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 fubject, has inferted in his historical work a difquifition on the language of Armenia, from which we might collect fome curious information, if the prefent 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 fomewhat 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 mysterious 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 thoufand 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 the 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 feems rather derived from that word, than from the name of a mountain. The DIANA of Epbefus 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 Sanfcrit book, entitled Chandi, than from all the fragments of oriental mythology, that are dispersed in the whole compafs 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 ftock, but were afterwards inhabited by that race, which for the prefent 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 fame 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 moft extraordinary people, who escaped the attention, as BARROW obferves more than once, of the diligent and inquifitive HERODOTUS: I mean the people of Judea, whofe 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 fevere, but juft, 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 perverfenefs, the ftupid arrogance, and the brutal atrocity of their character, they had, the peculiar merit, among all races of men under heaven, of preferving a rational and pure fyftem of devotion in the midft of wild polytheifi, inhuman or obfcene rites, and a dark labyrinth

any

of errours produced by ignorance and supported, by interested fraud. Theological inquiries are no part of my prefent fubject; but I cannot refrain from adding, that the collection of tracts, which we call from their excellence the Scriptures, contain, independently of a divine origin, more true fublimity, more exquifite beauty, purer morality, more important hiftory, and finer ftrains both of poetry and eloquence, than could be collected within the fame compafs from all other books, that were ever compofed in any age or in idiom. The two parts, of which the Scriptures confift, are connected by a chain of compofitions, which bear no resemblance in form or ftyle to any that can be produced from the ftores of Grecian, Indian, Perfian, or even Arabian, learning: the antiquity of those compofitions no man doubts; and the unftrained application of them to events long fubfequent to their publication is a folid ground of belief, that they were genuine predictions, and consequently inspired; but, if any thing be the abfolute exclusive property of each individual, it is his belief; and, I hope, I fhould be one of the last men living, who could harbour a thought of obtruding my own belief on the free minds of others. I mean only to affume, what, I trust, will be readily conceded, that the first Hebrew hiftorian must be entitled, merely as fuch, to an