame time: now, if it be asked, how the Goddess of Death came to be united with the mild patroness of Abundance, I must propose another question, "How came PROSERPINE to be represented "in the European system as the daughter of CERES?" Perhaps, both questions may be answered by the propofition of natural philosophers, that "the apparent destruction of a substance is the production of it in "a different form." The wild mufick of CA'LI''s priefts at one of her festivals brought inftantly to my recollection the Scythian measures of DIANA's adorers in the fplendid opera of IPHIGENIA in Tauris, which GLUCK exhibited at Paris with lefs genius, indeed, than art, but with every advantage that an orchestra could supply.

That we may not difmifs this affemblage of European and Afiatick divinities with a subject so horrid as the altars of HECATE and CA'LI', let us conclude with two remarks, which properly, indeed, belong to the Indian Philosophy, with which we are not at prefent concerned. First;

Elyfum

Elyfium (not the place, but the blifs enjoyed there, in which fense MILTON ufes the word) cannot but appear, as defcribed by the poets, a very tedious and infipid kind of enjoyment: it is, however, more exalted than the temporary Elysium in the court of INDRA, where the pleasures, as in MUHAMMED's paradife, are wholly fenfual; but the Multi, or Elyfian happiness of the Védánta School is far more fublime; for they reprefent it as a total abforption, though not such as to destroy consciousness, in the divine effence; but, for the reason before suggested, I fay no more of this idea of beatitude, and forbear touching on the doctrine of tranfmigration and the fimilarity of the Védánta to the Sicilian, Italick, and old Academick Schools.

Secondly; in the mystical and elevated character of PAN, as a personification of the Universe, according to the notion of lord BACON, there arifes a fort of fimilitude between him and CRISHNA confidered as Na'RA'YAN. The Grecian god plays divinely on his reed, to exprefs, we are told, etherial harmony; he has his attendant Nymphs of the pastures and the dairy; his face is as radiant as the sky, and his head illumined with the horns of a crefcent; whilst his lower extremities are deformed and shaggy, as a symbol of the vegetables, which the earth produces, and of the beasts, who roam over the face of it: now we may compare this portrait, partly with the general character of CRISHNA, the Shepherd God, and partly with the description in the Bhágavat of the divine fpirit exhibited in the form of this Univerfal World; to which we may add the following story from the fame extraordinary poem. The Nymphs had complained to YASO'DA', that the child CRISHNA had been drinking their curds and milk: on being reproved by his foftermother for this indiscretion, he requested her to examine his mouth; in which, to her just amazement, fhe beheld the whole univerfe in all its plenitude of magnificence.

We

We must not be furprized at finding, on a close examination, that the characters of all the pagan deities, male and female, melt into each other, and at last into one or two; for it seems a well-founded opinion, that the whole crowd of gods and goddeffes in ancient Rome, and modern Váránes, mean only the powers of nature, and principally thofe of the SUN, expreffed in a variety of ways and by a multitude of fanciful

names.

Thus have I attempted to trace, imperfectly at present for want of ampler materials, but with a confidence continually increafing as I advanced, a parallel between the Gods adored in three very different nations, Greece, Italy, and India; but, which was the original system and which the copy, I will not presume to decide; nor are we likely, I believe, to be soon furnished with fufficient grounds for a decifion: the fundamental rule, that natural, and most human, operations proceed from the fimple to the compound, will afford no affiftance on this point; fince neither the Afiatick nor European system has any fimplicity in it; and both are fo complex, not to say abfurd, however intermixed with the beautiful and the fublime, that the honour, fuch as it is, of the invention cannot be allotted to either with tolerable certainty.

Since Egypt appears to have been the grand fource of knowledge for the western, and India for the more eaftern, parts of the globe, it may feem a material queftion, whether the Egyptians communicated their Mythology and Philosophy to the Hindus, or conversely; but what the learned of Memphis wrote or faid concerning India, no mortal knows; and what the learned of Váránes have afferted, if any thing, concerning Egypt, can give us little fatisfaction: such circumstantial evidence on this question as I have been able to collect, shall nevertheless be stated; because, unfatisfactory as it is, there may be fomething in it not wholly unworthy of notice; though after all, whatever colonies may have come from

VOL. I.

PP